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If you've tinkered around with GoogleEarth, you know how much fun it can be to work with geospatial data. Whenever I need a good diversion, I fire up GoogleEarth to float above the skyscrapers of Manhattan or to see if they've built anything new in the neighborhood where I grew up.

The future of the operating system took center stage at the Open Source Business Conference here March 25, as a panel of vendor representatives debated the topic. Dirk Hohndel, the chief Linux and open-source technologist at Intel, said the company was totally driven by what the market wanted.

Asus has announced that the next Eee PC will feature a touch-screen. This should lead to much more attention being placed on software, potentially giving the Linux Eee PC a boost.

Fujitsu Computer Systems announced that four of its ultra-light notebooks have passed compatibility tests with Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED). The LifeBook U810, LifeBook T2010, and LifeBook P1620 ultra-mini PCs (UMPCs), and the LifeBook S6510 notebook have been "YES Certified" by Novell, says Fujitsu.

After the recent success we had at providing OpenOffice.org in a web browser, we're proud to deliver the first beta of nearly two years of work: Ulteo Application System 'Sirius' is now ready for download on several mirrors. Screenshots at The Coding Studio

There is plenty of Source Mage GNU/Linux activity. A new test ISO, new Sorcery and more!

"Shell Curses" is a library of script functions that provide the shell programmer the ability to perform text-based cursor movements to specified locations on the screen. This ability permits the creation of menuing and data-entry systems using shell scripts without the need for compiled binaries. These functions are similar to the "C" language "Curses" library.

The LUG at University of Illinois at Chicago is throwing an open source conference called Flourish. We're going to have some great talks, a web application framework throwdown, a mini-BARCamp, and a Code for a Cause Hack-a-thon. This is a one of a kind conference for the midwest and we hope lots of folks will come out.

Originally posted on March 15th. The KDE 4.0, the latest version of KDE desktop environment, was released recently. On this occasion, we reached out to the founder of KDE project, Matthias Ettrich who started the KDE project back in 1996. Almost 12 years down the line, he's now working at Trolltech, hacking Qt. Here is what the KDE-Man had to say...

Today marks the first Document Freedom Day. Inspired by Software Freedom Day, which is now is now in its fifth year, DFD is intended as an annual series of grass root events worldwide "to educate the public about the importance of Free Document Formats and Open Standards in general," according to the About page on the DFD Web site. The day is planned not as an end in itself so much as the highlight of year-round efforts, many of which predate DFD itself.

Microsoft’s general counsel Brad Smith took the hot seat at the Open Source Development Conference here March 25, facing an hour of questioning from panelists and attendees. But before the grilling started, Smith gave a 30-minute address about the parallels between open-source and proprietary software business models.

So how is Oracle doing with its Oracle Unbreakable Linux? Pretty well. According to Monica Kumar, senior director Linux and open source product marketing at Oracle, there are now 2,000 customers for Oracle's Linux. Those customers will now be getting a bonus from Oracle: free clustering software.

Upgrade Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) to Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron) Beta

I am pleased and excited to announce the release of PCLinuxOS Gnome 2008. Totally new and redesigned! Increased speed, great looks and out-of-the-box usability have been our main concern with this release! Screenshots at The Coding Studio

After having a mostly positive experience updating to the pre-release version of Kubuntu Gutsy 7.10, I thought I'd take the plunge with Hardy. This in no way constitutes a full, formal review, but is rather my impressions of the software so far.

I've recently been converting a bunch of old spoken-word cassette tapes to digital format. The Audacity audio editor (also available for Windows and Mac users) is the ideal tool. It's built-in effects -- which include normalising and noise removal -- make it even more useful, and it can save files in a variety of formats including WAV, AIFF, FLAC, OGG and MP3. But there's one trick it can't handle...

Two years ago we introduced five design patters, and now here are five more PHP design patterns to help accelerate your application development. PHP V5's object-oriented features give you the ability to implement design patterns to improve your code's design, so that it becomes more readable, more maintainable, and more robust to absorb changes.

Experience has shown a weakening U.S. economy would be good for open source, as a shortage of cash is usually a major catalyst for innovation, particularly around open-source applications, Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu Linux, said at the annual Open Source Business Conference here March 25.

The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organisation behind Wikipedia and other projects, has attracted substantial funding from the Alfred P Sloan Foundation.

We go through this every six months: Ubuntu brings out a new release, and by the time release day comes around, it's murder to get enough bandwidth to grab the damn thing and make a new disc out of it. And no, I don't have any recent Ubuntu installs that I can upgrade, so I need the full ISO. Hence, I'm downloading a Ubuntu 8.04 beta right now.