Developers

The LiMo Foundation and the GNOME Foundation on Monday announced that they have begun working together as partners to further open source innovation. Starting immediately, LiMo Foundation will become a member of the GNOME Foundation's advisory board and the GNOME Foundation will become an industry l...

Google on Monday threw open its App Inventor beta program to the public. The tools used in this program let the user create mobile apps for the Android operating system, even if the user has very little programming knowledge. The App Inventor program's tools use a visual programming approach and cod...

By now, you should at least be passingly familiar with Python. One of the fastest-growing languages, Python has been gaining popularity for years and has reached a level of maturity that makes it a top choice for enterprise development. Companies from Microsoft to Google have embraced Python and are...

A group of high-tech firms, led by ARM, Freescale Semiconductor, IBM, Samsung, ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments, have formed a nonprofit organization to promote the use of Linux software on smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices. To that end, the organization, called "Linaro," will develop t...

Google is planning to open an app store for its Chrome browser to make it easier both for users to discover Web applications and for developers to reach a large potential audience. Chrome users who find apps in the Chrome Web Store will be able to create shortcuts in Chrome for easy access, Google s...

Google on Thursday announced WebM, a royalty-free media file format for online video. With WebM, Google has thrown the gauntlet to H.264, the codec backed by rivals Apple and Microsoft, among others. Buried within the new format's FAQ was news about another Google project: Android. The next iteratio...

Garrett Heaton can't speak highly enough of his bank. "USAA is a FANTASTIC bank, and their services and customer service are top-notch," he says -- especially its Deposit@Home feature, which lets users scan checks for immediate deposit into their account. There's just one problem: Heaton, a N.Y.-bas...

The question "Why open source?" really encompasses two questions for the enterprise to consider: "Why use open source software?" and "Why should I develop my software in a community-based, open source way?" Who should care about the answers to these questions? Well, virtually everyone. As of 2008,...

Changes impacting storage are taking place at every layer of the network architecture: Disk drives are continuing on a Moore's law-like cost/capacity curve, yet concurrently we are also seeing the growth of solid-state technology to overcome the inherent performance limitations of mechanical disk; v...

The MeeGo community, formed by Intel and Nokia, on Thursday released the MeeGo distribution infrastructure and operating system base to developers. Images released are Intel Atom-based netbooks; ARM-based Nokia N900; and Intel Atom-based handsets running on the Moorestown chip. The Thursday release ...

The Linux operating system is highly compatible with two hot computing trends: virtualization and cloud computing. Just as the 2001-2002 recession helped usher in Linux as a mainstream solution, virtualization may accelerate Linux usage during and after the current recession. Linux already has a pow...

A new industry group hopes to improve the design and construction of data centers through the application of open source principles. Dubbed the "Open Source Data Center Initiative," the group was formed last week by GreenM3 along with the University of Missouri and ARG Investments. The University is...

After nearly four years of legal battle, a case involving the unauthorized use of open source software last week came to a final conclusion that affirms the legal right of open source developers to collect damages when their code is used improperly. The case of Jacobsen v. Katzer dates back to 2006,...

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...

Google's Nexus One phone is a winner, according to Linus Torvalds, founder of the operating system it's based on. "I generally hate phones," explained Torvalds, who is known as "the father of Linux," in a blog post on Saturday. "At the same time I love the concept of having a phone that runs Linux, ...