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One of the bolder goals Intel set at IDF this week is that within a decade it wants ship 1 billion Intel-based mobile computing devices each year. That's a big bet when you consider Intel estimates there will be a total of 163 million notebooks shipped this year. Notebooks have been coming on strong, but the Atom processor for smaller devices is also a key part of this strategy. In a session on Atom, Intel executives discussed the performance of the current Atom processor and its Menlow platform, and gave us a peek at its successor, Moorestown, scheduled to ship next year. Menlow consists of the Atom processor and a system controller that combines the functions of the north and...
This week, Microsoft renewed their union with Novell, to the tune of an additional 100 million dollars in commitment to buy more SUSE Linux support certificates that it can sell to its customers. Dang, Ballmer, for that kind of cash, you can get your vows renewed in Vegas, with the REAL Elvis. I'm not even going to mention what kind of a group package you can get at the Mustang Ranch. Although this might be considered a minority and controversial opinion on this particular relationship as an Open Source advocate, I happen to feel that the Novell and Microsoft alliance is a good thing. Having these two work together to improve interoperability between Linux and Microsoft's systems is potentially...
An anonymous reader writes "In an online survey, 42 percent of Internet users admitted to logging into other people's email and social networking accounts without their knowledge. The poll doesn't ask if passwords were found, granted, or stolen — which would make for further interesting results. The write-up summarizing the results defines the respondents as part of an "educated tech-readership" and questions the ethics of logging onto someone else's account, and whether those differ depending on the person and relationship."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Guest editorial by Emma McGrattan In the current economic climate, businesses of every size are looking to reduce their spending wherever possible. Open source software, which has no upfront licensing fees, is one way of achieving significant savings. However, in order to protect their enormous revenue streams, large software corporations have invested millions in spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) about the security of open source software. In this post, I will examine and debunk five commonly held myths about open source security and why large corporations are promoting a "fear factor" mentality around open source software. Myth 1 - Providing access to the source code makes open source vulnerable A common misunderstanding is that open source software is more...
Lucas123 writes "With gas prices 30% higher this summer over last, telecommuting is back on everyone's radar. According to a Computerworld story, however, IT and telecommuting don't have a great record of success. For example, citing negative impacts on productivity, HP ended its telecommuting policy for hundreds of workers two years ago, and this year, Intel began requiring more than half the teleworkers in its IT group to report to the office at least four days a week. So before leaping, some questions you should ask as a manager if you're considering telework include: How will you define and measure performance? Will creativity suffer? What about employees stuck in the office?"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Now that the Palm Treo Pro is official we will soon start seeing reviews posted on this latest device. I should be getting an evaluation unit tomorrow or Friday, but we are limited in what can be posted until a future date. Engadget Mobile received their evaluation model already and posted some unboxing pics for your enjoyment. As you can see the retail box is much like the Apple iPhone and even the device has a bit of the iPhone look to it.
Yahoo’s online photo sharing site Flickr showed off its upgraded slideshow Wednesday. It’s just like the old slideshow, but this one plays video seamlessly with your still photographs and can be embedded into HTML pages.
The slideshow can be launched from pretty much any page from the self-titled link. Embed or link to the slideshow and video from the Share link. The ability to upload and share video is limited to Flickr Pro users. Embedding the slideshow also requires viewers to have Flash installed, which isn’t much of a roadblock for desktop browsers these days. Mobile browsers don’t benefit, though.
The other embeddable slideshow option available is Picasa Web Albums’. Picasa Web Albums is the web version of Google’s Picasa image editor/manager. Poor Picasa Web Albums. Its embeddable slideshow function was one of its only advantages over Flickr. Now Flickr has it and has included video display too? Flickr’s new slideshow not only blows away Picasa Web Albums (again), it’s embeddable short videos rival YouTube’s as well — that is, if you don’t count Flickr’s 90 second and 150 megabyte restriction.
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The FCC has released its formal decision (PDF) against Comcast, ordering it to stop throttling BitTorrent traffic. As Wired's David Kravets views it, it's an open invitation for ISPs to censor content – so long as they're protocol-agnostic about it. Calling the decision "vitriolic," Kravets says: [FCC Chairman Kevin] Martin said when the commission decides whether an internet carrier violated net neutrality rules, it "considers whether the network management practice is intended to distinguish between legal and illegal activity. The Commission’s network principles only recognize and protect user’s access to legal content. The sharing of illegal content, such as child pornography or content that does not have the appropriate copyright, is not protected by our principles. Similarly, applications that are...
Forget the iPhone. Forget Android, which may not quite deliver. While these smart phones and mini-computer devices are becoming a reality, why not go old school? Make your application SMS accessible. Text messaging is available on darn near every phone available today, even the boring candy bar ones that providers give away for free.
There are several services with shared short codes, those five digit numbers like Google’s 46645. Getting your own short code costs thousands of dollars and comes with the political mission of getting accepted by each carrier separately. With a shared code, someone else has already done the hard work. You reserve a keyword on their service, so that when you text ‘webmonkey’ to 66937, for example, users receive a (hopefully dynamic) message.
Here is a quick run-down on three shared short code services:
Textmarks (41411) - From the makers of Reactee, which brings SMS to your shirt, this is the easiest and most robust of the shared short codes I’ve seen. You can accept input in addition to your keyword, then act upon it. For example, HealthyToys.org created an SMS application last Christmas for parents to check toy safety from the store.
Textmarks also lets you broadcast messages to users who have signed up. You can message everyone, just one user (”Hey! There’s a new match on your saved search.”), or any subset of users (build a private Twitter?).
