What Will We Use on June 30, 2011?

Yahoo’s stock tanked yesterday which closed at 15.14 -2.08‎ (-12.08%‎).Today  there wasn’t a rebound closing at 14.60< -0.54‎ (-3.57%‎). Microsoft remained pretty much the same.

Just in case you had not heard why, it is because yahoo has rented for 10 years to Microsoft their search engine brand pending the OK from the government. Microsoft did not buy Yahoo like I predicted. It is unclear to me when the 10 year clock starts, but the transformation will not be overnight. It will be outside of the time scope of June 30, 2011 before Yahoo realises if this was a good move or not for them. In the meantime, Yahoo can get back to the business of making money.Note that Yahoo’s CEO’s last words on the issue. Yahoo will be a fierce competitor to Microsoft.

Ms. Bartz knows what she is doing. I, on the other hand, don’t know how to make money off of the internet.

While setting up this site it dawned on me that the majority of internet revenue is advertising of other people’s websites. The art of selling ads is the cash cow behind Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft Razorfish. Making interesting media content is just a way to pull people in to see your ads. The hosting company where whatwillweuse.com resides has suggested that I use Google Adsense to monetise this site.

In this deal, Microsoft will do the expensive work of maintaining a search engine and Yahoo will monetise. Microsoft will give Yahoo monetisation opportunities on Microsoft’s websites too. Sounds good for Yahoo and bad for Microsoft.

Monetisation is the process of turning just about anything into cash in your pocket. I haven’t decided if we should sell ads here because I’m concerned that it will compromise the message. Besides, I moved away from a free blog service because I was uncomfortable with some of the ads they use. Since then I’ve spent about $400 setting up this website and making sure I have the tools to carry out this two year journey. Yup. I’ve invested over 200% of the bet jackpot to make sure I win.

There is a myth out there that Linux and non-Linux users believe that I want to discuss right now.

Myth: Linux users are cheapskates that do not want to pay for Microsoft products.

In Elaina’s case, initially you could say that it is true. After tasting the difference, Elaina now has no desire to buy another Microsoft product because she tells me Linux is so much easier for her to use.

I spend lots of money on technology for my personal use. Very little of it ends up going to Microsoft. I also click on ads from time to time while on the internet.

In the past 12 months I’ve bought with my own money…

• $400 laptop that runs Linux. It came with a Vista license but I did not accept the end-user agreement.
• $400 for a series 3 TIVO which uses the Linux kernel. Does Microsoft Media Center do HDTV?
• $180 for the Eee PC running Linux including the RAM upgrade which I am posting right now.
• $800 Registration and travel costs for the Ohio Linuxfest, Ontario Linuxfest, and South East LinuxFest.
• $200 wifi at various hotels and other internet services, ignoring the $400 I already mentioned that I paid for this site.
• $100 a scanner/printer.
• $125/month for my cell phone coverage. My phone runs PalmOS and I paid $100 more for the hardware because I didn’t want the Windows version.
• $125 membership dues to the Free Software Foundation.
• $20 for dues for Western PA Linux User Group.

What do you say folks? Should we monetise whatwillweuse.com ?

Shares of Microsoft closed today, July 27, 2009 at $23.11. I looked it up since other bloggers keep claiming that Microsoft is going to buy Yahoo. Now, before I say anything more, I do need to disclose that I am not an investment professional and I do not own stocks beyond 401K/403B/Pension savings. Nor do I work for any of the companies mentioned in this post. The same goes for my family.

Microsoft is in no position to buy Yahoo.

Microsoft, who offered Yahoo $31/share to buy them out in February 2008 isn’t doing too well if you take a look at their performance.

