The NOOKcolor from Barnes & Noble is an Android tablet computer that’s been turned into an e-book reader with the capacity to show pictures, store contacts, browse the web and play some video files. B&N has released an SDK and plans to compete simultaneously with the iPad and Kindle with this one device when they add a Google Marketplace app. That’s supposed to happen early next year.

All this is very exciting but it’s not why I bought it, I bought it because the NOOKcolor had been rooted, or modified to give its owner near complete control over the software. It also helped that others posted videos that showed some of the things a rooted NOOK color could do. So, within a couple hours of my purchase, I had rooted mine(thanks to the nookdev team!) and was off to load it with games and apps.

Finding these packages is tricky and for someone used to Synaptic, this process feels like an unsettling scavenger hunt. One must read wikis and forums to navigate the many places where the apk packages are available. After trying unsuccessfully to get many of the apks I wanted, I went and asked some free software friends who pointed me to F-Droid. F-Droid is an “app store” of sorts with the sole purpose of distributing free-as-in-freedom software to Android devices.

Among the apps I’ve grabbed from F-Droid are:
* Tiniest Open Source Violin – it’s just what it sounds like
* androidVNC – lets me view my desktop’s screen using the VNC protocol
* gvSIG Mini Maps – Similar to Google Maps, allows me to use multi-touch to move around many different map sources
* Jamendo – Download free music from the free culture crowd
* StatusNet – a client for identi.ca and other status.net microblogging sites

After loading up what I wanted, I looked for more. I learned of a couple of other lists of free software for the Android platform at https://wiki.koumbit.net/AndroidFreeSoftware and http://trac.osuosl.org/trac/replicant/wiki/ListOfKnownFreeSoftwareApps (the second of which I will probably help extending starting with this post). You can also search places like Google Code and github for other free software Android apps. Here are a couple more I’ve loaded from their Google Code sites…
* daap-client – I can listen to my entire music library that’s hosted on my server
* android-vlc-Remote – allows you to control VLC(the awesome media player) on another computer and even browse for files to play via HTTP

Of all the apps I’ve loaded I would say the daap, VLC, and gvSIG are my favorites. It truly is an exciting time so check out the NOOKcolor… it’s only $249 and the hacking opportunities are endless. It’s also a great front where the software freedom battle can be waged early and with great impact on the quickly growing mobile and tablet markets!

Thunderbird 3 brings one rather annoying change: the default search delivers confusing search results formatted into separate tabs sorted by relevance rather than date. To use the old style search, just click the icon on the left of the search box and choose anything other than the top option(“Search all messages”). Whew. That was a close one.

As a side note, I’m not sure if it’s my new machine or new operating system (GNU/Linux vs. XP) but this “classic style” search seems a lot faster to me in Thunderbird 3.

Blogger is ending support for publish-via-FTP and because it is costing them valuable support time and they claim 0.5% of active blogs publish this way. I’m interested to know their definition of active but not interested enough to “learn more.” I had been planning to switch to Wordpress and was using FTP(with little success) to publish to davidsterry.com so I welcome this change.

To begin I installed Wordpress and was surprised to find that there is a Blogger import tool included in Wordpress out of the box. I tried it and found 0 posts were importable but after a quick search, I changed my publishing method on Blogger(under Settings->Publishing) to publish using a blogspot.com domain.

I was then able to import all of my posts, deal with some redirects for my most popular posts, and setup my theme. I even took a new portrait which you may or may not see on the right of this. Goodbye proprietary blogging platform, hello increased publishing freedom!

Wireless on a laptop is like wheels on a car. Essential.

I’ve been running gNewSense for a few months and have found it to be very stable and kind to me on my HP dv6226us. Unfortunately there are no free drivers for the built in wireless card. That has meant no wireless networking on this baby. So to get by, I either stayed tethered to the nearest ethernet cable or booted into another OS. The Free Software Foundation knows that hardware support is a problem with 100% free software and maintains a list of fully supported hardware. After having seen that, however, I didn’t feel confident that I could make a purchase.

That’s the way things stayed until I heard a couple weeks ago in #gnewsense about the Netgear wg111v3. This usb wireless device was reported there to work with free drivers so I purchased one. I received it yesterday, booted up gNewSense, plugged it in and voila! Within a few seconds I was able to select my wireless network and get online. I’ve tested it with two WPA networks, one using TKIP and the other AES and it works fine. I’m not breaking any speed records (200kB/s max) but I’ve not done extensive testing or tweaking to see what might be holding that speed back.

Since wireless is an essential, yet tricky, feature to have working on a free-software-driven laptop I thought it was worth a blog. So, my fellow free software enthusiasts, you have at least one option when it comes to wireless on gNewSense! If you find this post helpful or know what might bring my speeds up besides the usual range/interference stuff, please post a comment.

I have a Logitech Harmony 510 smart remote that I use to control the devices that live near my TV. Programming the device was simple enough…I plugged it into my computer selected my TV, cable box, and dvd/home theater system and defined a couple activities like Watch TV and Watch DVD.

When you trigger one of these, the remote sends the appropriate commands to each device so you can watch what you want. The software made it pretty simple and I was impressed with the device support so I think the remote is a good value for the $80 or $90 price tag.

The only issue is that the software doesn’t run on GNU/Linux. To be fair, I didn’t try it on WINE but I like to explore what’s built specifically for GNU/Linux. Then I heard a couple weeks ago about a program called Concordance that lets you update your remote from gNewSense or some other Linux-kernel-running OS.

