Showing headlines posted by alan8373

RSS DJ is a new style of RSS aggregator. It can take any text based RSS feed (blogs, news feeds, anything), and automatically convert them to spoken word MP3 podcasts. You can even create your own “Mixes” combining feeds based on tags, freshness, and peer ratings.

The biggest pro's with Gentoo are that you can setup what are called USE flags. Basically they're like meta-flags which tell the compiled packages what to build into your system. For example, if I add "mysql" to my USE variable, all packages that have mysql support will be built with mysql enabled. Likewise, there are flags for everything from kde, gnome, and X to the basics like alsa, and ssl. This produces an amazingly targeted and fat-free system that only has what you want it to have. In theory this sounds great, in practice it's absolutely mind-blowing. You want all your packages to suddenly support postgres, just add it to your USE flag, and run 'emerge --newuse world' and any packages that can provide postgres support will be re-built. Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful.

What if we scrap the old systems of using SMTP and IMAP/POP for sending / retrieving email completely. What if we used RSS to read email and secure HTTPS to send (and also read) emails? I'm temporarily calling this "SMiRQ Mail" (short for Syndicated Messaging and Relayed Queueing).

The Linux Business Directory, the free and open directory of Linux and Free Source / Open Source based businesses and organizations has added over 200 new categories for organizations to use to describe themselves. This now brings the total number of categories available to our users to over 550!

I'd like to propose a new term be added to the vernacular of geeks and techies alike ... "Tacking" - a combination of "Technology" and "Hacking". What's most interesting is the similarities between my proposed usage of tacking in IT circles, and how it's currently used in the sport of sailing - manipulating your sail and zig-zagging up-wind to get to your destination.

The Linux Business Directory has expanded its offerings for its members and visitors. The new additions include a community Blog, a member updatable events calendar, and over 200 new business classification categories.

The Linux Business Directory is an effort to help further the adoption of Linux and Free Source / Open Source software by addressing issues that exist at the organizational and logistical level. By bringing together both sides of the Linux business equation - suppliers and customers - we hope to provide a valuable community resource to enable decision-makers, managers, and IT staff alike to better understand "the big picture" when implementing Linux and FOSS software.