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Introducing P-Brain.ai; A simple Node.js based voice assistant for the browser which makes use of NLP (Natural Language Processing), TTS (Text to speech) & STT (Speech to text) and can quickly be extended using Alexa skills-like plugins.

As many of those who have read my previous articles will know, i am a big backer of the web, especially web technology on the desktop. However with the recent course corrections made by Facebook in terms of their mobile offering and the relatively poor performance of HTML5 applications to date this belief had become marred with doubt. That was until i came across OS.js.

The term Bitcoin (BTC) has become a buzzword. A buzzword most recently associated with the euro, pyramid schemes and a purposed solution to the current banking crisis and economic turmoil. But what exactly is “Bitcoin” and is it something one should be investing in?

Linux has come so far since its initial release in 1991. In fact it beat all the odds to become the first commercially viable open source platform. The fair of hackers, computer enthusiasts and Enterprise alike there is a lot of love across the board for the little Minix clone that could. However, Linux, specifically Linux on the desktop, has had its share of problems that has held it back from mainstream dominance. Ignoring the competition offered by the likes of Microsoft and Apple , which of these problems is the most serious and how could said problem be resolved?

Its is almost tradition at this stage. A rumor surfaces at some point or another during the year, usually around the same time, that Valve are looking to bring their ubiquitous gaming platform to Linux. Usually these rumors are either fizzle out or are flat out denied and a plethora of excuses about poor market share, poor graphics performance and so on are given but when the inevitable (yet slightly late this year) rumor of Steam coming to Linux surfaced earlier today the stage was set slightly differently.

Its an exciting time of year of Linux fans, a time when Canonical get ready to roll out a new Long Term Service release (or LTS) of their Linux based desktop operating system, Ubuntu.

I have always had a fascination with the idea of alternative operating systems and over the years i have come across and played with (even developed applications for) a variety of them. However there has always been a few I've followed closely which have stood out, head and shoulders above the crowd. I have compiled a short list and description of what in my opinion are the top 5 best alternative, open source operating systems out there.

The latest and greatest thing to come out of Canonical Design is the Linux based, Kickstarter funded, E-Pebble smart watch which recently began taking pre-orders (via their Kickstarter page) after successfully reaching their target funding.

Lets face it, Linux lost the Desktop OS war years ago. It lost partially because it arrived too late to the game, finding that users where more than happy to stick to what they know (Humans, frugal yet stubborn) and partially because the design savvy to create something that was better and more usable than the competition's offerings didn't exist in the Linux diaspora.

A while back when messing with the chromium OS development branch on my nettop i stumbled upon Aura, a Window manager for the Chromium "desktop". I put it down to Google doing their usual "trow the kitchen sink at developers and see what sticks" approach to things and left it at that. Much to my surprise i saw that Google where planning on pushing this update out to all Chromebooks and that it has already done so with to the beta branch of Chromium OS.

While browsing the tubes today i stumbled across this post. I began to read the sob story totally un-aware of who its author was. It was in fact open source, indie games developer Luke Duke. Recently Luke drew attention with the release of his "Linux Tycoon" RTS .