Tuesday, January 25, 2005

Firefox and Google Y'all have undoubtedly heard by now that Google has hired Firefox's coder-in-chief, Ben Goodger. Now maybe it's just me, but just why would it be important for Google to have its own browser? It is absolutely wonderful that Google has helped secure Goodger's future by spreading some of that stock money his way. We will all benefit through Goodger's continued work on Firefox. But as to the semi-mysterious Gbrowser, why should Google (that public company that no longer answers just to Sergey and Larry, but to Wall Street) need to have anything but a skin on top of Firefox? I don't exactly know about Opera's bottom line, but with that possible exception, no company has ever been successful making money with a browser since Microsoft killed Netscape. No doubt I'm just showing off my lack of business acumen (I am, after all, a proud but humble worker), and I will try to do some more blogosphere reading once I get this book chapter finished, but it just doesn't make a lot of sense at first blush. 5:32:27 PM    comment []

Economic Upturn? Plethora of new Linux magazines Seems like everywhere you turn these days, there's a new Linux magazine coming out. I've previously reported on the soon-to-come-out Tux. Yesterday, I read Andy Oram's blog and learned about Free Software Magazine (more later). The other day I was in Greenfield News & Hobby, the greatest newsstand (and hobby shop) in SE Wisconsin, looking for nothing in particular. When perusing the computer section, something familiar, but oddly new, stared back at me: Linux Magazine. The thing is, I've subscribed to Linux Magazine practically since it was born in 1999. This wasn't it. Now I've seen UK imports for sale there, but this had pricing in US and Canadian dollars. More confusion: They are celebrating their 50th issue inside. Look closer at the cover, and see the URL is different from the one I know: Linux-Magazine.com, with a hyphen. A further look through the pages, and I solve the mystery. This is an English version of the German Linux Magazin (no e), which probably has been coming out for awhile. One hopes that this publisher, with translations all over Europe, will consider a new name for the North American version. Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to reading the mag.And perhaps writing for it down the road. Going back to Free Software Magazine, it is an interesting project. As a writer, the most interesting thing is that they have an XML-based template that handles all the formatting. To this point, I have not seen this in a periodical before. All my book publishers have had (M$ Word) templates that I've had to work with, so that's nothing new. This is the first magazine I know of that's done that, though. It'll be fun to see if they tweak what Oram calls its "rather generic-looking layout" and what they can get out of it. But all these titles, along with the continued success of the old print standards, Linux Journal and LinuxWorld, (well, LW is not so old, printwise) points to healthy growth in the Linux sector (not to mention the Linux writing sector). May they all prosper, along with their contributors. 4:38:13 PM    comment []