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Some time ago I had a long talk with an IBM’er about social networking. He said the first key to bringing social networking to business was a simple directory. We should all have our own page somewhere, whether as individuals, as members of a hierarchy, or as business entities. We need to be found, and have our expertise known. Then we need to use that directory to network with others. That’s a key idea behind Bluehouse, the service IBM launched in beta today.

Most free software projects produce applications for users. A minority, however, produce specifications or libraries for developers and other contributors. An example of this second type is the recently announced Manju project, whose goal is to make themes easier to create. The project's goal is to write the specifications and scripts for using scalable vector graphics (SVG) files to store widget and other theme-related information that can be used on a variety of toolkits.

The upcoming Ubuntu 8.10, alias Intrepid Ibex, is now in beta. Armed with new base elements such as Linux kernel 26.2.7, GNOME 2.24 and X.Org 7.4, Ubuntu 8.10 is due to be released by October. Beta versions of the add-ons Edubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Ubuntu-Studio and Mythbuntu are also available for testing.

Microsoft lobby platform"Voices for Innovation", which is managed by APCO (a well-known lobby firm in Brussels of which Microsoft is a client), has sent an alert to their corporate members asking them to lobby against a parliamentary resolution led by Rocard-Cotigny-Geremek-Geremek, which is asking to migrate the European Parliament systems to FLOSS, and to give some funds for R&D of FLOSS in Europe.

IBM has joined the companies jostling for position in the cloud computing space. The company has announced a variety of offerings that it claimed would allow users to better manager data and make collaboration easier. The company has opened up the beta for Bluehouse, the company's so-called Facebook for the enterprise. The software has been available in closed beta for the past nine months but is now being made available to anyone. The company said that Bluehouse would combine social networking and online collaboration tools to help organizations to share documents, contacts, engage in joint project activities, host online meetings, and build social networking communities through a Web browser.

A recent interview quoted an MSI executive as saying that returns of Linux netbooks were more than four times higher those of Windows XP netbooks. However, the quote may say more about MSI's Linux implementation than the suitability of Linux as a netbook OS.

FUEL (Frequently Used Entries for Localization) aims to solve the problem of inconsistency and lack of standardization in computer software translation in a new and unique way. Initiated by Red Hat, the project is trying to give a better experience to end users of a localized desktop by resolving the issues of standardization and inconsistency. It's hard for a naive user to digest five different replacements for a simple word on a computer menu like File or Save. Getting used to inconsistent terminology can be a major hindrance in path of the popularity of localized desktop. Therefore, FUEL's aim is to come up with the most appropriate and acceptable translations by collaborating with active communities and localizers who are having standardization problems in translation.

Sun Microsystems has been steadily shifting its business strategy toward open source for quite a while now. From delivering OpenSolaris, to pushing ahead with MySQL, to virtualization efforts, open source is driving many parts of Sun's business. We caught up with Rich Green, executive vice president of software at Sun, to ask him about what benefits the company is seeing, and what lies ahead.

Your occasiodaily dose of FOSS and Linux news as delivered by your host, Marcel Gagné (aka WFTL). Today's news features bad news for the economy, a Linspire suit, a turnabout wind, Norwegian OOXML dirt, some Google, and an important birthday!

One reason I love Linux is that when there's a problem, it gets fixed. Usually, it gets fixed in a hurry and that's exactly what happened with the e1000e Ethernet bug.

Even though Mono 2.0 is compatible with Microsoft's .NET 2.0, it's not in full compliance with the latest .NET releases from Microsoft. The Mono effort is important as it is intended to enable .NET applications to run on Linux. "We're certainly doing catch up in some areas," Mono project leader Miguel de Icaza told InternetNews.com.

I have been impressed with the way that popular Linux distros like Ubuntu have improved with each new release; these days, Linux is a great choice for technically sophisticated users who don’t mind being far, far out of the mainstream. But for people who don’t have the time or the inclination to make fundamental changes, it’s a nonstarter.

rsnapshot is a filesystem backup utility based on rsync. Using rsnapshot, it is possible to take snapshots of your filesystems at different points in time. Using hard links, rsnapshot creates the illusion of multiple full backups, while only taking up the space of one full backup plus differences. When coupled with ssh, it is possible to take snapshots of remote filesystems as well.

Although the Productivity Sauce blog is all about, well, productivity, I'm willing to make an exception and mention the newly released Puppy Linux 4.1. I've been using this lightweight Linux distro on my ASUS Eee PC 701 for quite some time, and it helped me to be productive wherever I went.

There's never a dull moment for those of us lucky enough to be part of the technology industry, and we here at LinuxInsider are just as prone as the next tech enthusiasts to get caught up in the excitement of new innovations and ideas. Take cloud computing. It's a concept that has been grabbing an increasing portion of the digital ink on our pages and elsewhere.

Do people who pay $299 to $399 for a Linux notebook suffer greater levels of buyer’s remorse compared to those buying Windows machines?

No need to introduce Fedora as they are usually in the top 5 at http://distrowatch.com. Fedora always stay current with the newest open source packages and usually at the forefront of the Linux Community. So with no further delay..... Check these Fedora 10 Beta ScreenShots.

While the default commands allow you to perform quite a few actions, the extensible and open nature of Ubiquity means that you can easily expand its functionality by installing additional scripts that add new commands. There are dozens of Ubiquity scripts floating on the Web, but here are a few that you might find particularly useful.

CEO Rusty Harris revealed MontaVista's role developing the quick-booting, ARM-based processor subsystem expected to ship this year in select Dell laptop models. The "Latitude ON" feature aims to give enterprise laptop users instant boot-up and access to select applications, with multi-day battery lifetimes.

If there's one thing that's never affected by economic downturn, it's the mobile handset market. This phenomenon is most evident at the underground parties and dive bars in San Francisco, where it is a well known yet unspoken tradition that in any given group of hipsters, the one with the cheapest phone must always buy the first pitcher of Pabst Blue Ribbon.