Showing all newswire headlines

Some are apparently up in arms that Google is refusing to allow Chrome developers to use its trademarks and the comic book it released to help explain Chrome. To these and others that equate open source with"up for grabs," please pay attention..

Technology is wonderful and useful in more ways than this post can effectively address. I did something today I have wanted to do for quite a while, but just didn’t take the time to tackle the task. Now that it’s done, I’m wondering why it took me so long to take care of business.

The international standards body ISO has offered to help maintain the ODF document standard alongside its work on the rival Microsoft-originated OOXML specification, saying its creator Oasis is not dealing with defect reports quickly enough. At a meeting in Korea last week, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) committee for document standards, SC 34, issued a liaison statement to Oasis, the body that created ODF. It requested an "alignment" of maintenance of ODF between the work done at Oasis and that within ISO.

Run with the puppies or stay behind to defend what isn't there anymore ;) More than a few people wrote in to let me know about other interesting "live" distro's of Linux after our post on using LinuxDefender Live CD to Fix NTFS problems ran. I've been a bit busy with my son, now that he's started school and isn't completely exhausted at the end of the day (like I always am ;), but I will post each and every comment I received (at least, with the consent of the commenter's) as soon as I can.

Mozilla, the company behind the Firefox browser, has released technology that helps websites detect the physical location of computers. The system will allow users, for instance, to find local restaurants when they travel to a new town. The Geode project is an experimental add-on ahead of a full blown launch of geolocation technology in version 3.1 of Firefox.

Commercial Linux distributor Red Hat hosted its annual analyst day in New York today, and as Wall Street continues to hemorrhage, the company couldn't have picked a gloomier time for the occasion. But harsh economic conditions tend to accelerate technology shifts, so the top brass at Red Hat were a pretty chipper bunch as they explained to Wall Street how they intend to make money in the coming years. Those in attendance were probably just grateful to have something else to listen to and talk about, and more than a few were probably reminiscing about the killing they made when Red Hat went public so gloriously little more than nine years ago.

The largest conference devoted to Linux technology is changing its name to embrace open source software on other operating systems (OSes). Next August, LinuxWorld will relaunch as the OpenSource World Conference & Expo, but will retain existing LinuxWorld features, says show organizer IDG World Expo.

The Amarok Squad is proud to announce the second beta release of Amarok 2.0. This release includes a lot of bug fixes and improvements, like the switch from SQlite to MySQL-embedded. The LibriVox service is back, as is lyrics support. We hope you enjoy this release which we have worked so hard to produce. Stay tuned for upcoming releases, and please do not forget to donate for Roktober!

Red Hat's CEO discusses the company's expansion to new platforms and markets, and the challenges around building solid business models for products that can be obtained for free. - Red Hat, which bills itself as the worlds leading open-source solutions provider, has managed to make free software pay by gathering, extending and packaging Linux and complementary open-source components into certified and supported products that are ready for enterprise consumption.

For developers who have fallen in love with .Net/C#, but aren't married to running their applications on Windows, the Mono Project aims to let Microsoft .Net-based apps run on Linux and Mac OS X, among several other platforms. Sponsored by Novell, the Mono Project has released Mono 2.0 of its cross-platform, open source .Net development framework.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin says the new Chrome Web browser is not the Web operating system many people see it as, but acknowledges it will get more robust through the open-source community under the Chromium project. Microsoft and other search engines and Web services providers must be wary about this evolution in application development. Google may be treading lightly with Chrome now, but the browser, combined with Google's search and Apps, could end up being a big threat to Microsoft Windows' market share.

People often think of open source as being purely a Linux and BSD thing. Perhaps they're aware of open source on OS X as well, but in general Windows is seen as hostile to open source. And at the heart of the hostility surely must be Microsoft's proprietary .NET framework, right? But no: the Mono Project provides a cross-platform, open source implementation of .NET. Version 2.0 was re

Many audio, video, and graphics professionals would like to make the switch to Linux, but don't want to deal with the hassle of figuring out multimedia on Linux or are scared off by the purported lack of such tools. I created Vector Linux Multimedia Bonus Disc (MMBD) to address this problem and perception. It's a complete multimedia creation and production system that contains hundreds of the best multimedia applications available on Linux. The MMBD is an add-on for Vector Linux that installs directly into a preinstalled copy of the distribution. Vector is a Slackware-based distribution that is built for speed and flexibility. Although Slackware is sometimes viewed as an archaic, crude operating system, it is famous for its stability and clean, reliable core.

Sales of Apple's iPhone 3G have given the hardware maker a six-point boost in the consumer smartphone market, from 11 percent to 17 percent, according to a new report from The NPD Group, a consumer sales tracking firm. The report placed the iPhone in the top spot among the four best-selling smartphones based on unit sales to customers from June through August.

The XML Challenge is a series of five XML contests created by the International DB2 Users Group at IBM to search for XML Superstars around the world. You have an opportunity to vote, comment, and enter Video, Gadget, Query, Ported App and XML Programming contests. Huge prizes await multiple winners. The most active participants can earn XML Grand Master status, which qualifies you for even more prizes.

Open source mobile messaging vendor Funambol plans to add micro-banner ads to its online portal myFUNAMBOL. Calling the ads "prominent yet non-intrusive," Funambol representatives say the new advertisements will display in several areas of the email client, including the inbox and message viewing screens. Company CEO Fabrizio Capobianco, says the move "will unleash a major revenue opportunity for service providers, portals and mobile operators." What's in it for myFUNAMBOL customers? Plenty.

A developer of Mac-based sync utilities is seeking beta testers for what it calls "the first Linux-to-BlackBerry sync solution." Information Appliance Associates (IAA) is initially testing its free "PocketMac for BlackBerry, Linux Edition" software on Xandros Linux running the KDE PIM suite.

Rob Reilly introduces us to the revolutionary and accessible new world of inexpensive microcontrollers, open hardware, and development environments that run on Linux. Unleash your inner mad scientist with these inexpensive yet sophisticated tools.

In order to graph the traffic from Akamai, I used to use MRTG calling a PERL/SOAP script which retrieved and combined the data from multiple cpcodes. This proved to be quite inefficient as each combination meant a separate SOAP call. I had thought about injecting the data into Zenoss, but the nature of that project dealt more with SNMP and simple commands and was not the ideal recipient of a multi-faceted SOAP retrieval mechanism. I finally got a chance to rewrite it this year as a perl script which connects to Akamai, acquires ALL the cpcodes for a particular login and, based on the cpcode name prefix, organizes the data by creating/updating RRD files and graphing them as PNG images (as well as creating MRTG-like HTML files).

Expanding Linux adoption beyond key vertical markets is an important driver for Red Hat's growth, which remains steady even as one of its strongest customer sectors, financial services, is getting hit hard by the U.S. crisis, the company's CEO, Jim Whitehurst, said Tuesday. At a Red Hat analyst event in New York, which was available via webcast, Whitehurst said that while Red Hat does well with "companies that use technology for competitive advantage," mainstream companies that don't care about being on the leading edge of technology adoption are still largely an untapped market for the vendor.