Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Anyone who has thought that, as nice as the Linux-powered One Laptop Per Child computers are for the target market of third-world children, they'd also make a lot of sense for U.S. kids too, is in good company. The mayor of Birmingham, Ala., Larry Langford, had the same thought and the result is that the city will be deploying 15,000 OLPCs to its school system.

Microsoft's chief software architect Ray Ozzie tried to clarify Microsoft's software plus services internet strategy. And guess what, it involves advertising and Yahoo!. Ozzie opened Microsoft's Mix 08 offering developers the "big picture" on a strategy he promised would culminate with massive software and service launches at Microsoft's mega Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in October.

[Still sounds like they need to buy Yahoo more than want to buy Yahoo to me. - Scott]

When you want to customize the look and feel of your Linux desktop environment, you can find many resources for altering window managers and interface widgets, but working with icons has always been more of an issue. Now you can get help with icons from a new program called Tango Generator. The major Linux desktop environments (such as GNOME, KDE, and Xfce) adhere to an icon theme specification from freedesktop.org.

Just when Microsoft thought it was on target with its forthcoming Internet Explorer 8 browser, the goalposts have moved. The Web Standards Project (WaSP) has released its latest browser standards compliance test - Acid 3 - and every browser that WaSP tested failed. IE 8 is, of course, not available for test yet. But given the abysmal performance of IE 7, Microsoft developers have a lot of work to do.

Backing up data stored in a MySQL database is an important issue for anyone running a blog, wiki, or any Web-based application that relies on the popular database engine. Many MySQL management solutions allow you to export database data as an SQL query, but if you are looking for a dedicated MySQL backup tool, phpMyBackupPro (pMBP) is your best bet.

While Canadian telcos are still dragging their feet in following the U.S. example of making cellphone data fees more competitive, the U.S. telcos are about to scratch each other’s eyes out after the arrival of Linux-based handsets.

SAP is furthering its efforts to gain midsize business customers with a new appliance-like ERP server that runs on quad-core Xeon processors and Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise. The server, developed in partnership with Intel, is aimed at manufacturing and service companies and comes bundled with SAP's All-in-One ERP software and the SAP MaxDB database. SAP is demonstrating the system at the Cebit show in Germany this week.

If you need an archiving program that can run under both Windows and Linux, sport a graphical interface, and be licensed as open source software, only a single program will do: PeaZip. It acts as a graphical front end for several tools that provide archiving, compression, encryption, and similar functions.

Texas Instruments (TI) will join the Linux Foundation in order to "collaborate with industry leaders who define both technical and operational best practices around open source software," it announced. TI's open source strategic marketing manager, Eric Thomas, will join the Foundation's board alongside new members Larry Augustin and Chris Schlaeger.

[T.I.'s statement makes it sound like they showed up late to a party they never wanted to go to in the first place. - Scott]

Designing good looking websites is often a little bit hit and miss. Even with the best web development tools, getting things to line up or matching colours is hard to achieve. Forunately, Firefox has a couple of great extensions that make laying out a web page just a little bit easier.

KDE Community Ships Second Translation and Service Release of the 4.0 Free Desktop, Containing New Features in the Plasma Desktop And Numerous Bugfixes, Performance Improvements and Translation Updates

OpenMoko, developer of open source Linux mobile phones, has open sourced the casing of its handset, releasing the CAD files so anyone with a computer-aided manufacturing technology can create their own versions to fit the OpenMoko electronics.

Microsoft is encouraging its business partners to promote its Office Open XML specification (OOXML) to the Indian Bureau of Standards (BIS) and Ministry of IT. This move has incensed supporters of the rival OpenDocument Format (ODF) who fear that the "soft" Indian state may not be able to stand up to Microsoft pressure tactics. Open Source Initiative (OSI) board member Raj Mathur claims to have a copy of the Microsoft letter to NGOs. "Microsoft has 'persuaded' several non-profit organizations," Mathur writes, "to bombard the Indian IT Secretary and the Additional Director General of the Bureau of Indian Standards with letters supporting its OOXML proposal."

Late last year, Everex, a mid-tier PC vendor, made a big splash with its inexpensive gOS Linux-powered Green gPC TC2502. Now, Everex is following that popular mini-tower PC with a Mac-mini format computer: the gPC mini. Like Everex's gPC TC2502, the gPC mini uses the Ubuntu 7.10-based gOS operating system. The gPC mini uses the newest version of gOS: Rocket gOS 2.0.

Although the Asus Eee PC has everything you need to be productive right from the start, a few simple software tweaks can help you to get more out of your tiny companion.

I had really thought that Vista SP1 would be an improvement. I didn't think it would be a big improvement, but still that it would be more competitive with Windows XP and the modern Linux desktop. I was wrong. I've now been working with Vista SP1, the so-called RTM (release to manufacturing) version, for about two weeks. I am amazed at how little improvement I see in this so-called major update.

One of the main things that gets annoying with FUSE, or Filesystem in Userspace, is that it won't automatically mount a filesystem when you first attempt to access the filesystem. This means you must manually track mountpoints and specify what program to run in order to mount each FUSE filesystem. Placing the exact commands to mount each FUSE filesystem into shell scripts can make things a little easier, but with afuse, you can mount FUSE filesystems on demand without the need for any explicit mounting.

Delays in awarding WiMAX licences and a lack of competition in the sector had undermined the rollout of high-speed broadband wireless services. This was the conclusion of a new study by World Wide Worx, released today. The report, WiMAX in SA 2008: Year Zero shows that only those companies that have already deployed WiMAX have appreciated its impact.

I remember when I was a Jr. Geek and could focus on one programming task at a time. Today, besides having all too many Linux-related tasks, I have an assortment of other things to deal with. This last week, one of my distractions turned into a new programming project. Those of you who have been following my posts know my current goal is to create the Geek Ranch. What I have been writing about has been how Linux fits into that project. Well, a peripheral need of the project created a new Linux project for me last week.

Tired of spotty network performance interrupting your web service's performance and of navigating the maze that is mobile application development? Google can help - just don't rely on the giant's Android mobile Software Development Kit (SDK) when it comes to building in security.

[A version of Gears that only works with I.E. and Windows Mobile? All that would do is tempt MS developers to use Google tools instead of Microsoft's own development tools. Interesting.. - Scott]