Microsoft last split in February 2003 at $24.96 which is well over a dollar less than where we are today. It would be a whole lot worse for Microsoft if Microsoft did not do a major buy back last fall. The fact is, Microsoft is selling Razorfish an advertising company to make up capital. Meanwhile advertising giant Google dominates advertising market share so don’t you dare tell me that people aren’t buying advertising in this market. Before you dismiss Google as some crazy start-up, keep in mind that their stocks continue to go up in today’s economy at the price of $444.80. Also consider that Google uses Linux, not Microsoft products. Microsoft, however, has been pouring money into online advertising for Internet Explorer 8 which is a product that people can’t even pay people to use. Meanwhile, American TV has a commercial four times an hour for Bing, Microsoft’s new search engine.

People say that Bing is picking up market share and weakening Yahoo. I looked up Yahoo’s stock prices that were $10.43 in February 2003 and at $17 today. That’s over $6 a share gain compared to Microsoft’s loss of over a buck. Also consider that during the whole month that Bing has been online, Yahoo’s stock has been on the rise. While Microsoft is busy selling a company, Yahoo bought Xoopit, an online photo tool. Now before you pa-shaw Yahoo, they do other stuff besides the directory based search engine. You should pay attention to Yahoo’s Zimbra which is an open source email and calendar server which does things like support mobile devices like Exchange only wishes it could. Oh yeah, Zimbra only runs on Linux or MacOSX and not Windows servers.

Yahoo is here to stay under the leadership of a strong businesswoman who does not look like she’s looking to exit.

So, to those who say “show me the money” when you doubt how open source friendly companies can compete, I invite you to look up some stocks using Microsoft Money Central. Other companies who are doing well as Microsoft struggles: Apple, Red Hat, IBM.

What a day folks. The unique visitor count is pushing 400 now. That’s fourfold growth in 24 hours. Amazing.

Did you know that Microsoft today has finished the RTM release of Windows 7.

If you are one of the corporations to subscribe to an “open” licensing package like this one

THEN

you will get your very own, non-beta Windows 7 copy  any day now

ELSE

you will have to wait until October 22 to get your hands on a system pre-built with Windows 7.

If you think you can’t turn on the television now without seeing a “if you can find it, it is yours” campaign or the “Bing” commercials, you have not seen anything yet.

On October 21, will we see people pitching a tent in the Best Buy parking lot just to get their hands on this product?

Just one moment, maybe they will be sitting outside a Microsoft store instead!?

Yes I said Microsoft store.

Where ever they may be pitching tents on Wednesday October 22, are there Microsoft fans anymore who love this stuff that much? I assert that the true computer fans, in their heart of hearts, already love other software cultures such as Apple, Free and Open Software, or vendor UNIX. Just in case, I will visit a store that evening to see if there are any campers and report back.

explanation prompted by the entire wu-tang-clan :

For those who don’t remember, when Microsoft released Windows 95 they made a big party about it and Microsoft fans were camping out for the very opportunity to have their hands on the very very latest copy of Windows. As I recall, they actually sold out. Ever since then, Microsoft has attempted to duplicate this lever of excitement without any of the pitfalls by taking preorders. Are you going to pre-order Windows 7? Vote here

In the meantime… OK internet, here is your chance. If you are a person who isn’t on the Microsoft payroll out there who can say you love Microsoft and you can’t wait for Windows 7, comment here.

On Friday, July 17 2009 this blog was was officially relaunched. It has been 5 days and we have had 126 unique visitors as tracked with W3Counter and Site Analytics that came with the hosting account. It has been quite the humbling experience.  WOW.

Monthly we will post the our statistics and compare them to what other stats counters are seeing. Tonight is a milestone as we definitely have passed over 100 readers. Therefore, you, the reader, get to learn more about your whatwillweuse.com neighbors…

First browsers., chances are you use Firefox but there is a smattering of Safari.

1     Firefox 3.0      42%
2     Safari 4.0       14%
3     Mozilla 1.9     14%
4     Firefox 3.5      11%

everything else each category is 2% or less including IE of any type and Chrome.

