David Adams Archive

CentOS, with almost 30% of all Linux servers. The Red Hat Enterprise Linux-derived distro is #1 according to Web Technology Surveys.

CIO.com highlights a number of new multimedia features in RIM's new BlackBerry OS, which used to mostly business-focused.

For years, researchers have touted graphene as the magic material for the next generation of high-speed electronics, but so far it hasn't proved practical. Now a new way of making nanoscale strips of carbon--the building block of graphene--could kick-start a shift toward superfast graphene components.

Humane PC and its Humane Reader child are open source hardware projects with some seriously low-cost internal components. At volume the PC could retail for as low as $20, and that's with 2GB of microSD storage, USB / PS/2 plugs, and video out. The PC is primarily designed to output low-res, black and white text to a TV, making it a low cost reader for developing countries, and the Humane Reader project pre-loads the device with thousands of Wikipedia articles (much in the vein of the OpenMoko WikiReader).

Today's commercial-grade programming languages - C++ and Java, in particular - are way too complex and not adequately suited for today's computing environments, Google distinguished engineer Rob Pike argued in a talk at the O'Reilly Open Source Conference. Pike made his case against such "industrial programming languages" during his keynote at the conference in Portland, Oregon.

India's Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal unveiled a touchscreen tablet that he claims they will be able to produce for just $35. The device is being aimed at students, and seems to be taking the One Laptop Per Child idea and running with it. "Despite the price, users will get a touch-screen, a PDF reader and a webcam for video conferencing. There has been no confirmation of its specifications but reports suggest 2GB of memory, Wi-Fi and Ethernet and power consumption at just 2W. Naturally, the device will run Linux."

Just after 3 weeks of the binary compatible vp8 decoder release, the FFMpeg team still impressing us but this time with a new benchmark of their own vp8 decoder. The new ffvp8 decoder written independently using pre-existent FFMpeg code-base is now the fastest vp8 decoder with margins going more than 30% faster than Google's official codec specially on 64bit machines.

The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, announced the GENIVI Alliance (founded by BMW, GM, and others) has chosen MeeGo as the basis of its next reference release for In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI). Also see this blog post.

Early takes on the Technical Preview of Windows Phone 7 are more thumbs up than screw up. But is it too late to sway users?

The Eee Pad, announced at Computex recently, was to be Asus' first foray into the tablet market, running Windows 7 and coming in both a 10 inch and 12 inch versions. The latests rumors, according to German site NetbookNews.de, state the Asus may be dropping Windows 7 in favor of a custom version of Android. With HP dropping their Windows tablet project some months back, and now Asus backing out of their plans, is there any hope for Windows to take hold in the tablet market?

Japanese printer company Brother has invented a battery that can be recharged by shaking it. It's intended for devices like remote controls that use very little power and would normally require infrequent battery charges, so unfortunately you couldn't use it to power a car that could drive forever on a bumpy road.

Long time fans of openSUSE Linux and its commercial big brother, Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, will find a lot to like in this latest update.

Dell has this "highly sophisticated website" telling us "WHICH OPERATING SYSTEM SHOULD I CHOOSE ?" Ubuntu or Windows? Read the site and understand why it is a "highly sophisticated website"

We've been expecting HP to make an official announcement on its rumored webOS tablet since their acquisition of Palm, but have come up with nothing yet. Crave is reporting that we may at least finally have a name for the device after the United States Patent and Trademark Office granted HP a trademark last week. The name? The HP PalmPad. While not entirely original, it's a nice nod to the company which is making the device possible and is at least more descriptive than say the Streak or the (what the hell is a) JooJoo.