Archive

Microsoft has filed complaints against TomTom in both the U.S. District Court in Seattle and with the International Trade Commission, alleging that the GPS gadget maker has infringed eight of its patents. Is this another day, another tech patent suit story? If it were any other plaintiff, perhaps. M...

Oh, Linux is Linux, and Windows is Windows, and never the twain shall meet -- isn't that how the saying goes? Well, not quite, of course, but it might have been if Kipling had only lived long enough to get to know our favorite operating system. The fact of the matter is that Linux and Windows must a...

Though "everyone knows" the threat and consequences of insider attacks, it was still shocking to read the headlines that a former Unix engineer at mortgage giant Fannie Mae was charged in federal court with allegedly planting a logic bomb that would have effectively shut down all 4,000 servers at Fa...

The ongoing economic meltdown has presented a unique strategic opportunity to vendors of open source software. Slashed budgets and riffed staffs are forcing enterprise users of proprietary software business solutions to rethink the suitability of open source replacement products. Many firms -- both ...

Would an enterprise be more likely to deploy a virtual solution if it were free? That is the question Citrix has asked with the unveiling of a new version of its XenServer virtualization platform that the company will offer free of charge at the end of March. The software, available to any user for ...

On Jan. 26, Lucid Imagination opened for business as the commercial entity for the Apache Lucene-Solr ecosystem. The new company hopes to unite both the Lucene and the open source developer communities under its wing by offering product support, training, consulting services and value-added software...

Several years ago, I helped develop some software that integrates and monitors certain business processes. We chose to use Linux-based systems because of some key free and open source software that allowed us to put together a sophisticated and comprehensive software platform. So often, the defense ...

When I first spotted Brain Genius, I figured it would be a fun way to while away some extra minutes and maybe beef up my brain cells a bit. This game is developed by Glu Mobile, which is one of the more prolific developers for the Android platform as well as for other mobile platforms. Glu makes sev...

Not many years ago, the open source software ecosystem and proprietary models might have been thought of as incompatible. About 10 years ago, though, the two systems began converging. IBM began to support Linux, providing what many analysts described as "legitimacy" to the fledging operating system ...

What happens when Apple and Palm representatives vaguely mention the ability to use and defend their patents, and then one anonymous source from Google vaguely states that Apple asked Google to not implement a certain technology in a recently release product? You get a whole lot of blog headlines ke...

Desktop virtualization is entering into the corporate limelight, after many years of existence as a consumer toy. Recently, for example, Citrix and Intel announced a partnership that will deliver an embedded bare-metal client hypervisor by the second half of 2009. Startup contender Virtual Computer,...

I admit it, I've developed a bit of a Facebook addiction. It's nothing serious -- I can stop any time I want, but this app might prove to be a bit of a setback for me. FBook is a client that offers much -- but not all -- of the functionality of Facebook on your G1. It offers the ability to upload ph...

The key to a successful business plan often hinges on who gets there first with a market-revitalizing product. Being first may not guarantee instant success, but it certainly makes those that follow behind play catch-up. Marketcetera's Automated Trading Platform may prove to be just that key for Gra...

The key to a successful business plan often hinges on who gets there first with a market-revitalizing product. Being first may not guarantee instant success, but it certainly makes those that follow behind play catch-up. Marketcetera's Automated Trading Platform may prove to be just that key for Gra...

VMware is introducing an open source version of its View product -- specifically, an open source client for virtual desktop infrastructure aimed at the data center. Called "VMware View Open Client," this release is largely a partner or ecosystem play for the company, pushing out the VMware View sour...