Then operating systems…
1      Linux           64%
2     Mac OS X     18%
3     Windows XP  7%
4     Unknown        6%

everything else each category is 2% or less including Vista, Windows 7, iPhone, and PalmOS.

You could say to me, “Gee, Beth Lynn, your audience is not representative of the population” but I assert the following…

Until now, these type of “market share” studies have been done by marketing professionals who have a product to market.  Their results would then be tainted toward the type of products they offer.  In order to reach everyone, and not just the people who buy stuff on the internet, personal websites must become part of the operating system and browser tracking in order for the world to see an accurate count. This blog, with the help of W3Counter, is a game changer because we at “What will we use” will use the power of social capital to get the general population involved in the counting of browser and operating system statistics based on page hits. That means you can help us out by adding a counter to your website or WordPress blog for free here with w3counter. W3Counter’s global stats will upload monthly with the data that we collect here at www.whatwillweuse.com and the data you see resulting in traffic from your network.  Amazingly, w3counter does not cost you anything for the basic account and you will get to see information on where your visitors are and what they are using. Please signup for your account, copy the javascript into your index.html and we will make history together. Oh yeah, there is a wordpress plug into too. W3counter is real simple for real folks.

I’ve been so pleased that I just signed up for the pro account.  If you like w3counter, support them because they get community like no other web statistics company.

This has been an unpaid product endorsement.

That GUIs on Linux were designed by developers for developers is a common criticism, but does it still hold true?  The tide seems to be turning, at least if the areas of FOSS inhabited by Ubuntu and KDE are any indication.

KDE developers have just elected a new executive council.  Notable as one of the new e.V. council members is usability guru Celeste Lyn Paul.  Celeste has spent the last five years working to make KDE more usable for the masses.  It really shows in current versions of KDE 4.  I found KDE 3 confusing and would give up when trying to change any settings, always running back to GNOME, but now I’m sticking with KDE 4.  It’s still KDE, so it’s still going to give lots of customizations, but it does them in ways that are easier to digest.

Last winter, Canonical’s Desktop Experience team set about touching up the rough spots of GNOME in Ubuntu, starting with notifications.  Not everyone liked the changes.  At first I didn’t either because of the inconsistency between KDE and GNOME applications, but I have to say, the decision to only show one notification at a time was a good one.  What’s more difficult than trying to read 15 timed  popup notifications at once?  Inconsistency is a problem from a usability standpoint, but now that KDE’s Knotification daemon is able to respond to notification requests from both GNOME and KDE applications, there’s a consistency win.

A new mission in the Ubuntu world is to fix 100 “papercuts” in each release.  This comes from the term “death by 100 papercuts.”  A papercut is a small issue that has a big impact when a user runs into it multiple times a day, or something small that if changed would make a big difference.  Of these 100 papercuts, Kubuntu has made it a goal to own ten of the papercuts this cycle.  The ongoing target of fixing ten papercuts each week is going well.  One I just fixed for Kubuntu (and yes, sent upstream to KDE) is that if you use Firefox, you get a bouncing Firefox icon and a bouncing Konqueror icon when you click on a link.  It’s a simple one-line change to a launcher file, but darn it if it isn’t confusing to see icons for two different web browsers.  I would always be afraid it was broken and about to start Konqueror instead of Firefox.  Other ones we’re working on for KDE include making the Get Hot New Stuff buttons consistent (six different makeshift buttons are used in KDE), getting the user’s avatar in the menu to be near the user’s name instead of with the search box, and changing techy phrasing to user phrasing.

If you’ve used Kubuntu 9.04, you may have noticed that the default IRC client is not good old Konversation.  It’s Quassel.  Why?  Well, Konversation wasn’t ported to KDE 4 yet, and the developers wanted consistency.  So they needed something that used Qt 4.  Quassel was Qt 4, but golly was it made for geeks.  Celeste went to the developers with a list of things that would make the user interface more usable for normal folks.  Since they weren’t designers, they were happy to have some guidance on these matters and set to making it better.  It’s not perfect, and there’s now a KDE 4 Konvi.  So what did we do at this year’s Ubuntu Developer Summit?  We came up with a list of features and usability requirements to give to both groups of developers, in the hopes they’d get up to speed.  What will come of it? Hopefully, they’ll both improve, and we’ll end up with a tough choice between two very good clients.

