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The Federal Communications Commission has released a mobile speed test app for Android to help the agency crowdsource data about wireless performance across the country. The app, simply named the FCC Speed Test, doesn't have the best looking design out there, but it doesn't necessarily need to: once installed, it'll automatically check a phone's connection speed in the background when the device is not in use. While that'll allow individual users to clearly see how well their own data provider is performing, it'll more importantly allow the FCC to gather a wide amount of data on cellular carriers nationwide — that is, if its app gets enough users.

We’re back from our brief visit to SUSECon 2013, where SUSE and its partners showed that open source is the way forward for business and computing

Littlebits is disrupting the open hardware space. It's "an open source library of electronic modules that snap together with magnets for prototyping, learning, and fun." The company is the invention of Ayah Bdeir, an MIT graduate and TED senior fellow, and was founded in September 2011. This is the normal for our kids: piecing together parts to make something they want to use, and being creators not just consumers! For one, many parents in the western world are having children later in life. Women often delay having a baby until they start a career, finish graduate school, or have more disposable income. A large majority of these mothers are highly educated and tend to be savvy consumers. Bear in mind, women are the leading or sole breadwinner in 40% of American households with children under 18. Here are the 5 big reasons why littleBits is exciting and different:

There are several well-known commercial flowchart and diagram software available, e.g., Visio on Windows, OmniGraffle on MacOS X. Then what about Linux? In fact, there are a couple of reasonably good Linux alternatives to Visio or OmniGraffle, for example, yEd, Dia, LibreOffice Draw, Pencil Project, etc. This tutorial describes how to create flowchart or diagram with yEd graph editor on Linux.

Linux-mad ex-Nokia bods prep mobes for Helsinki launch Finnish startup Jolla has revealed when the first batch of its Sailfish OS–based smartphones will be available to customers, along with new information about what software will be on offer when the devices ship.…

A long-running copyright lawsuit between the Authors' Guild and Google over its book-scanning project is over, and Google has won on the grounds that its scanning is "fair use." In other words, the snippets of books that Google shows for free don't break copyright, and Google doesn't need the authors' permission to engage in the scanning and display of short bits of books.

I’m a little late in my reporting, but this year, in May, the International Space Station (ISS) dumped the last of its laptop installations of the Windows XP operating system to go all Linux.

Today in Open Source: Protect your privacy with Linux. Plus: A review of PCLinux OS, and the EFF versus Canonical over Ubuntu trademark issues

The article contains a list of open-source and free for use forum software.

A startup called BiggiFi is approaching its Indiegogo funding goal for a $79 HDMI dongle that essentially turns HDTVs into supersized Android tablets. The BiggiFi device is claimed to let users run unmodified Android apps on their TVs using their phone or tablet as the TV’s touchscreen.

Thunderbolt is a dual protocol I/O innovation that dramatically increases transfer performance with bi-directional 10 Gbps speed, and offers daisy chaining to multiple devices, providing flexibility and simplicity for innovative, thin system designs like laptops and Ultrabooks.

The Kernel-based Virtual Machine updates for the Linux 3.13 kernel were filed today and includes a fair amount of improvements for virtualization on PowerPC hardware, but there's also some x86 improvements too.

It's no secret BYOD and consumerization have changed the balance of of power in organizations. To combat that, many companies are producing their own internal apps as alternatives to consumer offerings, but research has found that a vast majority of users don't like the company offerings. That means you had better come up with better alternatives and work harder to understand your users' requirements.

Centrych OS 12.04.2 is available. Centrych OS is a desktop Linux distribution based on Ubuntu's latest LTS release (version 12.04 released in April 2014), but it provides more recent versions of many applications. It uses a customised Xfce desktop. These images are geared for users who prefer the most recent versions of applications and want to receive both Ubuntu and Centrych updates as they become available.

This was a lot faster than expected, but the Arch Linux developers have just pushed a few minutes ago, the final and stable packages of the recently released Linux kernel 3.12.

On January 26th of 2013 cellphone locking in the United States effectively became illegal, at least without permission from your existing carrier. Although most carriers will unlock your device for a fee, there’s still a lot of confusion on the matter.

In the case of openSUSE, the community distribution set up by the SUSE Linux company, one feature is indeed unique: the Open Build Service (OBS) that allows anyone to build packages for any distribution, any supported architecture, yielding binaries and even installation media.

One of the most hotly debated ideas for patent reform is to expand what's known as the Covered Business Methods program, which creates a streamlined process for challenging patents. Advocates argue that expanding the CBM program would help to invalidate low-quality patents that are the weapon of choice for patent trolls.

But not everyone in the technology sector is enthusiastic about the idea. The BSA, an industry group that used to call itself the Business Software Alliance, counts patent-rich software companies such as Microsoft, Oracle and Apple among its members. And in recent weeks it has been a leading voice opposing the expansion of the CBM program...

All Things Open began with interesting and controversial keynotes; both centered on a call to action for the open source community. This part one of a two part series: first, a recap of Andy Hunt’s keynote, second and published next, a reacp of Whurley’s keynote.

A group of Linux journalists have quit their day jobs and are trying to start a new magazine that will give back to the open source community. They have pledged 50% of their profits to good causes with the FLOSS world, and will make all their content freely available after nine months.