Google’s blog hosted a pretty fiery critique of the proposed Microsoft buyout of Yahoo. Particularly focusing on MS’s history with building and promoting proprietary systems in the PC and OS market.

Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC? While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies…

In essence, Google is concerned that MS’s monopolistic tendencies and proprietary history will lead them to stifle innovation on the internet. Potentially suffocating the openness of today’s web and in the process hurting users.

However, I feel that a number of Google’s concerns aren’t completely valid. First off, Microsoft has shown a somewhat surprising trend towards standards in recent history. The passing of the Acid test for IE8 is just one example. Another is their documentation and developer support, the MSDN is surprisingly full of information for people looking to work with Microsoft applications. In fact, Imulus’ web development is primarily based around the .NET framework, even though every person in the office owns a Mac.

The truth is Google actually has a pretty big monopoly in certain areas of the web (advertising). And they are constantly making acquisitions (jaiku, you tube, double click, android) that give them a stronger fist. And while Google does seem, for the most part, to be committed to their “don’t be evil” slogan they are by no means a white light in the sky.

Now, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a huge fan of Google, I am. In fact, I use almost every service they offer and I respect their dedication to multiple platforms and browsers. Not to mention their documentation and support for google product API’s.

Still, I think their bold criticism of the Microsoft/Yahoo bid is a bit out of line. Especially considering how different Yahoo’s culture is from Microsoft’s. If anything, MS being interested in purchasing a company that runs on open source programming (mainly PHP) and hosting (RedHat linux) is a refreshing thought. I mean, if MS did acquire Yahoo are they really going to reprogram every app to be in .NET? Doubtful. If anything it seems that MS would have to embrace an even more open culture than they already do.

I haven’t quite made up my mind on whether I’m a fan of a MS/Yahoo deal or not, but I definitely think it deserves a fairer shake than Google is giving it.

Here at Imulus we recently set a goal to streamline our design and development process by creating templates for starting a new project. As a first step in this process I coded out a simple HTML / CSS example page that offers information on basic HTML elements and what CSS can do to them.

It contains visual examples for the following:

• font rendering (PC and Mac)
• link styling
• heading styling
• list styling
• border style options
• and table styling

You can download this cheat sheet in zip format or view it online. Enjoy!

Recently at Imulus we started utilizing a new DNS service by the name of OpenDNS. It’s an alternative to the DNS servers provided by our internet service provider. The key to OpenDNS is that it’s a project supported by people who embrace an open source mentality. In essence, people who believe that a fast and reliable DNS server should be a public good.

Here’s the jist — when a computer connects to the internet it talks to a Domain Name Server in order to find locations of websites and then communicate with them. Therefore the speed of a domain server can drastically effect how quickly a page is loaded on a user’s system. OpenDNS provides a huge cache of sites, meaning that a connection to a site doesn’t have to make as many jumps to bring in the content. Further, OpenDNS is smart, it takes a misspelled address like www.google.cmo and turns it into www.google.com automatically. Last, OpenDNS has phishing protection for sites that attempt to spam or steal personal information.

All these factors have lead us to use OpenDNS, and we strongly suggest you give it a gander.

For the longest time I’ve been trying to find an web-based answer to managing my 10,000 + photo collection. I’ve had very specific criteria in mind for the ultimate photo management solution:

• It must auto-generate thumbnails, mid-sized images and link to the full resolution version
• The application should be easy to manage and update.
• The management must allow me to upload pictures from several computers, rather then just one machine, al la iPhoto / .Mac.
• Storage cannot be a limitation.

My search led me to several programs before finally selecting Gallery. First off, it’s Free, which is always a good thing. After installing MySQL and PHP5 on my OSX machine, I had Gallery up and running in no time. The install process is very friendly and if you have a rudimentary understanding of Apache you should be good to go.

The next step is to integrate it with Drupal and turn this puppy live.

