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Most people require a little help in managing and organizing their life. Whether we like to admit it or not, most people tend to be disorganized and the reason why we have any semblance of organization is because we have and use tools to help us: pads of paper, PDAs, phones, groupware solutions, and so forth. If you don’t necessarily need a smartphone to keep things under control and a large groupware solution like Zimbra or Outlook is too much organization, there’s a solution called Osmo, which may be the program for you.

I was pleasantly surprised to read that Larry Augustin had been named SugarCRM's full-time CEO. After spending much of the last decade as an investor and board member extraordinaire for many (most?) companies grouped in the commercial open source category, it is good to see Larry back in the CEO saddle. This is a vindication of sorts for Larry and his vision of an open source future. After years of attempting to explain just how ubiquitous open source was going to be, he can now take the reigns of a company at a time when most customers and vendors take as a given that a substantial portion of any solution will consist of open source code. This was not always the case, especially when Larry was still CEO of VA Linux Systems, at the time the premier vendor for servers running Linux.

Google's ChromeOS is making a lot of, ahem, waves. But what is really hiding under its shiny feathers?

ZiiLabs announced a mid-range smartphone development platform supporting its Android and Linux-based "Plaszma" stacks. The Zii Trinity is based on ZiiLabs' dual ARM9-core "ZMS-05" SoC, and provides 1080p video output, OpenGL graphics, HSDPA, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, and a 3.1-inch, 800 x 480 OLED touchscreen, says the Creative Technology subsidiary.

Nokia has released Version 4.6 of its Qt cross-platform application and UI framework. Qt 4.6 includes support for the Symbian platform for the first time, and adds Windows 7, Apple Mac OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard), and the upcoming Maemo 6 to the list of Qt-supported platforms.

How to setup Wireless on Chrome OS. Chrome has recently been open sourced by Google as a developer preview. Its very young, clearly has some issues and needs serious work, however it is usable and lots of people have managed to get it running in a virtual machine or via a USB key.

Over the last few years, system security has gained a lot of momentum and software professionals are focusing heavily on it. Linux is treated as a highly secure operating system, but the reality is that it too has its share of security flaws…

This year with the Phoronix Test Suite we have delivered four major updates to this leading, widely adopted, multi-platform testing software that has brought dozens of new test profiles and literally hundreds of significant changes. These changes ranged from features to autonomously track performance regressions within any code-base, the ability to not only compare frame-rates within OpenGL tests but image quality comparisons too, support for mobile platforms, and so much other major work to further drive automated testing and benchmarking not only on Linux but OpenSolaris, *BSD, and Mac OS X too. In 2009 we also launched PTS Desktop Live, our own operating system for carrying out standardized benchmarks in an easy-to-use and repeatable manner from a live Linux environment, and also Phoromatic, which is designed for the enterprise world and allows the Phoronix Test Suite to be easily deployed across many systems and then managed from a central interface. The year is not over yet, nor is our work on ensuring that the Phoronix Test Suite is the most powerful and robust testing/benchmarking platform. With that said, as of this morning our Phoronix kernel test farm is now alive!

Among the bits of minutiae that I personally find entertaining about the Linux distribution release cycle is how different distros come up with their respective release names. Ubuntu with its 'interesting' animal inspired names like Dapper Drake and Karmic Koala gets its names from it's Dictator-for-Life Mark Shuttleworth. Rival Linux distribution Fedora doesn't have such an autocratic approach to naming. Instead the process (like much of the distro itself) is driven by the community. It's a process that is now gearing up for 2010's Fedora 13 release.

Today, KDE has released a new version of the KDE Software Compilation (KDE SC). This month's edition of KDE SC is a bugfix and translation update to KDE SC 4.3. KDE SC 4.3.4 is a recommended upgrade for everyone running KDE 4.3.3 or earlier versions. As the release only contains bugfixes and translation updates, it will be a safe and pleasant update for everyone. Users around the world will appreciate that KDE SC 4.3.4 is more completely translated. KDE 4 is already translated into more than 50 languages, with more to come.

This tutorial shows how you can set up a Linux Mint 8 (Helena) desktop that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge. Linux Mint 8 is a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu 9.10 that has lots of packages in its repositories (like multimedia codecs, Adobe Flash, Adobe Reader, Skype, Google Earth, etc.) that are relatively hard to install on other distributions; it therefore provides a user-friendly desktop experience even for Linux newbies.

The European Interoperability Framework, EIF, regulates how public agencies, citizens and businesses communicate with other on a software level. Now an alliance of proprietary ventures has had an influence on the EIF draft.

OpenLogic have announced that they are expanding their commercial support services for open source packages to include CentOS Linux. The company offers indemnification for a certified range of around 500 open source packages and a choice of either Developer Support with a four hour response time during business hours or Production Support with a one hour, round-the-clock response time.

Of all the big computer companies, only Dell really supports desktop Linux. Specifically, Dell offers a nice selection of PCs running Ubuntu Linux. But what Dell hasn't done is come out and announce that they are working on Google's beta Chrome OS. Other vendors, such as Acer, HP and Lenovo, are on board with Chrome. Regardless, Dell is actually the first big-time vendor to have released a version of Chrome OS designed to work with one of their netbooks.

I'm writing course notes for a sophomore (college) level survey, with tomorrow's material on Henry David Thoreau. All of a sudden, I got a a notification "The published version of this item cannot be shared until a Google review finds that the content is appropriate." The "share" link is disabled. This means I can't upload to my Google website from this page. I suppose I could cut and paste to another brand new document... but that might get me kicked off Google entirely if it still scans for and sees something "inappropriate"!

[For all the cautionary notes about The Cloud, there hasn't been much said about arbitrary denial of access. - gus]

A developer who claims he is tired of the “Linux is secure” argument has set out to develop a “package of malware for Unix/Linux” in order to help ethical hackers demonstrate the vulnerability of the open source operating system. "I was fed up with the general consensus that Linux is oh-so-secure and has no malware,” a developer going by the name of buchner.johannes wrote on Ask Slashdot, in posting filed by kdawson.

[Tired of the “Linux is secure” argument? Now I've heard it all.. - Scott]

The Mozilla Project has announced the winners of the Extend Firefox contest. The contest required entries to make use of new features in the Firefox 3.5 series, and included categories for best new add-on, best updated add-on, best shopping add-on, and best game & entertainment add-on. The winning entries for Best New Add-on were FireFound by Chris Finke, Multifox by Jeferson Hultmann, and Voyage by Hsiao-Ting Yu. FireFound sends your machine's location to a secure server, with the idea that if your machine is stolen, it can send its location using Firefox's Geolocation API to help track the machine. This assumes the thief uses Firefox after stealing the machine, of course. It works with Firefox and mobile Firefox.

Linux newbie and excellent writer Emery Fletcher weighs in on the subject of documentation for Linux users, and why it is a good thing.

Dan Kegel announced a new release of winetricks version 20091125. Below is a copy of the email Dan sent to the wine-devel mailing list. The highlight of this release is the inclusion of the ie7 verb, now with just a couple mouse clicks you can install and have Internet Explorer 7 running on your favorite UNIX Operating System.

One good sale deserves another. That’s one way to think of the Ubuntu PC market, where ZaReason is the latest company to offer special Cyber Monday sales to Ubuntu desktop and notebook shoppers. Here are some details.