Showing headlines posted by tadelste

Software behemoth Microsoft still rules, but its influence may be diminishing feel some experts.

Its déjà vu time for Microsoft, which edged out Netscape ten years back, as it is up against competitors who are using the web space to threaten its monopoly.

For instance, free OpenOffice suite can be effortlessly downloaded with a broadband connection. Its Writer is turning out to be an able alternative to MS-Word and certain experts feel Mozilla's Thunderbird can replace Outlook. So is MS-Office suite's dispensable in the very near future?

We’ve recently implemented Horde ( http://www.horde.org ) for internal mail, calendaring and task management. With tool suites like these available, the old guard must be getting nervous.

This may be obvious, but with the new Horde implementation (and Imp, Kronolith, Turba, Ingo, and Nag), our need for a commercial internal collaboration suite has been obviated. We probably wouldn’t have purchased such a suite (certainly not from a closed source vendor) so perhaps this isn’t a big deal in our case. I'm wondering how many times this scene is played out every day of every week.

Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya (MPP), a non-government organization of Nepal, has launched free/open source "NepaLinux", Nepali version of Linux, MPP said here Friday.

In a recent so-called Desktop Linux versus Windows XP shootout, writer George Ou declares that "Microsoft handily beat the open source platform." The basis for this judgment? "OS boot time and application load times" on two different PCs. Oh, dear. This isn't right at all.

First, using OS boot times as the only real comparison between operating systems is a lot like comparing cars by how long it takes you to get from 0 to 60. Yes, it's a measurement, but by itself it doesn't say much of anything.

The very nature of the test itself is really pretty meaningless, anyway. Two machines do not a benchmark make.

"Microsoft's move to sidestep the OASIS OpenDocument format (ODF) standard by making its own standards submission to the European ECMA standards body appears to contain 'bizarre restrictions' and are designed to give Microsoft 'complete control by tying products' together, IBM's standards chief said in an interview Friday."

Thanks to henke54

Almost a month after rumors started trickling in that Mozilla would use independent film-makers to promote the next generation of Firefox, its free web browser, Mozilla has confirmed that it would indeed engage in this online "open source marketing" drive.

Mozilla formally announced the opening of the "Firefox Flicks Ad Contest" which calls upon professional, student and aspiring film-makers to join the growing community of Firefox contributors to create innovative, broadcast-quality 30-second commercials for Firefox. The ads will be judged by a star-studded panel of luminaries drawn from the film, television and advertising industries, with great prizes up for grabs. The winning ads will also be considered for inclusion in global marketing campaigns for Firefox.

NetBeans Profiler Provides Tighter Control During the Development Process; Supports Java SE 5 Applications on Leading Platforms Including New Support for Mac OS X

BEIJING, CHINA – Trolltech® has said that it's Qtopia Phone Edition was awarded Open Source World's Editor's Choice Award for "Best Embedded Linux Platform", continuing to gain widespread recognition and solidify its leading role in the embedded Linux field.

Qtopia Phone is the only independent open software solution for Linux-based devices. It allows designers and manufacturers to develop feature-rich phones and other mobile and wireless devices, while maintaining complete control of branding and user experience. Today, more than 30 vendors are designing, building or shipping mobile phones built with Qtopia and related Trolltech software for embedded Linux, including Motorola, ZTE, and Cellon.

Ideas that grew in the last year and need to grow a lot more in the upcoming one.

So I am truly psyched about the advent of Performancing, a Firefox extension that integrates a full-featured blog editor right into the browser. Just hit F8 to call up the editing window, whip up a post, and shoot it right off to your Wordpress, Movable Type or Blogger blog. I don't have any blogs running on MT anymore but I set up several Wordpress blogs and an old Blogger blog in all of about 2 minutes -- it's dead easy. Then, you can choose to author in WYSIWYG or source mode, quickly switch over to a live preview and back again, add it to whatever appropriate categories and push the post out to your blog when you're finished. It does what it's supposed to do, simply and well. I absolutely love it.

Get the cameras ready to roll. Firefox is heading for Tinseltown as Mozilla prepares to give its open source browser the star treatment and calls for budding, enlightened filmmakers to start working on a screen treatment.

After announcing last month that it was embarking on its biggest-ever marketing drive, aimed at getting "thousands or tens of thousands" of videos out promoting Firefox 1.5, the company said on Thursday that it was launching a campaign to get the best emerging filmmakers working on the open source trail.

Ok. This is getting a bit out of hand for us right now. We at TechWhack love to use Opera. And we have been following the development of the company since quite sometime. The people at Opera have always claimed to have a specific goal and that goal does not include getting acquired by a bigger company. Some days back the media was mocked for having spread the rumor around that Google had possibly acquired the Norway based Opera Software ASA and now the same rumors are back again but with Microsoft being named as the new owners of the company.

America Online entered the market of free web mail service late but plans to catch-up with the dominating players in the market fast. Microsoft has MSN Hotmail, Yahoo! has Yahoo! Mail, and Google has Gmail. Now AOL is trying to popularize its AOL Web mail service and is testing out a browser toolbar for the Mozilla Firefox web browser.

Happy Holidays! This week, advisories were released for dropbear, nbd, phpbb2, OpenLDAP, Xpdf, cURL, CenterICQ, digikam, apache2, sudo, kernel, netpbm, udev, gpdf, kdegraphics, cups, and perl. The distributors include Debian, Gentoo, Mandriva, and Red Hat.

If you just can't bear to part with Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, or Quicken, but want to make the switch to Linux, relax -- CodeWeavers' CrossOver Office has you covered.

The European Commission turned up the heat yesterday on Microsoft, the world's largest software company, threatening to fine it more than $2 million a day unless it agrees to share more technical information with competitors.

The commission's warning is the latest salvo in its increasingly acrimonious dispute with Microsoft over just what the company must do to comply with a 2004 antitrust ruling by the European Union. But the move also points to the growing gap between the antitrust policies of the United States and Europe.

[Ed: Europe can make this an anti-American issue if it wishes. Whatever it takes to break-up Microsoft works for everyone, especially in the United States. - tadelste]

Joy to the world, the browser has come.

Such is the holiday sentiment that nonprofit Mozilla Group is asking its customers to share in the name of promoting its latest open source Web browser, Firefox 1.5. The Mountain View, Calif.-based organization launched its first official marketing campaign ever on Wednesday, an initiative that will ask existing Firefox users to make short films about their experiences using the software to convince other people to try it.

Shares of computer-related companies Research In Motion Ltd. and Red Hat Inc. gained after they reported results that exceeded analysts' estimates. Albertson's Inc. fell after the New York Times said the grocery chain rejected a takeover bid.

The SCO Group's revenue continued to fall in the fourth quarter and during fiscal 2005, as Unix sales slumped. Management, however, tried to put a positive spin on the results, released after Thursday's market close, saying that cost-cutting measures have made SCO's Unix business profitable again and adding that plenty of cash remains to continue a legal battle against IBM.

Linux Networx announced last week that it had signed an OEM agreement with IBM to distribute IBM's General Parallel File System (GPFS).