Monthly Archive:: May 2010

Pavel Heimlich has announced the release of an updated version of Korona 4.4.3: "Korona is the live DVD adding KDE4 packages on top of OpenSolaris. It is intended to be the showcase of the current state of the kde-solaris project, definitely not a distribution for any serious use."

"Today we are announcing the project release of MeeGo v1.0. This release provides developers with a stable core foundation for application development and a rich user experience for Netbooks. The MeeGo Netbook user experience is the first to appear, with the development of the MeeGo Handset user experience moving to the open in June."

Now this is a subject I've been tiptoeing around for a while now, not entirely sure what to do with it: the suicides at Chinese electronics manufacturer Foxconn. Instead of acting all morally smug and superior from my comfortable rural home in one of the richest countries in the world, I want to talk about two things journalists and bloggers should really stop focusing on when writing about this story: Apple, and the suicides. Wait, what?

Looking at the past few week of Google news, you'll be forgiven for thinking Google doesn't do anything else beyond making Android. While there's sexier stuff going on within Google, the company is also still trying to improve its core user service: search. They've launched encrypted search today, and it will be rolled out across the world in the coming days.

"Today, I'm happy to announce that Google Chrome for Mac is being promoted out of beta to our stable channel. We believe that it provides not only the stability, performance and polish that every Mac user expects, but also a seamless native Mac application experience that Mac users will feel instantly at home with." Update: The Linux version is out too.

"It's game time for Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive. Microsoft disclosed a series of management changes on Tuesday that will alter the shape of its business unit responsible for products like the Zune music player, Xbox gaming console and phones. Most notably, Robbie Bach, the current head of the entertainment and devices group, will retire from Microsoft after 22 years at the company. As a result, Mr. Ballmer will take a more hands-on role in Microsoft's gadgets and games by having various division heads report directly to him." Maybe we'll finally see an Xbox that doesn't sound like a tornado. I recently finally got the opportunity to fiddle around with a PlayStation 3 (the big one), and by god, the Xbox is a joke, construction-wise, compared to Sony's beast.

It's Fedora release day! The Fedora project has pushed out version 13 of its cutting-edge Linux distribution. There's a whole boatload of improvements, some of which come from the wider Free software ecosystem, but of course, there's also a lot Fedora/Red Hat-specific stuff.

Over at Daringfireball this past weekend, John Gruber put words to what many people are thinking about after Google's rush of Android announcements and not-subtle Apple-bashing at this week's I/O conference: "all-out war." I agree with Gruber that a good old-fashioned bitter rivalry could be a great thing for the computing world, and for smartphone/handheld fans in particular.

InfoWorld's Neil McAllister takes on the old saw that open source doesn't innovate, highlighting seven innovative new ideas in software that you may be able to buy from proprietary vendors some day, but that you can only get for free from the open source community today. "Proprietary software vendors would have you believe that the open source movement has produced nothing but knockoffs of existing products and cast-off code that couldn't cut it in the free market," McAllister writes, "The open source movement remains a font of innovation to this day, and not just in the commercial sector. Numerous projects founded by universities, loosely knit communities, and individuals are exploring areas yet to be taken on by mainstream, proprietary software products."

"Back in February, Microsoft released public specifications for PST files, the databases used by Outlook for storing and archiving e-mail. To these specifications, Microsoft has now added a pair of developer-oriented open source projects: the PST Data Structure View Tool for cracking open PSTs to browse inside them, and the PST File Format SDK, a cross-platform C++ library for working with PST files programmatically."

So, we've talked a lot about Android last week due to Google's I/O conference, but what about the other guys competing in this field? Research In Motion, the Canadian smartphone maker, is hard at work developing version 6.0 of the BlackBerry operating system, and if a video of a pre-release build is any indication, they've still got some work to do.

Nero AG, a company with one of the most fitting names ever (can you imagine a company called Hitler or Stalin 2000 years from now?), has filed an anti-trust lawsuit against the MPEG-LA. The German technology company claims the licensing body has abused its monopoly power, and that is has not honoured agreements made with the US Department of Justice. There's some juicy stuff in here.

"10 November 1972: CERN's Bent Stumpe places an order for 12 bowling balls for a total cost of 95 US dollars. Although not evident at first sight, he is buying the heart of some of the first tracking devices to be used in the SPS control room. Today, Bent Stumpe's device would be called a desktop mouse..."

Now that Google has opened up VP8, the big question is obviously how it'll hold up to H264. Of course, VP8 already wins by default because it's open source and royalty free, but that doesn't mean we should neglect the quality issue. Jan Ozer from StreamingMedia.com has put up an article comparing the two codecs, and concludes that the differences are negligible - in fact, only in some high-motion videos did H264 win out. As always, this is just one comparison and most certainly anything but conclusive. Update: Another comparison. I can't spot the difference, but then again, I'm no expert.