Git is a file syncronization, and source control tool. Git has been my enemy. It’s still a spooky animal. Here’s how I survive git now without letting it get in the way of me breaking new things.

Install Git Ubuntu/Debian linux:
sudo apt-get install git-core
(refer to references for windows or mac installs)

Setup:
git config –global user.email you@bigco.com
git config –global user.name “Your Name”

Setup new repo?
cd myprojectdirectory
git init
git add .
git commit -am “first commit message”

Grab a repo?
git clone git:repo/proj.git

Status:
git log

Good commit habit to a remote repo:
git commit -am “my new commit”
git pull repo
(no conflicts?)
git push
(if conflicts?)
*run around screaming and breaking things*
git mergetool
or read here

Revert:
git revert commitnumber
Or to revert one commit
git revert HEAD

Branch:
git branch mybranchname

Switch branch (changes files think lazy susan):
git checkout mybranchname

List branches:
git branch

Merge branch master into current branch
git merge master

References:

• Git for Dummies
• Toolman Tim
• Git Tutorial
• Git Homepage
• Interfaces and Tools
• Meld visual merge tool
• History

As long as I’m unwilling to face an obstacle, my mind invents clever schemes to prevent me from having to deal with undesirable tasks. That results in me treating the obstacle as a spooky animal. It also means I will miss out on any advantages of understanding the taboo subject.

My biggest hurdle over the past dozen years has been learning a new programming language. After getting comfortable with C++ (and c) I couldn’t imagine starting out all over. Learning how to translate thoughts into data structures, objects, and methods took me a good two years to understand, and five to get very comfortable with. But last year that barrier finally got worn away by a potent force, my enthusiasm to build a highly capable web information tool.

At that point I began to familiarize myself with php and common web programming languages. I had never consciously written code to access a web API before writing a script to access Twitter late last summer. The documentation was rich, but I kept looking for something like an include to dig into source code. That’s how I used to figure interfaces out, often my own source code written years earlier. But APIs only reveal the interface, they are the block box of the web world.

In the fall of last year I toyed with Scala on Lift, and Python with Django. Setting up Scala in Netbeans and Eclipse IDEs was nontrivial for a first timer. To clarify, getting the right compilers/Jre/sdk and mixing this concept with the Google App Engine took some time to straighten out (poor Benjamin Golub was kind enough to put up with my ignorance at the time the friendfeed API v2 was released).

My reliance on IDEs is another hurdle, but I far prefer rich IDEs for code navigation to editors and makefiles (I started coding on SGI unix, VI and emacs are not the ideal coding tools for me). I was clueless how to tweak the sample code frameworks besides obvious logical hints in the code structure. I judge a language by how much sense it makes to me when looking at sample code. If I have to pour over documentation to clarify dense arcane syntax, it’s a bad sign, although I’m becoming acclimated to hitting web docs for help.

Last November Tyler kicked me into learning the basics of Ruby through Rails our current framework for the IMM (Intelligent Media Manager). As a long time engineer who primarily did numerical/algorithm development in C++ I was a little shocked at how slow run times for interpreted languages can be. Why would anyone choose to develop in a language that was an order of magnitude or two slower? Some simple facts I was missing:

• for the type of web processing I do now, the wait time of remote API calls is much greater than local processing time
• abstraction for high level languages allows for rapid construction of functioning prototypes
• Static vs Dynamic typing: (somewhat related to interpreted and compiled languages) I prefer static typing to dynamic, as that’s how I first learned. Declaring types is good practice (its built in documentation) and saves a fair amount of testing. Dynamic typing has it’s own merits but I’m not the right guy to argue this topic. Someone like Dave Pollack can discuss the comparison of each much better. I’ll come back to it in a future post when I have more time to research tradeoffs (spooky animal)

In contrast to the lack of need for speed with some web development languages, there are fundamental interfaces that we all want to be as responsive as possible. For these (our database and public API) we’ll want things to be hypertuned. In fact if we had to, I’m confident Tyler and I could write the entire site/service over again in a natively faster language now that we’ve gone through it once *ducks the rock Tyler will throw at me for this comment*.

Ruby on Rails is a great tool for learning, developing and understating the process, data, and user flow. There’s still a great deal I can learn about the language (they didn’t choose dynamic typing on a whim). While working with Rails I have even learned a little JavaScript to enable users to do remote hits to the Twitter search API (we use jquery as a support lib). This was last step for the rudimentary twitter client we now have, Social Gravity. Our tools excel at identifying the important topics of status updates (metadata) and puts us in a position to better invent useful search and interaction tools.