GNOME, of course, is working on their Next Big Thing: GNOME 3.0.  The discussion in the GNOME Usability mailing list about new, more intuitive widgets is really something.  I’d be interested to try out some of these new widgets.  Then there’s GNOME Zeitgeist, the new tool that’s supposed to revolutionize how we deal with files.  “Where did I put those spreadsheets for work?  Was it Work/Documents/Financial…no that’s not it.  Maybe Documents/Spreadsheets? No…” No more of that. Instead, the context of the file, its data, when it was used, tags, etc. will all be stored to make it easier to find the file you’re looking for.

And really, if you were using Linux in the mid-90s, did you really expect you’d see the day when installation meant clicking (yes! with a mouse!) “Next” six or seven times and only having to give basic information like language, keyboard, username, and password with no questions about DHCP or setting a static IP address, no compiling kernels?  Did you think your computer would respond to plugging in a printer by popping up a notice that it was already configured?  What about GUIs to install drivers for the very few things that didn’t work perfectly out of the box, yet still worked?  We’ve made great strides toward a polished desktop that anyone can use.

I am an IT professional with 10 years experience supporting Linux. Over the years I keep hearing the Linux is not for the casual user because it is too difficult to use and support argument.  For the first 9 years I agreed with this argument. Today I believe your Linux is ready. Except for wireless, everything just works. Do you remember how USB was a major pain? Now Linux is the first OS to support USB3. 

For those who need another example, my friend Chris is a stay at home mom who is going blind. She was able to configure a USB printer with a Ubuntu 8.10 desktop I gave her without picking up the telephone or installing drivers off of a CD. The experience was easier than any Windows version would have been. When Microsoft releases a new operating system – or even a “service pack,” it tries with various levels of effort and success to get the  hardware manufactures to release new drivers. I’m betting on Microsoft failing to do this well for the release of Windows 7. On the other hand, Apple does support hardware well across OSes but that’s a post for another day.

But back to Elaina… I went over to her house to install Linux in April. Before I could get over there, she spent hours with me on the phone rebooting and installing software on the Windows XP machine and she was getting rather frustrated rather quickly because the Windows “freeware” didn’t work exactly as advertised. That’s right – she called me for Windows support and begged for me to get over there sooner to install Linux. She could have called Microsoft but that would be just as useful and expensive as a psychic hotline.  As Vance Kochenderfer pointed out in his article Who’s supporting you?, Microsoft users are at the mercy of a friend who is “good with computers” or strangers on an internet forum. Microsoft is no help. Your computer manufacturer is no help either.

My bet depends on those computer geeks who already like Linux to help their friends through the process of installation and along the way. The quality and ease of use of the Linux desktop will take care of the rest. Friends help friends use Linux. I first heard that sentence from Cathy Malmose at Southern California Linux Expo and it changed my point of view. Finally widespread Linux deployment seemed doable. Since April, I only had one support call to Elaina’s house which took place on July 17, 2009. The problem: the SD card reader that was working just stopped working. It turned out to be a hardware issue. I gave her that SD card reader so I know that it was a cheap close out I bought when Circuit City was going bust. Elaina never blamed me or Linux. In fact she hates Microsoft products; she likes Linux so much she wants a Linux laptop. I showed her my Asus Eee PC 900A which runs Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.04. She was so impressed that she wants two—one for herself and a second for her 10 year old daughter.

In April, my friend Elaina from junior high days called me because I “do computer stuff.”  Elaina is a stay at home mom of three (kids ages 10,5,and 6 months) and had just received a free computer from another one of her friends.  The new PC from the start would need some TLC and Elaina knew it.  Her first question was “How are we going to wipe the system and install Windows?” This question is interesting to me for three reasons.

