Thoughts Fedora 21

Even though my primary home desktop the past few years has been a Macbook Pro, my favorite Operating System is Linux.  It would be my primary OS if it wasn't for a few tasks that aren't as convenient on Linux such as photo management (which any father will know has to be good or Mother will bring down the hurt), so at home it's been Homebrew to fill the void.  Because of this I haven't kept up with all the changes with my favorite distribution, Fedora.

I have tried various distributions here and there, but Fedora has always felt the most comfortable to me.  A lot of it obviously due to familiarity as I've been using Fedora when it was first conceived as Fedora Core and Redhat Linux before it (and Slackware before that).  When the time came to put together a new machine for the family for things like Minecraft and playing videos I naturally was going to go with Linux and Fedora which is now at version 21.

In version 21, Fedora now offers 3 separate versions targeted at 3 different needs:  workstation (what most home and office users will use), server and cloud.  I suppose the idea is to make the installation process easier as each version is preconfigured with the software and settings that they feel meets the most likely needs of the target audience.  I'm not sure if I really agree with this approach.  I imagine that most people who are capable and willing to get and install their own OS will be configuring their environment and this just defers that to after the installation.   At the same time, the install process is very simple.  Just a few clicks and off it goes so if you don't mind claiming every bit of disk space maybe this is perfectly fine.

It's nice that the Live CD is used to start the install because it does make the disc more useful and provides a sanity check that everything works before installing to the hard drive.  What I do miss is at install time it doesn't give you the option of adding other repos (how many Fedora users don't add RPMFusion?).  Instead, you finish installing Fedora and then install RPMFusion and then add the packages from it such as VLC.

I admit that I was a bit caught off guard by the default desktop environment: Gnome Shell.  It is simplified and familiar especially if you come from OSX with the way the settings dialog is laid out and the application dock, but might be an oversimplification for developers.  I suppose if the workstation version is targeted at the enterprise office space that it makes sense from that perspective.  Whether or not that is the right direction, I'll leave that for the market to decide.  It is telling that if you search online that one of the first things people recommend after getting Fedora installed is to add the gnome-tweak-tool to customize Fedora.

Fortunately, Fedora makes it very simple to change to another of the other popular desktop environments such as Mate, Cinnamon, Xcfe, etc.

Fedora comes with Firefox and Yahoo as the default search engine.  I have no objections to Firefox or its choice of Yahoo, but the browser is so fundamental now to anyone using a computer that offering more choices here would be best for the user.  Given that Fedora is very much about open source software, I can understand if Chrome is not a choice but Chrominum can be.

These are all very minor complaints and Fedora is still awesome.   

Is it time for me to stop reading Yahoo finance?

I've been a big fan of Yahoo Finance and while my use of various Yahoo services have diminished, Finance (and Sports) are still two of my favorites.  However, I started to noticed that I'm less and less interested in Yahoo Finance since they no longer focus as much on news as they do on commentary, rumors and speculation.

When I look up the finance page on Yahoo, most of the articles seems to be about Google and instead of news it's often blog posts on rumors or some sensationalism.  As Yahoo change or focus their direction, I understand why they might cut some more tech-focused products but it would be sad if they let Finance deteriorate.

Moving on from Yahoo.

Well, the time has come for me to say goodbye to Yahoo! There are definitely some things I'll miss, but it is time to move on. I had a great experience here and learned a helluva lot. Now I'm looking forward to applying those skills I've developed at my next job. I'm not going far. Just up to the street to Google.

Giving bloggers a bad name -- Arrington on Yahoo

I think a lot of bloggers take their writing seriously even if they aren't professional journalists. Just like yellow journalism can hurt the reputation of the news industry, bloggers like Michael Arrington can also give bloggers a bad name by selling sensationalism as news.

Arrington posted another entry commenting on Yahoo and once again contradicts himself. He concludes his blog post (I wouldn't go as far as crediting him with the term 'article') with

It took me about five minutes of watching Yahoo’s top two executives talk last month to realize that they had no fight left in them. The fact that they simply gave up wouldn’t matter so much if the only people hurt by their actions were their employees and stockholders. But that just isn’t the case, and now we all have to deal with the fallout.

I guess it's safe for him that he doesn't actually have to provide any facts to back up his statements. He's basically saying that Jerry Yang and Sue Decker don't have any fight left in them other then fighting off Microsot and Carl Icahn. If they had no fight in them, wouldn't they just sold the company along with their principals? Arrington also implies that somehow Yahoo is hurting other people beyond employee and stockholders. Who is he talking about? Selling to Microsoft helps consumers? I can't understand the purpose of Arrington's ramblings other then him trying to make himself sound relevant and him thinking that if he can yell loud enough that people might think that he's somehow a participant or insider. I guess without any journalistic integrity he has to rely on fame in one way or another ala Paris Hilton.

I think I'll stop by a deli and ask the waiter on his thoughts about TechCrunch and quote it as fact that everyone in Silicon Valley feels what the "insider" feels.