Last updated: 4/26/2007

OK for the past year or so I’ve been trying to share my iTunes library from my home to my office. Using my PowerBook with OSX 10.4, iTunes 7, Rendezvous Proxy and Hamachi I was able to pull this off and I love it!

I had trouble at first getting Hamachi to install and run on my system but the rest was pretty straight forward once I had Hamachi working, hence this tutorial to help the others out there looking to do the same!

Start Downloading
Here is the list of files you will need to get this process moving along. I’m going to assume you have iTunes 7 and OSX. I’m also assuming you have 2 Macs to try this on. I’ve tried this on the PPC and the Intel system with no problems.

Hamachi
TUN/TAP
HamachiX Graphical Interface
Rendezvous Proxy

Install the Goods
I started with TUN/TAP. Download the file and unzip it. It should produce a folder called TUNTAP_TIGER. Go into the folder and install all 4 packages, at first I just tried the TUNTAP_INSTALLER.MPKG and that failed to produce the results I needed, so run all 4 installers.

Before moving on to Hamachi you will need to enable ROOT user privledges on your Mac. Go into APPLICATIONS / UTILITIES and run NETINFO MANAGER. In NETINFO MANAGER go to “Security” and then “Authenticate User”. Once Authenticated then go back to “Security” and “Enable Root User” it will prompt you to enter a secure password, once that is done move on.

Now unzip Hamachi and it will produce some obscure folder. For me it produced “hamachi-0.9.9.9-20-osx” for simplicity I renamed it “HAMACHI-FILES”, so should you for this tutorial.

Next, open up TERMINAL under APPLICATIONS / UTILITIES. If you never used terminal then don’t worry. Just enter my commands explicitly. I’m going to assume the “HAMACHI-FILES” folder is on your desktop. For this tutorial let’s pretend your name George and your computer is ADMIN-GMORRIS

When I open TERMINAL I should get

admin-gmorris: ~ george$

Now navigate up to the HAMACHI-FILES folder on your desktop. Start entering the following lines

admin-gmorris ~ george$ cd desktop/hamachi-files
admin-gmorris ~ /desktop/hamachi-files george$ sudo ./install
admin-gmorris ~ /desktop/hamachi-files george$ hamachi-init
admin-gmorris ~ /desktop/hamachi-files george$ hamachi start

Now Hamachi should start running. Most failures will happen at this point. At least for me I was hung up here with TUN/TAP issues. If Hamachi started for you, awesome keep going.

Now create your network on Hamachi. This is very similar to an networked workgroup or domain. Let’s call your network (make up your own name) georgetunes.

admin-gmorris ~ /desktop/hamachi-files george$ hamachi create georgetunes

It will then ask for a password, so give it one, and your hamachi network will be created. At this point you should run this phase of the process again on your other Mac. Once you do that then try to join the other Mac to your Hamachi network using the following commands while on the other Mac (again, assuming your name is George and your other Mac is HOME-GMORRIS). I’m also assuming that you just finished the install of Hamachi on the second Mac.

home-gmorris ~ /desktop/hamachi-files george$ hamachi login
home-gmorris ~ /desktop/hamachi-files george$ hamachi join georgetunes

It will prompt you for your password and then you should be connected. To prove the connection enter this.

home-gmorris ~ /desktop/hamachi-files george$ hamachi list

And you should see the other system in your Hamachi list.

To make this a bit easier, Install Hamachi X on both Macs. If you have already connected to your Hamachi network in Terminal then when you run Hamachi X you should see your network and which systems are online.

Share the Music Love
Open iTunes on both Macs and then share your music. Go into iTunes Preferences, then under General enter your Share Name. Once done then go to the Sharing icon and then make sure the “Look for shared libraries” is checked, also place a check in “Share my library on my local network”.

Here is where the Intel Mac and PPC Mac differed. For the Intel Mac I just needed to reboot iTunes and I could then see the shared music from my other Mac. On the PPC Mac I needed to install and run Rendezvous Proxy.

This should get you started, I’ll add and revise this as the comments come in.