In a blog post last week, the veteran Nokia executive who has been working to get Linux onto Nokia phones since 2000, announced that the MeeGo repository will be opened by the end of this month. The source and binary repo will provide a raw baseline for building MeeGo on the Nokia N900 and Intel Atom-based netbooks.

What’s more interesting is the flurry of debate surrounding the details – or lack thereof – related to the processes that will enable the open source development model to flourish around the MeeGo platform. So far, Halla has said little about the decisions made by the technical steering group to choose RPM rather than deb as the package manager for MeeGo:

While code is certainly the most important question, the most frequently asked, however, has been about technology selections. The big ticket items like Qt, OBS and RPM were already communicated at the launch and as we expected, kicked off a few small avalanches of debate! These selections were, of course, pre-agreed and I can assure you that the amount of effort spent in resolving these was not small. After all, these are the points driving most of the investment cost and transition pains for Nokia, Intel and the Moblin and Maemo communities. Further selections are mostly still under discussion and beyond a few obvious ones (X, connman, ofono, gstreamer, dbus,…) can be considered as working assumptions for MeeGo 1 release. Now that the internal responsibilities within Intel and Nokia are becoming clear I expect that the people behind these selections and assumptions will start appearing in meego.com pages, mailing lists and wikis during the coming days.

This has generated some concerns that developers are being left out of the conversation, thus increasing their skepticism of the purported “openness” of the MeeGo platform. To be fair, it was necessary for the steering group to make some hard decisions at the beginning of a big open source initiative that merges two existing platforms. Otherwise, we could argue till the cows come home and nothing will move.

But what is the process that governs these decisions? Are we talking about a process similar to JCP (Java Community Process), where there are clearly defined procedures for the development and revision of the Java’s technology specifications?

Other tough questions that need to be addressed: driver support from hardware and device manufacturers, DRM support that is compatible with operators’ content business and application support for potentially different variants of MeeGo that could emerge. The technical steering group should address these issues early on if it wants to seed a rich developer ecosystem that is crucial for the success of any mobile platform.

Take a look at a current one involving free iPads for beta testing :

The difficulty lies in telling whether a freebie giveaway is a scam sometimes. Some are scams, and some are supposedly real contests giving out free iPads, like the one here at freeipadgear.

When in doubt, it’s probably wise to reconsider: If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.

As part of the worldwide promotion to create buzz around the event, the Singapore Youth Olympic Games Organising Committee (SYOGOC), together with the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA), is creating a virtual world called Singapore 2010 Odyssey.

Said RADM(NS) Ronnie Tay, Chief Executive Officer of IDA at the official launch on Saturday 6th March: “The Singapore 2010 Odyssey is a unique virtual world platform offering many possibilities for learning, social networking and entertainment, as it reaches out to the youths from all over the world in a fun and interactive way. The development of the 3D virtual world is testimony to Singapore’s infocomm capabilities in innovatively harnessing digital media technologies to support major events like the Singapore 2010 Youth Olympic Games.”

Find the Odyssey at www.singapore2010.sg/o

Of course, what’s more important is the content of this virtual world. I had a preview of the world last Wednesday at a media/blogger session (the news was embargoed till today) but to see how it really was working out, I decided to give it a real life test.

So I went to the website, registered for an account and downloaded Odyssey, which is around 240MB. Installation crashed once on my Windows 7 machine, but it could have been just a stray glitch. Patches were automatically downloaded and installed, and in general getting Odyssey running — from registration to installation — was quite smooth.

The first thing I noticed about Odyssey after getting in was that it was pretty much empty. Of course, I logged in at around 1am on a Sunday morning, but for the day after on when this thing was launched, you’d expect more people. Besides myself, there was only one other lonely soul, and I couldn’t tell if it was an NPC or player character.

Odyssey's main hall

The second thing that struck me is that the look and feel is very much like Second Life, but it’s not by Linden Labs. The game world was created by HiPiHi, a China-based 3D company.

When you first enter the game, you get an introductory video clip on how humans are doing badly vs. aliens in the Intergalactic Olympic Games in the year 3010. By taking part in games, you can help humanity do well. The story doesn’t have much impact on the actual gameplay though.

Gameplay itself is a series of mini-games, where you mash keys to play with other players in various sports. Thus far, the only ones available are archery, swimming, shooting, hurdle race and basketball. More will be added later, according to in-game text stating this.

I’ve tried the shooting and hurdle race. Basically you mash keystrokes to compete with other players, for example, “E” to accelerate, and “spacebar” to jump in the hurdles relay. The problem is that if there are no other players to compete with you, there’s little point in this.

