Showing headlines posted by rpm007

The ambitious volunteer-based OpenStreetMap has now mapped more than 120,000 km of South African roads. It's ambitious and time-consuming work to produce free maps of the whole of South Africa, but that is exactly what the OpenStreetMap (OSM) team is doing. Relying on a team of volunteers willing to hit the highways, streets and tracks of the country with their GPSes in their spare time, the OpenStreetMap SA team has now mapped more than 120,000 km of the country's roads. The resulting maps are licenced under a Creative Commons licence so that anyone can use the information.

A powerful US lobby group is trying to have pro-open source countries listed as being "anti-capitalism". Open source software is anti-capitalism and undermines intellectual property. It's not a new claim against free and open source software, but now a new report suggests that a pro-proprietary lobby group has not only been pushing this line around the globe but is also looking to get pro-open source countries listed on the US' Special 301 watchlist.

Looking for some cool apps for your Android phone? Google's Android phone OS is just a couple of years old but has already captured users' minds. And in the less that 18 months since the launch of the Android App Market, more than 30 000 applications for the platform have been added to the marketplace. This is not nearly as many as Apple's iPhone app store but it is increasing rapidly. Almost 10 000 apps have been added to the Android market since December last year.

The annual Mobile World Congress (MWC) is always a highlight of the year for the mobile sector but this year's show was also a big one for open source software. Traditionally in a market dominated by proprietary operating systems there has been a significant shift towards open source software by mobile phone makers over the past year.

A decision to remove OpenOffice.org from the next Ubuntu Netbook Remix release has been retracted

There are a few good reasons why open source fans should support the Business Software Alliance. I've never made a secret of the fact that I dislike the Business Software Alliance (BSA). It's questionable statistics and its sweeping generalisations make for annoying reading at the best of times. But recently I've been thinking that perhaps open source advocates should get behind the BSA.

Ubuntu is considering including Google Docs as the default office suite for its next netbook release. Ubuntu's forthcoming Netbook Remix (UNR) will very likely not include OpenOffice.org and instead use Google Docs or other lightweight alternatives as the default office tools. The decision is proving to be a controversial one within the developer community but the lead developers believe that the web-hosted suite will free up enough space to give UNR a speed boost.

Gnome 3.0 promises to give Linux the desktop polish it needs. It's been a long time in the coming but this year Linux will get a makeover, thanks to the Gnome project. In September the Gnome team, makers of one of the most popular desktop interfaces for Linux, will release version 3.0 of their desktop environment and they are promising "big user-visible changes".

The last chapter of Sun Microsystems has now been written. It wasn't unexpected but there was still something jarring about typing in Sun.com earlier this week and finding myself on the Oracle website. The deal in which Oracle acquired Sun had been in the pipeline for months but this brought home, with finality, that this was indeed the end of an era.

Microsoft is being coy about when it will release version 7 of its Windows Mobile operating system as it focuses on other areas. It isn't the first time that Microsoft has missed the boat - it was also a late starter in the Internet game - but the company has all but dropped the ball with its Windows Mobile operating system.

It's a regular complaint: Linux is too hard. But is it hard, or are there other factors at play? We've all heard the complaint: "Linux is just too hard to use". Very often it's not defined in any more detail than that but it is enough for most users to write Linux off. So, is Linux too hard?

Get the most out of your netbook with an operating system built to purpose. Netbooks were big news in 2009 and we can expect them to be just as popular in 2010. But, being small and ultraportable there are compromises to be made: smaller screens, slower processors and smaller keyboards are just some of these. So, to get the best out of your netbook you need to pair it with an operating system built to make the most out of the smaller form factor.

Firefox downloads boosted by new release and Internet Explorer security scare. Mozilla's open source browser experienced a healthy boost in popularity last week on the back of a new release and security concerns about Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Web applications are going to be big in 2010 and Microsoft is working on a new browser to run them.

Firefox has dropped version 3.7 from its roadmap and will roll out new features in the next few weeks together with 3.6.

Is 2010 the "year of open source"? Probably not, but by the end of the year expect to see open source software everywhere.

Ubuntu Linux will likely include an iTunes-like music service in its next release.

Google's Nexus is the first phone to ship with the Android 2.1 operating system. Others will follow but until then, this is what you can expect

Microsoft will release Office 2010 in June but until then there are some great alternatives. In June Microsoft will release a final version of its Office 2010 productivity suite. Naturally many users will upgrade, at substantial cost, to the latest version of the popular Office suite, but for those not so eager to hand over their money to Microsoft there are still many great alternatives. And they are free.

Free software made steady progress in 2009, even if it didn't have the excitement of previous years.