Today they integrated Google Voice with Google Talk in GMail. I still don’t know how they are doing it, are they connecting to PSTN through XMPP? In any case, I feel all excited and giggly about it. Maybe I will keep my Google Apps account after all..

It’s always been another one of my personal technological gaps. How do I travel and remain reachable on my US number? I could spend months on end in Israel, and it’s always nice to have seamless access to my US number and voice mail. SIM cards are so cheap abroad, the phone numbers assigned to them are arbitrary, I should be able to punch them in to Google Voice and just have people reach me with my usual number (this feature is yet to come). In short, unify and clean up the mess that is telephony and voice mail. Hopefully, if all this magic is through XMPP, we will have sexy integration in Empathy as well.

So at this point, not only has this delayed my disengagement from Google, it has brought me a step closer to getting an Android phone (Apple, stay classy and ignore Google Voice).

This isn’t conclusive, I don’t welcome our new overlords with open hands. My trust is being eroded with age, I just need to hear another horror story about political repression or Google evil doing to decide on personally hosting encrypted everything. Even if it means I will have to spend a few years of my life setting up Asterisk.

These are my requirements for an awesome backup solution:

• When I connect to my home wireless network I want it to automatically start syncing and backing up data to the headless computer.
• I don’t want it to saturate the network or be too taxing on disk I/O, so that regular computing tasks could be resumed unhindered.
• I want it to be resumable, so if I leave the house while it was syncing some huge file, it will just continue where it left off when I get back home.
• A visual status indication of whether a sync is taking place. A way to pause it.
• I want it to have 3 different kinds of backup modes for 3 different types of data:

Home folder

Snapshot based backups, that allows me to easily roll back and view previous revisions of my home directory.

Media

Accumulative backup. See what new music, photos or videos I have on my laptop, and copy them to the backup storage. This mode never deletes media that existed in previous syncs. I should be able to download or create new media, and have it stored on the high capacity storage at home, and only carry with me the media that I am currently consuming (I really don’t want to clutter my laptop disk with The Godfather trilogy, but I might want to take it with me on a flight).

Virtual machines

I usually have a small collection of virtual machines on my laptop. They are by far the largest single type of data I have on my machine. Since they support virtual disk snapshots natively, I don’t really care for revisioning like the home folder, virtual machine disks could clobber older versions of themselves on the backup storage.

There are countless backup solutions (read: rsync wrappers) out there. Do any of them answer those needs in a user-friendly way?

“I still don’t understand what I did wrong. Seriously, I don’t understand!” Eden said during a morning radio interview after pictures of her posing next to blindfolded Palestinian detainees were found on her Facebook page.

Of course she doesn’t understand, she spent “the best years” of her life serving in an army of occupation, immersed in a culture that is blind to the humanity of it’s subject population. It’s not a sentiment reserved for the lower ranks, or the middle ranks, it goes all the way up. It’s a mentality where the only people with mothers are people who speak Hebrew. The Israeli army is where youthful experimentation occurs, you get to humiliate, you get to intimidate, and if you are lucky: you get to kill.

“I’ll rephrase my question, Eden, so that perhaps we can learn together how it was wrong…”, the radio host will walk her through it, slowly.

She crossed an invisible line, specifically she embarrassed the IDF, “I hoped there wouldn’t be any media interest” an IDF spokesperson said. But the media showed interest, and that is what turned Eden’s souvenir into “shameful behavior”.

And now Israel’s military, media and political elite must fulfill their solemn role: behave like disappointed adults, and wrinkle their noses in distaste. Another delinquent youth has infiltrated “the most moral army in the world”.

This isn’t of course the first morally corrupt soldier that the IDF has disowned. There are many more, and they have done worse deeds. Mostly these individuals don’t exceed the rank of second lieutenant.

And this is how the IDF keeps it’s legitimacy in it’s own eyes. While the Israeli government and it’s army are accused repeatedly of war crimes and violating human rights, the IDF, through internal inquiry, discovers that all of those heinous acts were committed by the rank and file alone. Where were the brigade and battalion commanders? Where was the regional command? The general staff? They were giving compassionate orders of the utmost morality, but a few teenagers spoiled it for everyone.

“We are a nation surrounded by enemies” Eden tells the the radio host. She doesn’t understand she is outside the fold, she is now a joke. She will repeat all the mantras and clichés she was told that enabled her to see Arabs as less than human. That allowed her to enjoy those army years so much without a hint of remorse or regret. Everyone else will shake their heads: “she doesn’t “get it”, she doesn’t understand how bad this makes us look.

I also prepared my talk. You should come, it’s on Wednesday at 11:15 AM in the Seville room. It’s going to be extremely nontechnical, but I hope you could follow. I don’t think a single acronym will be mentioned, although I don’t hold me to that. We will be discussing the software development process, design, things we take for granted every day, and door knobs.

