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Unless you are an atypical Linux user, you tend to accept the default apps featured in your distro of choice. After all, if what you use works just fine, why scavenge around for a replacement? If saying yes to that question means you miss out on adding the Listen audio player to your desktop tools, ...

The TEA Text Editor is a very handy writing tool that delivers a much different user interface. For most computer users cranking out words or program code for digital consumption, text editors are often preferable to feature-bloated word processors. TEA pours on features yet keeps from getting too s...

Linux provides more than one way to listen to music collections. The bare-bones solution is to click on a music file from within a file manager app. The high-end approach is to playback music with Amarok. Amarok is a sound-system-independent audio player with a flexible interface that uses a browser...

Cloud computing describes an Internet-based computing infrastructure that has abstracted users and user applications from the underlying computing resources that support them. In concept, cloud computing is functionally different from previous IT architectures in that users no longer need to own, ha...

On Oct. 30, Verizon Wireless is widely expected to launch the Motorola Droid, its entry into the Android smartphone market. It's ramping up to the event by kicking off an ad campaign that appears to put the Apple iPhone firmly in the crosshairs. Although Verizon hasn't officially announced details o...

Nokia on Thursday announced the N900 smartphone, a mobile device running the Linux-based Maemo operating system that the company typically uses for its tablets. The device runs a Mozilla-based browser and offers still and video photography, an FM radio and 3.5G and WLAN connectivity. Maemo is the op...

It appears that Wikipedia's reputation as the Internet's open source encyclopedia -- where any and all can contribute -- may itself be in need of some editing. Media reports quote a spokesperson for the Wikimedia Foundation, which manages the user-generated site, as saying that the English-language ...

A long time ago -- meaning, of course, three or four years in Internet time -- wikis came to represent the best of the true democratic, user-generated nature of the Web. The collaborative writing/editing of a wiki meant that all voices could be heard, but majority rule would prevail. This segment's ...

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...

The Web 2.0 revolution has spawned hundreds of cover stories, thousands of companies, and millions of words of hype. But there's one thing it hasn't brought: Profits. With the coming of the credit crunch and the global recession, hype won't pay the bills. That's why the next wave of Web 2.0 will be ...

The traditional process for sourcing creative work contains significant risk for the buyer along with the potential for wonderful reward in the form of great design. The typical risks are threefold: first, finding and working with the right designer for your project; second, the inherent limitations...

A quiet battle of sorts is taking place behind the scenes in the software industry. Software as a Service and cloud computing have evolved, placing much more attention on Web-based applications. This greater focus has also raised expectations for the services delivered via Web 2.0. The open source s...

British residents are finding that access has been restricted to a Wikipedia page about "Virgin Killer," an album by the 1970s German rock group Scorpions. Several British Internet service providers have limited access to the page because it displays an image of the album's cover, which depicts a nu...

Computers have become more complex in recent years as demands on systems have continued to increase in size due to the amount of external devices, software, hardware and communication components. Technical professionals are depending more and more on the Internet, a blog or a peer whenever they need...

The power of community is grossly underestimated in this country. Current collaborative trends on the Internet, from Web 2.0 to Wikipedia models, are seen as merely social or arguably informative in nature. That's a bit like saying the U.S. Constitution, another collaborative work, is a fetching fli...