Getting Down at AppUp Elements 2011

In June of this year I was pleasantly surprised when Intel’s Dawn Foster asked me to join a community panel for AppUp Elements 2011. I’ve been admittedly making only rare appearances in the AppUp community so far but the focus here was on Intel-sponsored communities in general, so if nothing else my MeeGo journey was relevant.

Closer to the event itself, Kira Boyko let me know that a separate talk I had proposed was accepted. More on that… later. 

Confessions of an APPathetic User

I’m going to confess something that’s likely to cost me Twitter followers, kill future career prospects and launch a mild Comment war:

I’m not much of an app user.

And I can’t understand those who are, either.  Well, I can align with the casual user.  The few utilitarians out there.  Those discriminating sorts who reserve their precious device storage space for more valuable content.  Like songs, photos and LOLcats.  

Intel and the Open Ecosystem

I have a confession to make that might not sit well in the AppUp World:

I’m a longtime AMD system builder.

I have to qualify that though.  Eons ago, when I first started assembling my own personal computers, CPU competition was fairly open.  Intel could not keep up with the demand at the time, so they licensed x86 production to various foundries– many that aren’t even around now.  I was a hardware opportunist, scavenging and cannibalizing and repurposing any part I could.  So it didn’t matter if a CPU was made by Intel or AMD or Cyrix or whoever… as long as I could use it, I did.

But over time competitors died or withdrew from that business, and for a while it was pretty much an Intel and AMD world for desktops.  

Blogging at AppUp, too

Intel’s ever-popular Bob Duffy asked me to do some blogging for their AppUp community and even as busy as I am lately, I could not turn down the opportunity.   As I say in my intro there:

Here I’ll narrow it down to mostly MeeGo-specific stuff with some general software development along with relevant hardware topics.  Just about everything will have a heavy community slant.

Bob was gracious enough to let me echo articles over here.   When I do so, I’ll wait a day or so after initially publishing there before republishing here, and also include a reference to the original post.  Note that most of my writing will continue to originate here.

It’s actually funny that I’m doing this for Intel, given that I have been a largely AMD customer for years.  More on that in a future article.

Oh, and Cosimo Kroll has also started writing at AppUp, too, so make sure to check him out as well!