While Peter and Dave’s songs are outstanding pieces of work, let’s not forget the original. While I hoped — nay, prayed — that I would receive some sort of recognition from the recording industry, as usual the independent artists are left out in the dust again and again. The 2004 Song of the Year Grammy went to Richard Marx and Luther Vandross instead. Nor did I win any award in any of the categories from which this song pulls inspiration: gospel, latin, or jazz. A travesty indeed.

Everyone from Red Hat keeps posting about how we don’t get Mugshot, or how it’s different than any of the million other social networking sites out there. You’re right, we don’t. And while probably most of the Slashdot commenters wouldn’t bother to learn, a lot of us are genuinely interested. Why not have a screencast showing what Mugshot’s secret sauce is and how it will change my life? While Havoc’s recent post is a step in the right direction, in a few weeks that blog post will drop off the front page and nobody will read it. No doubt Red Hat wants to reach out to people beyond the traditional Linux users to whom they’re familiar, and so maybe we’re not the target market. Marketing this stuff to nerds doesn’t always work out. (Remember Orkut? If you’re Brazilian or Iranian you do, but no one else does.) Maybe the “young people” will just “get it.” But I want to “get it” too. I can be “hip.” I can be “young.” I am an 18-39 year old American white male with disposable income! Cater to meeeee!

In any case, I see value in really hammering the point home on what makes Mugshot so special, especially if it requires people to download client software to really use it. The message is somewhat lost on the front and “About” pages.

I have regrettably been neglecting my Beagle duties of late. I’ve been very busy with work stuff in preparation for the upcoming SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop release. It’s going to be a great release and I hope everyone enjoys all the work we’ve put into it. Nevertheless, our intrepid Summer of Code students are madly hacking away on their projects, moulding the clay of… code?… into the future of desktop search! Ok, the metaphor didn’t really work out there, but you can follow their status all summer on our mailing list.