One type of game that you can play solo are the embedded flash games that appear in the world, lke this whack-a-mole game below.

Probably the most useful part of Odyssey is the ability to wander around the Youth Olympic Village, and for folks to get a sense of how the campus is without coming here physically. Other venues like the Marina Barrage and the Singapore Sports School are also available for a virtual walkthrough. I visted the Marina Barrage in Odyssey, and it is just a 3D model of the place for now. There’s precious little to interact with, and I guess more interaction will be added later.

Hmmm, flying avatars. People who've tried Second Life will have no problems with the controls

Verdict: If this was an actual commercial game, I would say that it is unfinished in terms of content. Sure, it’s pretty, but that’s about it — there’s not much to do in here at the moment. To be fair, this charge can be levelled at Second Life as well.

But as a social platform to reach out to people for YOG, I believe it has potential, provided that the community managers for the Odyssey run events in it.

At the media session it was stated that the team behind Odyssey are running poster design competitions (from January to March 2010) and machinima competitions (April to June 2010) for our Singapore schools. They are also getting the school kids to code and generate content for the world. All of these are good ways to drive users and build a community around Odyssey, which in turn will create a buzz around YOG.

Community. This is the keyword here. On the YOG website there are many social media initiatives run, from the million deeds challenge, to WhyOhGee, a portal site with a blog, contests and photos. There is some content, but the community building for some of these intiatives seems lacking.

For example, the million deeds challenge was launched last year in March 2009, but to date they have only garnered about 50,000 deeds and still missing 950,000. And there’s only about five months left to YOG!

Don’t get me wrong. As a Singaporean, I of course want YOG to do well and raise our flag high in the international community. But if you want the social media part to work, you must engage the community — just building sites and content is not good enough. And it can be done. A good example that I like in the public sector space is yesterday.sg, which is run by the National Heritage Board.

In any case, reaching out to the Singaporean blogosphere — from technology blogs like ours to general blogs — is an easy step to help market these social media initiatives for YOG. You can’t have thin skin though, because bloggers will give unvarnished candid feedback. The second step would be to get community managers to engage the audience, like going to schools and talking about it, or setting up meetings with bloggers.

Sell Singaporeans the vision, and we’ll in turn help sell it to the world.

If successful, Apple’s action will get HTC’s phones banned — both Androids and Windows Mobiles — from being sold in the US, and be awarded “treble damages” and “interest at the maximum rate allowable by law”. Going by the list of patents Apple is whacking HTC for, it sure sounds like a hit job. It’s a big middle finger to the mobile phone industry not to mess with Apple, which had already tussled with Nokia in lawsuits late last year.

Not going to rehash the newspoints that you can find covered better elsewhere, but just some quick comments of my own.

Apple did shake up the mobile phone industry when it debuted with the iPhone in 2007, which birthed the touch phone genre. I can’t even remember when was the last recent phone I reviewed that was not a touch phone, so for this we have Apple to thank.

But of course the rest of the mobile manufacturers fought back, and this led to a flourishing touch phone market. End result: More choice for consumers, and Asian brands like HTC and Samsung are doing well in the touch phone space.

So of course Apple nips it in the bud by throwing roadblocks at the competition, namely number two (Nokia) and three (HTC). And with Android gaining fast ascendance, whack the phone manufacturer, i.e. HTC, which has rolled out the most Android phones thus far. Doh!

What these lawsuits will do: Not very much, I predict. Even if Apple gets its way, the US is not the only phone market in the world. In Asia alone, mobiles are huge, and we have two of the world’s most populous nations — India and China — in our patch.

Get ready to put on your 3D glasses and watch Wayne Rooney leap up in 3D to score his latest headed goal. If electronics behemoth Samsung is to be believed, you will be watching 3D programmes that seem to jump off the screen instead of the current flat images we have known for decades.

So confident is the Korean firm that it will launch more than 20 TVs featuring the 3D feature this year. The first models, demo’d today at a regional showcase of its entire line of electronics, will go on sale here in Singapore this month.

Most of the 3D TV models will be out by 2Q 2010, and will include LED, LCD and plasma TV screens.

“We are not offering 3D as a niche product,” said Samsung’s strategic marketing director Irene Ng at the event today. “We believe 3D will be everywhere.”

Though the Samsung show also included cameras, e-books and even washing machines, the star was clearly the new line of TVs from Samsung, which is no. 1 here for TVs here.

Samsung’s big-bang announcement comes just a week after Sony unveiled its own 3D TV sets here. Sony’s Bravia LX900 will go on sale in the middle of this year.

