You want to receive our Picks of the Week every Monday morning?
Thank you for reading the first edition of the Knowledge7’s Picks of the Week.
Every week, Avinash Meetoo will make you discover interesting articles and websites to help you broaden your understanding of the world of open source software and information technology in general.
Instapaper
Instapaper is “a simple tool to save web pages for reading later” and is 100% free. While browsing, I frequently come across interesting articles that I would like to read at a later time. Up to now, I generally bookmarked the articles… and forget about them later. Instapaper allows me to collect those articles in one central place and read them when I have some free time either on my laptop or using my mobile phone. Instapaper can also print excerpts from the articles so that I can peruse them while relaxing on the beach for example. Now that we’ll be doing this Knowledge7’s Picks of the Week regularly, you have a great incentive to try Instapaper 🙂
BSD for Linux Users
Ever asked yourself the difference between BSD Unix (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Mac OS X, etc.) and Linux? Want to know the differences between the two main types of open source licences: GPL and BSD? Always wondered how the cathedral compares to the bazaar? Read this great set of articles by Matt Fuller to understand those deep philosophical and technical differences. Matt is a BSD user and the articles are written from his perspective but they are all very well written and straight to the point. As a bonus, you’ll also learn that “Windows Causes Stupidity” and that the “Stupidity” is not an insult.
StackOverflow
StackOverflow describes itself as “a programming Question & Answer site that’s free. Free to ask questions, free to answer questions, free to read, free to index, built with plain old HTML, no fake rot13 text on the home page, no scammy Google-cloaking tactics, no salespeople, no Javascript windows dropping down in front of the answer asking for $12.95 to go away.” And that’s precisely what it is! StackOverflow has really become THE place on the Internet where programmers can find solutions to complex problems by asking those who got the same issues before. It’s much better than fishing in the dark with Google Search (now that our Web is so polluted with spam blogs and websites).
Android-Powered Smartphones
I have a confession to make: I wrote this article myself for the TechKnow magazine. But, heck, why not telling you about it? In it, I explore the world of Android-powered smartphones (like my own Google Nexus One) and try to understand how a mobile platform which was launched in October 2008 has managed to be present on HALF of the smartphones being purchased in the USA at this very moment (the iPhone is at 23%). Is that because Android runs Linux inside? Or is it because it’s open source software which can be used and modified freely by any phone manufacturer? Or is it simply because it’s the best mobile platform ever?
jQuery Mobile
Speaking of smartphones, here is the jQuery mobile framework for building mobile websites having “a unified user interface across all popular mobile platforms” (Android, iPhone, BlackBerry, Symbian, Windows, etc). jQuery Mobile is obviously based on jQuery which is pretty much the standard Javascript framework in use by millions of popular websites all over the planet. Now that smartphones are so pervasive, one cannot develop a website for desktop computers only anymore and jQuery mobile seems to be a worthy candidate framework for building mobile websites. Note that jQuery Mobile is still an alpha release (so expect things to break from time to time) but it’s exciting news nevertheless.
Leave a Reply