Author: Francesca Migliorini

A recent announcement from Dell and a BBC report, outline that sales of Linux based computer have experienced a year of constant growth. Linux is rebounding, at least for non Wal-Mart customers, among end-users for several reasons. Let’s take a look at some of these.

Both end-users and organizations are largely unhappy with the latest version of Windows OS, Windows Vista, which has been perceived more as a theme-pack for Windows XP than as a new operating system. It has been said to be slower, to require more resources and to have still lots of bugs. Bill Gates has announced in fact that a new edition of Window, version 7, will be released in one year time.

On top of this, many computer producers, Dell is an example, decided to offer the option to buy PC and notebook with Ubuntu pre-installed – a user friendly Linux distribution. This allows them to lower the final price, offering cheaper but competitive products. The reason behind a general lower price is not only because Linux is free and almost all its programs are as well. This operating system tends to require fewer resources so that the hardware used doesn’t necessarily have to be the latest, cutting edge kit.

On top of these two main factors, the security side also plays a big role in favor of Linux. The threat of virus spread via P2P and other Internet technologies is greatly reduced, as not only are there far fewer viruses and Trojans designed to attack Linux, the kernel (or core) or the operating system is inherently more stable than that of Windows.

Last but not least, the availability of software like Wine and Cedega, allows users to emulate the Windows environment in order to run games and programs they couldn’t otherwise run. Consider it just as an option for specific programs you can’t find a Linux version of or for games. To be clearer, it will be much faster to use Linux OpenOffice rather then using Windows MS Office with Wine on Linux. But for specific apps, like phone managers, 3D games etc, Wine or Cedega are better.

For the series, ‘I want to do something about climate change, but I don’t want to change my lifestyle’, here’s another chapter. How you can offset your carbon footprint without making nearly any effort?

Ecocho claims to plant two trees for every 1,000 searches made through their website, which uses the Google or Yahoo as search engines. The search results are the same as the ones you would get if you were using the two main search engines directly, the only difference is that by using EcoCho you help the Earth get greener. Unfortunately, trees are now planted just in Australia, while it should have been fairer to have them planted in the users’ country of residence. We all want to breathe better air!

You can also get a toolbar for Firefox and IE and add the Ecocho-Yahoo or Ecocho-Google search in the ‘quick search’ function at the top right-hand corner of your browser. If this is not enough there is also available a game where you have to help the website’s tree mascot to get more Co2 so to grow bigger and bigger. Although I wouldn’t recommend the game, which is fairly boring and doesn’t help the environment, I would advise you to have a look at some web sites to know more about the effects of climate change:

BBC Climate, reports the evidence, the impacts the adaptation we have to face and the Kyoto policies.

Threehugger, advices on how to green every aspect of your life, from work to sex!

Countdownyourfootprint, promotes environmental awareness and solutions

Don’t forget you can find out more about your carbon footprint using programs that can help you calculate the figure like The carbon footprint calculator.

Voice Over IP is a technology that allows you to use the Internet Protocol to transmit your voice and, practically speaking, to call everywhere in the world, mobile or landline numbers. Skype is the most widely known and used VoIP application, but there are also other valid options, like VoipBuster, which can be an even a cheaper solution when calling abroad.

Recently though, I had some issues on the quality side of my VoIP conversations. Although I used a handset, this was not enough to reach the same quality level of a normal land-line telephone conversation. You can actually end up getting very frustrated when your voice is cut and you don’t realise it until you discover the other person is speaking on their own without listening to you at all! In fact, it may happen that if you both speak at the same time, your voice doesn’t go through and you have to repeat things, ruing the natural feeling of a relaxing good chat. How can you improve then the quality of VoIP conversation?

Some well known advice is to use a good handset, which in fact is a must have for internet phone calls, then to double check that your software is updated and finally to avoid downloading or watching online TV while calling. That’s all fairly obvious.

More advanced users could double check if in their router is set to prioritize the VoIP traffic in the router configuration page. Most routers allow you to do so in their Quality of Service (QoS) settings, and you should prioritize the IP address and audio UDP port for your VoIP provider. Some modern routers though, are smart enough to recognize VoIP traffic, and automatically prioritise it over other kinds of traffic, but you can easily check this in your router configuration page. Another easy step to follow is to optimize your computer for broadband. SG TCP Optimizer, for example, can change your OS’s networking settings to allow your computer making the best use of your broadband connection.

If you have experienced poor quality on VoIP conversation, tell us how you solved it and what do you believe being the best VoIP application.

Have you ever thought that your computer can help scientists solving critical world problems like cancer, AIDS and global warming? This can be achieved thanks to distributed computing. This technology allows to use your computer as if it were just one of many CPUs all joined via the net to form a supercomputer. Once it has processed a package of data it connects to a centre to upload the results and download new materials.

If just a small percentage of the world’s estimated 650 million PCs were doing so, it would result in the creation of a huge amount of calculating power, enough to solve problems that would otherwise take years. You can help find cures for diseases like diabetes, Alzheimer’s, search for cosmic gravitational waves (whatever they are) or help in the hunt for extraterrestrial intelligence. There are many projects you can join and two main platforms you can install:

• BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) is a free, open-source software. You can select which of the nine projects to help.
• WCG (World Community Grid) is founded by IBM and currently hosts 5 projects.

When choosing a project, always check the intellectual property of the results which have to be available to the whole scientific community. Some projects that at the moment need particular help are Rosetta@Home, Einstein@Home, SIMAP, World Community Grid, specifically Human Proteome Folding and FightAIDS.

Other three interesting and easy ways on how digital technologies can help us to make a difference with not a great effort are:

The Hunger Site, where you click in the main page the ‘give’ button to see lots of little banner which should pay to sustain different projects, from protecting the rain forest to sustain the research against breast cancer.

FreeRice, where you play a challenging word game and for every right answer you donate grains of rise distributed by the United Nations World Food Program.

Kiva, where you can lend small amounts of money to people in developing countries to support their projects.

After hearing the news that Babelgum will invest €10m in new productions, mostly shorts and documentaries, we wanted to find out more about where online television is heading, and what we can expect from it. We spoke to Valerio Zingarelli, Babelgum CEO, to ask him about what’s going on in the market. He let us know the company’s views on their current content strategy, the future of web TV and the low-down on their revenue-share system, as well as responding to some criticism in the blogosphere.

It is in the news that Babelgum will invest €10m into independent film production. Could you tell us where your company is heading and why it is independent film worth investing in?

Babelgum remains primarily a web distribution platform for non exclusive “long-tail” content; a platform that allows professionals to showcase and monetize safely and instantly their content, bypassing today’s distribution bottlenecks. The self produced content will always represent a small minority of all our content on offer (1%). The reasons why we are dedicating a budget to develop also our own productions are:
1) As Spike Lee put it, Babelgum’s mission is to nurture young talent;
2) Having exclusive self produced content is part of – I would say – every good content strategy. It helps to attract users in those areas where Babelgum wants to become a point of reference: indie films and Nature. Continue reading “Babelgum talks about content and the future of web TV”