Just how good is 3D? Well, if you have watched Avatar in 3D, you will know that properly-created videos can create a new level of suspension of disbelief. In Avatar 3D, it’s hard to forget the thrill when creatures leap at you from screen.

You can see attempts to replicate some of that on Samsung’s screens today. Yes, there is some semblance of “depth” with these upcoming 3D TV sets. A rock band’s frontman does seem a little more forward than his band members, and you do see football players leap up in the air more realistically.

Me and the gawky specs

But to be fair, viewing things on a big screen, in a dark theatre, is always something that you’ll struggle to replicate at home with a 3D TV. Then, there is the content, which is ramping up, but will still take time.

Yes, the Arsenal-Manchester United match was recently shown in 3D, but you need a lot more content than that to make me stick on a pair of gawky-looking 3D glasses for two hours.

Yes, it's pencil thin

Today, the jury is still out. But we are surely moving towards 3D TV on the mass market. And I suspect a lot of Samsung’s initial 3D TV buyers will buy them for their looks rather than 3D.

The new C9000 LED TV, for example, is only as thick as a pencil. Yes, we can literally say its pencil thin. It’s not the thinnest around (LG holds that record now), but with a silver bezel, the new range from Samsung stands out well against the black-framed models we are so used to now.

Beyond looks, the C9000 impresses too with a bundled remote controller that not only has the usual wireless wizardry, but doubles up as a second screen.

In other words, you can stream another channel, via Wi-Fi, onto the remote even as you are watching the big screen. I can imagine watching two football matches at the same time with this setup, which requires that you stream the second video via a separate but standard Wi-Fi router.

The remote, which also works with other high-end Samsung TVs, is sold separately as well. But the asking price of US$350 is hefty – it could well net you a low-end TV these days. Also, get ready to charge your remote often if you fire up that Wi-Fi link all the time.

The remote aka second screen

In other words, a Linux OS. “That’s rubbish” was my response and I simply told him/her that the sentence was a total waste of valuable space on the newspaper. He/she said he/she did not understand why I used the word rubbish and went on to send me more info:

Q. What is the OS for Skylight and why did you choose it?
A. The Skylight User experience is comprised of a custom UI layer built on a custom Linux base OS.   The average user will not be aware that the OS is based on Linux.  We chose this approach because it provided the flexibility to deliver a simple, discoverable, and fun gadget based way of presenting web applications and media.

Q: Is this a Lenovo Operating System?

A: That depends on your definition of “Operating System”.   We have created a unique software stack optimized to achieve a specific user experience focused on web applications, media and cloud computing.    The focus of our investments have been on the User Interface layer.

Q: What did you base the OS on?

A: Lenovo’s Skylight Interface runs on Embedded Linux.  ThunderSoft is Lenovo’s Linux System Integrator.

Q: Are you working with a Linux distribution partner? Who is it?
A: Yes Thundersoft.  Lenovo recognized the value of running Linux as a base platform for the Skylight User Interface for everything from performance to extensive customization.   This allowed us to pick the best and most appropriate elements to solve the SmartBook equation.   An extensive team of partners along with internal development teams from Lenovo and Qualcomm worked together to pick, customize and create what we needed to provide a world-class solution.

Yes my friend. It is still a Linux OS.

British hi-fi speaker maker Bowers & Wilkins has come up with its first pair of computer speakers, which it says will provide “hi-fi” sounds from laptops and PCs hooked up to them.

The MM-1, a little reminiscent of Bose’s earliesr PC offerings, looks the part and is now up for pre-order here in Singapore before it ships in April 2010. Each pair will cost you a handsome S$899 – the cost of a PC – at B&W distributor Eighteen 77.

As part of the product pre-launch promotion, you get 10% discount for buying of one unit and 15% discount for two units. Promotion ends on 2 Mar 2010, according to Eighteen 77.

So, what’s the big deal?

B&W claims its active, near-field speakers will offer better sounds than rivals in a rather diminishing field of good PC speakers. This, it says, is thanks to two separate drive units including an aluminum tweeter that is tuned for treble performance.

I haven’t listened to the speakers yet, but I’m rather worried about bass. Without a subwoofer, the MM-1 relies on what B&W calls Dynamic EQ boost to bring out the low-hums. Hmmm…

What seems nice, though, is that the MM-1 has its own headphone output, so sounds from your PC passes through the MM-1’s DSP before reaching  your headphones. This means you bypass your PC”s usually dodgy sounding headphone jack (unless you have a really expensive soundcard or amp for that).

The anti-virus (AV) market is increasingly getting to be a difficult business for market incumbents.

