GNOME - 10 Years Of Freedom
Hey I got a chance to jump on USTREAM Tuesday night and watch Russ and Richard do their thing over at LINUX in the Ham Shack. Yup they were live!
It was interesting to go behind the scenes to see what went on during the breaks. Those are the spots where podcast listeners only hear the cool music that Russ provides. The making of episode 35 took the better part of 2 hours to produce. Once again, Richard and Russ did an outstanding job of providing information to us information junkies and open source crazies.
Although Linux In The Ham Shack Episode 35 did not directly discuss LINUX or Ham Radio apps , the guys did conduct a very interesting phone interview with Stormy Peters the Executive Director of the GNOME (pronounced GA-NOME) Desktop Project.
Stormy was very informative and talked a bit about her position and responsibilities as Executive Director and provided insight into how the not- for-profit organization operates its levers behind the curtain. I was unaware of the fact that about 40% of the GNOME developers are paid staff while the balance are volunteer, open source crazies like you and I.
Another intersting point that Stormy made was that the GNOME GTK (GNOME Tool Kit) is widely used to develop variations of the standard GNOME Desktop release and is placed on netbooks, cell phones and scientific (medical) instruments.
Stormy also provided some insight into the coming release of GNOME 3. BTW you can download and install the shell now but the official release date will be around Q3 of this year.
The GNOME project has no direct control over when a new release of GNOME desktop will be integrated into OS’es but you will most likely see it bundled in the next release of UBUNTU.
So if you have not taken the opportunity to check out LINUX in the Ham Shack, take a spin over to the site. Russ is constantly making improvements to the site and just like like fine wine, the site continues to improve with age.
With the ever increasing numbers of iPhone and iPod units out on the street, people “like myself” have begun to take a greater interest in creating and listening to Podcasts, the “new broadcasting format”.
Apple sold a record 22.7 million iPods and 4.3 million iPhones during the Q4 of 2008. Rather stunning numbers I’d say. I read somewhere that iPod devices now account for 24% of Apple’s revenue.
From the Website “Digital Strategy – Government of New Zealand”:
“Podcasting, a portmanteau (a word created or made from parts of other words) of Apple’s “iPod” and “broadcasting”, is a method of publishing files to the Internet, allowing users to subscribe to a ‘feed’ and receive new files automatically by subscription, usually at no cost.”
Traveling Around:
So in my travels around the Internet, I ran into a Ham Radio site where the owner actually has the time and equipment for making and distributing his own Podcasts. Meet the Practical Amateur Radio Podcast.
Enter KD0BIK:
The site is owned and operated by Jerry (kd0bik) and Jerry has recently produced his 15th Podcast. Podcast #15 discusses the importance of emergency preparedness. Past topics include upgrading your license class, the origins of the QSL card and multi-part Podcasts about operating Amateur Radio equipment.
Jerry’s Website also included a number of links to other interesting Amateur Radio Podcast sites. For those that are interested, I expanded the Podcast links on the right sidebar for your listening pleasure.
Comments and Discussions:
Do you listen to Podcasts of any kind?
Do you regularly download Podcasts related to Ham Radio?
What is your opinion of Podcasts in general?
