Monthly Archive:: November 2009

An effort is currently under way to port the Firefox web browser to the Amiga operating system. This effort goes by the name Project Timberworlf, and is the latest in a long line of efforts to port Firefox to alternative operating systems. This raises the question: is Firefox really suited for these small platforms?

Google has opened up its gallery for developers to share Chrome extensions, a step that soon should make it easier for people to customize the open-source browser. Aaron Boodman, a leader of the Chrome extensions effort, announced the move on a mailing list posting Monday, and programmer and "gallery master" Lei Zheng shared details in a blog post. So far, only uploads are permitted. Google plans to let some testers use the gallery to download extensions, too "in the next few days," Zheng said. "We are making the upload flow available early to make sure that developers have the time to publish their extensions ahead of our full launch."

KOffice 2.1 has been released. "This release is a marked improvement of almost all parts of KOffice compared to 2.0. Version 2.0 was labeled a 'platform release', which was meant as a first preview of the framework and new UI paradigm. In version 2.1, most applications and components have improved significantly but should still only be used by early adopters and probably not as the primary worktool."

During Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference the company's President of Server and Tools, Bob Muglia, and Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie talked to a select group of reporters and bloggers about a variety of topics - including Silverlight.

The GNOME Journal team has published issue 17 of the GNOME Journal, titled "Women In Open Source". This is their first issue with a unified theme, and with all articles written by women from the open source community. The idea and execution of this issue was created by the GNOME Women community. It comes packed with articles about GNOME and its underlying frameworks.

Database security is the single biggest concern with today's Web-based applications. Without control, you risk exposing sensitive information about your company or, worse yet, your valuable customers. In this article, learn about security measures you can take to protect your PostgreSQL database. Be sure to download the sample code listings used in this article.

The Opera team has released version 10.10 of their feature-rich browser. This is the first Opera release to come with Opera Unite, which combines the web browser with a web server, so that users can share data directly between one another, without the need for a third party.

Phoronix has a done a set of benchmarks with the Fedora 12 Intel driver and concluded that it performs better than previous releases of Fedora. "Compared to Fedora 11 especially, Fedora 12 offers much-improved Intel Linux graphics. Besides just the frame-rates being better, when using Fedora 12 we have encountered less problems with kernel mode-setting and quirks with different hardware configurations. In fact, the Intel experience is quite pleasant atop Fedora 12. This is good news for those running Fedora 12 now and should be even better news for those that will receive these updated packages in their distributions next year."

Apple is usually quite the secretive company, revealing little of itself or its practices. With the App Store under heavy criticism, the company felt it needed to break the silence, and as such, Apple's senior vice-president for worldwide product marketing, Phil Schiller defended the company's App Store policies.

"So you like Apple's fancy Magic Mouse? It's a beautiful piece of engineering with an insane price tag of $70. Problem is, even at $70, it only works on Macs leaving Windows users in the dust. But thanks to a hidden update here is how you get this little guy to work in Windows XP (32 bit) to Windows 7."

It is no secret that Microsoft is doing whatever it can to eat away at Google's immense market share of the search market, with Bing being its most ambitious effort yet. Well, it seems the battle just got a whole lot dirtier, as The Financial Times has uncovered news that Microsoft has approached several news content providers, offering them money if they "de-index" their sites from Google.

A few weeks ago I explained that because Palm is still not selling the Palm Pre here in The Netherlands, I decided to buy an iPhone 3GS. Well, we're a few weeks down the line now, so let's review the darn thing.

A new version of the learning tool OS MikeOS is available, sporting a new BASIC interpreter with 24 instructions. You can run BASIC code from inside the text editor by pressing F8. See the App Developer Handbook for a guide to the BASIC dialect (somewhat similar to old 8-bit BASICs, nostalgia fans), and the User Handbook for info on running MikeOS from a USB key, floppy or CD.

German website Heise Online has received confirmation that IBM is terminating its Cell processor line. This means that no future development will take place, making the PoweXCell 8i the last Cell processor. Parts of the Cell project will still make it into future processor designs, however.