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As mobile data usage skyrockets, wireless companies are spending billions each year to maximize capacity, and consumers end up footing the cost in the form of higher cell phone bills. But a cube that fits in the palm of your hand could help solve that problem.

Not FOSS related but very cool. - Scott

Frederico Araújo Mendes has created a very interesting Unity mockup (video) in which he proposes better menus and a social networking widget layer.

A programme to build Linux skills and capacity in Africa, which started in November 2010, has already doubled the number of certified Linux professionals in some African countries such as Uganda and Kenya

Ardesia is one best of the design applications available for Linux which can be used to create mockups, sketches, hand drawn annotations, interactive presentations, live demos etc. with ease right on your current desktop view or with custom images.The application supports a number of Linux devices that include desktops, tablets, whiteboards, tablet PCs and other touch devices. Ardesia is a completely free and open-source project and is under heavy development. Together with GIMP and Inkscape, Ardesia can complete your design toolkit on Linux and you may never have to look for any other thing.

Besides numerous improvements, digiKam 2.0 brings a handful of new features, including Color Labels and Picks. As the name suggests, the Color Labels feature allows you to assign color codes to your photos.

In the early 1980s, MIT computer scientist Bob Scheifler set about laying down the principles for a new windowing system. He had decided to call it X, because it was an improvement on the W graphical system, which naturally resided on the V operating system. Little did Bob know at the time, but the X Window System that he and fellow researches would eventually create would go on to cause a revolution. It became the standard graphical interface of virtually all UNIX based operating systems, because it provided features and concepts far superior to its competition. It took only a few short years for the UNIX community to embrace the X windowing system en masse.

The recent uncertainty cast over Android's Bionic library and its use of Linux kernel headers "seems totally bogus", according to Linus Torvalds. In an interview with Brian Proffitt at ITWorld, Torvalds said "I haven't looked at exactly what Google does with the kernel headers but I can't see they they'd want to do anything fundamentally different from glibc in this respect". He also pointed out that he has said making use of the kernel's system call interfaces, as described in the headers, does not "in any way result in a derived work as per the GPL".

Ubuntu is hosting a technology event on IRC that starts in two days, it's focused on Cloud Computing technologies. The event is "Ubuntu Cloud Days" and it features technical sessions from the Ubuntu cloud team and various Ubuntu community members. Sample technologies covered include GlusterFS scalable filesystem, Ensemble distributed orchestration framework, OpenStack Cloud framework, LXC Linux containers, UEC Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud and Hadoop among others. If you're an Ubuntu Server guy, or if you are intrigued by Cloud computing, you will most likely enjoy this event

Matt Zimmerman, Ubuntu CTO, has found a way to bridge the ever-widening crevasse between Debian and its derivatives. The Debian Front Desktop was formed last summer in order to bring together these camps, but Zimmerman wants to go a step or two further.

Firefox is coming to Android devices. Does Android need another browser and can FF and it's add-ons displace the default software on the growing mobile platform? As Firefox inches slowly towards its March 26 release date, the Mozilla folks are also working on Firefox Mobile for Android — a port of the beloved Firefox browser to the Android platform. Can Mozilla make significant headway on mobile devices? Signs point to yes.

Zarafa offers a commercial, open-source alternative to groupware suites like Microsoft Exchange, with its main product available under the Affero license. So how will Zarafa leverage the cloud to go global? Here are insights.

The Oracle Technology Network Garage – the blog where system administrators and developers hang out in the World According to Larry – has announced that the software giant has put out a tool to help customers figure out if their Solaris applications will be compatible with the upcoming Solaris 11.

Microsoft has filed a lawsuit against Barnes Noble with the ITC and the U.S. District Court of the Western District of Washington over Android-based UI techniques used in the Nook-e-reader claimed to be covered under Microsoft patents. The lawsuit also targets Nook device manufacturing partners Foxconn International and Inventec, says the company.

We’ve all been told that the “cloud”–whatever exactly we believe that means–is the future, and the desktop is headed for the dustbin. What we hear less about is the potential of the cloud for reinvigorating and redefining desktop computing. Here’s how that could happen, and why it should.

ZoneMinder is intended for use in single or multi-camera video security applications, including commercial or home CCTV, theft prevention and child or family member or home monitoring and other care scenarios. It supports capture, analysis, recording, and monitoring of video data coming from one or more video or network cameras attached to a Linux system.

I must admit, I have been a tar + cron Unix guy for over 20 years and never really considered anything else necessary for backups on Unix, until now. ...

Kupfer is a quick launcher like Gnome DO or Synapse. Kupfer exists for quite a long time and thanks to this, it comes with a huge list of plugins: you can use it to quickly access any browser's bookmarks, control Empathy or Pidgin, Evolution, Thunderbird, Google Search, Gmail support, image tools, Rhythmbox support, Tracker search and well... basically it has support for half the applications you can think of.

How many countries do you know which are placed in Europe and Asia both? Russia? Anything else? Yes, that is Turkey. Not the most well known country in the world, although European culture would be different if this country would not exist. Byzantium, Constantinople... They are all parts of Turkish history. Of course, Linux is popular there too, as well is all over the world. If you have Linux fans, surely you will have your own Linux distributive. Does Turkey have one? Yes, and it is named after Anatolian leopard: Pardus.

Android's default media players are reasonable enough but if you want a little more from your mobile media player then there is good news. The number of great media players now available for Android is growing daily and includes the likes of stalwarts such as Winamp as well as some new names.

Project Orion is a browser-based development effort run by the Eclipse Foundation, but it does something very different from the Eclipse Framework, a workbench favored by enterprise Java developers for connecting lots of different third party tools into a common and open framework. Orion does not squeeze the Eclipse Framework into the browser, and it doesn't try to plant an IDE in the cloud. It's not even built on the same language as Eclipse. Orion is built on JavaScript while Eclipse is mostly written in Java, though it spits out apps in different languages.