Coporate parents

The finance articles about shareholders and corporate raiders wanting MS to come back and buy Yahoo reminds me of those parents who has a favorite ex-boyfriend/girlfriend for their child and just can't accept that they've broken up and don't want to be together anymore.

It's tough being a founder.

The news has come out that Microsoft is withdrawing its bid for Yahoo. This is expected to lead to a big drop in Yahoo's stock on Monday and bring about law suit against Yahoo and its board.

A lot of fingers will probably be pointed at Jerry Yang and that is unfortunate, but given how cynical the world is towards CEOs I'm not surprised. We live in a time where CEOs are viewed those who are there to make big bucks and companies are soulless entities. Jerry Yang could've approached his role in the same way. He got to be a CEO, broker a major internet deal, pocketed a lot of money and moved on, but people forget that Jerry founded Yahoo and he really wants it to succeed as a company and I believe that he defines success both for the company, its employees and its shareholders. Shareholders will sue him and Yahoo, though, but I believe he is looking out for share holders and also for the 13,000 people who make up Yahoo.

-----

I originally wrote the above post right after the news broke but didn't actually publish it. With the latest news of billionaire Icahn trying to set up a proxy battle against Yahoo, it felt like a good real life example of what I said about people looking to make the big bucks but have no real interest in the company or its people. Basically Mr. Icahn is trying to replace the current Yahoo board for the sole purpose of selling off Yahoo. The problem is that if that is all it focuses on then this is a board that doesn't have any reason to look out for the shareholders because it's not looking out for the shareholder's company. If a deal cannot be brokered with somebody quickly, this board has no interest is making sure that the company succeeds.

Yahoo Application Platform (YAP)

At the end of last year, I switched from Yahoo! Profiles (Profiles, 360, Mash) to a new team which I have not been able to tell anyone about other then to say that it was a "platforms team". The past 5 months that I've been with the team has been fun, fast, and very exhausting. We are aiming to do something very different then what Yahoo has done in the past and doing something new that can effect a company the size of Yahoo is not easy especially when it involves steering it away from its traditional course.



After months of work, we're finally able to let the world know the full extent of what we've up to. While we've already announced Yahoo's adoption of Open Social and being a part of the Open Social Foundation, it is only one part of what my team is handling. At the Web 2.0 Summit today, our CTO announced Yahoo's Open Strategy (YOS) which aims to open up Yahoo as a platform. At the heart of it, is the Yahoo Applications Platform (YAP) and that's the group I'm a part of (shown in the above picture as simply APP). Needless to say, it's been a pretty hard pushing 2008 tackling such an ambitious project, but it feel nice to finally be able to let my friends and family know what I work on. :-)



For those interested in what I'm directly involved with from the chart... AppBin/Gallery API, End User Services, Core App API, End-user services, Publisher Services API, END POINTS, droplets, Dropzone DB, and Open Social which all part of the "APP" of the first picture.

And for the person who posted the comment saying that YAP is just vaporware, he should know that Search Monkey has gone into private beta to a select set of developers is built on top of YAP and will have a public launch soon so we're far from being vaporware.

For the many critics of Yahoo that accuses us of not moving, I can only say that while we might not be making splashy daily marketing propaganda that they are a lot of damn serious work being put in by a lot of dedicated engineers to put some serious fire power in the hands of its users.

Mash fugly... avoiding the fate of MySpace

One common criticism of MySpace profiles is that they can be so hideously ugly or impossible to read. Y! Mash wants to be able to give users the flexibility to customize their profiles too but also protect the eyes of the unsuspecting viewer so if you run across a profile that just hurts your eyes and brains, try clicking on the "fugly" link and it'll take away the crazy CSS and let you see the contents in a very basic format.

Mash vs My!

I've been reading some of the blog postings from new users of Yahoo! Mash and one of things mentioned but a few is whether Mash replaces My Yahoo!. I thought I should point out that these two product serves a very different purpose. Mash is information you want to share with the world while My! is information you want to see for yourself from the world.

mash.yahoo.com

Today, Yahoo released the beta of a new site called Yahoo! Mash. Because it is currently an invite-only site, going to the link might now reveal very much, but Tech Crunch has some coverage and screen shots here. Now, normally I don't tend to talk much about my work or give my opinions about it other then to mention some new features coming out of Yahoo, but Mash is a little different in that I'm directly involved with it. I switched out of my previous group where I had been for the past few years to work on this project and be its engineering manager.

Mash is a strange beast and is different for different people. Some view it as a social network site. Some view it as a Facebook competitor. Some believe that it is a Y! 360 replacement. Mash is all of these and none of these.

At its core, Mash is your Yahoo! Profile with additional functionality often found in social networking site with a very wiki-like philosophy. Additional functionality can be obtained through "modules". Not only can you customize your profile, but your friends can also help you build it (with your permission) by editing the profile and adding new modules for you. We hope to open it up so that everyone can write their own modules to share with others, but until them we're giving people as much freedom as possible to customize the page. You will be able to edit and create your own CSS to make the page look however you like (or your friends can do it for you if you're not so artistically inclined. ^^;).

