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It may not seem obvious at first, but the tragic earthquake in Haiti, the historic election that put a Massachusetts Republican in the U.S. Senate and the 2010 Super Bowl all have something in common: the smartphone. During each event, billions of consumers around the globe were glued to their phone...

When the Symbian Foundation announced the opening up of its namesake smartphone platform on Thursday, it caused a major shift not just in the mobile landscape but also in the FOSS world. Announced by Nokia back in 2008, the transition of the leading platform from proprietary code to open source was ...

Few, if any, photo viewing apps on any platform provide a perfect photo management experience. However, F-Spot Photo Management for Gnome gives Linux users a fairly complete set of photo tools. F-Spot ranks among the most well-known photo apps for Linux. In many ways it is similar to Google's repack...

Fresh off the introduction of its Nexus One smartphone, hailed by some tech analysts as the first real iPhone killer candidate, Google has debuted mockups of a possible tablet device running its yet-to-be released open source Chrome OS. The mockups, posted on Google's Chromium Web site, depict a dev...

Positioned somewhere between the smartphone and the laptop, Apple's new tablet is billed as "the best way to experience the Web, email, photos and videos." While the Macintosh, Windows and Linux platforms all compete to varying degrees on PCs, netbooks and smartphones, the iPad currently stands more...

What is Red Hat up to with its launch this week of the opensource.com Web page? This replaces the "Truth Happens" page which ran articles and videos on open source, intellectual property, transparency and other issues. "Opensource.com is now the place to go to find out about how open source principl...

Screenlets bring a collection of fun things and useful apps to add functional eye candy to the Linux desktop with little or no resource drain on the computer. Windows and Mac machines have their widgets. Linux has its Screenlets. So you can scratch one more reason from the list of why you shouldn't ...

Linux inched ahead in the operating-system arena during the final month of 2009, even as Windows and Mac gave up some ground. That's according to research firm Net Applications, which recently released its Market Share report covering operating systems in December. Linux accounted for 1.02 percent o...

If you are looking for a superior text editor, your search might just begin and end with a nifty program called "Geany." One of my biggest concerns when I switched from Microsoft Windows to Linux was finding an adequate replacement for my favorite text editor. I use the OpenOffice Writer for printed...

New software from Misys Open Source Solutions promises to provide what could be the world's first fully open source, standards-based platform for exchanging health information. The Misys Connect Exchange software was demonstrated and successfully tested last week in Chicago at IHE Connectathon, the ...

Jaspersoft on Tuesday released its latest offering aimed at helping businesses make sense of the piles of data they accumulate on a regular basis. The new Jaspersoft Enterprise Edition provides organizations with a package of business analytics and reporting functionalities. It announced the availab...

Google's Chrome may be a relatively new entrant in the browser arena, but already it's edged past Apple's long-standing Safari to assume the third-place spot. That's according to market researcher Net Applications, which recently released year-end data indicating that Chrome now accounts for 4.63 pe...

In 2010, application developers will continue to be asked to do more with less. During the global financial meltdown of the past year, the amount of work didn't change while resources were dramatically pared back. The result was that new projects suffered. Talking with application development lead...

Chinese-language consumers unwilling or unable to pay the cost of a legitimate copy of Microsoft's Windows XP now have a new alternative: a clone of the operating system that's based on Ubuntu. Dubbed "Ylmf OS," the software is available from Rain Forest Wind Guangdong Computer Technology as a free ...

Google finally released a beta version of its Chrome Web browser for Linux on Dec. 8, slightly more than one year after releasing its Chrome browser for Microsoft Windows. The wait was worth it, especially given the more than 300 extensions already available to customize the new browser. Because Lin...

With the rumor mill still in overdrive following reports of a new, Google-branded Android phone going on sale directly to consumers as early as Jan. 5, it's not yet clear what effect it may have on the broader cellphone market. Widely referred to as the "Nexus One," the HTC-manufactured phone will l...

Linux and open source middleware JBoss has made its mark in the enterprise, and it is just a matter of time before open source becomes mainstream in other functional parts of the IT infrastructure as well. Where exactly that will happen, however, is the interesting question. With most companies spen...

The Boxee video-on-demand software maker aims to change the way consumers get free movie and TV entertainment from the Internet with its first hardware venture, called "Boxee Box." The open source software company debuted its new hardware device at the Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, N.Y., o...

Everyone makes mistakes now and then; the hard part is admitting it. Yet that seems to be just what Google did on Saturday following its acquisition of AppJet, maker of the EtherPad collaborative word processor. The news first broke last Friday, when it was announced on the EtherPad blog that Google...

After more than 20 years of evangelization by vendors and consultants, many companies are now fully aware of the benefits of business process management and the value of business process management solutions. These benefits include cost reduction through targeting inefficiencies, improvement of proc...