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Mention Jimmy Wales and you automatically think Wikipedia; however, that is not his only love child. The Wikia search engine is his latest offspring — or least it was when it was launched in January 2008. Wikia has been devised as a free software and open source alternative to Google and others search engines. In an article in June I speculated about how the internet might change the way we think.; I mentioned in passing the Wikia search engine. Read the full article at Freesoftware Magazine

This has been a big week on the open source database front. Yesterday, Ingres launched version 9.2 of its database, which you can download here. And today, Sun Microsystems announced the new version 5.1 of MySQL, with a near-final candidate release downloadable here, and a final version expected on December 6th.

A while ago, I was in an Internet café at a tiny mall here in Bohol for a quick check at my Email. The place has around 40-50 desktop computers with decent tech specs and with LCD monitors. I've been there before and have noticed that most of their machines ran in Windows, while a few ran in Mac OS X. Linux was nowhere to be found. But today is different. I saw a monitor displaying brownish desktop wallpaper that made me smile. Yes, it's definitely Ubuntu. I later found out that they have installed Ubuntu in about 10 of their PC's.

Bandwidth limitation is still a problem for a lot of people who connect to the Internet. You can improve your available bandwidth by installing Squid caching proxy server on your network with configuration parameters that will increase your byte hit rate, giving you about 30-60% more bandwidth.

LinuxPlanet Classics: With a few simple regular expressions you can quickly search your logfiles for problems, nasties, and even good news. These regexps are also useful for all kinds of text searches; Carla Schroder shows you how.

A full-featured distribution, ClarkConnect includes most features that would be needed to facilitate access from a remote site. Provisioning a highly functional yet inexpensive remote network solution for remote sites is a continually evolving challenge. I have started an endeavor that will be considering the ClarkConnect Internet gateway distribution of Linux. The ClarkConnect gateway is based on Red Hat Linux and the 2.6 kernel.

We interviewed Matthew Bloch, one of the founders of British hosting company, Bytemark. He talks about his company, and their commitment to free software. You be the judge! Read the full interview at Freesoftware Magazine.

An overview of an Ubuntu Server installation. "The Ubuntu team deserves a lot of credit here since they certainly have trimmed out a lot of the fat ... just like Sizzlean ... mmmm ... bacon."

Today I came across a nice bit of software called BitRock Installer when I wanted to evaluate Qt Creator. It's a software installer similar in appearance and easiness to the ones available on Windows.

The article discusses E-Stewards, a new certification program for e-waste recyclers that aims to prevent dumping in landfills and developing countries. That old CRT monitor the size of a small fridge. The original Apple Newton that kicked the bucket and never woke up. The early-vintage musty VA Linux box – what happens to all of this e-junk after it, if ever, leaves your basement? Ideally e-junk lands at a reputable e-recycler with the equipment to safely recycle and/or dispose of these items that are very difficult to process. What happens frequently is that a less-than-reputable outfit will pack your e-junk onto a container and ship it off to a developing country with lax environmental and labor laws, where it will wreak havoc on the environment and poor people.

If all goes according to plan, the first alpha release for Ubuntu 9.04 (the Jaunty Jackalope) will be released tomorrow. It's not even been one month since the release of Ubuntu 8.10, but this first alpha release will show early signs of what we can expect to see in this next Canonical-sponsored release -- albeit many of the features are still in planning. In this article we will provide a glimpse at what Ubuntu 9.04 should hold in store to captivate Linux desktop users.

An Amazon Kindle is $359. How about a free one? It's been a year since Amazon released its Linux-based Kindle Ebook Reader into its online store and currently more than 200,000 people have purchased one. Are you going to join the fray at almost 400USD or wait for my bombshell? I suggest you wait.

StarOffice 9 reminds me of the classic Monty Python skit in which Graham Chapman wrestles himself. Although StarOffice is being aggressively presented as an alternative to Microsoft Office, it seems to be equally marketed and bundled to compete against OpenOffice.org, the free software project that is sponsored by Sun and that shares a common code base with StarOffice. The trouble is, the differences between the two have diminished with each release, until, with StarOffice 9, you have to wonder who the potential customers might be.

The Typo3 Association is warning users with accounts at Typo3.org of a possible misuse of stored data. In a mail sent to its account owners, Typo3 reports an unauthorized person posed as an administrator to gain access to sensitive data stored there by registered users.

Mozilla Chief Wrangler Mitchell Baker today reported Mozilla's financial position which shows 2007 revenues of $75 million up by 12 percent from 2006 revenues of $67 million. Though Mozilla is on the upswing, Baker's report shows some areas of potential future financial concerns including an IRS review.

While I remain in agreement with many observers who see the economic downturn as potentially very positive for open source, I have to wonder whether we're going to see some of the leadership open source companies swallowed up in all the financial carnage. Red Hat, Novell, and Sun Microsystems are all companies that I'd like to see continue their open source leadership without the meddling of huge corporate parents, but one has to wonder how cheap these companies can get in the public market before their independence is threatened.

Known as Kardphisher and “in the wild” since April, 2007, last week the malware author of this trojan horse mimicking the Windows XP activation interface while collecting the credit card details the end user has submitted, has made significant changes to visual interface and usability of the trojan, consequently improving its authenticity. Guess what happens when a gullible end user falls victim into this social engineering attack?

Some time ago I was required to adapt a bespoke website application (which I had originally written) so it not only supported multiple languages but also multiple character sets. The website, MakingContact.org, is a on-line community for families with disabled children run by the charity Contact a Family. It required “support” for four languages in addition the English it was currently in: Somali, Arabic, Farsi and Simplified Chinese. Yes, I know the latter is not actually a language but for these purposes the cap fitted. I decided to do it using Smarty, the PHP-based templating engine. Whilst it was possible that a CMS or similar could do the job now, at the time I could find none which supported multiple character sets in the way I required. I’ve been meaning to write the process down for some time so here’s how I did it. Read Ryan's story of how he did it at Freesoftware Magazine.

Last week in our classic Networking 101 series we learned about Border Gateway Protocol, the networking protocol that powers the Internet. This week Charlie Schluting leads the dive into iBGP-- Internal Border Gateway Protocol-- to learn how to connect all those BGP routers together, and how to route between thousands of computers without going nuts.

Marking the two-year anniversary of their controversial interoperability agreement, Microsoft and Novell this week are announcing upcoming availability of both the beta version of Moonlight, which puts Microsoft's Silverlight rich Internet application technology on Linux, and the general release of Advanced Management Pack for Suse Linux Enterprise for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2. The November 2006 agreement has had Microsoft offering Suse Linux support certificates from Novell. The companies have also agreed not to sue each other's customers over intellectual property issues. Some have protested that the agreement legitimized Microsoft's claims that Linux violates its patents.