Harlem and I interviewed Justin Hayes from the Funpidgin fork of the Pidgin project on this week’s Fresh Ubuntu podcast.
Bethel Signs on to EC Fiber
From this week’s Select Board Meeting Minutes:
With respect to the Town joining with others through the ECFiber Interlocal Contract to develop and implement a communications system, Chairman Fox stated that the Town appears to be in receipt of sufficient legal advice to confirm that the draft Interlocal Contract for formation of ?ECFiber? should now be signed, it being anticipated that the initiative will move forward expeditiously, and that a final form of the contract will be available for consideration in the near future which, when executed, will perpetuate the association being formed at this time. He then made the motion to approve the subject contract, this motion being seconded by Joe De Freitas and unanimously carried. Justin McCoart asked if the Town had yet appointed an alternate representative to the ECFiber Board of Directors; Chairman Fox advised such has not yet been undertaken by the Board.
Brookfield is Now Part of ECFiber
Last night, Brookfield, one of the three towns who have expressed an interest in ECFiber but not yet signed the agreement, did indeed sign on and is now a part of the initiative to bring fiber to every home and business in 21 (and counting) towns in east central Vermont.
gAIM -> Pidgin -> Funpidgin -> Carrier?
There’s a little program out there known as Pidgin, which is an open-source messaging project formerly known as gAIM. It supports communications with all of the popular chat platforms out there, like AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, MSN Messenger, Google Talk, ICQ, and Jabber. I have been using it for years and love it.
However, there is a sense in the user community that the Pidgin developers have been unresponsive to user requests. Apparently the straw that broke the camel’s back was the latest version not allowing you to resize the text entry box, forcing the user to rely on the program doing so automatically. Continue reading “gAIM -> Pidgin -> Funpidgin -> Carrier?”
(Minor) Corrections to this Week's Herald Article
The Herald of Randolph this week published a story covering my presentation to the Stockbridge Select Board on April 17th. It was good, nut there were two minor errors. First, I did not say Stockbridge has the highest number of pre-registrations, I said we have the highest rate of pre-registrations among the member towns. Also, the article indicated that I am attempting to solicit more pre-registrations. In fact, other individuals in town are heading up this effort. All I am trying to do is get the grand list from the town so that other volunteers can contact property owners in town who may not yet know about EC Fiber.
Iron Man Movie Audio Review
Listener Randy “the Nose” Noseworthy of the Fresh Ubuntu Podcast and I got together and recorded a rambling recap/review of the Iron Man movie. You can download it here, if you’re bored.
ECFiber Pre-Registation Campaign
In case you haven’t heard about it yet, The East-Central Vermont Community Fiber-Optic Network (ECFiber.net) is an association of 20 towns in East- Central Vermont formed to build a community-owned fiber-optic communications network for the purpose of making high-speed Internet, digital television and telephone services universally available to the approximately 23,000 homes and businesses in participating towns.
ECFiber.Net is working to increase pre-registrations. At present more than 3,000 future subscribers have pre-registered for the service. The most efficient way to pre-register is online at http://www.ecfiber.net/preregister. Pre-registering is not a binding commitment as it is understood that your needs may change. When service is available in your area, ECFiber will contact you see if you are still interested.
There are three reasons to pre-register:
- A high pre-registration count indicates to the financial community that ECFiber already has a great deal of local community support.
- The more subscribers connected in the first few years, the more successful the network will be. An early “take rate” is essential to the project.
- Towns with the highest percentage of pre-registered customers will most likely see the line crews first.
Show your support for ECFiber by pre-registering. You can also help by encouraging your friends and neighbors to do the same. Watch for the yellow pre-registration cards in the local stores and businesses and encourage the ECFiber volunteers asking for your support. A sub-committee of ECFiber has been formed to work on increasing pre-registrations. There are many ways to help with this effort. If you would like get involved call 802-889-9602 or write to [email protected]
No AIR for Yo(ubuntu) (yet).
Many of my friends on Twitter have been raving about clients based on Adobe AIR. So I decided to download it on my recently-upgraded Hardy Heron notebook. However, the page I landed on at http://get.adobe.com/air/ clearly seems to indicate that there’s no AIR for me.
Several of my Twitter followers sent me links to the “pre-beta” Linux version, so I am heading there now.
Update: Xoke had a similar experience.
Transcript of the Mark Shuttleworth IRC Chat Today
(11:16:05 AM) The topic for #ubuntu-classroom is: Ubuntu Open Week | Information and Logs: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOpenWeek | How to ask questions: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOpenWeek/Rules | Ask questions in #ubuntu-classroom-chat, prefaced with “QUESTION:” |See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOpenWeek/JoiningIn to filter out channel noise | Ask Mark – Mark Shuttleworth Continue reading “Transcript of the Mark Shuttleworth IRC Chat Today”
My ((Very) Brief) Chat With Mark Shuttleworth
Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical, the parent company of Ubuntu, is in #ubuntu-classroom as I type this, taking questions from those present. Here’s what I asked, and the reply. Continue reading “My ((Very) Brief) Chat With Mark Shuttleworth”