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The Apple iPhone is available to US customers today. Already, many have camped out in front of stores waiting for doors to open and Apple has indicated that no more than two units may be bought per individual.

Apple has no immediate plans to offer the iPhone for sale in ZA, though the release date for the European market is slated for December 2007. We shouldn’t be too far behind that, I would guess. By that time, the first OpenMoko-based devices should have been on the market, providing an interesting comparison.

Overall, I think the iPhone looks good and is a device that should win many over if it conforms to the well-known Apple simplicity and stability. The battery life, and especially standby time is quoted as being ten days and the pane the user uses to interact with the device has been changed to optical-quality glass to achieve a superior level of scratch resistance and optical clarity.

For those who enjoy stretching the limits of such hardware, the experience may be a bit too consumerist. We’ll need to wait for the first real-world feedback to indicate what the unit is capable of.

Google has released a beta version of Google Desktop for Linux. I quite like Beagle, but Google Desktop adds the promise of widgets to future versions.

For now, Google Desktop is able to perform like the first Windows version of Google Desktop Search and includes a Quick Search Box.

So I finally managed to crack the Moneydance installation on Fedora 7. Not that it’s that difficult…but it should have been more of a dance than the Tarantella it turned out to be.

Long story short: the default, non-proprietary Java runtime included with Linux distributions doesn’t seem to play well with MoneyDance, even though it’s supposed to run on most Java platforms. The solution is the installation of a proprietary Java runtime, namely the Sun JRE. While you’re at it, get the latest JRE 6 update 1. I grabbed the self-extracting file rather than the RPM package, simply because I like to put things in certain locations.

Don’t follow this step! Due to my previous attempts at doing the same thing in Ubuntu, I removed the GNU Java component from Fedora…

That takes a bit of time. Not only that, it also removes most of OpenOffice! Obviously, Java features prominently in that application suite… Not trying to be too flustered by the fact that I had removed a fairly large application, I unpacked the Sun JRE to /usr/local and after running the script for the installation, had the JRE in /usr/local/jre1.6.0_01.

That’s still not enough for MoneyDance, though. Open a terminal session and ensure that moneydance_linux_x86.sh is executable using chmod. Set the JAVA_HOME environment variable like this

and then run the Moneydance installer.

No more blank screen and success! The installation is easy from then on in and the application is available.

To resurrect my OpenOffice, I had to reinstall first the GNU Java component, and then OpenOffice. Needless to say, that was a rather time and bandwidth intensive activity that could have been avoided by never removing GNU Java in the first place. Hence we learn…

For those with a Microsoft hat on who consider the installation of a simple finance application with so many steps and traps a bit ridiculous, consider this: sometimes, computing should involve a bit of computing too

Bonfire night

Originally uploaded by MHertenberger.

MoneyDance is a great personal finance application, written in Java and therefore available on virtually any platform you can imagine. The Windows installer made light work of getting MoneyDance up and running on the XP partition of my nx8220. But I’ve had some serious issue trying to install it on both Fedora and Ubuntu.

The install program starts up, creates the Java environment and then…nothing. The initial setup screen is empty and waits for an eternity doing nothing. I’m not sure what the problem could be, but suspect it may have something to do with the Java runtime packaged with Linux distributions. The Java release is not the official Sun release, but rather the GNU public version. I’m hoping the download and installation of the Sun Java, together with the removal of the GNU Java will have the desired effect.

P4 is an older machine with a Radeon 7000 AGP graphics card. She’s been my testbed for Ubuntu, Xubuntu and Kubuntu over the past few months. For a few days now, I’ve been running Fedora 7 and have been very impressed.

There are few visual differences compared to Ubuntu. The standard Gnome desktop. Because its a newer release, a few applications are available that so far haven’t made it to the standard Ubuntu repositories. Pidgin is one example. The change from using sudo to using su – root is an easy one. To be honest, I prefer it. But that’s probably due to it being traditional UNIX. I find yum as good as apt-get. Both work as advertised and make installation of additional applications seamless.

