Yesterday, one week to the day after the release of Windows 7, Ubuntu released version 9.10 of their Linux distribution. It’s got all sorts of new features that have been talked about extensively all over the web, but I just found out it also fixes a bug that’s been bothering me ever since I first got into Ubuntu. Under ‘Karmic Koala’, the video tearing on Intel graphics adapters is finally gone.

Intel’s integrated video adapters have long been recommended for Ubuntu users with modest graphical needs. If you’re not into games and don’t need the absolute best possible video playback, going with an onboard video adapter from Intel was a safe bet. I have two machines that use Intel’s GMA 950 chip, and I found them to work quite well, except for this one issue.
More I could just hug Karmic Koala!

There are three corporate giants that dominate tech news. All of them have recently made headlines with innovative new products, and all of them have a dedicated following among tech fans, and are hated intensely by just as many. Time to gather pros and cons for Google, Microsoft and Apple and decide who truly deserves your devotion. Please feel free to add yours in the comments.
More So, are you an Apple, Microsoft or Google fan?

My main work PC still runs a copy of Windows Vista. I’ve tried switching to Ubuntu, but I still need Windows-only software too often for that to work out. So for now I’m stuck with Windows, and as long as I am, I figured I might as well upgrade to ’7′. But as I found out today there’s a catch.
More Upgrading your Vista could severely limit Windows 7

As Jamie pointed out in a comment on this blog, Nabaztag creator Violet has been purchased by a company called MindScape. The news had escaped me because most of the press released are in French, but I’m happy to see these adorable little rabbits saved.

I’ve written in the past about how poor Violet’s service was at times, and I firmly believe this, at least in part, caused them to go under. They were getting a really bad rep. Nabaztag bunnies need to connect to a central server to operate, and is Voilet hadn’t found a buyer they’d probably all have let their ears hang.

Let’s hope MindScape fixed the software, adds WPA2 compatibility and launches some cool new ‘services’. My bunny has been disconnected for months now because it won’t connect to my network and it didn’t really do anything anymore (email notification was broken last time I tried, so were lots of other services). It will be hard to come up with a business model though, as people already have the hardware, and paid services failed miserably for Violet.

Back in early 2003, a friend and I started a blog called Choking on Popcorn. This was the blog that introduced me to Pivot, Movable Type and later WordPress. My personal blogs (the first on was on Blogger, started in May of 2002) have come and gone, but CoP is still around, and now has almost a thousand movie reviews.

I did a post there yesterday that I could just as easily have posted here. It’s about how new technology is changing the way movies are consumed. About how downloading a movie is often significantly easier than going to see it at the cinema (at least in my case). I’d ove to hear your thoughts on this, so please place your comments over there: Why do you pirate movies?

When I first heard about gdgt.com, I thought the startup founded by Peter Rojas and Ryan Block was terribly clever, and right up my alley. The idea of having gadget freaks keep “had”, “have” and “want” lists makes sense both from a user’s perspective and from an advertiser’s. When the website opened to the public I was quick to register and started adding things to my lists. Some stuff that wasn’t in there yet. It was amazing to see how much stuff was entered by users.

But I don’t buy a new gadget every day, so keeping the lists up-to-date doesn’t require me to visit GDGT daily. Considering how Rojas and Block were also involved in Engadget and Gizmodo, I was hoping their new effort would replace both those blogs and become a one-stop shop for technology enthusiasts. So far, at least for me, it hasn’t.
More Why do I still not love GDGT?

Over the last few months, I’ve not been able to dedicate as much time to the WP-Cumulus project as I’d hoped to. Freelance work has been keeping me pretty busy, and I’ve had to deal with acute issues rather than be able to focus on new features. That’s why I decided to look for help. Just around that time, Luke Morton launched a spin-off version of the plugin that implemented something I’d been meaning to work on too. I contacted Luke and I’m very happy he’s agreed to help develop WP-Cumulus from now on.

Some of the things we’ll be working on are pretty major. We’ll finally move to SWFObject 2.x, look into internationalization (both for the plugin and the Flash movie) and make improvements to the admin screen. We hope to be able to release a true 2.0 version sometime this year.