Free Alternatives from Google and Apple

Apple has decided to give iWorks which consists of Pages, Numbers, Keynote, iMovie, and iPhotos for free to all customers who bought their new iDevices, particularly iPhone 5S/C that are preloaded with iOS7, their latest mobile operating system. Shortly after that, Google released QuickOffice, which was acquired last year for free as well. This is surely a good news for all users who used these products.

QuickOffice was once a commercial product, $14.99 for Quickoffice on iPhones or Android smartphones, and $19.99 for a version for Android or iOS tablets. That really costly, but worry not, since it's now FREE!!

This really gives Microsoft a pressure since other vendords has started to give their office suite for free. Google did more than that actually, by adding QuickOffice into Chrome OS and also to Google Chrome browser few months ago.

I have upgraded my iPad 3 to iOS 7 and i'm really glad that Google provided this wonderful application for free. I loved this application, except for one missing feature: WiFI upload. It's really a nice feature and it really helped me since i don't use Windows so often. With this feature, i can upload any files i want anytime even though i'm using Linux. This feature is now missing on Google's version of QuickOffice.

Other feature that is missing is to add third party service. Google now limit it onto to their Google Drive service. I don't really use this feature as i already have DropBox on my iPad, but still it's quite annoying to see some features are removed in the latest version.

BBM for iPhone Officially Launched

BlackBerry has officially launched BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) in other platform than BlackBerry itself which is in iOS. For Indonesian people, you can start downloading BBM for iPhone from this link. It's targetting for iPhone and not applicable to iPod and iPad.

As for the Android platform, it hasn't been released yet, but probably shortly and don't try to download scam applications which tried to trick you. Just relax and wait for the official announcement and link to the Google Play.

Faulty Updates

Few days ago, i installed updates from Microsoft and it was fine after rebooting for the last time (and switched back to Slackware). Today, i tried to log in to Windows to perform an upgrade to my iPad to iOS 7 and noticed a reboot. I tried to log in to Windows again and it happened again. I tried to use safe mode, but it all failed. I guess the update is the culprit. This system has been installed on my desktop for almost 5 years without being reinstalled. I followed Microsoft's update monthly. I guess it's time to say good bye.

I have just finished installing Windows 7 on this machine and right now, i'm still installing all the applications and also patches from Microsoft since Windows 7 SP 1 was released. It's also a good time to start with a new operating system after a while.

OK, time to restart Windows (as always) :)

Linux Kernel 3.11 is Out

Just week after celebrating Linux's 22nd anniversary, Linus sent out the final version of Linux Kernel 3.11. This marks the end of 3.10 development and now the maintenance will goes to Greg whom will update on his weekly -Stable cycle and Linus will open up a roughly two weeks of merge window where all of the planned feature that has been developed or sitting on linux-next can be pushed to Linus' main tree by using a pull request.

For now, the entries in KernelNewbies hasn't been updated for Linux Kernel 3.11 (but it will soon), and since The H has shut down some time ago, the best thing you can get deeply in Linux Kernel 3.11 will be from Phoronix.

I'm compiling it right now and it should be finished soon. Let us see what visible improvements that we can get from this shiny new kernel :)