That is sometimes how I feel about my blog, if last month I didn’t blog in a long time, today I didn’t blog in a really really long time! So I am probably officially not a blogger any more.

I still owe some obligatory posts, specifically about my day job, and about the fact that  and giving a prez there.

But now let’s talk about my new toy. Did I need it? Probably not. My T400 is a portable workstation that gives me everything I need. But every 2 years or so I decide to splurge on a new machine, and I am happy to say that I have become increasingly satisfied with my choices each time. My T400 refuses to die or become obsolete, it’s black unimpressive looks doesn’t allow it to get stolen. But it’s been 2 years!

I have been looking at the Thinkpad X series for a while, and debating whether the X201 was ergonomically large enough for full days of work. The X300/X301, priced north of 3k, always seemed obscenely expensive, but I was curious what made it so (is it the whale penis leather exterior?). It’s been lauded as Lenovo’s answer to the Macbook Air, but I have seen those in reality, they looked paper thin. The X301 does not look as miraculous, not even in the sales photos.

One day, while reading the interblogs, I came across a $1,700 discount for the X301. I impulsively clicked “checkout” (after clicking “add 2 year warranty” and “add to basket”). Then came my favorite part about ordering a Thinkpad: the weeks long wait for them to assemble it, ship it, get through customs, and hoping the UPS does not lose it in the back of a truck in rural Wisconsin. After this period, you are sure that the UPS guy is going to deliver pure joy to your doorstep, as this photo suggests:

It’s a pretty nice machine, everything I liked about my T400 in a reduced package. Large enough to work on, but extremely light. Is it worth the $3,000 price tag? No. $1,300? Yes.

My favorite feature is not the 128 GB solid state drive, it’s the fact that the earphone jack is on the side, and not in front like in the T400. The front jack just didn’t work for me, it was super awkward.

My biggest disappointed has been the fingerprint reader. It does not work on Linux, what’s up with that? Are we in 1995? I really looked forward to unlocking my GNOME key ring with my middle finger, that would be so cool.

OK, enough with this guilty materialistic blogging. Next post will either be about my upcoming GUADEC talk about universal design, my fun happy times working on Telepathy and friends, or Israel’s rapid decline from nationalist chauvinism to overt fascism.

Daniel Gordis wrote this, and I couldn’t help but reply. Since I spent time writing it, maybe it’s worth a post of my own? You’re welcome.

You may not like it, but I am extremely encouraged by where young people, in particular young American Jews are taking us. A new generation is taking a fresh look at Israel today, and it doesn’t like what it sees.

On one hand we learn about the American civil rights movement, about separation of church and state, about a progressive immigration policy, about multi-cultural multi-ethnic society, and about the rule of law. We learn to cherish and defend these principles especially as Jewish minority, especially after our experience in the Old World. And then we go to Hebrew school, where first we are lied to (“a people without a land, for a land without a people”), and later we are told to love Israel, an ethnocentric state where one set of laws does not apply to half of it’s population, where a secret police reigns supreme, where it views 1/5 of it’s population at best as a blight in the landscape and at worst as a fifth column or a “demographic time-bomb”.

We are lucky that this new Jewish generation is not outright schizophrenic, but overall has understood these contradictions in its education.

“Pro-Israel” advocates will try to re-brand and encourage the narrative of a pluralistic, secular, gay-friendly and technologically advanced Israel that is contrasted with its dark, backwards, violent, and poor neighbors. This is meant to appeal to democratic and progressive ears, but it is nothing more than veiled racism that simply rekindles our fear of the unfamiliar, of the brown, and of smelly poor people.

You say “the only association they have with Israel is the conflict with the Palestinians”. A good observation. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict rightly eclipses every other aspect of Israel’s image. It cannot be overstated, any attempt to trivialize it is simply dishonest. Even the word “conflict” deceives, as it implies the clash of two equal parties, where the reality is of an occupying power and a (increasingly) dispossessed and disenfranchised population.

Judging by the comments on this post, it seems like your readership is mostly middle-aged and concerned about their children’s attitude towards Israel. I just hope your kids manage to remind you what it’s all about and help you snap out of the euphoria and delusion you have been in since ‘67. Your children’s expensive education does not teach them to agree with you, even though you are footing the bill.

I was reminded of my moderated comment when I saw this essay by Peter Beinart that was just posted on The New York Review of Books.

GUADEC 2010

I am going! And more importantly I am presenting. The title is Accessible by Universal Design: Why I love The iPhone. Did I provoke you yet? Hope so. In this talk I will show how smug designers with their high sense of aesthetic could be even better (and smugger). I am not racist, some of my best friends are designers.

