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Now that Google's wildly popular Google Reader has been switched off for good, what's everybody to do? Google Reader was popular for a reason: It was fast, and it allowed news fans to rapidly assimilate news, synced cross-device, using a super-efficient visual RSS headline-only scan. The lack of lof...

BoxTone's enterprise mobility management platform is designed to bring Android security up to levels better-suited to the rigors of the business workforce, but in making Android enterprise-hardened, the company left Android's open source trappings intact. As part of that EMM platform, BoxTone delive...

The latest release of Linux Mint 15, nicknamed "Olivia," tries really hard to reach new design goals but is marred by a series of petty flaws. The latest rendition of Linux Mint's flagship desktop environment, Cinnamon 1.8, is ambitious but immature in its execution. If you choose the new MATE 1.6 d...

In a world of mostly proprietary video platform developers, success for an open source startup requires very sharp cutting-edge technology. For Kaltura, part of the secret has been making sure that competitive edge is never dulled by settling for being just good enough. The company's management phil...

Music management programs for Linux often leave me wanting more -- more flexibility, more file type options, more friendliness towards large song collections, etc. Guayadeque, on the other hand, is a music player that proves that less can be more. Guayadeque is light on system resources but still ma...

Big Data and open source software may be the next great unholy alliance in computing's current promised land, but open source is a broken business model that needs a better vehicle for supporting projects such as programming suites that build database applications. So argues Chris Wensel, founder an...

Online gaming service Steam announced on Monday that the popular shooter, puzzle-solving hybrid action game Portal has officially been released on the Linux platform. The game had been available on the open source operating system in beta form since early May, but this week Portal was declared stabl...

SolydXK is a Debian-based Linux distribution that offers a choice of two desktops: Xfce and KDE. It is a very new Linux OS, but do not push this new kid aside assuming stability and performance need a lot of maturing. In fact, SolydXK is already a solid and very impressive distro. It has more polish...

Does it make good business sense to migrate corporate database software from costly proprietary platforms to free open source solutions or low-cost commercial open source replacements? The answer is a no-brainer, said EnterpriseDB CEO Ed Boyajian. Founded in 2004, EnterpriseDB began on a quest to di...

After a hiatus of more than two years, the developers of Debian last month released a major upgrade. That surely came as good news to fans of this granddaddy Linux OS, but the new Debian 7 "Wheezy" may not be worth the wait if you are happily using more popular Linux options. I feel somewhat like a ...

A thin line between traditional IT monitoring and management services and monitoring real-time operations divides what Zenoss offers its customers and what other vendors provide. The IT monitoring space is becoming more crowded with proprietary and open source software solutions. Zenoss offers a uni...

Like Carrie, whose hand emerged from the grave to grab Sue by the ankle in Sue's nightmare, SCO has reemerged from its grave to revive its lawsuit against IBM, 10 years after the case was first filed. A court has granted SCO's motion for reconsideration and reopening the case. The case had several t...

The Great Little Radio Player is a perfect example of how great things can come in small packages. This robust Internet radio station streamer does not burden system resources and packs a powerhouse of listening pleasure immediately after installing it. It's so fine-tuned that it needs no configurin...

Open source software is a passion for some and a business for others. Daniel Robbins was driven by a need to make Linux better than he found it. Robbins created two Linux distros: Gentoo and Funtoo. He created Gentoo Linux during his time as a systems administrator at the University of New Mexico. F...

If there's one app that has been synonymous with an innovative, high-quality Twitter experience in the Android environment, it's Joaquim Verges' paid Falcon Pro. One of the killer features in Falcon Pro is its ability to live-stream a Twitter timeline. With a 2-minute synchronize refresh rate, Fal...