Unlimited API hits aren’t free

The past few days I’ve been digging into Open Calais’ API. They have another great semantic tool which we can leverage. The big plus for Calais is there 100k hits per day limit. While debugging our list processing, I’ve already gone beyond the Zemanta API limit of 10k. Alchemy’s Orchestr8 is our goto semantic API, and it gives us 30k hit per day to work with. If necessary we can explore hitting DBPedia directly to identify our own entities from text. Relying on external tools could be more expensive than our limited revenue can practically support. It all depends on how many affiliate sales we can get per API hit. Zemanta’s pricing architecture is $1200/month for 50k hits per day at the time of writing this post. To break even we have to make 3 cents an API hit if we perfectly max out calling the API. I have to do some quick calculations for Alchemy and Open Calais but the number is much lower than 3 cents per API hit. Calais may be our most viable option. Even better than that, in house semantic lookups could be the best long term solution. Lower software and maintenance cost versus API hits, and in theory we could have a massive local database to minimize response time.

1. iPhone is a fundamentally closed architecture. Sure lots of developers are working through the store to get access to a large market, but the store’s cut isn’t the only tax. Apple is the gatekeeper and has proven that it will block competition. For examples see Skype & Google Voice. Additionally the approval time for updates is too slow, taking weeks or more
2. Web apps are much more appealing alternative for developers who want the biggest market without having to rewrite the same app for multiple architectures. I recognize that web apps don’t have full access to the device hardware. Expect this trend to change rapidly
3. I’m not the administrator on my own hardware (without jailbreaking) which is a pita without a mac. Software apps or Apple can push updates I don’t want. Jailbreaking an Android is trivial by comparison. Being in the drivers seat of my own hardware destiny matters to me
4. No choice of data provider. Put aside the debate of dumb pipes, AT&T vs Verizon vs Sprint vs Tmobile. Choice is the foundation of competition. I want businesses competing ferociously to be my mobile web service provider. I want the mobile Net commodotized and absolutely transparent. Providers should be dynamic not static, the cheapest bit wins
5. iTunes doesn’t work on Linux. Sure I can get wine to emulate windows and the push the iPod patch and it may work (it flaked on my setup) but why should I have to?
6. For the same reason Microsoft was a monopoly for integrating their crappy Internet Explorer browser Apple should have to decouple their store from their hardware. Let me buy through whoever I want (go Magnatune & Last.fm!). I admit IE has gotten better since they were forced to decouple their web browser from the OS. Competition is a good thing for users/customers and the stability of businesses
7. For me it comes down to user experience. I’d much prefer a solid under the hood infrastructure and choice of windowing/interface environmet. It’s why Ubuntu flavored Linux is working great for me. If only I could slap that on my mobile…

Things that no mobile provider has official support for but it should be the defaut:

• Tethering. One monthly bill for all my data usage (4G I’m looking at you). No special tax for voice or SMS colored data or cost multipliers because I have a laptop or desktop at home. $70/month for fat bandwidth is more than enough to cover my data needs. I shouldn’t have to lay $80-110 per device or an extra $50 for a landline

This is a followup to Apple and AT&T are pulling a Thelma & Louise.

Disclaimer: I don’t hate Apple, I’ve enjoyed my iPhone mobile for a few years for the Net access it has given me (2G and 3Gs). My fiancé Michelle had a wonderful experience setting up her iMac.

Highly profitable attention based business is powered by crack dev teams working at Google and Microsoft (Bing). From the point of view of an outsider looking in, there is a massive shift in resource gravity that has taken only a decade. It is a living example of attention jiu-jitsu, which leverages human interest towards desired outcomes. In this case the result is ever larger revenue growth and accompanying data-centers. The yield of compute center investments are reaped by maintaining information superiority in an emerging network economy. The massive information network density may be the perfect environment for a new pattern to emerge. Upon writing this, I can imagine a room full of artificial intelligence researchers laughing at the possibility of accidental intelligence. My counter is that with enough information (energy) density and connectivity, the highly unlikely becomes inevitable. A plausible method leading to identifiable A.I. is to create a rich environment for intelligence to emerge, as opposed to chasing after intelligence by emulation software. A single spontaneous event is enough to change everything.

