Archive

Cheese is a nifty little application that makes it easy to use your computer's built-in -- or plugged-in -- webcam to take photos and videos. Given today's penchant for populating social media with photo journals, Cheese can be one of your must-have Linux tools. This handy webcam app brings to your ...

The blind hatred of Free Software Foundation President Richard Stallman toward proprietary programs is such that he has given speeches in which he advocated for software piracy. Stallman wrote this the day after Steve Jobs died: "As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor D...

Ubuntu is already the leading Linux distribution on desktop PCs, according to DistroWatch, and now it's set its sights on tablets, smartphones and even TVs as well. Calling the move "probably the most significant broadening of scope in Ubuntu's history," Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth told re...

I've long held the opinion that the most effective way to get Internet-based content onto a TV is to simply hook a laptop up to the flat screen with an HDMI cable. The laptop acts as an oversized remote control. You get a full Flash-based Web browser, hard drive and keyboard on your TV. It's not the...

The passing of Steve Jobs earlier this month triggered reactions that spanned the gamut -- from expressions of appreciation and sober reflection to some tasteless extremes of zealotry from a subset of the open source community. We can learn a lot from Steve Jobs, even if we ultimately have different...

Microsoft has signed an agreement with Compal Electronics granting the device maker coverage under Microsoft's patent portfolio for its tablets, mobile phones, e-readers and other consumer devices running Android or Chrome.The deal comes hard on the heels of similar arrangements made with Wistron a...

Verizon Wireless has disabled the bootloader unlock feature in the software on the Droid Razr, the Android smartphone that Motorola unveiled last week. Motorola had shipped the Droid Razr with a bootloader that can be unlocked and relocked, company spokesperson Becki Leonard told LinuxInsider. "Whet...

Anyone who's gone through the painful task of buying a new smartphone knows that the process of re-installing apps and getting the phone configured just-so is a major job. While the Android Market does keep a list of your apps in its library, automatic syncing is hit-or-miss. You can manually send e...

Google unveiled Android 4.0, aka "Ice Cream Sandwich," in Hong Kong on Wednesday. The presentation was accompanied by Samsung's announcement of the Galaxy Nexus, the first smartphone running Ice Cream Sandwich. Ice Cream Sandwich is a redesign of the Android OS. It has a highly visual interface, a f...

How many times have you accidentally deleted a photo you really needed from a digital camera or attached storage medium? We've all been there and done that! Sure, if you delete most files -- even some standard graphics images -- from the hard drive, the Linux trash can visibly holds the goods. But ...

The Kindle Fire, the Android-based tablet Amazon revealed in late September, could well be the next step in the ongoing metamorphosis of Google's Linux derivative into a proprietary operating system. Even if Amazon does not lock down its altered Android platform, it clearly has created a major fork ...

Quanta Computer has agreed to pay Microsoft a license fee for devices that run Google Android or Chrome. It is the latest deal in a series that Microsoft has inked with manufacturers using Android, and more lately, Chrome, in their products. Other notable wins for Microsoft have been Samsung and HTC...

My first experience with trying to consume news on-the-go was back in the eighties using the original CompuServe text-based online service -- the first commercial online service. The process generally involved trying to connect a laptop to the hotel phone system through a combination of alligator ...

The proliferation of smartphones has created headaches for security-minded IT departments everywhere, but a Motorola subsidiary aims to give system administrators more peace of mind with a solution for managing Android phones in business environments. Three Laws Mobility, purchased by Motorola eight...

Canonical will release its upgrade to Ubuntu 11.10 on Oct. 13. If you suffered through version 11.04 in hopes that something better would arrive in 11.10, you suffered in vain. For the typical user, very little of anything new is bundled into this latest Ubuntu upgrade. To be honest, my early hands-...