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Posted in News Roundup at 10:42 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzGNU/LinuxES: Axarquía county administration moves all desktops to open sourceThe administration of the Spanish county of Axarquía is about to begin its move to open source desktops. About seven hundred PCs in all county government offices and in town halls in Rincón de la Victoria, Periana, Totalan, Moclinejo and Almáchar are the first to be fitted with open source softwareHow windows anti Linux strategy will backfire in 2009Microsoft has a strategy aimed at converting Linux/Unix users to windows, this is obvious because they are creating the tools and extensions to windows that resemble Linux.[...]Microsoft likes to see open source coming to windows, they rather have people using apache and gimp on windows than having them use it on any other OS. But the open source software will start eating windows from the inside, firefox, open office, the gimp, you name it. People I know are not using Linux, mainly because they don’t know how to use the programs.DECT Forum Responds To Security QuestionsAccording to published reports, researchers at the 25th annual Chaos Communications Congress demonstrated the security breaches using a Linux laptop. The breaches reportedly would occur with either the current DECT standard and the forthcoming CAT-iq update.X Input 2.0 Protocol Draft SpecificationPeter Hutterer, the mastermind behind Multi-Pointer X, has released the draft specification for the X Input 2.0 protocol.Beta Vista 7Why Linux will crush Windows 7Desktop Linux is moving forward. All the major computer vendors are now selling at least one PC, laptop or netbook with Linux. Many, if not most, PCs and netbooks will have SplashTop Linux soldiered right on their motherboard in 2009. Netbooks, the new hot computer model, often have Linux running on them. And, oh yeah, some company named Google seems to be making some interesting moves with Android Linux on netbooks. Oh, and have I mentioned that Windows’ market share has actually dropped below 90% of the desktop market. Mortal OS Kombat: Linux versus Windows 7My take: LinuxThere’s no doubt that Windows 7 will make more headway into the netbook market than its failed attempts at capitalizing on this emerging sector in 2008. But the ultimate factor in the netbook space isn’t the feature-set of the operating system. It’s the cost. When two similar notebooks exist at a hundred dollar price gap, we can’t envision a consumer adopting the pricier model just for the Windows 7 experience. The hype can’t possibly be that much of a selling point… right? Consumers might be having a trickier time adopting Linux, but in a worsening economy, they might have a more difficult time sacrificing that extra cash. 7 reasons why Windows 7 will not wreck Ubuntu# Ubuntu has an entrepreneur at the helm. Microsoft beat IBM because it had Bill Gates up against a bunch of suits. Now Microsoft is a bunch of suits and Ubuntu has Mark Shuttleworth. # Ubuntu has more server compatibility. Linux continues to beat Windows on the server, and servers (in the form of clouds) are becoming dominant over clients. # Ubuntu’s friends will not desert it. HP and Dell have gotten a taste of freedom from Microsoft tyranny. They won’t give that up easily. They will continue seeking product line niches where Ubuntu can succeed. # The Netbook will continue to evolve. The “no moving parts” PC is still at Version 1.0. There is a niche for a cheap, profitable “online machine” that can be used in Airports, hotel rooms and sandy deserts.AppleSwitchingYou might have gathered from some of my more recent posts that I’ve switched platform. My main machine is now a Dell laptop, running Ubuntu 8.10.[...]Apple doesn’t produce a less-powerful 15in machine, but plenty of other vendors do. It’s understandable from a supply-line and product simplicity perspective for Apple to keep its product lines as tight as possible. But at the end of the day it also means that it doesn’t make a machine which matches my needs.The end of my love affair with Apple?I, for one, have become reacquainted with Linux and its incredible flexibility on a wide variety of hardware. Linux allows me to have a “real computer” inside some very inexpensive hardware, whether netbooks or extremely cheap desktops. Even if Apple starts dumping their remaining white MacBooks on educational institutions, we’re still going to be looking at $800 a pop. Their more interesting products climb quickly.