Organized structure arising from chaos isn’t a novel concept in nature. Cosmologists have constructed intricate hypotheses based on circumstantial evidence and measurements of ancient energies (I trust their data much more than my arm chair A.I. ideas, which isn’t much). A popular theory tells a tale about the history of the entire universe. The story heralds the unfolding of super galactic structures, all emerging from a single event of supreme energy density.

I look to life for supporting patterns to my “far out” thought riffs. In the search for technological intelligence, what better place to look than the history of the human species, an incredible biological machine. Evolutionary development shows a marked gain in cognitive abilities (brain size) happening over a relatively short timespan.

By reviewing this tree of species is there evidence of a threshold for connectivity that may give rise to sentience? Since we don’t have enough social analysis of our ancestors (read as: I’m too lazy to research it at the moment) it’s tough to judge what was the required neural connectivity to define conscious self awareness. Intelligence is likely a gradual awareness that improves as neural connectivity increases. For example, my dogs are aware, but they’re not self aware (as far as I can guess). In my less lucid moments (strong emotional states), I too become less self aware.

There’s Dollar Signs $$ in Knowledge

Different aspects of decision making are emerging as valued hubs on the web. Hunch and Quora are joining accepted knowledge systems like Wikipedia, Stack Overflow, and many others. Legacy knowledge systems derive value from organized crowd sourced user contributions. As more systems lead to rich connected data frameworks, users benefit from improved information availability. I look forward to progressive models which reward the extracted value with their user communities, something the gentlemen behind Iter8r are working on.

Inspired by knowledge systems, frankensearch.appspot.com was my first effort at a real time search mashup. I’ve been fascinated with various forms of social search since becoming an admitted Net junky over the past 18 months. Since late last year Victus Media has served as an outlet for focusing my efforts on revealing greater user value in social search.

I’ll leave off with a great share I got from my friend David Semeria, the genius behind the LM Framework. Can you see emerging information patterns in collaborative software development?

Twitter Code Swarm from Ben Sandofsky on Vimeo.

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• Enhanced Cooperation with Facebook on Search (Bing/Search Blog) (techmeme.com)
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“White Blood Cell Chases Bacteria… It is a neutrophil chasing Staphylococcus aureus”. For more details see “how neutrophils work”* at the end of the post.

It’s good practice to make clear any assumptions or definitions so here’s a brief introduction to how white blood cells function:

The immune system, which responds to an invading pathogen, is an intricate system of defense mechanisms designed to block and destroy any foreign substance entering the body. It is made up of many cells, which help it to perform its function… White blood cells fight infections, and protect our body from foreign particles, which includes harmful germs, and bacteria.

The immune system is an example of a complex information filtering and processing system. It’s intricate design, superb pattern matching, and cheap disposable resilience has evolved to enable our survival. The features I’m most interested in are the advanced filtering technique and dispersed nature of our white blood cells.

Filtering and Motive Abilities Combined

Work done by Ronen Alon and Ziv Shulman has shown tiny leg like structures that sprout from the white blood cell as it moves through tissue.

Rather than sticking front and back, folding and extending to push itself forward, the cell creates numerous tiny ‘legs’ no more than a micron in length – adhesion points, rich in adhesion molecules (named LFA-1) that bind to partner adhesion molecules present on the surface of the blood vessels. Tens of these legs attach and detach in sequence within seconds – allowing them to move rapidly while keeping a good grip on the vessels’ sides.
Next, the scientists turned to the Institute’s Electron Microscopy Unit. Images produced by scanning and transmission electron microscopes, taken by Drs. Eugenia Klein and Vera Shinder, showed that upon attaching to the blood vessel wall, the white blood cell legs ‘dig’ themselves into the endothelium, pressing down on its surface. The fact that these legs – which had been thought to appear only when the cells leave the blood vessels – are used in crawling the vessel lining suggests that they may serve as probes to sense exit signals.
The researchers found that the shear force created by the blood flow was necessary for the legs to embed themselves. Without the thrust of the rushing blood, the white blood cells couldn’t sense the exit signals or get to the site of the injury. These results explain Alon’s previous findings that the blood’s shear force is essential for the white blood cells to exit the blood vessel wall. The present study suggests that shear forces cause their adhesion molecules to enter highly active states. The scientists believe that the tiny legs are trifunctional: Used for gripping, moving and sensing distress signals from the damaged tissue.