Caribou

It will be in GNOME 3.0. I recently took over maintainership, which basically means cutting releases, making sure it’s translatable, accessible, packageable, and generally keeping up with the GNOME schedule. There seems to be a good amount of people interested in it, and there is even official funding for it in Spain, so we will be getting some good contributions in the near future.

iPhone Application

I have one in the app store. Before you accuse me of being a sellout and an Apple fanboy, let me just say that it was an interesting experience, and my motivation was mostly writing for something that everybody has (and it’s a real thrill). Took the better part of two weekends, Jenny and I are unveiling it in Megapolis in Baltimore this weekend, if you are in the area you should download it and give it a try. Future versions should have a lot more user-submitted content and work in other areas around the world. Maybe a Maemo and Android version too…

Work

It’s fun and interesting, hope to give an update on that once I actually have something to show.

The hackfest at the end of last month was a huge success, here is a partial list of summaries written by different attendees:

• Ben Konrath
• Willie Walker
• Bryen Yunashko (2) (3)
• Joanmarie Diggs
• Michael Gorse
• Steve Lee (2)
• Li Yuan
• Ke Wang
• Flavio Percoco Premoli

More is certain to come, Brad Taylor has some interviews to share, and Bryen has been capturing a lot of photos and videos.

We also has a some media attention, I believe. Should have written this all down when it was fresh in my mind. Willie and I were interviewed for Blind Bargains podcast.

Next Year

This might be a bit presumptuous of me. But I think we should have a GNOME presence on an annual basis. The combination of booth, talks and hackfest went really well. What we need for this is dedicated sponsorship (ie. funds that are for the event specifically, and not for general GNOME a11y).

We talked to some really big employers, like social security, who are interested in FOSS and want to see it in wider use in their agencies. Accessibility for them is key.

We handed out a couple hundred OpenSUSE CDs. A big problem with having a GNOME presence in a non FOSS conference is explaining to people what it is and how they should give it a try. We talk their ears off regarding the merits of GNOME and FOSS, and yet we are not backing it up with a service, or even a download URL. So Novell really saved our butts, besides the CDs, Brad was constantly giving out business cards.

Next year, maybe Red Hat, Novell, Canonical or some other GNOME distributor would like to officially endorse are booth, fund the event, and drum up business at this conference. I really think it has untapped potential for enterprise desktop in particular.

I heard from more than one conference attendee that we created a bit of a buzz, which is great. Might be due to our tweetage, talks, booth or tripping on us when we congregate on the lobby’s bar floor with laptops.

In the past companies like IBM and Sun showcased GNOME a11y, which may have appealed for large customers, but it was nice to have a .org booth this year that really brought FOSS’s grass-roots message to individuals, trainers, agencies and institutes.

My talk was really well received, I only wish it was slated for another hour besides 8 AM. Finally uploaded the slides. Not sure how well it renders on Firefox, apologies in advance. Also they aren’t the kind of slides that are very readable without the presentation.

Yesterday we had a wrap-up meeting, here are some notes Will took, didn’t bother to edit:

Eitan and Mike got Accerciser working with AT-SPI2

Eitan hacked a nice animation for Caribou with Clutter.

Ben enjoyed seeing the other booths to learn more about the space he is working in.

Ben was able to connect with Flavio to share ideas and develop a new collaboration with each other.

Ben was able to meet the SS12 students and follow up with them to get patches for Caribou.

Ke and Li met with Willie and Joanie to learn Orca internals, allowing them to help more.

Ke was able to learn more about various technologies related to accessibility.

Joanie and Alejandro looked at Orca together.

Joanie got good important face time with the Mozilla guys.

Li was happy to finally meet the rest of the team and also go over the bigger picture.

Steve Lee was happy to meet with the SS12 students and get more student input into GNOME.

Mike worked on AT-SPI2. Was glad to have the GNOME3 meeting because it helps us scope out what is needed. Mike also talked with Joanie about the Orca regression tests.

API found this to be a very positive experience to meet people face to face. Got to see that people (all conference attendees) see that open source a11y is important.

Willie thinks the GNOME 3 part is really important, he now thinks we could be successful in achieving GNOME 3 a11y. We also agreed on things we would not do, like the CSPI bindings and GOK. It was good to sit and brain dump Orca stuff with Joanie Li and Ke. On the show floor there were good conversations with people from different parts of the community, a lot of business cards! Talked to profs so they include GNOME in their classes, more HFOSS and PP stuff.

Bryen thought it was a good experience to see what we and others talk about wrt open source. Bryen was happy to meet everyone here and to connect with everyone and thanks us all for all of our hard work. Bryen has a connection with the UK Ability Magazine to write an a11y talk.

Willie and Eitan were interviewed for a podcast – blindbargains.net.

Mike and Brad were interviewed for another podcast.

Flavio was happy to finally meet us face to face! Flavio was pleased to see the effect GNOME a11y had on real end users who were coming by our booth. Helps immensely with self esteem. Flavio and Ben developed a new collaboration (yeah!).

Eitan wants us to blog more.