[...]Apple is losing its luster for me. I’ll always feel warm and fuzzy inside walking into an Apple Store, but the other night we were talking about how to meet the computing needs of our family of six. Three out of four kids are using computers all the time for school now (and are far more likely to pop onto a computer than watch TV, a trend that I welcome happily). My youngest rarely “needs” a computer for school, but can easily make use of one (and is frequently bumped from a computer by his older brothers who actually need them to type papers, create presentations, conduct research, etc.).Apple fanboy defects to LinuxSELF-CONFESSED Apple fanboy Christopher Dawson has decided that it is too expensive keeping his addiction to the hi-tech toys going and has defected to Linux.Apple Urges Wired To Remove Hackintosh Video, ArticleIt appears that Apple is not just going after Psystar when it comes to running Mac OS X on non-Apple branded computers. Wired’s gadget blog was running a story, accompanied by a video, demonstrating how to install Mac OS X on a non-Apple netbook. After Apple contacted Wired, the website took down the video.Open Source Alternatives to iTunes: Your Favorite?While it’s true that Apple iTunes has some compelling services, such as their TV/music/movie store, the media player itself leaves many power users yearning for something more.To be sure, the alternatives don’t have Apple’s muscle with the media industry. This translates into a lack of a movie/TV download service to be seriously competitive with the likes of what iTunes can provide. Despite this drawback, there are still some great open source alternatives to iTunes for those who are more interested in software freedom than software convenience. GuidesHow To Migrate Your Desktop From Windows To LinuxMoving from Windows to Linux is a big decision, and actually making the leap can be challenging and intimidating. By understanding the planning and preparation process for migrating to Linux, business owners and IT staff will know what to expect during installation so they can make the move manageable and straightforward.Step-By-Step: Migrating Your Desktop From Windows To LinuxYou can make the move from Windows to Linux in no time at all by following the steps in this hands-on guide where you’ll learn how to migrate your desktop PC to Ubuntu Linux.Free Ways to approach Ubuntu from WindowsFor Windows Users: Apart the rhetoric that Linux is not Windows, how can one gradually get used to this different way of conceiving an operating system? Ubuntu has many killer applications Windows users can benefit from. If you’re stuck in your Windows sphere and do not intend moving out – no problem, it is understandable, but you can still improve your productivity by running Ubuntu and many of its indispensable applications on your Windows OS.ShowsInterview: Dann Washko, The Linux Link Tech ShowAfter being a guest on The Linux Link Tech Show back in December I asked Dann Washko if I he would be interested in allowing me to conduct an email interview with him for MontanaLinux.org. He kindly agreed. If you aren’t familiar with The Linux Link Tech Show… pull your head out of the sand and check out their wikipedia page. I hope to add a picture or two of Dann and his co-hosts if he can come up with some in the not too distant future.Ubuntu Podcast Episode #17Channel/OEMThe Gatekeepers of our technologyThe Linux Community is having an on-again off-again love affair with Dell. It’s been a rocky affair since Dell decided it would bump the positive side of their ledger by offering the Linux Operating System on their products.There have been some embarrassing public displays of affection and there have been equally public spats, with a few pots and pans thrown…So it goes with passionate couples. A word of advice is always welcome though and I might offer one of the afore-mentioned parties a bit of it now…Red Hat Nearly Doubles Its Partner ChannelMore proof open source is infiltrating (and redefining) the IT channel: Red Hat’s partner network now exceeds 1,300 companies — up 84 percent from 713 companies in January 2008, according to The VAR Guy’s Open Source 50 report. Of course, “more partners” doesn’t always mean “better partners.” But Red Hat’s ability to recruit channel partners to back Linux and now JBoss middleware proves the company has learned a few key lessons from Microsoft.Investing in Penguins and FedorasWith the current recessionary environment, perhaps it’s not such a bad time to take a look at investing in penguins and fedoras. When I say penguins, I mean Tux, the official mascot of the Linux kernel and when I say fedoras, I mean Red Hat, the Raleigh, NC-based provider of open source enterprise solutions. Red