11/02/2004 - 11/08/2004

Adobe eyes the Linux Desktop Market

From CNet...

Adobe Systems, maker of major desktop software products such as Photoshop and Acrobat Reader, has begun a quiet effort to become more involved with desktop Linux.

Adobe has largely been on the sidelines of efforts to boost Linux for desktop computers, the vast majority of which run Microsoft Windows. The software maker is now taking a more active role by joining a prominent Linux consortium, working to improve Linux and planning to lead its own open-source development projects, CNET News.com has learned.

Two job postings reveal some of the company's intentions. Adobe wants to hire a director of Linux market development to "identify and evaluate strategies for Adobe in the Linux and open-source desktop market" and to identify projects that "will help improve Linux as a desktop environment." The employee also will "develop strong business relationships with leading Linux distributors and partners."

The rest of the article is here...

My new printer - Epson Photo R300

We've been talking about wanting a dedicated photo printer around the house for a while now - instead of sending out to Shutterfly all the time, and to be able to print off "spur of the moment" copies"...

Marla also decided that she'd like a color printer (since the kids and I already have them) for printing out her term papers and reports...

So I headed over to our local Mac-centric shop (since everyone's on a Mac, except me) - Springboard Media - and after looking at the options, settled on the Epson Stylus Photo R300.

I'm pretty impressed with it. The printer can be used entirely standalone, for printing pictures directly off of digital media cards/sticks AS WELL AS any USB-based device you can plug in (camera, CD, ZIP, etc.). You can also plug in a writable device (CDRW, ZIP, etc.) in, and auto-copy the digital media contents to the drive - all w/o a computer! And if you do have a computer, then any cards or USB devices will "pass through" to the computer as if they were directly plugin in. So you don't need a separate card reader.

I then proceeded to hook it up to an extra Mac in the house, enabled printer sharing, and now we can access it from any machine in the house - both Mac and PC! I also ordered the optional BlueTooth adapter to allow wireless printing from my camera phone...

Ran a bunch of test photos and document print last night - all excellent quality and speed is quite reasonable.

It's not 100% perfect - the biggest missing feature is on the 300M, a preview monitor so see the pictures on the media instead of having to print "proof sheets".

A Geek Guide to Kosher Machines

Meet the hacker who makes your home appliances right with God. By Michael Erard from Wired magazine.

Strange things for your keyring

For anyone needing a complete web, ftp and email server that they can carry around - check out WebServerUSB.

Though much cooler is the ability to have a fully bootable and usable GUI Linux on your USB key OR your iPod(!). Check out MetroPipe's Portable Virtual Privacy Machine.