The closest macro analogy I can compare to white blood cell sensing is smell. Sharks have long used their fantastic smell to track miniscule concentrations of blood in water to find their prey. In a similar way, chemotaxins meet the surface of the white blood cells for coarse direction, and pseudopod extensions for zeroing in, guiding the white blood cell towards invaders (bacteria, etc). White blood cells are own little army of sharks.

Why should a dataminer/founder like myself care? The following question gets to the heart of my interest:
How can modern information tools better mimick our master filters?
Surface matching requires “information structures” as well as an internal database of patterns. A flow of information is also needed to cause the surface filters to interact with the information. Both coarse (hashing) and high fidelity solutions can work in tandem to help filter out noise.

Perhaps an even closer analogy, is security software. The same immune system principles can be leveraged to identify and eradicate invaders. There we seek intruder patterns which are being actively designed.

Notes*:
how neutrophils work:

Neutrophils are the most common granulocyte. They have segmented nuclei, typically with 2 to 5 lobes connected together by thin strands of chromatin which can be difficult to see; the cell may thus appear to have multiple nuclei. The nuclear chromatin is condensed into coarse clumps. Small numbers of immature neutrophils or band form neutrophils may be seen in a blood smear. These are incompletely segmented and often have a ‘C-shaped’ nucleus.

The cytoplasm of neutrophils contains three types of granule.

Primary granules are non-specific and contain lysosomal enzymes, defensins, and some lysozyme. The granules are similar to lysosomes. They stain aviolet colour when prepared with Wright’s stain which is commonly used in studying the blood. The enzymes produce hydrogen peroxide which is a powerful anti-bacterial agent.

Secondary granules are specific to neutrophils and stain light pink (‘neutral stain’). They contain collagenase, to help the cell move through connective tissue, and lactoferrin, which is toxic to bacteria and fungi.

Tertiary granules have only recently been recognised. It is thought that they produce proteins which help the neutrophils to stick to other cells and hence aid the process of phagocytosis.

Once in the area of infection neutrophils respond to chemicals (called chemotaxins which are released by bacteria and dead tissue cells) and move towards the area of highest concentration. Here they begin the process of phagocytosis in which they engulf the offending cells and destroy them with their powerful enzymes. Because this process consumes so much energy the neutrophils glycogen reserves are soon depleted and they die soon after phagocytosis. When the cells die their contents are released and the remnants of their enzymes cause liquefaction of closely adjacent tissue. This results in an accumulation of dead neutrophils, tissue fluid and abnormal materials known as pus.

References:
White blood cells
Wikipedia on White Blood Cells

a Han Solo inspired title for a post that dips into the spiritual side

Have you ever experienced moments where you felt unstoppable?

I’m not talking about run of the mill mania, a bloated ego, or a positive feeling of well being. What I refer to is a state of being where all our cylinders fire syncronously. In this state we’re so deep in the flow that we can’t imagine leaving it. Our thoughts and actions can flow without hindrance. There’s this humbling sensation of immense strength that is remarkable because it emanates from us.

It is us.

The sensation of self truth is an aspect of our persona that’s untarnished by doubt. This is the song of life that is in harmony with our own inner tune. Forgive the new age mumbo jumbo spiritual speak, and think about the precious nature of these moments. There is no stronger signal I can imagine than our honest subconscious needs emitting every ounce of endorphins to echo “this is the way, go forward”.

If you can relate to these moments of self truth, unfettered by the noise of distraction, you can align your life to cultivate stronger and deeper moments. The power of this recurring look into who we are, is much more than a feeling of elation or confidence.

• Your ability to make important decisions is superb. Without the distraction of unimportant tasks, all of our minds processing ability can be leveraged to best estimate changing states and predict likely futures. For developers reading this, you can relate to a fluctuation in your or your colleagues ability to analyze technical challenges. I believe this is a related phenomena
• This purposeful and peaceful aura is infectious. Imagine a meme that instills flow, confidence and truth to all that adopt it. I’m beginning to understand the strength and draw of religions now, although I strongly disagree with their rigidity/control. The acceptance of self truth is dynamic and personal. It’s hard for me to even properly describe this feeling, your interpretations likely differ
• Mental barriers and limits are clearly visible as self built constructs. Their strength in stopping you from pursuing a fantastic path comes only from your belief. As you inspect this faith with a clear mind, you are able to verify the reality of a limitation
• Energy, enthusiasm, and joy are in great abundance. The miracle of your existence is founded upon millions of years of impossible odds being overcome. You have no idea what you’re really capable of until your motives are made perfectly clear, and all of your vitality is focused on a single goal

Or they could just be delusions of grandeur

Whether the economy is growing or contracting, the heart of every business are the employees that work to see its success. In these challenging times it has become even more important that we review the relationship and responsibilities between people and the organizations they work within.