Hat’s a fairly unique company; one that prides itself on a corporate culture that promotes openness and creativity. That’s not surprising given the company’s position in the world of open source software. Open source contrasts itself with proprietary software, where the terms of use are limited by licensing agreements and the source code is not available to the user. How to Create a Profitable Desktop Business for LinuxDoes this sound a lot like Google’s (GOOG) Android model? Yep. And as far as reports go thus far, they don’t even seem to be concerned with making money on the Android Market itself. Android is such a great vehicle for mobile search, location based services, content delivery etc — apparently that’s plenty. And by the way, Android is founded on a Linux kernel, and there’s a lot of buzz about it pushing up into netbooks and higher food-chain devices. I would think Android will end up being a highly profitable proposition for Google, just not in the conventional Linux distro business type of way. That’s the mentality I believe will make a Linux desktop profitable.KDEKDE: Linux Format’s Free Software Project of the Yearrecognizes stand out projects and members of the Free software world with their Reader Awards. The readers of the magazine send in their votes, Linux Format (LF) tallies them up and then publishes the results.Plasmoid prognosticationPlasmoids and maybe Plasma (or derivatives) itself on everything from 3′ phone screens to 30′ LCD panels, with every size of netbook and laptop inbetween. This, gentle readers, is why you stay forward thinking on technology (Plasma framework decisions) and keep your usability experts happy. This can and will be massive.KOffice 2.0 Beta 5 ReleasedMoving towards the 2.0 release with almost monthly beta releases, the KOffice team has once more honoured its promise to bring out beta releases of KOffice until the time is right for a release candidate. So today we bring you this beta with many, many improvements across the board. Incremental as it is, this beta is an important step towards a final release. So here it is: full announcement and changelog. UbuntuFun With LinuxFinally, finally, here I am. Ubuntu installed on son’s computer, check. Ubuntu installed on my (first) old computer, check (still need graphics card). Ubuntu installed on my (second) old computer, check.Why we need Edubuntu to succeedThis evening I had a great chat with a guy named David. He’s a 9th grade science teacher in Minnesota. He’s working on a project called Growing Communities Of Scientists in his school. He plans to use a set of “computer enabled science classrooms” which embed thin clients into a student group workspace. David’s also got a great blog where he’s been journalling his experience. This means students have access to computers without interfering with they’re normal learning/social area. A common sight I’ve seen in most computer labs is individual students with hardly any working space and fairly isolated from each other and the instructor. It’s sort of like a cubicle effect. For sciences were you’re trying to get a lot of hands on instruction it’s rather difficult.Ubuntu Faster on My Internet Than Windows XPThen I tested my Time Warner cable connection on my primary work machine running Ubuntu 8.04. My cable modem connection is always much faster than my DSL by a factor of 10 on the download speeds. I forget what Time Warner’s latest promises are for download speeds, but I think it’s 10 mega bits per second to 12 mbps. Upload speeds are throttled down to 1mbps.My Ubuntu machine returned a rating from the Bandwidth.com test of 22-25mbps over several tests. That’s darn fast today, faster than normal. Then I did the same test from a Windows XP PC and got results from 12-14mbps. Still fast, but not nearly as fast as the Ubuntu machine.Ubuntu 9.04′s blazing boot times…Linux kernel 2.6.28, released on Christmas Eve 2008, delivered a stable implementation of the ext4 filesystem, and this is now included in Ubuntu’s daily development builds. It’s this filesystem which is getting geeks worldwide all steamy under their collar.The New Ubuntu BrainstormThe new and much improved version of Ubuntu Brainstorm, Ubuntu’s site for receiving ideas from users and allowing other users to vote on those ideas, was launched today.Devices/Embedded“BeagleBot” cruises on LinuxA Linux-powered robot project has won the first monthly design contest sponsored by “BeagleBoard.org,” a group promoting a low-cost, Linux-friendly single board computer (SBC) with an ARM Cortex-A8-based processor. Antti Seppanen’s “BeagleBot” is a partially autonomous, WiFi-enabled