Ubuntu does have the good manners to offer installing various codecs for media playback. In Fedora, the rather long but effective command yum -y install totem-xine totem-xine-plparser rhythmbox mplayerplug-in mplayer mplayer-gui xine-lib-extras-nonfree libdvdcss libdvdread libdvdplay libdvdnav lsdvd libdvbpsi compat-libstdc++-33 is required. However, that will work only once an additional repository has been added. The Livna repository is not a standalone repository, but an extension of Fedora, and the system is made aware of it hence: rpm -Uhv http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-7.rpm.

Just as useful is yum -y install ntfs-3g-devel ntfs-config to enable access to existing NTFS partitions.

I have had no issues with Fedora 7 so far. The system is stable and performs really well for having to exist on four year old hardware.

The album by Maroon 5 titled It won’t be soon before long has some catchy tunes on it. Not being one to pay to much attention to lyrics, the words to Won’t go home without you caught my attention nonetheless:

At least their website disclaimer The lyrics could be characterized as “nonsense” is spot on! Or maybe Adam and company sleep with dogs or horses…

Ubuntu is really cool. But I’ve been intrigued by the new Fedora release. Earlier this week, I finally managed to get the ISO down and baked to a DVD. The download is not for the faint of heart, or for those with bandwidth limitations. I was fortunate enough to have a speedy link and got the 2.5GB file down in less than twenty…

I tend to back up all the files in my home directory. That makes installations and upgrades pretty simple and I generally need to worry only about certain applications I need to add in again.

The Fedora 7 installation is simple, but not as simple as the Ubuntu procedure. Not that it matters, as the prompts are clear and I like the fact that a firewall is installed by default. Screens are attractive and the only time to ensure you know what you are answering yes to is when disk partitions are being created. I wasn’t too fussed about Feisty – format and install!

Fedora is slick and performs well. The default Gnome desktop looks good, though the hot air balloons may not be everyone’s cup of tea.

The installation took less than 40 minutes, but after the reboot, 72 updates were found! Those took more than two hours to trickle down my iBurst connection.

The Netweaver special interest group had some interesting information regarding the latest releases of the Netweaver Portal, Business Intelligence and Exchange Infrastructure solutions. First off, the Netweaver Portal is due for some major enhancements, including the re-coding of many user interface elements using AJAX. The usability impact should be tremendous, and will bring the enterprise portal in line with current web 2.0 standards. Hopefully, the overall performance and response time will be improved too. The addition of AJAX is significant: until now, most access to elements on the screen required forceful clicking, then a wait for a screen refresh.

An interesting addition to the BI 7 release is a new transformation editor that is almost identical to what is presently available in the Exchange Infrastructure (XI) product. Using drag-and-drop, elements may be mapped and transformations added. The inclusion of numerous standard transformations (such as currency conversions) makes the transformation operations simpler and easier to maintain. Various syndication features permit the automated dissemination of reports to selected users at chosen time intervals. SAP seems to be standardizing on certain components to make working with different products in the Netweaver stack somewhat easier. Until now, transformations have to be handled differently, depending on whether you’re busy in BI or XI, for example.

Finally, Exchange Infrastructure (XI) is now officially know as Process Integration (PI). The term PI has been floating around for quite a while, but has not met with widespread adoption. PI becomes the engine on which SAP intends building its ESOA solutions. The primary benefit of PI is the inclusion of a range of standard, already configured content. The ESR is a vital component to ensure governance and compliance with standards and is also officially shown in the PI marketing slides.

I’ve had little interest in retrying a mobile connection from the JAMin in the area known as the deadzone…

…until this morning. Bored in a rather lengthy, pointless workshop I had little else to do but attempt an ActiveSync. As unbelievable as it may seem, the connection to EDGE and GPRS over MTN suddenly worked. For a bit, then died. In fact, the JAMin lost the entire GSM connection after a while. Half an hour later, things worked again. Connectivity has been spotty, but I’m confident that the deadzone is slowly being transformed and morphed back to a portal into the Interweb.

I’ll check it with renewed vigour from now on.