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.
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.
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”
ECFiber/VTA Editorial in Today's Valley News
See this editorial in today’s Valley News for a pretty good summary of the state of ECFiber with respect to the VTA.
Tim Nulty's Response: "My Turn"
The reaction of an ECFiber delegate (a project to clone Burlington Telecom in rural Vermont) to the Free Press article was: ?The tone is negative, but the facts are actually positive for BT?. Quite so. Continue reading “Tim Nulty's Response: "My Turn"”
Burlington Telecomm Article in the Free Press
See this article on the current state of Burlington Telecom which ran in the Burlington Free Press yesterday. I think it is written pretty fairly, from my perspective, and raises some legitimate concerns. Note that, while BT may be behind on its predictions, it is projected to break even within the next few months. Taking advantage of current low interest rates to refinance its current debt load is probably a good opportunity for them to sustain this status, and move into the black in the future. The questions about the lack of details in early plans are legitimate, and things that EC Fiber must be certain to take into consideration now, or hopefully, they already have.