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I'm not what you would call a major gamer, but I've played the console version of "Guitar Hero: World Tour," and I didn't get booed off the stage every time. So that makes me an expert, right? When you're playing "Guitar Hero" on a mobile phone, the most important thing to bear in mind is that you'r...

If the FOSS community is united by its love of passionate debate, it is arguably divided in equal measure by diverging views on the purpose of free and open source software. To some, FOSS means simply software that is intended to be free, or without financial cost; to others, the open availability o...

Someone has floated a trial balloon, through a leak to The Wall Street Journal, that IBM is in "talks" to buy Sun Microsystems for $6.5 billion. The only party that would leak this information is Sun itself, and it smacks of desperation in trying to thwart an unwanted acquisition, or to positively i...

In our age of instant gratification, no one likes waiting for anything. That's why the sluggish launch time of a typical personal computer can make a consumer irritable. It's also why instant-on computing has become a sort of Holy Grail for hardware and software makers in the industry. The pursuit o...

HTC was the first mobile device maker to introduce a smartphone for the Android platform. Now it might be the second, third and fourth as well. Peter Chou, CEO of the Taiwanese handset manufacturer HTC, told the Wall Street Journal that it will bring out at least three new Google Android smartphones...

If nothing else, you've got to give the people over at QuickOffice credit for being early movers. They are the first to bring us an application that will open Microsoft Word documents and Excel spreadsheets on an Android-based phone. They're also the first, to my knowledge, to figure out how to reor...

When Microsoft won its bid to make Office Open XML an international standard last year, it was a pivotal moment for many in the FOSS community and beyond. The process had been a highly contentious one, with protests from nations and corporations around the globe, and the International Organization f...

Despite the current economics, netbook sales have been growing at double-digit rates. It's one of the few hot spots in the consumer computing space. There are now more than 50 vendors with an offering across EMEA! What's really interesting is the shift toward the importance of the telco channel in a...

Where aggregates content from a variety of content providers, and they're all location-based. Need a fill-up, or a cup of coffee, or maybe a quick dozen roses? No problem. The main page is a grid of icons. There's one for Yelp, which brings up a list of Yelp categories such as restaurants, home serv...

The free and open source software community is known for many things, but perhaps none more than its propensity for passionate debate. No topic is too small for the community's spirited analysis, so it should come as no surprise that the Linux kernel -- one of the most central elements of the FOSS w...

The Linux Foundation has inked a deal that fosters collaboration with SourceForge and acquires ownership of Linux.com. The move is intended to create a long-lasting community destination for Linux users and developers, officials from the organizations said. The Linux Foundation is a nonprofit outfit...

Many large enterprises still run critical applications on legacy Linux and Unix platforms. Much like the fabled Energizer Bunny, these old computing OSes keep going and going and going. Some of these are not even in production any more. Upgrading these systems is no simple matter, partly because the...

There appears to be a new netbook maker on the block. Always Innovating has announced a new touchscreen netbook that purports to offer users four devices in one. The new Touch Book from the Menlo Park, Calif.-based startup weighs in at less than two pounds with an 8.9-inch screen and has a battery l...

There are as many dedicated gadgets out there for golf range finding as there are gadget makers. Since I only play golf a couple of times a year, it doesn't really make sense for me to buy a $200 range finder. TeeDroid Caddy, which costs less than 20 bucks for an annual subscription and resides on m...

Most segments of the technology market are hurting due to the recession, but one -- open source systems -- appears to be thriving despite the economic turmoil. Open source vendors such as Red Hat, SugarCRM and Vyatta say the recession has compelled organizations and corporations large and small to t...