marypcbuk

I've been itching to write this piece since the MIX conference in the spring when I talked to Miguel de Icaza about the way Mono was developing and the headline sprung into my mind; I detoured into the chintzy little phone booths they have in the corridors in Vegas conference hotels to write it down before I could forget, Plus Miguel gives fantastic quote: "It's like when your girlfriend is in denial about her friends. Microsoft is in denial that the Mac OS exists and the iPad exists and the iPhone exists and Android exists and Chrome OS exists and all of those things." Interviews like that are a joy to write up.

And then Novell sold itself to Attachmate and the Mono team were gone and the product was in limbo and I was almost sorrier to lose my wonderful headline (I'll admit it; when we writers have a phrase that sings to us, we love it deeply) than to think that Mono was in trouble. I was delighted to have Xamarin set up and take over Mono: it plays to my native versus Web development prejudice, I'm a big fan of C# and I loathe JavaScript with a passion I once reserved only for Java itself, and while .NET is a lumpy beast, many of the lumps are powerful muscles rather than just excrescences... And I could catch up with Miguel, get the skinny on the future direction and finally get to write this piece up.

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/application-development/2011/08/11/mono-a-cure-for-microsoft-monotheism-40093649/

A roundup of some recent writing, not counting pieces for print that will take it a while to make it online (PC Plus) or may not be available online (Windows XP).

Another identity piece for the Developer Register, this time on an interesting project that combines Novell's directory experience with open source and the identity metasystem that Kim Cameron has been championing. I had some fun with the name too (Bandit).
Unmasking Novell's identity plans

Last week's Digital Business section of the FT had three of my pieces, all on the same page:
Finding room for photos and songs
Digital photos, MP3 and iTunes music, video clips, e-mail, downloaded bank statements. You might already have a terabyte (1,024 gigabytes) of data at home, scattered across different hard drives, DVD backups and memory cards – and you’ll have more soon.
Read more about 1TB NAS
A little (robotic) help from your friend
Ageing populations, rising healthcare costs, an increasing number of people who refuse to retire – and the robot vacuum cleaner that might help.
Read more about iRobot
Audio files: no longer too big to store nor too hard to search
We talk far more than we type. Podcasts, online video, internet radio, recordings of meetings and phone conversations – so much information today is contained in audio files. But how to index it, search it and access it?
Read more about audio searching

I expected my first piece for Tom's Hardware to be for the new UK site, where I'll be writing about home entertainment, MP3 players, media centres and other fun topics. As it happened, it was a review of the Nokia 770 Internet tablet with the new version of the OS that I collaborated on with sbisson, commissioned by the US parent site, though it's appearing on both so I'm boosting the local traffic in my link!

PDAs and smartphones can browse the Web, but small screens and poor support for JavaScript and plug-ins can make browsing a cramped and unsatisfying experience. UMPCs give you a standard browser but they're still too big (and expensive) to carry all the time. Nokia's 770 Internet tablet fits - not necessarily neatly - in the middle, in terms of size, price and features.

Read the rest.


Rather sadly, PC Advisor will not be having an Office Advisor column for me to write any more, due to some changes in the title. I shall miss writing these pieces as I've found such a lot of useful tips and tools myself, but I count Office (both Microsoft and more generally office software) as one of my key areas so I'm sure I'll carry on covering similar topics elsewher, including possibly some more specific tutorials in PC Advisor's workshop section.