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In 2004, KnowledgeTree CEO Daniel Chalef had no idea his interest in developing an open source document management product would thrust his South African company into prominence. That's the time a government agency there approached him to help the Medical Research Council retain control of its docum...

Six months ago, I began a self-imposed experiment to see if I could survive leaving Windows XP behind. After all, despite its flaws and decade-old technology, the aging Microsoft OS had served me well. However, I decided to skip Windows 7 when it comes to town in October. Vista was never worthy of m...

Microsoft has a very clever philosophy that it uses to keep consumers misinformed about the benefits of the Linux operating system. It's a simple message that effectively dissuades consumers from deviating from the Microsoft upgrade path to Windows 7. The argument basically asserts that consumers m...

With Google targeting the netbook with both its Chrome and Android operating systems, which way should developers jump? Should they pick Chrome, the browser that will soon become an OS and is likely to face strong competition from Microsoft and Apple? Or should they go with Android, an OS that has s...

Nine months after launching the Chrome browser, Google on Tuesday announced plans for a Chrome operating system. The new OS will be tailored for netbooks. Google has already lined up several OEM partners, and it plans to put the first products out by mid-2010. Speculation is that Google is targeting...

Microsoft made good Tuesday on a promise it made months ago to the open source community that it would not sue software developers who use its EMCA C# programming language and Common Language Infrastructure, or CLI. This announcement aims to calm growing fears that Microsoft might restrict open sour...

Here's one of the many questions facing device makers targeting the mini notebook and netbook markets: When business users or consumers want to access the Web on the go, will they be willing to set aside a smartphone or cellphone and instead log on using a next-generation PDA? Dell may be wagering t...

Taiwan-based HTC, a fast-rising star in the smartphone manufacturing industry, has unveiled its latest model, the Hero, its third offering based on the Android operating system. The Hero comes with a new user interface called "Sense" that makes use the device almost intuitive. The Hero is the first...

T-Mobile's Tuesday announcement that it will offer a new Android smartphone in August has raised interest in the possibility of greater competition for enterprise adoption. The new Android-powered smartphone, the myTouch 3G, will come loaded with a 3.5-inch touchscreen, a 3.5-megapixel camera and a ...

Wind River on Tuesday announced the availability of a high-performance Type-1 hypervisor as the latest addition to its VxWorks product portfolio. The Wind River Hypervisor Multicore Software Solution for device development supports virtualization on single and multicore processors. The new hyperviso...

Although it's struggling against both giant rivals like Google and smaller ones like Microsoft's new search venture Bing, Yahoo is handing over the source code for its version of Hadoop to the community. Hadoop, a top-level Apache project, is an open source distributed file system and parallel execu...

The Fedora Project on Tuesday announced Fedora 11, the latest version of its free open source operating system. Code named "Leonidas," Fedora 11 takes another whack at virtualization, a technology market in which its sponsor, Red Hat, is working hard to carve out a niche. It also has several feature...

As the most dynamic and commercial industry on Earth -- which has grown its annual revenues from zero to $1 trillion in less than 25 years and today manages 4 billion consumer relationships -- mobile has propelled itself forward with a highly discriminating attitude toward openness within device tec...

Taiwanese computer manufacturer Acer, which seems to be having an on-again, off-again relationship with netbooks running Android, is now reportedly working on one. Jim Wong, the firm's president of IT products, made the announcement Tuesday at Computex Taipei, Asia's largest computer exhibition. The...

Mozilla on Monday announced the first alpha release of its Fennec mobile browser for the Windows Mobile 6 operating system. This alpha is available only on the HTC Touch Pro from Sprint. Versions for other smartphones will be unveiled later. While Microsoft continues to upgrade the sixth version of ...