1. Even though Elaina did not have a computer in the home besides this free gift, she knew that a Windows XP installation would have licensing issues (is it transferable? is this a “genuine?”)
2. Would it be worth using a software configuration that led to the free computer’s availability? Would there be viruses, spyware, mysterious lockups, and blue screen of death?
3. How much would all of it cost? Software licenses for Windows, Microsoft Office, and virus scanners would quickly amount to around $700. Hardware upgrades would be needed to meet Vista system requirements making this free computer sound scary.

I told Elaina that there was a better way: Linux. All concerns were handled with free licenses, no virus worries, no more blue screen of death, and no need to upgrade the computer hardware.  We decided to install Ubuntu Linux 9.04 because it would meet all of her communication needs and it would cost her nothing. Overjoyed, Elaina asked me back in April, “Why isn’t everyone running Linux?” I told her I do not know. OK internet. Beth Lynn, Elaina, Mackenzie, and Nick want to know. Tell us why would anyone choose to run Windows over Linux given the same set of circumstances?

First of all, I have to say thank you to the readers who followed me over from my personal livejournal blog.  It will stay there if there is something in my personal life that I, Beth Lynn Eicher, wish to tell the entire world about.

When I first started this discussion two weeks ago, I had no idea that the future of operating system, browser, and office suite usage would be so interesting to so many people.  What I thought was just a personal debate  between Nick and I, turned into something serious which demanded professional blogger-journalist tools.

It turned out to be a very great move because here we will be able to do the following:

1. Track Ubuntu – Bug One – Microsoft has majority market share status of the visitors of this website. Thanks to the folks at w3counter.com we see if bug one exists for the vistiors of this website.
2. Anonymous comments can be efficiently handled with akismet. As before, intelligent discussion, even those who disagree, will be encouraged.
3. Have multiple writers tracking the status. So far it is myself, Beth Lynn Eicher, and Mackenize Morgan who will be writing for this blog. If you want to commit to this 2 year journey and blog here about how Microsoft or the alternatives are doing, leave us a comment. Writers who are Apple or Microsoft apologists are welcome. You do not have to agree with the prediction to write with us.  All you have to do is write about who is using what and why.
4. Advertising on whatwillweuse.com will be under the editorial control.

Had I moved onto a Microsoft/IIS server based web log technology like SharePoint, I would not have had benefits of moving points 1&2.  Instead I am using Centos 5.1 GNU/Linux with Apache and WordPress. Why use Microsoft when the Free Software alternatives we use instead work so well?

I say that we are in Gandhicon3 because Microsoft is targeting the Linux community. In the first years of Linux, it was easy to ignore since the user base was so small. Then free software was mocked with “just for geeks” thinking. Ladies and Gentleman, the days of ignoring and mocking are over. If you do FLOSS, Microsoft is fighting for you to come to them. Why should Microsoft care? Geeks have been on board with Linux for years now. Linux is 18 years old. It is time to introduce her to society: Your Linux is ready. The 80% that Nick is talking about have started to checkout the Linux and they like the maturity Linux brings. My mom bought this eeePC with Linux on ToysRUs’s website for under $150. She now has zero desire to buy another Microsoft product. Until now, she has been computing with Microsoft operating systems since 1992 because that’s what people did. If she isn’t the 80%, I don’t know who is. of started this year poorly. In February 2009, Microsoft held and investors meeting and what you see here are leaked images of the PowerPoint slides. Mr. Steve Blamer stated “we’re very focused in on both Apple as a competitor, and Linux as a competitor. I think the dynamic with Linux is changing somewhat.” and “I assume we’re going to see Android-based, Linux-based laptops, in addition to phones. We’ll see Google more as a competitor in the desktop operating system business than we ever have before.” For more info see The OSWire andLinux Pro Magazine.