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2005 October

VMWare Player

Now this is a virtualization product to get excited about! VMWare has decided to release a free version of their powerful VMWare workstation product that can run, but not create, virtual machine images.

Since they’ve included the Linux version in this deal, you might be seeing Live CDs with a full virtual machine player installed. In fact, you could distribute your application as a Linux LiveCD that boots your application image in VMWare!

I also imagine that we’ll be seeing VMWare-enabled Linux distribution demos. What better way to try out a different flavour of Linux without installing it?

Build your own e-Ink reader

eInk is offering a development kit for its new active matrix electronic paper prototype. For only $3000, you can build yourself an e-book reader with their Linux-based evaluation board.

I think I’ll bite when this drops below $300.

OpenDocument for Australian National Archive

From Groklaw:

The Australian National Archive has selected OpenDocument XML for long-term storage of government documents. GovTech News also reports that Open Source Victoria has called for all remaining Australian government institutions to follow Massachusetts’ lead in adopting OpenDocument XML…

Wow.

Switching blog readers

I’ve decided to take the plunge and switch RSS readers. I was using SharpReader at work under Windows and Liferea at home under Linux. Neither reader met my needs very well. I found that SharpReader was a big memory hog and suffered from the general heaviness of most client-side .NET applications. Liferea at home was fast and supported the page-per-blog model, but it was somewhat crashy.

Starting today, I’m using the Sage RSS Reader at home and work for my RSS reading. It’s a firefox plugin, so I can use Adblock to block those annoying feedburner ads in some of the feeds that I read.