Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

If you're interested in getting started with GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program), an open source alternative to Photoshop, then check out the latest issue of GIMP Magazine. The visuals are stunning. You can take a deep dive into motion photography and learn about filter options.

The openSUSE project is back on track. This week version 12.3 of the Linux operating system distribution was unleashed, right on time, as a free download. This will be seen as good news after the organisational restructuring and delays that plagued the release of openSUSE 12.2 last year. While 12.2 was delayed, it was worth the wait, delivering a snappy, attractive and, perhaps most importantly, stable KDE desktop alternative to a world drowning in desktop "innovation".

We're seeing an entire genre of Twitter clients proliferating within the Android ecosystem -- each app with its own idea about the best way to interact with the monolithic, 500 million-strong social network. OneLouder's Slices Pro for Twitter is the latest client to grab my attention -- not least because it provides a way to browse Twitter directories by category to find the best Follows.

Developer Break – catch up on the smaller but important notes for developers, from libraries to APIs and from people to postings. In this edition: Apache Ant, Play support in NetBeans, an LLVM IR plugin for Eclipse, App Engine, GWT, asynchronous tasks in Xamarin, and a new version of Git.

Who doesn’t want a talking computer? Linux is great for accessibility. Whether you need a text-to-speech (TTS) system to help you with daily computer tasks or you’re an experimental musician looking to incorporate robot voices into your songs, Linux has got your back. While there are a number of TTS programs for Linux, the one we’re going to discuss now is called Festival.

There are big moves going on at Google, with possible implications for the company's operating systems Chrome OS and Android. Longtime Android chief Andy Rubin is stepping aside, although he is staying at Google. Meanwhile, Sundar Pichai, VP of Chrome and Apps, is a star on the rise. Pichai has been overseeing the delivery of Google's well-recieved Chromebooks, and many of its very slick apps, in addition to steering Chrome OS forward. The moves at Google are causing some to speculate, once again, that Google will merge Android with Chrome OS. Here is why it won't happen.

After having its way with the smartphone market, Android is now poised for a repeat performance in the tablet market, according to market anlyst firm IDC. IDC says it’s just tweaked its multi-year worldwide tablet market forecast to account for an average 11 percent increase in overall unit shipments from 2013 through 2016, based on a recent “surge in smaller, lower-priced devices.” The firm now projects annual tablet shipments to exceed 350 million units (globally) by the end of 2017.

Version 1.4 of Sinatra, the domain specific language (DSL) for creating web applications in Ruby, is imminent, according to a blog post by its current maintainer, Konstantin Haase. The new version will be the first release with new features since October 2011's 1.3.0 release. Those new features include support for new HTTP methods, updated templates, an improved classic mode, better parsing of routes, MIME-type parameters and more supported servers.

With the new version, 12.3, the openSUSE developers are presenting an update of their popular Linux distribution that offers a redesigned, elegant desktop, updated software and various technological improvements.

LibreOffice developers have been working on bringing the open source office suite to Android for more than a year. But aside from a remote control app that lets you use your phone to control presentations running on a desktop, nothing has yet hit the Android app store.

Buhl Data Service GmbH, the developer of the WISO Mein Büro2009 software has agreed to pay €15,000 (approximately £13,000) to adhoc dataservice GmbH for using its LGPL-licensed FreeadhocUDF open source library in his business software without observing the LGPL's licensing terms. The GNU Lesser Public Licence allows software to be used free of charge, but it stipulates that developers must give prominent notice to where the licensed code was used, point out that the code is under the LGPL, include a copy of the LGPL, and make the library's source code available.

Given all the legends surrounding Apple's widely mourned Steve Jobs, it's not entirely surprising that comparisons should be made any time another tech leader begins to resemble him in any way. Case in point: Mark Shuttleworth. The billionaire Canonical founder has actually been compared to Jobs on numerous occasions before, but lately the discussion was renewed afresh by a recent post on Linux Advocates.

SpringSource has released version 3.2.0 of the Spring Tool Suite (STS) and Groovy/Grails Tool Suite (GGTS). The new versions include updates to Eclipse Juno SR2, support for high resolution displays on Mac OS X, support for Spring Integration 2.2 and compilers for Grails 2.2.1 and Groovy 2.0.7.

Atheros has been more friendly towards Linux customers in recent years with open-source WiFi/network Linux drivers. Atheros has even been kind towards BSD users. The latest Atheros open-source contribution is the opening up of their firmware for two wireless chipsets.

The Fedora Project is perhaps one of the hallmark Linux distributions. Fedora is sponsored by Red Hat, the commercial developer of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Red Hat's investment in the Fedora community is collaborative. As such, Fedora Linux releases often provide RHEL developers with a field test environment that incubates innovative open source software technologies.

McAfee has released new security software for Android-based embedded devices. Application Control for Android is claimed to be the only kernel-level security solution for protecting devices running embedded Android from installing or executing malicious apps.

Open Source software has had a special area for itself at the CeBIT trade show for the last five years. The H went along to see what was new this year and in the process met Knoppix creator, Klaus Knopper, saw the latest in 3D printing, and talked with John "Maddog" Hall about Project Cauã.

Ardour chief developer Paul Davis has released version 3.0 of his digital audio workstation. Ardour 3's most important new feature is the multi-track recorder's comprehensive MIDI support and MIDI sequencing functionality. Ardour supports instrument plugins in Steinberg's VST format, the AudioUnit format of Mac OS X, and the LV2 Linux standard, successor to the LADSPA format. The MIDI workflow is modelled after the audio workflow: notes played on a MIDI device can be recorded as separate tracks and then played back via a software synthesizer. An overview of the MIDI-enabled multi-track recorder's capabilities is available on the project's feature page.

According to a Google+ posting from Google, there were no winners in Google's own Pwnium competition, which followed Pwn2Own at the CanSecWest conference in Canada. Google had offered a prize fund, inspired by the constant pi, of $3.14159 million with $110,000 prizes if the browser or system could be compromised and $150,000 prizes if the compromise could be persisted over a reboot. The target for the attacks was a Series 5 550 Chromebook running the latest stable ChromeOS.

When I heard, in a tutorial video, the multi-platform programmer's editor Sublime described as "the cool kids' code editor" (or possibly "the Cool Kid's code editor" - the speaker didn't enunciate his capitals and apostrophes very clearly) I was puzzled. As the goto (or, rather, the call-by-reference) consultant on Agile Harlem Shake in the northwest corner of our floor, surely no such assertion could plausibly be made without first interviewing me? Nothing would have come of this if TextPad, normally as reliable as a tax demand, had not crashed. Twice. Unprovoked. Editing piddly little config files.