Archive

Imagine going out to do your shopping errands in a world devoid of standards. What would that be like? Without standard sizes, something as routine as buying clothes would be an exercise in frustration. Finding a replacement bulb or buying tires for your car would require unique parts made only by t...

At first glance, French Mozillux may look a lot like LXDE-based Lubuntu Linux. Don't be fooled. This year-old Linux distro, which targets both beginners and intermediate users, offers a surprisingly comprehensive selection of installed software for users with a wide range of interests. It's easily a...

If you've used any of the free tracking apps -- like Google's My Tracks, which records your path, speed, distance and elevation change while you exercise and then maps the route, charts elevation and speed, and tots it all up in a set of statistics -- you'll understand the concept behind Runtastic P...

The Linux desktop has an impressive list of good music playing apps, so choosing a favorite title is a difficult task. The decision almost always comes down to personal taste rather than feature sets or GUI. Exaile ranks high on my player list for what it does not have. It spares me having to traips...

Google has refreshed its music app. It's a big deal, because Google has introduced custom radio and an a la carte music streaming service, All Access, for an introductory price that's $2.00 cheaper than a la carte streaming leader Spotify. Fee-based Spotify, Rdio and now Google Play Music All Access...

Midnight Commander is one of those original computing tools that keeps getting better with age. It may be old school, but its file managing capabilities keep it at the head of its class. Midnight Commander is a text-mode file manager that runs in a terminal. It uses a two-panel interface and a subsh...

Graphs are everywhere. You find them on websites adding social capabilities. Telecommunications companies use graphs to personalize customer services. Innovative bioinformatics researchers, and other organizations are adopting graph databases to model and query connected data. Neo Technology has pio...

Life is like a roller coaster, as the popular saying goes, filled with both ups and downs. Here in the Linux blogosphere we've certainly experienced our share of downs in recent months -- thanks in large part to a frustrating spate of FUD -- but lately the clouds have parted and the sun is shining o...

I often run into issues playing video media on mobile devices. It's been something that has haunted me since the days of Windows Mobile on the Palm Treo -- remember those early smartphones? Believe it or not, it's still an issue years later with current tablets and smartphones. The problems that I'v...

Hybrid cloud technology is garnering much attention of late -- whether for cutting-edge development and the continuous integration and release processes achieved through devops, or for traditional enterprise-proven approaches to infrastructure and applications. There's more to hybrid clouds than hyp...

Gnome-Pie could be one of the best user interfaces for accessing menus on any Linux desktop. It is a radial visual application that keeps your hands on the keyboard or the mouse to quickly launch any application. Launching frequently used programs could not be easier or more fun. Gnome-Pie brings fu...

Jason Huggins took Web browser and website testing to new levels. Pushed by several Aha! moments, he recognized a pressing need for automation in applications testing. He also discovered that no existing proprietary software provided cross-platform features. What did not exist in a marketable box, H...

My first question to the desk clerk at a hotel in a strange country is no longer, "What time does the restaurant close?" It's more often, "Where I can get a SIM card?" $2-a-minute voice and $10-a-megabyte Internet roaming in many parts of the world make acquiring a local card a must. I recently had ...

The latest release of Canonical's Ubuntu Linux distro, version 13.04, or Raring Ringtail, comes with a big yawn factor. I get a growing sense that the company's rejections of users' criticisms of Ubuntu's native Unity desktop portray Canonical as Microsoft in a penguin suit. Regular Ubuntu users of ...

Luke Kanies has a passion for the Puppet language he created. He always wanted to start a software company with Puppet as its foundation. The problem he faced was how to make the open source model support his software innovation without getting lost in the process. After eight years as founder and C...