Showing headlines posted by the_doctor

Two German technology blogs have leaked screenshots of the upcoming Windows 9 Technical Preview, which is billed as build 9834. The shots depict the new Start menu, floating Modern app windows, a notification center, multiple desktop workspaces, a flat new design for the desktop, and many other changes that we've long expected.

The Document Foundation's tender for the development of an Android implementation of LibreOffice begs serious questions, namely: Can an influx of cash into open source code creation succeed, and how do pay-for-code plays from nonprofit foundations affect the ethics and work ethic of today's open source community?

Well this is some unfortunate timing. One day after Apple announced two new iPhones and an incredibly ugly watch that no one needs, 9to5 Mac reports that Macworld magazine — which has covered Apple since 1984 — is folding.

The web forum 4chan is known mostly as a place to share juvenile and, to put it mildly, politically incorrect images. But it’s also the birthplace of one of the latest attempts to subvert the NSA’s mass surveillance program.

Is it crazy to pay $1300 for a Chromebook? Some reflections after a year and a half of living with Google's luxurious Pixel.

NotepadConf: the textiest conference you'll attend! See the latest technological advancements in plaintext editing. Meet the luminaries of the market and some sneak peaks at what's coming next!

Diehard Windows XP fans are having a hard time bidding the legacy operating system farewll -- by the numbers, it's estimated that some 15 percent (StatCounter) to just under 25 percent (Net Applications) of desktops are still running Windows XP. Save for businesses that pay a fee, Microsoft killed off support for Windows XP back in April, though one developer is determined to keep it alive with a new (and unofficial) Service Pack.

Linus Torvalds may still want a Linux desktop, but no one else does. And even if they did, by the time the requisite ecosystem could be developed, the need for a desktop -- Linux or otherwise -- will largely be gone.

Microsoft's newest version of OneNote for Android is optimized to work on tablets and adds support for digital inking. The 'modern' version of OneNote for Windows 8.x also is getting an update.

While it's obvious that Windows Phone is stuck as a distant third in the smart phone ecosystem race, it's equally clear that the biggest danger to the platform isn't failure, but rather the perception of failure. And in a market in which the distant number two player, Apple, can do no wrong, Microsoft faces an uphill battle that it may never win.

How big do you like your tablet? If you're designing a kid-friendly device that can be used as an easel, learning resource and game platform, the answer is probably: roughly Monopoly-board big.

Audacity’s been around for a long time—since mid-2000—and for good reason. It’s a relatively lightweight, open-source, and completely free audio editor that can handle pretty much every task you throw at it. Need to edit together a podcast? No problem. Looking to do some simple noise reduction? Looking to turn your PC into a music computer? Audacity’s got you covered.

Microsoft Office might still be the de facto name in office suites, but the free, open-source LibreOffice has been one of the top contenders in the space for years. And while the recent update to version 4.3 is light on grand, sweeping changes, it still cements the suite's place as a solid contender to tackle your productivity needs.

For the past decade, Munich has been the poster child for open-source advocates, who pointed to its successful migration from a Microsoft platform to one built on Linux and OpenOffice. Now, a newly elected government has called in experts to see whether it's time to switch back.

In the world of consumer electronics, if you don't give the buyer what they want, they'll go elsewhere. We've recently witnessed this with the Firefox browser. The consumer wanted a faster, less-bloated piece of software, and the developers went in the other direction. In the end, the users migrated to Chrome or Chromium.

Customer reports of blue screens of death and reboot loops have led the company to withdraw several updates and recommend that users uninstall MS14-045. Since Patch Tuesday this past week, Microsoft has been receiving reports of severe system errors caused by one or more of the updates. In response, the company has pulled several updates from download channels and offered advice on how to remove them. In one case, it recommends that users uninstall the update.

You would think that after 30 years of Windows, many of the obvious and consistent flaws would be fixed. Are they unfixable? Or are the people at Microsoft who can fix them uninterested?

Fossetcon is an acronym for Free and Open Source Software Expo and Technology Conference. Fossetcon will be September 11-13th, 2014 in the Rosen Plaza Hotel in Orlando, FL.

We've pointed out before how Chromebooks are some of the best selling laptops on Amazon, and though these cloud-based systems aren't as capable as their Windows-based counterparts, they've having no trouble finding an audience, particularly in education circles. In fact, market research firm Gartner forecasts 5.2 million Chromebook sales by the end of the year, which would translate into a 79 percent jump compared to 2013.

David Andrade, the CIO of Bridgeport Public Schools in Connecticut, has deployed 11,000 Chromebooks over the past year and plans to add another 5,000 in the next 12 months. It's a major deployment, but not unusual.