Jesse Ross | jesseross.com

And lo, The Great Googley One said unto me, “I bring to you a phone, a phone powered by open source, which you will still pay through the nose for, because the telecom companies are greedy, greedy bastards, but nevertheless, a phone that will let you easily add new applications, and share those applications with the world, in a share-y, share-y, love-y, love-y, socialist-y sort of way, and it will not be an iPhone, but it will at least provide a decent alternative, and it will not force you to switch to Ma Bell.”

And thus, I bought said phone, and I will patiently wait until October 22nd, when it appears at my door, as if delivered from the loving hands of The Great Google itself. And in my waiting, I will learn the SDK and develop applications. And it will be good.

It’s like His Ubiquitous One just came down and touched me on my ethernet cable… I’m that happy…

I realize that I still have about a month before I’m officially allowed to start making New Year’s Resolutions, but with this one I want to make sure I give people sufficient warning. As many of you out there know, I’m a big advocate of open source, and an even bigger advocate of open standards. It’s because of open standards we have things like the Internet, the Web and email. Well, in an effort to support open standards, as of the first of the year I am moving over to Jabber exclusively for my instant messaging needs.

At this point, you probably have one or more of the following questions:

• “What is Jabber? And, other than wanting to talk to you, why should I use it?”
• “How do I get Jabber?”
• “What is your new address?”

If you’ve never heard of Jabber, Jabber (known formally as XMPP), is an instant messaging protocol, just like AIM, Yahoo Messenger or MSN. The biggest difference is that Jabber is open and decentralized. For example, if you want to talk to someone who uses AIM, you need to go through AOL’s servers. If you want to talk to someone using MSN, you need to go through Microsoft’s servers. Jabber is actually more like email: you can talk to people on different servers, as long as their server speaks the Jabber protocol. These include servers run by companies such as Google (via Gmail), LiveJournal and Earthlink. In fact, because it’s open, anyone can run their own server, which is what I’m doing now via my new web host.

In addition to openness and decentralization, Jabber has many other noteworthy qualities, including a much better security model than email (no spam!) and the flexibility to add custom functionality on top of the core protocol.

If you think this sounds good, and want to get in on the action, grab a client that supports Jabber. There are tons, but the ones recommended by the Jabber Software Foundation are at the top of this list. Oh, and you’ll also need a Jabber ID. If you have a Gmail account, you already have a Jabber ID: it’s the same as your email address. If you don’t have a Gmail account, there are tons of other servers offering free accounts. Here is a handy guide for getting an account on the jabber.org server.

So if you’ve ever enjoyed my witty one-liners and masterful use of emoticons, and would like to continue to enjoy them from 2007 on, hook yourself up with a Jabber ID and Jabber client and hit me up!

Allow me to confess. I’ve been bad. Very bad. I’m many, many ways.

First of all, I’ve been neglectful of my blogging duties. I had meant to post at least once a week. I will try to do better. I will recite ten 404-error haikus as penance.

Second, I have received a multitude of Illustration Friday emails, and have participated in none. I commit to doing next week’s theme. I will sing “Numa Numa” three times as penance.

Third, I have commited grave sins of Non-Replying against my fellow mailing list members. I have found new interests that have taken me away from you all. Those interests will end by the end of the year. I will reenact the Star Wars Kid one time as penance.

Finally, I have had many unpostable thoughts. Not about pr0n, you sicko. Just things that are not worth posting about, thus the lack of involvement with you lately, my dear Internet. Actually, strike that. I’ve had tons of postable thoughts. But, they must remain hidden. At least until the end of the year. Big fun adventures are underway… But, basically, if you know of any girls with long dark hair and a desire to act, who are in the Twin Cities area, I need to talk to them about something. And again, not about pr0n, you sicko.

I have this theory that Google is going to become a deity. We turn to Google to give answers to our probems, and Google provides. Google is ever present, an unseen force that knows more about us than we know ourselves. Google can see deep into our psyches and hidden desires, seeing the searches we share with no one else.

And now, I have further proof of Google’s transition to spiritual entity:

Maybe if we look at it like this:

Anyone else seeing Google on a cross, bursting forth from the world?

(Via the opening sequence of Google Current)

I had been struggling with this issue for months on my other Linux boxes, and finally discovered the solution.

If you install Ubuntu, and everything goes smoothly, but then you try to load google.com or yahoo.com or some of the other big sites in Firefox and nothing works, here’s the fix:

try disabling ipv6 if it is not already done by doing this:

gedit /etc/modprobe.d/aliases

find the line:

alias net-pf-10 ipv6

and replace with:

alias net-pf-10 off #ipv6

Oh yeah, and you’ll have to be root, so you may want to preface those gedits with sudo.

Geeks love pranking. It’s true.

And since the Internet is lorded over by a bunch of geeks, it’s no surprise that the holiday of pranks and humor is embraced the world over by the Internet. On April 1st (and, this year, today), many a great and wonderous thing happens:

• Slashdot posts nothing but prank articles.
• ThinkGeek posts nothing but prank products.
• Google posts a humorous product or news report (previous items included MentalPlex, Google Gulp, Pigeon Rank and the Lunar Job).
• Tons of other sites get in on the fun, such as The Economist.

Let’s see what more this year will bring…