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In this article by Jonathan Bennett, author of the book OpenStreetMap, we'll look at the tools and techniques used by the OpenStreetMap community to gather data using GPS, and upload it to the website.

Here's some fun news: "Gartner Says Android to Become No. 2 Worldwide Mobile Operating System in 2010 and Challenge Symbian for No. 1 Position by 2014." I moved to a smart phone within the last year. In the past I hadn't really needed one. When I went somewhere I typically had my laptop with me, so I usually hid behind that. However, as my role became more and more driven by general email and Internet access rather than specific proprietary programs I realized that I wanted to have more access and functionality without lugging the computer around all the time. If you know me at all, you know I'm a Linux nut, so I naturally gravitated toward an Android phone. I love it. The openness suits me and I get to use my curiosity and ability to tinker to my advantage.

The survey, entitled “Linux Adoption Trends: A Survey of Enterprise End Users” and published in partnership with Yeoman Technologies, asked nearly 2,000 selected users if they thought that the use of Linux within their organisations would increase within the next five years. Almost 80% of respondents said they felt it would. According to the survey, in the last two years, 66% of new Linux deployments have been green-field deployments, while 36.6% have been migrations from Microsoft Windows. Over 60% of respondents said that they would use Linux for more mission critical workloads within the next twelve months.

Policy group New America has written a scathing blog entry that criticizes the HTC G2 for including a "hardware rootkit" that prevents users from installing custom firmware on the device. The report appears, however, to be based on a misunderstanding of technical issues raised in an XDA discussion thread. The G2 isn't unique in blocking third-party firmware, and it doesn't come with anything that could correctly be described as a rootkit.

Linux server deployments are expected to take slightly more business from Microsoft than Unix in the next year, according to latest data. A Linux Foundation poll of major public and private sector organizations using Linux has found that 76.4 per cent plan to add more Linux servers during the next year, with just 41.2 per cent planning to add more Windows servers to their IT infrastructure's mix.

I finally became fed up with this one little idiosyncrasy that my KDE-based home entertainment center kept exhibiting -- it would not let me specify VLC as the action handler when I inserted a DVD in the drive. Instead, it was most insistent that I use the KDE default DragonPlayer, which had somehow gotten confused about where the drive was and could no longer start the DVD. That was all it took for me decide to to take the time to rebuild the home entertainment system last weekend. You may recall from a previous article, I discovered Linux Mint 9 not too long ago, and really liked it.

The Linux Foundation says Linux is poised for significant growth in the enterprise, some of it at the expense of Windows servers. 76.4% of companies surveyed are planning to add more Linux servers in the next twelve months. 41.2% are increasing their Windows servers, while 43.6% will decrease or stay the same. Over the next five years 79.4% of businesses surveyed plan to add more Linux servers compared to other operating systems, while only 21.3% plan to add more Windows servers.

Oracle and IBM have unveiled a new collaboration which will allow developers and customers to build and innovate based on existing Java investments and the OpenJDK (Java Development Kit) reference implementation. According to a joint statement issued by Oracle, the two partners will make the OpenJDK community the primary location to facilitate open source Java SE (Standard Edition) development. The new collaboration will also center on the Java language, JDK and Java Runtime Environment.

While some users of the Lenovo G555 laptop and its Atheros AR8132 Ethernet interface report no trouble with networking in OpenBSD using the alc driver (courtesy of FreeBSD) that made its debut in version 4.7 of the operating system, that wasn't the case for me. The wired Ethernet interface shows up in the dmesg as alc0 but doesn't "light up."

A trojan recently analysed by Webroot is said to rely on retrieving web page passwords from a browser's password storage, rather than logging a user's keyboard inputs. To make sure it will find all the interesting passwords in Firefox, the malware, called PWS-Nslog, makes some changes to jog the browser's memory. A few manipulations in a JavaScript file prompt Firefox to store log-in information automatically and without requesting the user's consent.

The new Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) has just been released. This guide shows how you can upgrade your Ubuntu 10.04 desktop and server installations to Ubuntu 10.10.

I found a computing treasure in a local Goodwill store three weeks ago: a book about System/360 assembly language. (Assembly language is the human-readable form of the concrete instructions carried out by the computer.) In earlier years, this would have been a wonderful surprise, but a previous find precludes that from happening... Last year, I found a special treat in the discount bin of a local grocery store: a movie, in Mongolian. In the rural Midwest USA, that is difficult to surpass that for surprise finds.

There are all kinds of fancy backup applications, from free to complicated and expensive. But it's still hard to beat the speed, simplicity, and flexibility of the old standbys.

Thank you Mr Chairman. We should like to thank you for the opportunity to take the floor during this very important meeting. The agenda includes several items of great interest to the Free Software Foundation Europe, and the Free Software or open source community at large. Free Software relies on licenses to give users the freedom to use, study, share and improve a program. These licences in turn rely on copyright. Free Software is, however, fundamentally incompatible with patents on software.

It is very clear to me that Linux, GNU, and free software are more popular than ever. It is also very clear that this makes a lot of people in high places very afraid. Patent lawsuits and propaganda seem to be the customary responses to Linux's ever increasing popularity. However, there is a great infrastructure that has been built that provides a powerful platform to combat the Linux-naysayers: Youtube. With billions (perhaps trillions) of video views, it is very clear that Youtube has become the dominant force for spreading information freely.

Oracle is no longer totally isolated on Java — IBM now stands with the giant, in a move that potentially stymies Google's Android. IBM said Monday that it's putting its efforts into the OpenJDK project, run by Oracle, and switching away from the Apache Software Foundation's (ASF's) Project Harmony on Java Standard Edition (Java SE).

It's not open source, of course, but the Freemium model offers a fully functioning free version of a service or software. Users who want additional features (or content) over and above the free version have to pay. For software vendors in particular it offers a way to scale quickly and build a user base.

The Medibuntu repository for Maverick (10.10) is ready to be used with your freshly updated/installed Ubuntu distribution. Some packages have been removed for this release: Googleearth, realplayer, gizmo5. These softwares can easily be installed following the documentation provided on their respective websites. They will still be maintained for earlier versions.

A fractal is a geometric shape or quantity which displays self-similarity and non-integer dimension. The property of self-similarity applies where a self-similar object is exactly or approximately similar to a part of itself. If you zoom in on any part of a fractal, you find the same amount of detail as before. It does not simplify.

Yesterday's Kubuntu 10.10 release features new KDE software for your phone. Working with KDE's Plasma Mobile team, Kubuntu have created Kubuntu Mobile, suitable for smart phones and available for i386 and ARM platforms. This is a technology preview of the upcoming Plasma Mobile workspace and is not ready for day to day use.