robot with servos, sensor, and webcam. Imaging vendor goes cross-platformThe acquisition will also help it to expand to support Linux, Unix, Mac, and mobile device platforms, says the company.Security gateway runs Linux on Cortex-A8 SoCM2M Solution announced a security gateway reference design based on the Texas Instruments (TI) OMAP3503 system-on-chip (SoC). The Homebox runs Linux, enables remote monitoring of real-time video and security sensors, and will soon be sold by MYXYTY under the name MyHome, says M2M.Why Pre is the right move for PalmFoleo, a Linux-based Netbook that perhaps arrived ahead of its time. When it was introduced in mid-2007, reactions were mixed. It was one of the first devices from a reputable and established company to fill the gap between smartphones and laptops, but critics weren’t receptive to its $500 price tag and lack of compatibility with third-party software.But Palm was also quietly tuning a version of Linux for its next-gen handsets. Last week at CES, Palm announced a new operating system, called Web OS, and the first device to run it, the Pre. It also announced an application store, called Pre Catalog. And that’s when things got very interesting: the Pre blew everyone away. AndroidWhat Did 2008 Innovate?For now, Android hasn’t picked up all that much steam, but 2009 will see the introduction of several more Android-powered smartphones. Given the open source nature of the mobile OS, we could see a rapid maturation of the platform, ushering in new and improved functionality in just about every way imaginable. It’s arguable that this is already the case with Mobile Linux, but Linux doesn’t have the same industry backing as the Open Handset Alliance and Google Android.Wind River announces Android support for Qualcomm chipsetWind River, the embedded software specialist, has announced an Android support package for Qualcomm’s Snapdragon mobile phone chipset. Qualcomm and Wind River presented the technology at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) a week ago. Sub-notebooksNetbook adventuresI got it installed. Wow. It’s even smaller then Eeebuntu Base, and yet includes more stuff. It’s also faster, since instead of the heavyweight GNOME desktop, it uses Openbox, which is much more streamlined. I think we’ve got a winner here.Installing Ubuntu EEE with Compiz on the EEE PCToday we have a guest blogger on One Click Linux. Michael Szorady is a recent graduate of Bowling Green State University with a degree in Computer Science. His computer expertise covers multiple platforms and computing languages. A Linux fan and advocate, his article discusses the installation of an Ubuntu distribution to his own Asus 701 netbook. We hope you find the information a helpful guide for customizing your own Asus netbook. Review: Sylvania’s g Netbook MesoAlthough traditionally known for its electrical and lighting products, Sylvania has also licensed its name to other manufacturers to expand its product lines. The latest entry is in the rapidly growing market of netbooks.Produced by Digital Gadgets, which previously specialized in various mobile electronics and accessories, Sylvania’s g Netbook Meso is similar in many ways to its more well-known competitors. Measuring 9-x-7-x-1.25 inches, it weighs approximately 2.2 pounds without battery. [...]Our test unit was loaded with Ubuntu Netbook Remix, but Windows XP Home Edition is available as an option. The interface of the operating system is nicely laid out and easy to navigate, even for Linux novices.Every child in Portugal and Venezuela will have open sourceThe Magelhaes (Magellan) initiative of the Portuguese government is giving every child in the country an Intel Classmate PC for 50 euros – and they are dual-boot machines running XP and a local Linux called Caixa Magica.Netbook market looking at major price cutsNetbook pricing has been slowly creeping up over the last year as buyers looked for bigger hard drives, better performance, roomier keyboards, and larger screens. That feature creep means it’s not uncommon to see prices well above $400 for entry-level devices. The folks at Freescale Semiconductor want to turn that trend around, offering a low-power chip designed to sip electricity while letting netbook makers offer devices for less than $200.F/OSSSuite freedom: a review of GIMP 2.6.4Free, but high-endThis is the first time that I’m reviewing GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program), and it’s definitely long overdue. As the open-source image editor of choice, the feature list of GIMP 2.6 is very long, and despite its status as a free application, it’s as