Risto H. Kurppa » News

MS Bing the default search engine in Firefox of Ubuntu?

Risto H. Kurppa — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 19:30:33 +0000

Will Firefox in Ubuntu soon use Microsoft Bing as the default search engine? Some press releases / announcements are out that can be interpreted so.

July 2009 / Microsoft Press Release

Yahoo! and Microsoft announced an agreement that will improve the Web search experience for users and advertisers, and deliver sustained innovation to the industry. In simple terms, Microsoft will now power Yahoo! search while Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers.

January 2010 / Ubuntu Desktop Mailing List

Change #2 is changing the default search provider in Firefox to Yahoo!
Note that this won’t in any way effect the ability of a user to choose
and use the search provider of their choice. It’s literally 2 easily
discoverable clicks to change this setting, a simple matter of switching
to that search provider in the chrome by clicking on the icon and
choosing the desired provider. Note also that Yahoo! does not share any
personally identifiable or usage information.

Why?
I am pursuing this change because Canonical has negotiated a revenue
sharing deal with Yahoo! and this revenue will help Canonical to provide
developers and resources to continue the open development of Ubuntu and
the Ubuntu Platform. This change will help provide these resources as
well as continuing to respect our user’s default search across Firefox.

February 2010 / Yahoo Press Release

Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT) and Yahoo! (Nasdaq:YHOO) announced today that they have received clearance for their search agreement, without restrictions, from both the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission, and will now turn their attention to beginning the process of implementing the deal.

Implementation of the deal is expected to begin in the coming days and will involve transitioning Yahoo!’s algorithmic and paid search platforms to Microsoft, with Yahoo! becoming the exclusive relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers globally. Once the transition is completed, the companies’ unified search marketplace will deliver improved innovation for consumers, better volume and efficiency for advertisers and better monetization opportunities for web publishers through a platform that contains a larger pool of search queries.

To me it looks like that 1+1 = Firefox of Ubuntu will soon be using Microsoft search engines and algorithms. If you know more about and are able to clarify, please add it to the comments. What do you think, would you be happy to use Bing search engine as your search engine or are you maybe already using? Better than Google?

Thanks Aapo for the tip!

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Kustomizer 0.3 for Openmoko 2008.12

Risto H. Kurppa — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 02:28:55 +0000

Kustomizer 0.3

If you want to use Freerunner with OM2008.12 as a usable phone and music player and internet device and gps device then there’s so many things you have to install and configure before it’s usable. It took me a lot of time to get everything installed and configured (and there’s still some things to do). But now there’s the Kustomizer, maybe this can make life a little easier. M.K@community

And that’s the reason there’s a new release that has again some new features and that fixes some of the bugs 0.2 had. Just to make life a little easier.

UPDATE – You can also try Kustomizer 0.35 that has a major bug fixed that prevented many apps from installing.

I know that the Openmoko distribution is a sinking boat and I should abandon it for Debian or FSO/SHR. But since I haven’t made that change yet, and even if I would, I need an easy way to return my Freerunner to a ~usable state where GSM, GPRS, GPS, aGPS and WLAN work. That’s what Kustomizer tries to do. I do hope this will be the last major Kustomizer version for OM 2008.12 but you never know. Feel free to develop it further, change it to suit your needs! Kustomizer 0.3 General information

Changelog etc

Version 0.3 – 2009-02-19 CHANGELOG

(fix) all possible packages installed using default & opkg.org & navit repositories
(new) tried to fix speech-dispatcher -bug, see http://lists.openmoko.org/nabble.html#nabble-td2175057
(new) password required for the root user during installation
(new) ssh-over-wlan allowed
(new) navit repository added -> updates from svn 1793 to 2051+ :)
(new) Backups copies of some changed files stored to /home/root/backup
(new) ntp to set clock in time
(new) Sortdesk icons (thanks Yoann – http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/community/2009-February/041915.html)
(new) opentts -> navit speech guidance works more or less
(new) Sample book for fbreader included: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/24948
(new) linball
(new) gtick http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/GTick
(new) guitartune http://www.opkg.org/package_115.html
(new) pythm http://www.opkg.org/package_1.html
(new) fourier – sounds work -> returned
(new) pypennotes
(new) openmiaocat
(new) agps
(new) pythm & a fix to make it work w. python 2.5.
(removed) mofi – doesn’t work :(
(removed) pidgin – segfaults
(removed) scummvm – useless..
(removed) yaouh – doesn’t co-operate with latest tangogps versions without some hacking :(

