Do you say Baybo or Beebo? Do you have a clue what I am on about? Apparently 22 million of you out there will, welcome to Bebo.com the social network growing faster than ever! What is a social network? Apparently (by Google Definitions):

The personal or professional set of relationships between individuals. Social networks represent both a collection of ties between people and the strength of those ties. Often used as a measure of social “connectedness”, recognising social networks assists in determining how information moves throughout groups, and how trust can be established and fostered.

Only now is it truly becoming clear, their is [serious money in Open Source][]/ With Mozilla reported to have made tens of millions of dollars. One blogger reported 70m was made by the corporation, with a Mozilla insider confirming thats a reasonable ballpark figure. Christopher Blizzard, board member of Mozilla, had this to say on his blog:

Blizzard added that an earnings figure of $72m (£41m) quoted on some blogs was incorrect. “I won’t comment on the dollar amount except to say that it’s [$72m] not correct, though not off by an order of magnitude. I also won’t comment on sources of that money, except to say that some of the assertions that I’ve seen in the comments are pretty far off, both in terms of numbers and sources,

One of the biggest complaints of Linux is that software doesn’t install to well, or is very difficult to install. “Dependency Hell” (When software relies on other bits of software to work), used to be quite commonplace. Ubuntu has cleaned a lot of dependency hell up, and a new program for installing software from the internet, is included in the new version, due to be released 1st June 2006.

That’s when I discovered a little gem called Klik for many Linux distributions. Simply lookup the piece of software you need, click on it and you have it! No need to install! It places the whole program on the desktop, so it is easily deletable and easily transferable. For example, if you have an office application, and your friend doesn’t, simply copy that file on desktop to your usb key or a cd, and copy to friends pc, done and dusted - Your friend has the whole application! This is an obvious feature bonus over current Windows version, XP.

So you have heard of Ubuntu, maybe they have even shipped you a free disc or you have downloaded one? Like most users, even advanced PC users, they get nervous about installing Linux and afraid of what they might have to learn. Touted as the brighest star, Ubuntu really does outshine other Linuxes, with usability, features and great range of software. Now you can try Ubuntu on Windows.

I use Linux, I also use Windows. I see the merits of the two, as they are different. Most people don’t see this distinction, that although the two OSes do many of the same functions, they remain lightyears apart. I have to admit I preach Linux to the hilt, I shouldn’t, but I do. I get skeptical Windows users who ask me what Linux does better, and I am stuck for an answer, as it does a lot of tasks better.

Well I can’t believe I only had one post in February! A lot has happened since then, with Danish cartoons, Dublin Riots and a few policy changes to the site. First of all the cartoons, I mean, whats all the fuss? Christianity is banned in Saudi Arabia and Muslims in the middle east just don’t get the idea of ‘free press’. No one should be allowed to immigrate to the western world, if they do not hold the core values which we hold, such as human rights, free of expression/press and other values. Should we worry about the middle east? Not at all, they’re behind the times, their loss. Why is it that movies which parody Christianity are so popular with Christians (like Monty Python)? We have evolved and can tolerate jokes and laugh at ourselves, many, but not all Muslims have not learned to do this, but they will, its called evolution, and sooner or later, it will hit the middle east. I am not defending the Cartoons, and I know Muslims do not produce images of Muhammad, and offense to this, I can understand. But they need to relax, maybe try some of the many drugs they like to export to us?

I recently travelled to Munich, Germany on a recent exchange (1st-9th Feb, 2006). Not knowing what to expect, I found a very different Germany from the text book one you read about (Bavarian Trad Dress, Beer-drinking, Pretzel Eating, Sausage loving etc!). Of course all of these elements were present, but I think a modern German society closely reflects American one, in a lot of ways. Germans are the largest group by ethnicity in United States, so maybe its just German culture prevalent in America?

Well the last couple of weeks have been interesting! You will notice the website is now a wiki based on Wikipedias engine, metawiki. I had a load of problems with making the theme work with a wiki with loads of menus. I think I did well considering I only spent about 3 days doing it. The code still aint how I want it and some features were lost, such as rss and del.icio.us bookmarks. But pages are now easier than ever to navigate and comment on which brings more features.

Well another year has passed, so I thought I’d make a short recap of it, and tell you what I am looking forward to in 2006. The year was firmly in the hands of mother nature as we saw in both Pakistan, New Orleans/Gulf of Mexico and the Tsunami’s after effects. International consensus was reached at the G8 as London was being bombed - not by the IRA, but by their new enemies in the middle east. Iran esculated its pressure on the world by resuming its nuclear activities. George W. Bush took office in January, much to the distaste of the Daily Mirror in the UK, who scored their most famous headline, “How Could 59,054,087 People, Be So Dumb?”.

A student in England has almost reached his target of one million dollars, and he is only 21! He came up with the idea after jotting down ideas before he went to bed on how to become a millionaire before he went to university. Then he came up with the million-dollar idea, sell pixels at USD $1 a piece on his homepage, MillionDollarHomepage.com . This man is Alex Tew, hailed as an advertising genius by the many companies who are using his site to make Internet history.