Our friends from across the pond have been remaining true to the cross-platform community. Skype 2.0 for Linux has at long last been released.
The free favorite of the VOIP clients has finally upgraded its suite to include a missing feature. For years, both XP and OSX clients have included video capabilities. Now their Linux client has caught up. This is a huge win for the Linux desktop community. Based on the QT 4 gui library, the Skype for Linux client has a clean look that becomes integrated with modern desktop managers.
Being a regular user of Skype, I’ve come to rely on cost savings from computer-to-computer video calls. It has also been a lifesaver recently when hosting conference calls. The mingling of Skype-out and internet calls in a single conference is a beautiful thing. Oh, and who doesn’t love having extra euros on hand for those occasional land line calls? There has never been a better time to resurrect the aging workstation from your closet. Client processor requirements on Linux: 1GHz. Time to get that dedicated Skype box up and running.
A small blip on the radar brought attention this week, this time in the browser world. First off, this enlightening article is a sleeper, considering the importance of the browser. It garnishes unbiased attention from the developer community, no matter what platform is involved. Firefox marketshare continues to hack away at IE, as shown from the current 2008 results. During times of IE compatibility issues, i’ve never hesitated to recommend Firefox 2 to a client. Regardless, here are a couple highlights to pay close attention.
For those of us who rely on Firefox 2 on a daily basis, you may notice that the memory usage gets out of hand after a while. For the users who keep a browser open for days, this can be a problem. Trashing is apparent when checking out old tabs, as they were probably thrown into swap space.
This article dives into techniques used by the dev team to hunt down memory leaks. This goes beyond the basic malloc trimming as expected. Since the browser is cross-platform, it goes into learning to track allocations in XP, Linux, OSX. Very helpful for extension builders. Not surprisingly, cache is getting also tune-up when dealing with images. The benefits are shocking. Keep diving, because they lay out a black and white comparison to IE. Bottom line:
Firefox 3 ends up about 400mb smaller than IE7 at the end of the test!
Why wax poetic about little Firefox 3 memory usage improvements? The answer is simple. Just ponder the new business model of productivity software. Large corporations now have the option to buy hosted solutions to handle their word processing, spreadsheet, email, etc… The end result is very similar to the offerings from google. You now subscribe to software which is centrally maintained and secured. The only client side installation to maintain will be your browser. The improved memory footprint of Firefox 3 should greatly improve this experience, especially those of us who keep open 20+ tabs at once.
Seems as though there is some peaked interest around here regarding dev platforms on the iPhone. Not actually owning one of these beasts, this entry is just a comment on general smart devices.
It just so happens that the iPhone is filling the gap more each day. Considering I’m in the market for something with tight PIM integration, it is no wonder I would consider the iPhone. However, with all the favorable opinions and market share pointing to the Blackberry, it has been difficult to choose otherwise. Strictly speaking, what consists of a “Blackberry Killer?”
Ballmer said it- Developers. It should be painfully obvious that recent announcements by Apple are downright huge. Huge in the sense of computing platforms. (without a keyboard) First off, iPhone 2 software, now the SDK. Until now, the common way to use custom software was to use simple, yet warranty-breaking “hacks.” Much of that mentality will disappear with the ability to use Java SDK and Apple’s own SDK. This software will actually be legitimate, and take direct advantage of on-board controllers like the accelerometers. We can all think of some cool use cases here.
On the corporate side. Push email. Exchange server. What more do you need to know? Apple has made an initiative to tap the connection to thousands of businesses who already have a solid installation of Exchange. “I want an iPhone, but we have to use a Blackberry because of Exchange” - No longer will you hear this. Yes, we are aware that the current ATT edge network isn’t the most speedy for mail use. Apple counters with a 3G net?work capable version announcement. Watch the smartphone market share tables turn this fall…