The service is free, though they’ve reserved a number of popular keywords. Also, response messages include an advertisement (right now for themselves).
Mozes (66937) - Their service seems to be aimed at bands, but it’s useful for anyone. Just like MySpace! By default, your keyword will reply with a static message. Mozes also makes it way easy to reply with a link to download media that they host.
The documentation is good, but it’s not as easy to get started as Textmarks. Plus, Mozes only gives you one keyword for free, and that will cost you $5 per month starting in 2009.
DOTGO (368266) - This service takes a little bit different approach. If you own a domain, you already have a keyword reserved: it’s everything before the dot-something extension. To create content for your keyword, you need to have an XML file that describes the types of queries you expect.
Sadly, it looks like you’re stuck with static replies (though more than one), so the type of application you can build is limited. Like Textmarks, DOTGO is free and ad-supported (also just house ads right now).
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The Wall Street Journal is reporting that a Maryland start-up company has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Nintendo, alleging four patent violations — three in the Wiimote alone. "The start-up, Hillcrest Laboratories Inc. of Rockville, MD, filed a complaint Wednesday against Nintendo with the US International Trade Commission, alleging that the Wii's motion-sensing controller and software infringes on Hillcrest patents related to the technologies. The filing asks the commission to halt the import of Wii consoles into the US. Hillcrest also filed a lawsuit in federal court in Greenbelt, MD, making similar allegations against Nintendo and seeking financial damages." I just hope Nintendo's already retained Phoenix Wright in this case I like to call "Wii would like to countersue."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
In my last article I described what it feels like to have your house struck by lightning. Luckily there were no injuries or structural damage (thanks for your kind words in the comments), but our gadgets and other electronics inside the house weren't so lucky. This is their tale. The first thing I noticed was that my computer wouldn't come on. I thought that was odd, since it's a laptop that works on battery power. A catalog of all the files I had neglected to back up flashed before my eyes. Materials for a book, family photographs, personal documents. Some of it I could recover, some I couldn't. Lesson learned. I glanced over at the wireless router. It was completely...
For those of you readers who work within federal government agencies and have been faced with meeting mandated conservation policies, software vendor BigFix has negotiated a deal with the General Services Administration to offer its software at an annual license of $3 per computer for the first year of new contract. The software can help agencies meet the requirements of the Federal Desktop Core Configuration rules as well as emerging compliance regulations regarding power consumption. BigFix, which got its start in life as a patch management software company, sells something called BigFix Power Management, which lets you set policies over literally hundreds of individual workstations that can be managed centrally. The company is typically used to shut off power at...
Intel was taken by surprise by the worldwide demand for netbooks, but has now decided to lean into the trend with 'nettops.' At the Intel Developer Forum, the chipmaker unveiled a new chipset to power these entry-level desktops aimed at connecting to the Internet. And, they'll be even cheaper than netbooks.
Intel unveiled a new iteration of its Classmate PC today, featuring a touch screen with tablet mode, a new wedge design, and motion-sensing internal hardware. According to Intel's press release, “Our ethnographic research has shown us that students responded well to tablet and touch screen technology,” Ibrahim added. “The creativity, interactivity and user-friendliness of the new design will enhance the learning experiences for these children. This is important for both emerging and mature markets where technology is increasing being seen as a key tool in encouraging learning and facilitating teaching.” What does that boil down to? We all like touch screens and they really help mitigate the shortcomings of traditional keyboard/mouse input for students, especially in math and science. This...
Ragnar Tornquist is respected as one of the best storytellers in today's game industry. He's done work on Anarchy: Online, Dreamfall, and upcoming MMO The Secret World. Rock, Paper, Shotgun has a lengthy three-part interview with Tornquist about how good stories are crafted, how they interact with other aspects of the games, and what his preferences are for building a compelling character. "We had all these characters who were on a journey of faith, and we said how can we ensure that this theme is carried through, and have a clear view of how their journeys happen. So we said, every single major character had to fit into this model. Everybody starts out at the top. Faith can be anything — it can be religion, it can be a belief in yourself, in your abilities, in the work you do. As we face challenge, there's a process where we have loss of faith. It can be a minor thing: thinking one day, 'God, I suck at what I do. I can't do this.' And a lot of people after that point turn themselves around, face those problems, challenge them and they conquer them, and they say, 'Screw that, I am good at what I do.' I think most happy people live in this loop."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
I'm old enough to remember the many apocalyptic scenarios conjured up by nuclear weapons and the Cold War. From Alas, Babylon to "The Day After", from Godzilla himself, the second half of the Twentieth Century was repeatedly haunted by vivid imaginings of the post-nuclear world, or its ending. Now it seems we may be in for an apocalypse fiction wave of a less violent nature: we run out of oil. Cleantech is too slow or too little, oil stops, chaos descends. Axes and pistols once more are the basic tools of any household. Not laptops and autos. Here's a novel about the devolution in America when the energy runs out. Here's the novel's trailer on youtube. The catch phrase in...
ZABBIX is an enterprise-class open source distributed monitoring solution designed to monitor and track performance and availability of network servers, devices and other IT resources. It supports distributed and WEB monitoring, auto-discovery, and more.
The Expense Submittal System (ESS) is a Web-based 'soup to nuts' solution for expense reports and expense report processing. ESS provides report entry, approval routing, corporate policy checking, credit card statement importation and report payment.
TurtolCMS is a web-based website builder, Content Management System and Web Application Platform which runs under Apache and mod_python. TurtolCMS's editing is done client-side on the web pages you're viewing, not in a separate admin interface.
Malzilla is an advanced malware-hunting tool specialized for hunting web-based exploits, decode obfuscated JavaScripts etc.
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