Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Ubuntu for Android... and Plasma Active?

So, it's news of the day that Canonical presented Unity for Android devices (http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/android). As I seen the video I thought: well, also Plasma Active can do this. The problem is that there is no porting of Plasma Active for Android platform. So I'm asking: wich are the main techincal problems we could encounter in transforming Plasma Active in an app for this system (it's not rhetorical, I'm really asking it because I don't know)?
Talking about the ethical question, sure, Android is not really FOSS. But it's the most used quasi-free system, and having Plasma Active for this system could only improve the freedom of users. It would also became a big "advertisement" for the whole KDE software compilation.

By the way, here's a video of Unity for Android in action:

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

The "raspberry" that wants to change computer science

Some months ago, the project RaspberryPi has been announced. Its purpose is very ambitious: creating a good computer at a very low price, so it will be possible to reduce the "digital divide". In January, models A and B have been  presented (http://www.raspberrypi.org/faqs), and they will be available after February 20th. The B model will cost 25 euros.

The "flow rate" of this thing is enormous: having a computer, perfectly working, at about 25 euros, means that we will be able to computerize a lot of things: used with Arduino, RaspberryPi will make possible the low cost domotics.

I asked some questions to Eben Upton, and I have managed to undestand a little bit more about what they are going to do.

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Interviewing Ton Roosendaal: will it blend?

Yes, I could not resist to associate Blender with "will it blend" my favourite way to use an iPhone (check out this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_S8sxpK4_iA).

Some days ago, I asked some questions to Ton Roosendaal and he, really nicely, found the time to answer. As you all may know, he is the creator of Blender and the head of the Blender Institute. Anyway, for me, the most important idea he developed is the "open movie" project. It introduces a completely new concept of creating an artistic opera, where the public can be an active part during the production and expecially after it, possibly improving the opera itself or creating another version (if it's a movie, you can create your own final). Basically, it's the power of free open source software ported to art, expecially cinematographic art.

Tra l'altro: se siete italiani, potrete leggere una traduzione dell'intervista con presentazione nel prossimo numero di GNU/Linux Magazine Italia.