Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Zuck's engineers unveil formal spec based on PHP 5.6. A group of Facebook developers has decided to break with 20 years of tradition and release a formal specification for the PHP programming language. The initial draft of the spec was released on Wednesday and is available via a Git repository hosted on PHP.net.

Variscite has upgraded its Linux- and Android-ready “VAR-SOM-AM33? COM based on a 1GHz TI Sitara AM335x SoC, adding MIMO WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0 LE. The “hugely successful” VAR-SOM-AM33, in Variscite’s description, appears to be a close cousin to its circa-2010 VAR-SOM-AM35 module, which showcased the 600MHz Texas Instruments AM3505 and AM3517 system-on-chips. The SODIMM-style VAR-SOM-AM33 instead runs on the also hugely successful Sitara AM335x, which has appeared in numerous Linux-ready computer-on-modules such as the IGEP Aquila.

Red Hat has upped its commitment to support servers based on the ARM processor architecture, with the formation of a new partner program specifically for vendors of 64-bit ARM hardware for the data center. The Red Hat ARM Partner Early Access Program is aimed at both chipmakers and server builders, and its early members include AMD, American Megatrends, AppliedMicro, Broadcom, Cavium, Dell, HP, Linaro, and ARM Holdings itself

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a critical tool – but bored customers can spell disaster. Zurmo has the answer. All businesses thrive on customers, and managing the customer relationships is one of the most important day-to-day tasks. In this guide we’re looking at customer relationship management with a twist – Zurmo, the gamified CRM that could change your customer interactions for the better.

Akademy 2014 will kick off on September 6 in Brno, Czech Republic; our keynote speakers will be opening the first two days. Continuing a tradition, the first keynote speaker is from outside the KDE community, while the second is somebody you all know. On Saturday, Sascha Meinrath will speak about the dangerous waters he sees our society sailing into, and what is being done to help us steer clear of the cliffs. Outgoing KDE e.V. Board President, Cornelius Schumacher, will open Sunday's sessions with a talk about what it is to be KDE and why it matters.

TouchPico is prepping an Android 4.2 mini-PC that doubles as a pico-projector and approximates touch input via an infrared stylus and camera. It’s not enough to offer just another straight-ahead pico projector these days. Sprint’s recent, ZTE-built LivePro, for example, doubles as a mobile hotspot and features an embedded display, and Promate’s LumiTab is also a tablet. Now a startup called TouchPico offers a similarly Android-based TouchPico device that adds touch input to projected images.

When I was in journalism school back in the late 1980s, gathering data for a story usually involved hours of poring over printed documents or microfiche. A lot has changed since then. While printed resources are still useful, more and more information is available to journalists on the web. That’s helped fuel a boom in what’s come to be known as data journalism. At its most basic, data journalism is the act of finding and telling stories using data—like census data, crime statistics, demographics, and more.

Intel and Microsoft launched a community-backed, quad-core Atom Z3735G-based “Sharks Cove” SBC aimed at designers of Windows or Android tablets. As you might expect from the fact that the $299 Sharks Cove development board ships with a Windows Embedded 8.1 image, this is not an open source SBC — at least from the Windows OS perspective. However, it’s backed up by a SharkCove.org community site, which has posted hardware documentation, but currently lacks a forum. The board is available on pre-order from Mouser.

Reducing tool complexity requires mercilessly applying YAGNI to your toolchain. Resist the siren songs of new, popular memes and the blandishments of vendors, and choose the tools that deliver only what you need.

Hardkernel launched a $30, 60 x 36mm Raspberry-Pi compatible “Odroid-W” wearables oriented SBC, adding eMMC, ADC, RTC, a fuel gauge, and step converters. Hardkernel’s Odroid project developed the Odroid-W (Odroid-Wearable) for a partner’s Internet of Things prototyping platform, after first considering and dismissing its quad-core Odroid-U3 single board computer. The Odroid-U3, which was rated as the third most popular Linux hacker SBC in our recent survey, used too much power for use as an IoT and wearables platform. The Raspberry Pi was more power efficient, but too large. No doubt, RPi compatibility also had its attractions, as the project ended up building its own Raspberry Pi pseudo-clone implemented on a COM (computer-on-module) style form factor.

The developers behind the stripped-down CoreOS Linux distribution have pushed version 367.1.0 to the Stable release channel, marking the first time the project has delivered a production-ready release. Unlike other Linux distros, CoreOS is a minimal OS that ships each new version as a single unit, rather than updating individual software packages. Updates are pushed to users via "channels," similar to how web browser vendors deliver their releases.

Attackers have figured out a new way to get Amazon's cloud service to wage potent denial-of-service attacks on third-party websites—by exploiting security vulnerabilities in an open source search and analytics application known as Elasticsearch.

Interested in keeping track of what's happening in the open source cloud? Opensource.com is your source for what's happening right now in OpenStack, the open source cloud infrastructure project.

Plasma 5, released last week, is a major redesign of the Unix KDE desktop environment and underlying frameworks. Perhaps the most notable difference is the visual changes, which see KDE embracing a more streamlined, "flat" interface, but it's also the first version of KDE to be powered by Qt 5 and the recently released KDE Frameworks 5.

The Raspberry Pi is an ideal device for embedded designs, but controlling it away from a keyboard and monitor can be a bit tricky – until now. Designed by a team led by University of Manchester honorary research fellow Dr Andrew Robinson, the PiFace Control & Display does exactly what the name implies: it provides users a means of controlling the Raspberry Pi away from a keyboard and mouse, while also providing a means of displaying its output.

LittleBits launched a tiny $59 ARM9-based “CloudBit” SBC that adds Internet access to the company’s collection of 60+ electronics modules for DIY projects. The tiny, 15 x 10 x 5mm CloudBit single board computer adds Internet connectivity and a modest ARM9 brain to LittleBits Electronics’s popular, Lego-like platform, which is billed as an easier, plug-and-play alternative to Arduino for electronics prototyping. The LittleBits modules are available in $99 (10 modules), $149 (14 modules), and $199 (18 modules) kits, and include actuators, sensors, buzzers, dimmers, LEDs, DC motors, and other gizmos. The devices connect to each other in serial-bus fashion via magnets, enabling rapid project brainstorming without the need for soldering, wiring, or programming.

Is the default image viewer in your desktop environment just not working the way you want? need more features (or maybe something simpler) from an image viewer? Well, you are in luck, as there is no shortage of choices when looking at alternative image viewers in Fedora. This article covers 15 image viewers in Fedora.

I am pleased to announce that Chris Beard has been appointed CEO of Mozilla Corp. The Mozilla board has reviewed many internal and external candidates – and no one we met was a better fit. As you will recall, Chris re-joined Mozilla in April, accepting the role of interim CEO and joining our Board of Directors. Chris first joined Mozilla in 2004, just before we shipped Firefox 1.0 – and he’s been deeply involved in every aspect of Mozilla ever since. During his many years here, he at various times has had responsibility for almost every part of the business, including product, marketing, innovation, communications, community and user engagement.

The second day of GUADEC was also full of interesting talks. Jeff Fortin spoke about the video editor Pitivi. Nathan Willis devoted his keynote to software for automotive and the opportunities for open source software in this area. There have also been a lot of changes in the Web browser and Zeeshan Ali talked on improvements in GNOME Boxes. The biggest news of the day is an announcement of Fleet Commander which should provide tools and infrastructure for large desktop deployments. Something the Linux desktop has been severely lacking.

Last May a group of three Okular developers met for four days at the Blue Systems Barcelona office to hack on the KDE universal document viewer.