Mircea Bardac /random_thoughts

News in the IM world.
Hal mentioned in his blog Google’s future aquisition adding a small emphasis on Jabber support in the future client.

Many of you might have already said something like: Oh boy, Google on the IM market. It’s going to be interesting… . I did the same and then looked at the reasons Google went for this company/product.

I’ve read several blogs/news articles about this, comming up with a single possible killer feature.

Quote InternetNews.com article:

Meetro combines instant messaging with automatic local buddy finding. Users can log in and browse or search profiles of other members in order to find someone compatible who’s nearby and also logged in. The area to be searched can be narrowed to a quarter mile.

“The beauty of Meetro is the direct way in which you connect with people nearby,” Paul Bragiel, CEO of Meetroduction, said in a statement about the software release. “Just run Meetro, double-click on a person and begin chatting immediately. It’s all real-time, which means you see and communicate with local people who are online right now.”

I went to their site to see the wonderful functionality. Imagine my surprise: only Microsoft Windows download.

My first feeling: errr.. what? and that is going to be used by Google?
Not even MacOS, not to mention Linux (at least binaries).

Well, I hope Google changes thinks about this a little and looks into other platforms also. Google Earth is already Windows-only and that is not very thrilling. There are great multi-platform toolkits for developing applications: check out Qt or GTK.

I was doing stuff around the how today, when I turned on the TV to keep me company. I have noticed that I have a reflex about TV: whenever I turn it on, it is most likely to be on Discovery Channel.

I find Discovery Channel to be a great way of entertainment during breakfast, as I actually watch TV while doing some other activities. I often watch Myth Busters, which is one great show. I like inovation and that show is all about that.

If I remember well, right after Myth Busters, there were 2 documentary films today. I’ve watched them because they sounded interesting. I don’t remember their exact titles (or corresponding shows), but I remember their content.

One was about how windmills appeared in the Netherlands and all their uses. The saw mills were impressive. The Netherlands‘ naval fleet benefited the most because of the saw mills. Using the saw mills they could cut in a few hours the same amount of timber they had cut before in a few months. The sawers’ guild even tried to stop the implementation of saw mills because they felt they could loose their jobs. It was a very interesting story about windmills and the numerous uses people in the Netherlands found for them.

The second documentary film was about Canal du Midi (en), a water channel built by Pierre-Paul_Riquet (en) in the 17th century linking the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. I was totally impressed by the beauty of the scenery (check the pictures in the French Wikipedia article I’ve linked). The technical innovations were also impressive. The first water roundabout was created on that channel. The Malpas Tunnel was created through a hill just for this channel.

It seems there’s an official site about Canal du Midi. Make sure you check it out.

I think it was an interesting afternoon on Discovery Channel.

While working at the computer, I got the following amaroK information popup:

amaroK has had to delete some of the images that you downloaded from Amazon. Amazon’s licensing policy require us to remove content within 90 days of its download. You can read more about Amazon’s policies here. Please note that this only affects covers downloaded using the Cover Manager’s fetch covers feature and the covers downloaded using the context menu in the Context browser, not manually added covers.

That is what I call a good interaction between the licenses world and the open source world.
Congratulations! Everybody wins.

I have arrived today back in Bucharest, after a night spent on the train traveling back from Vatra Dornei, the place where I have been for the last 10 days.

It’s been a wonderful mountaining experience with lots of accomplishments and excitement. I will return soon with some details and some pictures, as soon I can get them from one of my colleagues.

On another front, I have been listed 700+ unread e-mails - I haven’t looked over the RSS feeds yet.
I’m trying to go through everything as fast as possible and return to my summer holiday schedule (which not yet published).

This is the day I leave for Vatra Dornei (gallery), the place where I have scheduled 10 days of relaxation and excitement together with 2 adveturous friends.

We will be leaving at ~10 pm, travel >550 km by train and arrive in Vatra Dornei at ~7 am.

The trip will include:

• hitch hiking
• sightseeing
• tours for visiting the monastires in the North of Moldova

The weather is a bit tricky during this time of year. Actually, the entire year has been weird when it comes to weather. As it happened all over Europe, increased rainfalls caused a lot of damages (many rivers flooding their bays). I hope we won’t encounter such problems.

Have fun these days. I know we will