There are broad groups that comprise the workforce. Employees are generally compensated the worst but in turn have the greatest job stability and benefits (*cough*). Consultants are generally paid much more per hour or project but have little to no job security. They negotiate one project or job at a time, and receive no benefits.

Consultant:
Expected Responsibilities:

• Complete a project on a fixed budget or timeline
• Execute on the task to the satisfaction of the business

Employee:
Expected Responsibilities:

• Work a part or full time shift weekly
• reliably show up for work and execute required tasks
• give notice when leaving*

Business:
Expected Responsibility to Consultants

• Define exactly what is needed. The expectation is that consultants will know how to best execute.
• Pay what was negotiated for the project

Expected Responsibility to Employees

• Define what work tasks are needed. The employee should know how to best execute those needs. Micro managers are a path to a high churn rate, and zombie employees
• Pay the negotiated salary, including benefits like unused vacation, or unemployment benefits for layoffs

Although, I much prefer the consultant to employee model (ideally the world would be dominated by free agents), I’d like to bring to light a despicable practice companies are using. Businesses are treating people that are paid like employees, like consultants when it comes to termination. This is both deceitful and illegal.

A close friend described a roller coaster of inept management at their job. Their management has a history of losing money and making very poor decisions, while concealing this from board members and employees alike. My friend went through a promotion, followed by finding out their entire staff was terminated, followed by a highly uncertain future in just two months.

Upper management is attempting to demote employees into unsuitable positions: “forget your years of expertise and training, your new job is to push paper mountains back and forth”. Their strategy is to force people to quit so the company isn’t required to cover unemployment benefits. While this is terrible, the business is outdoing itself with the following move. They are liquidating all acrued vacation time, and not paying it out to terminated employees. The employees are also not allowed to use their vacation in the interim. How can this possibly be legal? The upper management should be tarred and feathered in my biased opinion.

*Disclosure on my hypocracy: I took a leave of absence at the end of 2008 with no notice from my then full time position. At the time I wanted to quit, burned out, working without a contract and no self direction (but an abundance of external direction). There was sparse contract work during that period so my selfish move saved the company 5 months of my salary. Thanks again to Ralph for suggesting I think it over, the part time income I make now provides me with just enough to survive, live with my life partner Michelle, and pursue my passion of building a business. The situation matches my need to create real value, I may never be wealthier.

Imagine relegating every important choice to probabilistically dominant outcomes? This decision architecture attempts to rigorously bake out every conditional factor and estimate it’s impact on a particular choice. The intriguing aspect of this method, is that our mind already functions much like this on a tiny level.

The complicated network of neural connections can be broken down into massive clusters of linked neurons. Each synaptic event will trigger wave like propagation throughout responsive nodes. The pathways, feedback, and weighting all lead to macro decision events. Habit weighs heavily on our minds decision making ability, and serves as an autopilot or default response.

All of our minds available information is leveraged in a moment to make a decision which will determine our actions. For the greater part we are socially judged by the efficacy of our decisions and corresponding actions. The ultimate representation of this ideal is a true meritocracy. The realities of game theory dictate our current wealth distribution model, but without faith that direction and effort lead to earned rewards, the system would rapidly unravel. Any system which promotes a disconnect between motivation and value is doomed to collapse. I tried to come up with a fitness criteria for evolving economic models and their efficiency in evaluating individual contribution but gave up due to weariness. I promise to come back to this topic another time.

Risk versus Reward

What am I risking versus my probability of payout? How much confidence should we place on our estimate of success, and if we’re wrong how much of an upside do we lose out on from missing a sweet deal. A trap of probability weighted decision systems is choosing a mediocre path. If every decision is dictated by consensus we are left with a moderate outcome which equally dissatisifies everyone .

Reality Distortion Fields Influence Decisions

As an information hungry startup founder, I have encountered the phrase “reality distortion field” used by many investors and entrepreneurs (my first experience with the term was at Steve Blank’s blog). I have come to respect this concept as it represents much more than charm, influence, or deception. Reality distortion can be leveraged on a space which is already out of alignment. Manifest enough social gravity, and you may shape the current landscape into a legendary beauty worthy of future awe and emulation.

