Archive

Capturing a screen image is a basic computing task -- so basic, in fact, that almost every computer keyboard has a dedicated key to grab a picture of what the monitor is displaying in the instant the key is pressed. Three Linux apps have proven very useful to me. I use Shutter, Gnome Screenshot and ...

Belgian open source application vendor OpenERP has set up its first overseas business office in San Jose, Calif. Traditionally, the company has worked with reseller partners in the United States and 54 other countries worldwide. After four years, though, OpenERP has begun an aggressive expansion. It...

Have you cleaned up your Linux installation lately? On its face, that question might wrongly mark me as a Linux newbie, much like a Linux newcomer asking about antivirus and antimalware software. But I am far from being a newbie to Linux. That said, three program packages designed to clean out your ...

Canonical has released version 10.10 of the Ubuntu Linux operating system, code-named "Maverick Meerkat." This will be supported for 18 months on desktops, notebooks, netbooks and servers. It's available in 37 languages. With Ubuntu 10.10, Canonical has begun focusing on consumers and mobile devices...

At the heart of the case is whether the Android operating system infringes patents on the Java technology Oracle acquired when it bought Sun Microsystems early this year.

One of the hallmarks of using the Linux operating system is the ability to choose. The choices do not end with opting not to use Microsoft Windows or Mac OS X and instead choosing from among dozens of Linux distros. You also get the freedom to decide which individual software tools and applications ...

The smartphone industry has caught the sue-me, sue-you flu. Microsoft on Friday filed a patent infringement suit against Motorola related to Android technology. Microsoft claims Motorola has infringed on nine Microsoft patents with its Android-based smartphones. The patents at issue relate to a wide...

A study conducted jointly by Penn State University, Duke University and Intel Labs has found that some Android apps surreptitiously send user information to remote servers at ad networks and analytics firms. Some of the apps send users' geographic locations to remote ad networks; others send a uniqu...

One of the best productivity tools I had when I used Microsoft Windows was a collection of portable applications. I missed those tools when I migrated to Linux. Now several open source projects could make portable apps available to mainstream Linux users. Three websites are trying to create that fun...

When the Internet and World Wide Web finally went mainstream in the mid-1990s, new Unix-like operating systems running on PCs went mainstream too. Developers working on these systems had access to a wide range of development tools, but these platforms didn't initially offer anything like the mature,...

Typically, we use computers to help us track our information and organize our data. Most everything else involves the computer functions related to accessing and processing all that information. Often, we use software apps to handle our journals, wikis and to-do lists. Putting all three of those fun...

Summer was a Droid double-header for Motorola. The company opted to follow up last year's successful original Droid launch by introducing not one but two sequels: The Droid X, followed by the Droid 2. When I first heard this, I started to believe Motorola was having a numerological crisis, unable to...

As spectators crowded in to see keynote speeches Monday at Oracle's OpenWorld 2010, the question on everyone's lips was: What's Mark Hurd going to say? The recently ousted HP CEO was hired by Oracle CEO Larry Ellison shortly after Hurd left HP amid a scandal involving a female contractor and fudged ...

The team that created Diaspora, the open source social network launched earlier this year to take on Facebook, released their source code on Thursday, as promised. "This is now a community project, and development is open to anyone with the technical expertise who shares the vision of a social netwo...

Following the lead of one of its parent companies, Verizon Wireless is preparing to launch an Android app store under its V Cast label. More information about the launch will become available next week at the company's developer conference, Verizon spokesperson Debi Lewis said, but she added it's be...