I decided to give it a go so I started by downloading the tarball and began to build the two parts I needed: concordance and libconcord. To successfully build them, I had to do libconcord first and I believe I had to make sure libusb was installed. Once it was built and installed, I found that I needed to run concordance as root. I also had to set an environment variable since the libconcord library wasn’t installed in gNewSense where the the concordance binary expected it.

Apparently, this programming process works by interacting with a website. Logitech runs a site, mentioned in the README files, that lets you download a communication file that triggers the remote to respond to the website. The communication file has some sort of session id so you have to download that each time you want to update the remote. Once that file is sent to the remote, the website gives you the menus that you use to select the options for your remote. When you’re all set, a new configuration file is downloaded to your computer and you run concordance again to complete the update. I had expected that this tool was flipping bits on the remote but it turns out it just provides a way to get the remote and website talking without the Windows-only tool.

I backed up my current config, made some changes, and successfully updated my remote. The end result is that I don’t have to go through 4 pages of custom commands to get to the HDMI input on my TV or to manually turn a device on or off. I should have looked for concordance a month after getting the remote rather than waiting 8 months as I did. I could have used the Windows tool too but what’s the fun in that?

Anyway, it was an educational and satisfying experience that opened my eyes to the way the remote actually gets programmed. I didn’t know that Logitech was storing the details of my hardware on their website but I guess that’s not such a big concern. Maybe Logitech should help me sell them when that comes time?

Have you tried it? How has concordance worked for you? If it’s good, go to this page and write it a good review!!

In this HOWTO I’m going to take you through running gNewSense, a 100% free operating system, on top of your currently installed operating system. This HOWTO mentions how to run gNewSense on top of Ubuntu and Windows though it’s possible to run it on any OS that runs VirtualBox OSE. This HOWTO will only add 100% free-as-in-speech software to your computer because I believe free software provides the best way to run your computer.

A rough overview of the process is:

1. Download and install VirtualBox OSE.

2. Download gNewSense.

3. Install gNewSense inside a VirtualBox Virtual Machine

4. Set it to run in seamless mode.

And now for the full HOWTO:

1. Ubuntu users: To download and install VirtualBox OSE, Ubuntu users can start Synaptic with System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager.

2. Then search for the virtualbox-ose package, mark it for installation, and click Apply at the top.

– or –

1. Windows users: Download the VBox Open Source Edition that has been compiled for Windows at:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/vboxwin32/

2. Run the VBoxSetup-____.exe to install.

——————–

3. Download the latest gNewSense ISO file from:

http://www.gnewsense.org/Download

You can also use FUSBi( http://aligunduz.org/FUSBi/ ) to download and make a bootable USB drive so you’re ready to boot or install gNewSense whenever necessary. For the rest of this HOWTO, I’m assuming you have the ISO downloaded to your desktop.

4. Create a new Virtual Machine in VirtualBox in which to install gNewSense:

a. Start VirtualBox and click New.
b. Click Next and type gNewSense in for the name.
c. For the Operating System choose Linux and for Version choose Ubuntu then click Next.
d. You can accept the recommended base memory or increase it depending how much RAM you have in your machine. Click Next.(I have 2gb of RAM in this laptop and like to give at least 512mb of RAM to the Virtual Machine. I wouldn’t put much less than 256mb.)
e. Now to create a virtual hard disk, click New, then Next.
f. Leave Dynamically expanding storage selected and click Next. This makes a file that will grow in size only as needed up to the maximum you select on the next screen.
g. You can leave the default location and default size and click Next and Finish, then Next and Finish again. Now you’ll have a new Virtual Machine that’s almost ready to boot.

5. Set the new virtual machine to boot from the iso you downloaded:

a. With your new virtual machine selected in VirtualBox, click CD/DVD-ROM.
b. Check Mount CD/DVD drive and the ISO Image File option.
c. Click the folder in the ISO Image File option to add an iso to Virtual Box’s library.
d. Click Add and navigate to your desktop to select the gNewSense .iso file you downloaded and click Open.
e. Click Select and Ok to finish getting the ISO ready. Now we’re ready to boot and install gNewSense.

6. Install gNewSense by clicking Start on your virtual machine and then follow the directions here: http://wiki.gnewsense.org/Documentation/InstallingGNewSense#Installation_Walkthrough At this point you should have gNewSense running and be able to login to it.

7. Now in the Virtual Machine’s window click Devices -> Install Guest Additions. This will mount a virtual cd in gNewSense which will popup.

8. Inside gNewSense, click Accessories -> Terminal and run:

sudo /media/cdrom/VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run

9. Restart gNewSense and login. When your desktop comes up you can press your right Ctrl key with the L key to enable seamless mode or select Seamless mode from the Machine menu.

So there we have it. In seamless mode, you will be able to use all the applications inside gNewSense on the same screen as your host operating system’s programs. If you value software freedom you’ll try to run as many things provided by gNewSense as possible and to replace your host operating system with gNewSense as soon as possible. Do not lose sight of the goal of running gNewSense and free software exclusively on your computer.

Just ran across these videos on Youtube just taken at IIT Tech fest in India. John Hall of Linux Journal discusses Free Software with a small crowd.

Looks like a 5 part video so look out for the rest…