Monthly Archive:: July 2010

Real-Time apps have been popularized by social-notification tools like Twitter and Friendfeed. With a Real-Time web app you can get website information as soon as it's published. Learn techniques that allow you to create responsive, continually updated web applications that conserve server resources while providing a slick user experience using jQuery, XMPP and PHP.

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.

While browsing through dealextreme.com, a popular online shop for electronic products here in Asia, I was really surprised to see several iPad-like tablet computers that are sold for as low as $99 (US). Another surprising thing is that they are all powered by Android.

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).

Wind River Linux Secure, a secure embedded Linux, is in evaluation by the National Information Assurance Partnership (NIAP) to be certified to Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level 4+ (EAL4+), conforming to the General Purpose Operating System Protection Profile. Upon certification completion to Common Criteria EAL4+, Wind River Linux Secure is expected to be the first commercial embedded Linux operating system accepted by NIAP.

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."

Blogger Kevin Bowling takes a look at the never-ending stream of benchmarks from Phoronix, with various Linux distros pitted against each other and even different operating systems, and he wonders, are they bullshit? . Case in point, this Debian vs FreeBSD benchmark that was submitted to OSNews yesterday.

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.

"As a long-time fan of GeoWorks Ensemble (now Breadbox Ensemble), a DOS based graphical user interface and office suite popular in the 80s, I've run it under a variety of operating systems and emulators over the years. You see, Ensemble requires an underlying operating system to provide a DOS compatible file system, not unlike early versions of Windows that required DOS. With the release of eComStation 2.0 I thought I'd revisit the challenge of getting Breadbox Ensemble running under OS/2 again but to add a further twist, since I didn't want to do this on a dedicated machine, I chose to see if I could get things running under VirtualBox."

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.