Earn the trust of the right community, and you can literally change the world.

Related References:

• Wikipedia on decision making and Decision Analyses
• From Britannica, How we make decisions

At first look building a business on a macro level appears to be a linear series of steps. From my vantage, forming a startup and building it into a business is part art form, part leadership/negotiating reality distortion, and a heavy dose of successful practices. The framework leveraged to build out a startup needs to be “precompiled” answers to common questions. As a founder you will become overwhelmed with minutia if you attempt to micromanage all aspects of a growing business. If you want to do everyone’s job be a consultant not a founder.

Here’s the external view of business conception:

One or a few founders hash out and build a working prototype. Then they seek early funding and hire super employees and score some marketing assistance. Then seek out more funding or leverage revenue from early customers to build out the business. Down the road they sell the business or continue building it by efficiently using revenue or investments to hire and acquire infrastructure.

The reality is that building a business is a threaded overlapping set of priorities and needs. In order to even approach investors you should identify a market area of proven traction. You have to look for employees far in advance of when you desparately need their help. You’ll count on early employees to connect to trusted associates who can work within the developing furnace of value creation that defines a startup. From those with experience leading startups (Paul English of Kayak), only two out of three hires will match the work culture you cultivate. Those odds aren’t too bad compared to the small percentage of startups that succeed each year.

Tyler Gillies (Chief Tech and cofounder of Victus Media) and I have been discussing plans for our first hire. The following is how I see the major aspects of the decision:

• When do we hire? If we seek help now it can greatly improve the businesses chance of growing so it’s on top of my priority list. If we put off hiring until we have revenue/growth/investment it would be more natural timing. But we may need help at that point, not three months later
• Who do we approach? There is an enormous pool of talented folks who could be ideally suited to our startup both outlook and skill wise. What skill areas do we need most help with now, and will we need as the business develops. Now we need UI/UX aid, as well as engineering. Hiring also means legal/accounting aid. Later we’ll need more hacker/engineer superstars and perhaps marketing assistance
• How will we hire our first employee? We can offer an employee a mix of cash and equity, go after a short term consultant with pure cash, or bring in someone willing to work purely for equity. How much equity, and what time frame this is earned over are vital parts of the negotiation. We’ll certainly need legal help setting up the business officially with vesting for both Tyler, myself, and any equity hires

Thus far I’ve put off the idea of heavy recruiting. I have occassionally laid down a virtual landing page or two for those interested, but before any deals can be worked out I need to straighten the when, who and how.

Yesterday evening I was back to nearly full functionality after leaving my old friend Windows. The surprising casualty of the switch from Windows to Ubuntu Linux is iTunes. Apple hasn’t released a Linux client yet, as I suspect the unix to unix port to be a heavy burden (JFDI).

The largest troublemaker was getting my Logitech (MX518) mouse to function. I found a helpful web guide that lead me to edit xorg.conf and set some options (note: I didn’t need to change the server layout file). After that I grabbed the following must have (for me) software:

• Google Chrome: preferred browser, email client, social media UI, backup blog platform
• Java Runtime Environment/Java Developer Kit, (bundled with Netbeans): must have for eclipse or JVM languages (scala)
• Adobe Flash
• Ruby, Gem Installer, Rails, Apatana RadRails: our web development environment at Victus Media & my favorite IDE for ruby/rails, JavaScript or even php. Supporting installs, many gems, Mongrel, Sqlite, and dependencies
• git: a promising software management tool
• Dropbox: fantastic file sharing & syncronization
• VLC media player
• WINE: an emulator for Windows. Have your cake and eat it? Tried making iTunes work with this but found additional tricks were needed to get it to connect to my iPhone. It could still come in handy for must have winOS software
• VirtualBox: another virtual machine emulator, this one from Sun. I enjoyed Centos under my windows os, may install windows in VB to see how it runs

The installation of the software was done through command line:
sudo apt-get ApplicationName
Or by using the Ubuntu package handler in the UI (under the applications tab).
And the last installation method I used was clicking on .deb files. All methods worked equally well.

Installation was straight forward and setup didn’t vary much from a windows experience. It wasn’t quite as smooth as setting up Michelle’s iMac (she did it all easily and is the bane of all computers). It wasn’t substantially harder, although it was significantly less expensive.