Ubuntu’s two big advantages over Windows and Mac
Posted on July 30, 2010 by hunghuynh
Filed Under Collection | Tags: Window | Leave a Comment
I’ve been using the latest version (10.04) of Ubuntu Linux since April and there’s a lot to like about it. I announced earlier this year that I was giving desktop Linux another look, and I went with Ubuntu because it is the Linux distribution most focused on a desktop OS. I have lots of observations about the Ubuntu experience and how it compares to Mac and Windows, but I’m going to save most of that feedback for another article.
Today I want to talk about two significant advantages that Ubuntu has over Windows 7 and Mac OS X. This came up last week because Apple displaced Oracle as the new world leader in security vulnerabilities, according to a report from Secunia. And Ars Technica astutely pointed out:
The report includes cumulative figures for the number of vulnerabilities found on a Windows PC with the 50 most widely-used programs. Five years ago, there were more first-party flaws (in Windows and Microsoft’s other software) than third-party. Since about 2007, the balance shifted towards third-party programs. This year, third-party flaws are predicted to outnumber first-party flaws by two-to-one. Secunia also makes a case that effectively updating this third-party software is much harder to do; whereas Microsoft’s Windows Update and Microsoft Update systems will provide protection for around 35% of reported vulnerabilities, patching the remainder requires the use of 13 or more updating systems. Some vendors-Apple, Mozilla, and Google, for example-do have decent automatic update systems, but others require manual intervention by the user.
Google I/O: Google Wave
Posted on July 15, 2010 by hunghuynh
Filed Under Collection, How To | Tags: google | Leave a Comment
Google Wave is a new collaboration and communication tool, with a powerful API and a federation protocol. In this track, learn about the underlying technology and how waves are used by consumers and the enterprise. In particular, Google Wave engineers will explain how to build wave-y extensions using the APIs, how you can run your own wave service, and how you can contribute to the technology.
All videos and slides are available below.
Fireside chat with the Google Wave team
Google Wave API design principles: Anatomy of a great extension
Open source Google Wave: Building your own wave provider
Making smart & scalable Wave robots
Google Wave Media APIs: Attachments can surf too!
Google Wave and the enterprise environment
Five Really Handy Google Command Line Tricks
Posted on June 22, 2010 by hunghuynh
Filed Under How To, News | Tags: google | Leave a Comment
With the right commands, you can turn your favorite command-line text editor into a distraction-free Google Docs app, add new events to Google Calendar, upload images to Picasa or video to YouTube, backup your Google data, and more. Here’s how it works.
On Friday, Google released GoogleCL, a saucy command line program that interacts with Google services from any *nix-friendly command-line prompt (on Windows, Mac, or Linux). We spent the weekend playing around with it, and now we’re sharing a few of the coolest ways we’ve been putting it to use.
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What is Google TV?
Posted on June 17, 2010 by hunghuynh
Filed Under News | Tags: google | Leave a Comment
Google’s video introduction to Google TV helps us understand a bit more about the nifty unreleased service, Android developers are focusing on user experience in the next update, and Microsoft starts testing the Windows 7 Service Pack 1 beta.
* What is Google TV?
If you haven’t figured out what Google TV is yet, this video will explain that it’s an all-encompassing multimedia system on your big screen. [YouTube]
* Android Team “Laser Focused” On The User Experience For Next Release
Google says that the next release for Android, Gingerbread, will focus more on the user experience than features. Google is reported to have said that, barring a few tweaks, they more or less have the features they want. [TechCrunch]
* Windows 7 Service Pack 1 beta invites dispatched; testing to begin shortly
Windows site Neowin says that Microsoft is already emailing beta testers to test the new Windows 7 Service Pack 1 beta. There is a possibility that Microsoft will add USB 3.0 support and a more stable Bluetooth/Wi-Fi connection for users. [Download Squad]
* Google Wi-Fi Snooping Could Result In 30-State Investigation
Google’s entanglement with the government over Wi-Fi data gathering is getting more complicated. Thirty states are considering an investigation over the Google Street View cars, which have been gathering local Wi-Fi information from business owners and residents. [Gizmodo]
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Speech Recognition with Javascript
Posted on June 14, 2010 by hunghuynh
Filed Under How To | Tags: java | Leave a Comment
Recently Google’s free text to speech api has made the rounds. The reverse is also possible, converting speech to text.
With speechapi.com’s javascript API, it is possible to build interesting speech-web mashups that include both speech-to-text as well as text-to-speech.
A combination of several technologies and open source tools make this possible. In the browser, Flash is used to access the microphone and stream the audio to an RTMP server. Red5 is used because its a versatile media server that has the benefit of being open source and free.
Once that audio is received on the server, it needs to be converted to text. There are many speech recognition engines to choose from. Many are proprietary and provide very good accuracy results but they are pricey and closed source. There are some state of the art opensource speech recognition engines too, such as julius and Sphinx to name a couple. The speechapi service uses sphinx because it is license friendly and has a strong community.
Now this is great, we can transmit audio and convert it to text but we need to control the process and use the results in the web page. That is where Javascript comes in. Speechapi.com provides a Javascript API. There is a setupRecognition method that sets up the grammar used in the speech-to-text process. There is a simple grammar mode, where you can just provide a comma seperated list of words. JSGF is also supported and is useful for more complex grammars. There are also methods that communicate with the flash control to indicate when to start transmitting audio and when to stop transmitting audio. You can also use the flash controls built in press to speak button to specify the speech endpoints.