For Hana and Luke

Two of my friends are (independently) due to receive brand new, tiny netbooks in the mail Friday. Since I've been in all over these things since people had to mail order them from Taiwan, I thought I'd put together a little list of essential netbook software. Since the little guys are smaller, don't have a lot of resources to spare, you don't want a lot of useless gunk slowing down your computer and hogging hard drive space. I've tried just about everything out, and this is one of the (few) times I really know what I'm talking about. So listen to the geek, and learn.

1. Browser
These days, people spend most of their time on computers in front of the web browser, so it's the most important program running on your computer. Internet explorer, however sucks. The new version (IE8) is better, but still the slowest browser you can buy. Replacing it with anything is an improvement. I say go for Google Chrome or Firefox. Chrome is still a little bit faster, but I like Firefox because it's still compatible with the most sites, the most customizable, and full featured.

2. Word Processing
I think most netbooks loaded with Windows XP come with Microsoft Works, which is kind of anemic, and your first impulse is to go to the store or fire up BitTorrent and bootleg the latest Microsoft Office. But it's big and bloaty and slow on a netbook, and needlessly expensive. Get OpenOffice instead. It's a little bit slimmer, and still compatible with just about every Office document, from Word files to spreadsheets. It's also completely free and open source, and supports some pretty cool plugins (like this, which syncs with Google Docs).

3. Syncing
Now you guys have multiple computers. You have smartphones and stuff. There's nothing more frustrating than having data on one device when you need it on another. There's a couple of ways to keep your data synchronized without having to think about it. One of my favorite programs is Evernote. It's like a little extra brain that sits on your desktop. You can write notes on it, drag pictures into it, take screenshots, or if you have Firefox, you can clip web pages into it. All of your notes are synced to the server, so you can access them on any computer that runs Evernote, or you can get to your notes through the Evernote website. There's even an iPhone/iPod app, so you can take your notes everywhere. It's free for an account, but you have a monthly allowance for notes unless you buy it. But it's probably the only webservice I think is worth paying for. For syncing files, check out Dropbox. It's super simple--once it's installed on your computer, you have a new folder called Dropbox. Once you drop something into it, it will sync with every computer you have Dropbox installed to, and then you can access your data from anywhere. The free account is limited to 2g, but that's a lot of documents or whatever. Both of these programs are available for Mac and PC.


4. Appearance
I like Windows XP. It's a solid, fast operating system. But it looks old and stupid. Lifehacker has a cool article on how to change your desktop theme. It's a hack, but it's one of the easiest hacks there are. Another cool little program I use is Rocketdock. It replicates the Macintosh dock on Windows. It's tiny and customizable, and you know, aweseome.

Hope this helps you guys with your new computers, and have fun!

Digital Rights Mean Nothing Without Rights

There's a largish number of people who are upset with Amazon this week over their policy (or lack thereof) of consumer rights on the Kindle. Apparently, a company that didn't own the publishing rights to 1984 by George Orwell self-published the work for use on the E-book reader. After they realized the mistake (and a bunch of people purchased and downloaded the book), they removed the book from E-circulation. Fine. Except that Amazon (who maintains a constant wireless connection with all activated Kindles) pulled the book in question not only from the servers, but from the devices of people who had bought the book. They gave instant refunds as well, but suffered a staggering loss of credibility. Not only did they redefine the E-book, they redefined the concept of purchase as well.

While this case is extreme (and ironic), it's part of a much larger problem. What does a purchase mean? In iTunes, it means that you can download a music file exactly once, and it can be played on no more than three (3) computers. For the Xbox, you can download it as many times as you want, but you can only play it on YOUR Xbox. The MPAA works feverishly to keep you from backing up your DVDs, even from companies that put another layer of DRM to keep you from pirating them. So I ask you: does the term purchase carry any weight at all? When we purchase digital media, we don't own the physical data, since it's against either the rules of purchase or copyright law to copy things as we wish, and we obviously don't own rights to the media either, since there's always byzantine restrictions on how we can consume it. So what's the solution?

Universal Streaming Rights. The technology is setting in place for this. Imagine a world where you don't buy the song, you buy the streaming rights. When a movie comes out, you shell out the cash to stream it from anywhere. Your TV, your computer, your phone, your car, anywhere you have access. Same with music. Same with books. Sure, it costs plenty in server capacity to stream content, but there are companies like Pandora and Netflix that are making a killing at it. People are already consuming the media this way. The only difference would be the consumers rights. And yes, some people would find a way to copy media, just like everything else. But I argue if you give the customer an ounce of dignity instead of searching a way to criminalize your consumer, you would have a following like no other.