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The Contiki operating system allows tiny wireless battery-operated devices to communicate using IPv6 - a concept known as the Internet of Things. The Contiki team has just released Contiki 2.5, which brings ContikiRPL, the new default low-power IPv6 routing protocol, and ContikiMAC, which allows nodes to keep their radios off more than 99% of the time yet communicate with each other using wireless multi-hop networking. The Contiki Wiki has more information on Contiki.

"At the beginning of this year, the Plasma team was itching to extend Plasma's coverage of the device spectrum. We already had Desktop and Netbook interfaces, and while maintaining and incrementally improving those, we wanted to show case the possibilities of Plasma by creating a full fledged touch interface for devices."

I thought OSNews would be a good forum to talk about a matter that has been weighing on my mind lately primarily because the site has been so focused on Apple's patents and litigation as of late. The news that HP, the largest PC manufacturer in the world is spinning off or getting out of this business is what really prompted me to write this article.

Fedora 16 Alpha is released today, featuring GNOME 3.1.4 with a unified input indicator for keyboard layouts and input methods, KDE 4.7, GRUB 2 on new installations (with GPT disk labels) and several other major changes. You can download it now. Remember to read the important information in the release notes and common bugs page.

Google has finally acknowledged that its characterization of Android as open source is false and, in the end, this can only make the mobile platform stronger, InfoWorld's Galen Gruman argues. 'It's hard for believers to accept that open source brings with it difficulties, but look at the consistent failure of the other open source mobile platforms -- Moblin, Maemo, and MeeGo -- that all devolved into grad-student-like thought experiments and personal pet projects. Users don't want that, and ultimately products are sold to users.' Instead, Google has been quietly taking parts of Android back in house to develop them purposefully and deeply, and as Google has asserted more control over Android, it's improved.

InfoWorld's Neil McAllister questions whether slowing product development, legal woes, and rising bureaucracy will signal trying times ahead for Google. "With Google's rapid growth have come new challenges. It faces intense competition in all of its major markets, even as it enters new ones. Its newer initiatives have often struggled to reach profitability. It must answer multiple ongoing legal challenges, to say nothing of antitrust probes in the United States and Europe. Privacy advocates accuse it of running roughshod over individual rights. As a result, it's becoming more cautious and risk-averse. But worst of all, as it grows ever larger and more cumbersome, it may be losing its appeal to the highly educated, impassioned workers that power its internal knowledge economy." Note from Thom: Are Apple's Microsoft's Google's days behind it? I don't think you can call yourself a technology giant without a ' is dying'-article.