Archive

Will FOSS Jump Into the iPad Fray?

Positioned somewhere between the smartphone and the laptop, Apple's new tablet is billed as "the best way to experience the Web, email, photos and videos." While the Macintosh, Windows and Linux platforms all compete to varying degrees on PCs, netbooks and smartphones, the iPad currently stands more...

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

The Web’s Next Layer of Innovation: Q&A With Creative Commons CEO Joi Ito

Web surfers, whether hardcore business professionals or amateur Web site creators, frequently find images online either through search engines or Web page browsing. However, in most cases, these images are not free to use. Maybe the photographer who created the image would be open to selling rights ...

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

The Web’s Next Layer of Innovation: Q&A With Creative Commons CEO Joi Ito

Web surfers, whether hardcore business professionals or amateur Web site creators, frequently find images online either through search engines or Web page browsing. However, in most cases, these images are not free to use. Maybe the photographer who created the image would be open to selling rights ...

There’s Something About Droid

Verizon Wireless is stoking the excitement around its upcoming Motorola Droid smartphone, which it will officially put on sale on Friday. The buzz on the Droid isn't driven entirely by a marketing team, though. The phone's hardware has received many positive reviews, and it will be the first phone t...

Adobe Bulks Up Open Source Street Creds

Adobe has released two new platform initiatives for developers and content publishers: Open Source Media Framework, previously part of the Strobe project, gives developers new open source tools to build media players based on the Adobe Flash Platform; Text Layout Framework, or TLF, provides develope...

Where Does Android Stop and Chrome Begin?

With Google targeting the netbook with both its Chrome and Android operating systems, which way should developers jump? Should they pick Chrome, the browser that will soon become an OS and is likely to face strong competition from Microsoft and Apple? Or should they go with Android, an OS that has s...

The Business Case for Virtual Business, Part 2

There's no doubt some companies have succeeded in using virtual worlds for branding and interaction with their customers, whether through in-world stores, billboards or other means. Wells Fargo, for instance, has been operating its Stagecoach Island aimed at young customers for roughly four years an...

The Long March of Androids to the Enterprise

T-Mobile's Tuesday announcement that it will offer a new Android smartphone in August has raised interest in the possibility of greater competition for enterprise adoption. The new Android-powered smartphone, the myTouch 3G, will come loaded with a 3.5-inch touchscreen, a 3.5-megapixel camera and a ...

SUCCESS STORY

SourceForge Grows Up – and Out

SourceForge, a media services and e-commerce company that provides open source software downloads and development, is enjoying the best of both business worlds. It is one of the largest open source software repositories -- the SourceForge Web site has more than 30 million unique visitors per month -...

Yahoo’s Hadoop to Run Free in the Wild

Although it's struggling against both giant rivals like Google and smaller ones like Microsoft's new search venture Bing, Yahoo is handing over the source code for its version of Hadoop to the community. Hadoop, a top-level Apache project, is an open source distributed file system and parallel execu...

Linux Foundation Forges Deal, Takes the Wheel at Linux.com

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...

TECHNOLOGY LAW CORNER

The Rocky Legal Landscape of Virtual Worlds, Part 2: Patents

A patent represents a grant from the United States government to an individual for the exclusive right to make, use, import, sell, and offer to sell an invention. In order to obtain a patent, an inventor must prove that the invention is new, useful, and not merely an obvious improvement over what wa...

Google Bares Android’s Soul

As promised, search engine giant Google has released the source code for its Android platform -- the open source technology that Google hopes will be adopted by mobile application developers, phone makers and carriers alike. The move comes just a day before the first Android-powered smartphone -- th...

OPINION

Free Software Shouldn’t Mean You Can’t Make a Buck

Richard Stallman, the founder of the GNU Project, speaks at great lengths about preserving the ideological purity of free software, and in his vision of the future, computer software development is modeled after mathematics and science research, where all research and development is open. So far as ...

Will HTC and T-Mobile Get Android’s Gears Spinning?

T-Mobile may be partnering with cell phone handset manufacturer HTC to deliver the first smartphone running Google's Android platform, according to reports. Unnamed sources briefed on T-Mobile's plans have said the carrier could announce the phone as early as September -- and would almost certainly ...

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