feature-packed as any commercial application. GIMP is loaded with the up-to-date tools many demanding professionals need: Bézier path editing with brush stroking, tablet support, Heal Tool, alpha channels, multiple-undo History, area-averaged eyedropper, PSD file compatibility, and a wackload of other high-end tools that are impressive in their attention to detail. OpenSplice DDS Real-time Integration Software Now Available as Open SourcePrismTech™, an acknowledged leader in advanced software integration and infrastructure solutions, announced today that it is releasing its OpenSplice™ DDS low-latency data distribution software as Open Source software licensed under LGPL licensing. This Open Source code base is supported by a range of optional subscription packages from PrismTech that include professional support, productivity and optimization tools, connectors, and other advanced product options.PrismTech is one of the pioneers and leading vendors of ‘packaged Open Source’ middleware and has a long and successful track record of providing CORBA solutions using this model. This initiative will leverage all of PrismTech’s expertise in this area to provide a superior DDS solution. Semantic Technologies, Web 2.x, Cloud Computing, and Open SourceLooking back on 2008, we’ve seen several trends in the web space. The web has transformed from a place to look for information to a place to share information.Harmonic Software Systems releases open source tool to unlock the power of the PLAYSTATION 3Harmonic Software Systems has released the Cell/BE Execution Framework (CEF) to the open source community, allowing industry and academia to unlock the massive computing power, which is within the PLAYSTATION 3’s Cell processor.Crawley, UK. January 13, 2009. Harmonic Software Systems announced today the availability of the Cell Execution Framework (CEF), as a free download under the BSD open source license. The CEF has been designed to unlock the power of the Cell Broadband Engine™ (Cell), so that software engineers can start to use the power of the Cell straightaway.What happened to the GPL Project Watch ListWe started tracking GPLv3 information as of June 29, 2007, and continued to do so for 15 months. Our team included over 50 research interns from schools throughout our country, the project managers and me. We successfully provided clear and objective information regarding the acceptance and use of the new GPLv3 license, and extended the scope of our interest to report news and trends as well.Joyent Buys Reasonably Smart to Create Open-source CloudJoyent today announced it has agreed to acquire Reasonably Smart, a fledgling cloud startup based on JavaScript and Git, for an undisclosed amount. While on the surface it might look like simple industry consolidation, Reasonably Smart’s technology will in fact help Joyent compete with emerging service-centric clouds while retaining an open model that makes developers comfortable.Stock MarketsBringing Open Source Software to Trading DesksMarketcetera, a Silicon Valley-based start-up, has developed open-source trading software that it says will make the creation of custom financial trading systems easier and cheaper. Rather than creating their own products, financial services firms, hedge funds and others can pick up the Marketcetera Platform software and use it as a basic framework for their operations. The financial companies just plug their algorithms and trading policies into the system and let it handle the demanding processing jobs required to obtain and analyze financial data.Trading Up to Open SourceThe new code that has been added to these established projects is released under the GNU GPL v2. That’s welcome, but there’s a slightly misleading statement on the home page regarding downloads…EnterpriseBringing Up Open Source, Part 1: Enterprise EditionUsing open source instead of proprietary technology can help keep costs down. Here are three startups making headway in the enterprise Linux space.