The top players in this space — notably Symantec’s Norton and McAffee, followed by Trend Micro — have seen their market shares taken on by a slew of smaller competitors in the market, including Kaspersky Labs, ESET, Panda, AVAST and AVG, amongst others.

What’s more interesting is that some of these AV solutions from these smaller firms are good, and might even be better than the incumbents, if you can believe the latest anti-virus comparisons released by Anti-Malware Test Labs just about a week ago. Anti-Malware Test Labs is a Russian independent security research firm that is not affiliated to any software vendor, and has shared AV comparison tests with the public since 2007.

According to them, both DrWeb and Kaspersky, both Russia-based AV solutions, topped the list of the 17 AV software vendors. More than half the vendors flunked the comparison test as they didn’t defend against enough virus attacks in the testing.

The results, especially if you delve into the methodology, seem quite vigorous. Although to an observer like me far away it’s interesting to see that two Russian anti-virus firms topped the list.

Another interesting tidbit I spotted: Microsoft Security Essentials clocked in at second place (tied with Czech-based AVAST), which isn’t bad in terms of performance. Now, with Microsoft throwing their weight into this area and offering their security solutions for free, this is really going to put the squeeze on the AV space. No wonder the old guard software security firms are fleeing this area, and are looking at new pastures.

In any case, if you’re looking to purchase an anti-virus solution it makes sense to check out Anti-Malware Test Lab, AV-Comparatives.org, VB100 or ISCA Labs, which are some independent AV and security testing research firms in this space.

If you’re a repeat visitor to Techgoondu, you’ll no doubt have noticed the look and feel of the site has changed. Try it out and let us know what you think!

It’s the third incarnation of Techgoondu since our inception more than 18 months ago, but you’ll notice that our tagline remains the same: The revolution has begun.

That tagline has a special relevance to us (more on this later!), but most importantly the site wouldn’t exist if not for you, our readers.

What started out as an experiment in blogging and social media — as this old post by Boon Kiat aptly put when Techgoondu turned one — has taken a life of its own.

From various contests, to threads that have surprising life, to YouTube Techgoondu interviews, to Christmas wishlists, to our meet the techgoondu event, to Hong Kong flavoured posts, the site has evolved step by teething step.

Not all ideas worked and we had to drop some. But it has been a journey that has been — for the most part — a joyous thrill ride, and we’re grateful for the chance to be read.

Thank you for being part of our journey.

What will the future of Techgoondu hold? I don’t know how the site will look, but we’ll keep experimenting. We’ll keep trying to build a great content site that is useful and relevant to readers. Watch this space.

We started the site out of a fervent belief that traditional media platforms in Singapore do not reflect the way people access information and services nowadays. We desperately wanted a platform and voice to tell good tech stories that sometimes the media doesn’t tell. Put the two together and you have Techgoondu.

This isn’t just our site. We hope to build something that is also your site. Have a tech story to tell? Let us know. Hate the new interface or something bugs you? Let us know! Are you a vendor or PR that wants to try something crazy with social media? As long as it is good content that serves the community, you’ll find that we’re a flexible bunch to work with. Are you a small local SME or start-up that wants to be heard but don’t know how? Talk to us!

Drop us a note at contact@techgoondu.com, or check out our about pages for individual email contacts.

Lastly, here’s a gallery of some of our previous Techgoondu designs and sites one and two.

Take Nouveau for example. The open source project started in 2006 with the aim of building high quality drivers for Nvidia graphics cards. Although Nvidia provided a Linux driver several years ago, it was a basic driver with no 3D support. The Nouveau project gained momentum and a year later, its driver soon outperformed Nvidia’s in 2D performance.

While some Linux drivers can be as good as proprietary ones from hardware vendors, others only allow basic functionality with sometimes abysmal performance. My interest in Linux was rekindled recently when I installed Ubuntu 9.10 on my three-year-old Macbook. The basic hardware like the keyboard and graphics worked right out of the box after the installation, with the exception of the iSight webcam which only worked after I installed a software that reverse engineered the right driver out of Apple’s proprietary iSight driver.

Driven by commercial interest through a stranglehold over the unique features of its hardware, it is not in Apple’s interest or any hardware vendor to release open source drivers. A recent feature in Linux Magazine on the Nouveau project pointed out that Nvidia “still gains far too much advantage by keeping their driver closed. They get support for brand new models, extra performance, better power management, extra features like VDPAU, and certain technology components can remain a company secret”.

Meanwhile, Linux users have to continue tinkering with their boxes to make things work, but with the support of the community through hundreds of thousands of forums and interest groups on almost every Linux distro, there’s bound to be a workaround out there. But hey, it’s also what makes computing fun isn’t it?