techiehenry

Some of us play with operating systems just for the heck of it. Some set up their systems to do a multiple-boot scheme where two or more OSes are installed on different partitions of the machine. However there are some who don’t have the time to clear up their existing systems for this scheme, so the alternative would be to use virtualization, where another OS runs on top of what is currently running.

We have Parallels and VMWare to do virtualization. However these are commercial products, so some amount of money is required to be able to use it legally. Just recently, Sun releases its own virtualization product, FREE and OPEN SOURCE!

You can know more about this product at the VirtualBox home page.

Coincidentally there is a video presentation (~16Mb) at MacWorld that discusses what it is, how you can use it, and how it performs.

I’d try using this with an image of Ubuntu Hardy Heron. I’ll be posting the results later.

Funny how microblogs seem to sprout like mushrooms lately — Jaiku, Pownce, Twitter, Tumblr… Well this one went under my radar about a month ago, and I got hooked!

Getting addicted to Plurk was a result of several things. As you may know, I spend my life on Twitter for some time already. It turns out that Twitter wasn’t designed the way it should be, thus when the number of total users swelled to a large size, bugs appeared in the form of Tweets not loading, delayed entries, etc. I am using Twitterrific, a standalone client, to update my Tweets — this one isn’t working properly as well. Given the impression that the Twitter developers aren’t really that concerned about a glaring problem in the design of the database, I have decided to jump ship when I read some of the Twitter friends posted about it.

As it turned out, a lot of Twitter friends are on Plurk as well! Given the timeline approach to different posts and a threaded view for all replies, you see everything organized in a manner similar to a ticker tape of threaded messages.

One feature that causes quite a stir among the users is the Karma system. Depending on your activity, Karma plus points are given to you, depending on your activity over a period of time. Some despise this, yet some actually liked it. Enough Karma points would unlock several items on the profile editing page.

So what are you waiting for? Join me at Plurk!

Wouldn’t you want to know more about the typhoon that’s sweeping across 75% of the Philippines right now? This site is a very useful tool, as shown below:

Not only does it show a graphical representation of how the storm progresses, but the site also posts news articles about what’s going on.

Visit it at: http://maybagyo.com

Oh, what Mac users do with their beloved desktops.

Mac clones aren’t really a new thing, but one has been making the rounds across all news sites on the internet for the past few weeks. CNet ran a review on the PsyStar OpenComputer, pictured below:

I don’t know how long Mac clones like this would last, but an article on OSNews may be correct in saying that machines like this that run Mac OS X could be rendered useless through Software update, just like what they do during an iPhone firmware update.

So, how do we call them, by then? Hackintosh, Frankenmac, or Jailbroken Macs?