I hope people find the site to be both fun and useful. Keep an eye out for the Hot Potato (get it? mash...potato...) module that jumps from profile to profile! It's still in beta so we know there are some features that users are wanting. I encourage people to make suggestions on our suggestions board.

Y! Messenger Archive location

If you archive your messages in Y! Messenger and need to move to another location, the files are stored in:

Program Files\Yahoo!\Messenger\Profile\\Archive\

As Yahoo! rolls out their new homepage design, I've been asking various friends what their thoughts are on the new look-and-feel. The reactions has been mixed although none have been outright negative. Initially, I thought that those who didn't like the new look was because it was such a big change and change is not always welcomed. Some things aren't necessarily the best, but they work and people can get what they need out of them without much thinking.

After awhile, I started to ask myself why is it that I liked the new Yahoo homepage and while there are many different reasons, I thought that maybe one of the reason is that Yahoo homepage is beginning to be more of an "application" then an online publication.

As a software engineer, I like building applications and I'm not so inclined to build online content. One is a problem that challenges me while the other is equivalent of data entry (remember that this is from the perspective of engineers who aren't being paid to be creative writers so they are usually handed the content from "writers" and are told by non-engineers to "implement" the articles).

I guess I'm saying that I liked the web initially because it was more about programming (software engineer). Then it became more about content layout and it got boring (web developers). As the balance went back towards programming and application, it became challenging again (frontend engineers).

Yahoo Messenger 8.0

The new Yahoo! Messenger is out. The biggest change is its ability to load user created plug-ins. Everything besides the base functionality is a plug-in and users can create their own. I can see this really expanding the power of Y!M, but can it overcome established IM clients which offers many of the same things? Sometimes, I feel that the feature war is one the Cold War where eventually people forget the purpose and just ends up doing stuff for the sake of keeping busy and the status quo.

That's why I like Google Talk. It's not jumping into the feature war, but going after the simple but effective philosophy that has worked for UNIX for so long. I also like Trillian which allows me to talk to multiple IM providers (Yahoo, AIM, MSN), has a nicer interface then most "official" clients, and just has the features I want to use. In the long run, I feel that this is the winning strategy.

I think we can learn from the success of Trillian and to an extent Google Talk (not enough mass adoption to be called a success yet). An interesting case study might be GAIM. Here was a open-source application that was really ready to take off and become a leader in my opinion. Although the UI could've been better (I prefer Trillian's look), it was one of those "it just works" programs that could've hooked users. However, it's been stagnant in its development. 6 months goes by without any updates on its official site and each beta release takes ages. If I didn't know better, I would have thought that the project was dead and why would I use a dying application?

Update: I just want to clarify that I do realize that there is development going on with GAIM. I can check the source control and see that changes are taking place. However, even though I am a developer, this isn't my area of focus so I don't usually go looking at the change logs. I go to the web site every so often and see if there are any important changes or news. After many months of no updates, I start feeling like the project is dying which happens to most software projects since not one important change has happened that is worthy of being put on the web site.  To me, none of this is a big deal.  GAIM is pretty cool and if it works, I'll use it.  If it doesn't, I'll look for something else.

The world's information.

Google's traditional mission statement is to "organize the world's information." Yahoo has never been as much about organizing information as much as it is about finding information (original Yahoo portal), centralizing personal information (My Yahoo), and generating information.

Google has recently launched some pretty cool things. Even though I work for Yahoo, I don't hesitate to say it when Google launches good stuff. Good stuff is good stuff!

The world need both companies. Yahoo can generate the content and let Google organize it. ^^

Check out Google's latest toys and the new Yahoo! Homepage.

tech.yahoo.com

Aimed at helping consumers with technology, Yahoo launched http://tech.yahoo.com which is something like CNet.  It looks pretty good although they are using Flash (I tend not to like Flash) and that the layout has some bugs on my Linux-based Firefox.  Check it out.

Yahoo! UI library and Design Pattern

Although I'm a little late in writing about this, but the Yahoo Developer's Network continues to release new products to the community. The User Interface Library has been released with the BSD license to allow building modern interactive websites. In addition, Yahoo released their Design Pattern Library.

I hope things like these will help demonstrate that Yahoo is indeed a tech company.

Yahoo...

I took a look at my blog and realized how many recent entries have been about some new Yahoo! annoucement that I found to be interesting. Urgh... I need to branch out more! What's Google up to lately? :-)

Wordpress on Yahoo!

Following the news that Moveable Type will available on Yahoo! Web Hosting, Wordpress will now also be offfered.

Moveable Type now on Yahoo

Came across this somewhere that Yahoo will now host Moveable Type blogs.

Yahoo! Widgets 3.0

Yahoo! released their Widgets Engine 3.0 (formerly Konfabulator) for Windows and Mac. There's been some changes and a bunch of new widgets so it might be worth checking out. The list of changes can be found in the version history file (which I wish was easier to find).