KNOWN ISSUES

Many opkg.org packages fail to install because of bad packaging. They’re still in there in case the packages are fixed at some stage.
/dev/dsp is sometimes reserved (by speech-dispatcher?) so other apps can’t use it
GSM registration takes a long time

Hope it’s useful for you :)

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Kustomizer 0.2 for Openmoko 2008.12

Risto H. Kurppa — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 00:06:52 +0000

Right after the first release of Kustomizer I realized that GSM didn’t work at all. It was a pain to fix but I think it’s fixed now and GSM should work again. The script has gone through some major changes and I think it makes more sense now. Bad thing is that now it requires a bit more user interaction (restarting the script) but it also should be faster and suit forthe needs of more users than earlier.

Kustomizer 0.2
Test run log

ONE SCRIPT – TWO SETUPS

It’s now possible to run Kustomizer once or twice. Here’s an explanation what happens:

First run:

illume-theme
terminal keyboard
wrench & qwerty buttons
opkg.org repository added
qpe eating CPU resources -bug fix
new gsmhandset.state for improved audio quality
Restart to apply the new settings

Second run:

Linking /home/root/Maps to /media/card/Maps
Loads of coolest applications & libraries
GPRS settings
Your custom script from /media/card/customscript will be run, if found
Restart to apply the new settings

Changelog

Rewriting the instructions
General cleaning
(new) ntpclient
(new) http://www.opkg.org/package_121.html – MokoMaze
(new) ttf-liberation-mono (vala-terminal uses this)
(new) battery http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Forcing_fast_charge_mode
(new) runs /media/card/customscript – the user can add his own stuff there
(new) automatic prevention of suspend & dimming
(update) yaouh – version update
(update) neon – version update
(remove) Finnish keyboard layout & dictionary
(remove) custom scripts from card
(remove) cellhunter – on FSO-based only?
(remove) Guitartune – on FSO-based only and libfft fails to install
(remove) fourier – libfft fails to install
(remove) zomg and appmanager – less used..
(remove) pingus – doesn’t install
(remove) mumpot – useless for most
(remove) usbmode – battery replaces most of this
(fix) watch checkrate changed from 1s to 2s
(fix) libglade-2.0 -> libglade-2.0-0

For more details, see http://wiki.openmoko.org/index.php?title=Kustomizer

Give it a go & let me know!

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Tampereella opiskelijoilta koneet takavarikkoon – päivitetty

Risto H. Kurppa — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 14:10:05 +0000

Tuli tällainen viesti.

Tampereen poliisi on keskiviikkoaamuna etsintäluvalla takavarikoinut Tampereen yliopiston opiskelijoilta tietokoneita. Opiskelijoita epäillään vahingonteosta ja tietomurrosta. Kyseiset opiskelijat ovat kurssin harjoituksia suorittaessaan joutuneet vierailemaan internet-sivulla, jonne on samoihin aikoihin tehty tietomurto.

Muuta tietoa aiheesta ei (vielä) ole. Karu meininki.

Päivitetty 5.2.2009:

Ainakin joiltain tietojenkäsittelytieteiden peruskurssiopiskelijoilta on koneita viety, takavarikon laajuudesta ei ole tietoa, Ainakin yksi opiskelija on saanut koneensa jo takaisin. Normaalin protokollan mukaisesti kovalevy sisältö oli kopioitu tutkimuksia varten. Tarinan mukaan poliisilla olisi jo syyllinen selvillä.

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