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Google on Monday disclosed more details about Android 3.0, nicknamed "Honeycomb," prior to the operating system's official unveiling, scheduled for Wednesday. Honeycomb is designed from the ground up for tablets and has a new holographic user interface. It includes a so-called Action Bar to let user...

Google will reportedly allow in-app payment abilities in Android applications sometime this quarter. Android Developer Ecosystem Manager Eric Chu announced this at the Inside Social Apps conference in San Francisco Tuesday, according to reports. In-app payments will let Android app users purchase vi...

The upcoming new Unity shell design for the next release of Canonical's Ubuntu 11.04 could change the face of the popular Linux desktop as we know it. Canonical creator Mark Shuttleworth is pushing the change to Unity while other Linux distros are rolling into GNOME 3. Linux Picks this week takes a ...

Canonical, which leads the Ubuntu project, has reportedly decided to switch from the OpenOffice productivity suite to LibreOffice in future versions of the popular Linux distribution. Version 11.04 of Ubuntu, also known as "Natty Narwhal," is expected to be the first release to incorporate LibreOffi...

As the economy continues to improve, allowing us to feel a sense of hope that the worst is behind us, it's still critical for business owners to make sure they're making smart decisions about technology. After all, if the recession taught us anything, it's that we must be cognizant of cash flow, and...

The Linux OS has a number of nimble apps that take the hassle out of getting photo images and documents from a flatbed scanner to a hard drive or USB storage device. Two worthy examples reviewed in Linux Picks are Xsane and Simple Scan. While these and other scanner apps do a good job of creating fa...

Mobile malware may grow as a security threat this year, but security researcher Ralf-Philipp Weinmann says there's a worse threat lurking around -- the GSM baseband system. The threat from hacking GSM baseband systems has been largely ignored, Weinmann reportedly told the audience at a presentation ...

Google announced Tuesday that its Chrome browser will stop supporting the H.264 codec in a couple of months and will support its own WebM and Ogg Theora technologies instead. The announcement set off a firestorm. Some contended the move is a step backward for openness; others speculated that it migh...

CPTN, a consortium set up by Microsoft, Apple, Oracle and EMC to acquire hundreds of Novell patents, appears to have inadvertently faked out the open source community by withdrawing its proposal from the German Federal Cartel Office. News reports on Tuesday noted the event and alluded to possible su...

One key area of frustration for newcomers to the Linux OS is using document scanners. Most hardware makers do not provide Linux drivers on discs that accompany their scanner models. So Linux users have to struggle to find solutions on distro-specific help forums. Linux does not support the TWAIN-com...

Remember the holographic message Princess Leia sent asking Obi Wan Kenobi for help in the movie "Star Wars"" That's apparently what Android 3.0, code-named "Honeycomb," will make mobile communications seem like. "There will be heavy use of 3D-like interfaces throughout to create the impression of a ...

Forget the notebook, the netbook or the laptop; this is going to be the year of the tablet. Corporations from Salesforce.com to Mercedes-Benz and JPMorgan Chase have started equipping their executives with iPads. Meanwhile, a slew of new Android and Windows tablets have been taking the spotlight at ...

The concept of reading literature -- except for technical documentation -- on a computer screen has come a long way in the last few years. No doubt the growing popularity of EBRs, or electronic-book readers such as the Amazon Kindle and the Barnes & Noble Nook are having a big impact on our read...

Modern data centers with large number of Linux servers and heavy use of virtualization often don't have the tools they need to handle system version control and modeling. "Twenty years ago, most companies had tens of servers to manage," said Erik Troan, founder and chief technology officer of rPath....

One of my biggest concerns when I adopted the Linux OS over Microsoft Windows was Linux's ability to supply me with a robust presentation program. I did lots of lecturing and instructional seminars. Those activities required a product that closely mimicked Microsoft PowerPoint quality. The resulting...