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Skype 2.0 beta has arrived for Linux. I read about this here. I have been trying to get Google Talk support for Linux for a while. I tried that in PLUG mashup event. So summary of what I did was as follows:

What I wanted to achieve?

I wanted to integrate support for voice chat using Pidgin for Google talk users.

What we did?

We started with analysis of libjingle which is xmpp based communication library from Google code. We faced lots of problems in integrating that as a plugin with Pidgin. I could see that there is already a feature request logged with Pidgin for this support. I tried to work with Ubuntu (Gutsy Gibbon). There were many problems for libraries which are either very old or sometimes difficult to maintain.

There are many issues with the library dependencies of libjingle as well, viz. linphone, gstreamer etc. Each of them require different version which is sometimes quite old than the current stable version.

I will be working on this more to achieve the goal. There seems to be quite few huddles before I could reach there though. I don't know what is current state of this post. I am hoping this will start working soon. Till then, I'm there to see how I can add the talk plugin to pidgin.

I read today about new protocol for reading and writing data on web. Google has put the client libraries and other information on their website. I really appreciate the style of Google for providing open standards as well open application interfaces. We all know that Google earns a huge amount of money from their Ad programs but still, they are doing many things for free. Their every effort to make the web better place is clearly visible. Take example of their vast range of applications, (Gmail, Calendar, Spreadsheet, Reader, Suggest, Maps...) all applications are wonderful and I love them. Undoubtedly they brought the Ajax wave to mass. Many people were using XMLhttp before Google too, but it was not to masses, Google not only made it visible but they demonstrated how you can really simplify the applications!

Similar things should happen for quite long from now. We need help from giants on the web. They need to help building and realizing the open standards so that Web 2.0 and subsequent versions of it will be much more powerful than anybody has seen or imagined!

I was on vacation for last few days. I got chance to talk to once of my friend who is using Ubuntu on his laptop. He was using Breezy Badger distribution and the laptop was little old and upgraded one. I was curious to have a talk with him regarding his suggestion / feedback.

He was also going through same cycle of happiness which I experienced before! What made me more curious was, he was using a 3-4 years old laptop which was upgraded in terms of RAM and other hardware. That was IBM Thinkpad with earlier Pentium 4 processors. He said, he could run it smoothly and there were no hardware issues at all! He could install everything very easily and comfortably. That is a reason for toast!

He was happy with performance and also features. I would like to mention his one quote, which everybody will agree... "It is better than Windows XP!"

I installed ubuntu 6.06 LTS on my machine. I was on the ride of happiness I liked everything, right from the starting sound to shutting down screen! Some notable features are -

• Package manager - This really helps. You can choose which packages / libraries to download / install and just download them. That really gives you lot of choice to work with.
• Device support - I experienced the seamless operation of many devices. My thumb-drive and digital camera were instantly installed and ready to use. No more website searching for drivers.
• DVD, Mp3 & other playback - Though I was required to download libraries to run non-free media formats, but that's OK. I could finally listen to my songs while I work

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I just had a look at OpenOffice.org 2.0 and it rocks! You just see how many features are loaded there. Moreover, its free. I have decided that from now on I will install only viewers for Microsoft Office and for my day to day office purpose I will use OpenOffice. There are few differences in them like the macro definition language. But almost any office document can be opened into OpenOffice. Good work OpenOffice team. Just have a look at here.