[...]Being part of the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack — and the adoption and the community momentum around that LAMP stack — instead of being a strictly commercial venture was something that Tuerk was key on leveraging. The enterprise value of modifying open sourceI spent some time with a large customer of Alfresco’s today, and heard an interesting reason for why choosing open source was critical to them. Granted, it’s a large media company, and so its needs may not fit those of most other enterprise customers.Alfresco and Remote-Learner.net Partner to Deliver Moodle eLearning IntegrationAlfresco Software Inc., the leader in open source enterprise content management (ECM), today announced an OEM partnership with Remote-Learner.net, the provider of open source solutions for online learning management, record keeping and learning object storage to corporate, academic and governmental clients. The partnership will deliver solutions to allow learning organizations using Moodle’s open source course management system (CMS) to access Alfresco’s robust open source ECM repository to support content development and reuse.Jaspersoft’s Strong December Attests to Popularity of Open Source BIIt was an event-filled December for open source business intelligence (BI) specialist Jaspersoft Inc., which announced a new revision 3.1 release of its Jaspersoft Business Intelligence Suite and generated another $12.5 million in venture capital (VC) funding. The latter, of course, is no small feat in a climate in which credit markets are frozen and VC funding has tightened significantly.Presence Technology Tapped as Digium Open Source Solutions PartnerAs part of its mission to expand its partner universe and increase the number of value added applications available for their Asterisk (News – Alert) Business Edition, Huntsville, Alabama-based Digium, the creators of the open source telephony software Asterisk are always looking to innovative companies.AdministrationCongress to inform about application of Open Source SoftwareOpen-Source-Software (OSS) is a software alternative to the software of traditional software manufacturers in particular for small and medium-sized entities and should therefore be taken into account by these. Furthermore, an always growing number of manufacturing businesses have recently turned to the OSS model. But is OSS suitable for business applications? This question is soon going to be discussed at the fourth “Open Source Meets Business“ congress in Nuremberg. In more than 100 talks given by OSS experts and businesses experienced in the use of OSS this question will be looked upon from several points of views.Humanitarian FOSS ProjectThe Humanitarian FOSS Project is a collaborative, community-building project that was started by a group of computing faculty and open source proponents at Trinity College, Wesleyan University, and Connecticut College. Our goal is to build a community of academic computing departments, IT corporations, and local and global humanitarian and community organizations dedicated to building and using Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) to benefit humanity.SunSun enhances VirtualBox with Version 2.1 updatesWith an impressive 25,000 downloads a day, and downloads up 120 percent over last quarter, Sun seems to be doing a good job at breaking through the noise of the desktop virtualization market.Java forks, rivers, and streamsThere are any number of very good reasons why Sun open-sourced Java, but there are always wrinkles. Among them is the loss of control for the central “authority” of the language — Sun, the JCP, what have you. At first blush, this is bad mostly for the control freaks at said central authority, and why should we care about their hang-ups, right? If they wanted to keep everything under control, they shouldn’t have open-sourced it.Can Sun Rise on Open Source Storage?At first glance, Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) appears to be having a bit of trouble: Big layoffs, a stock that is down 80 percent in the last year, and constant rumors about its demise or takeover. A brief look at the overall server and storage stats from IDC and Gartner doesn’t provide much evidence to the contrary, with Sun nowhere in the overall storage stats, and lagging further behind Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) in fourth place on the server side.Fact Vs. Friction: Picking The Right Open-Source Office SuiteOxygenOffice bundles OOo with lots of extras, including a huge clip art and photo library, document templates, and additional font support. Like so many of the extras bundled with various OpenOffice.org variants (including Sun’s proprietary StarOffice suite), users can find most of this content elsewhere, although it can be more convenient to get it bundled as a complete package.CES 2009 Open-Source And Otherwise Free Doesn’t Adversely ConfineFor writing blog posts and web articles, I instead relied on OpenOffice v3. I was pretty impressed with its features and Word 2000 format compatibility (especially considering the price!), though I highly recommend disabling the Java runtime environment support (if you don’t need it) as a means of drastically reducing the application startup time. Web surfing was (as usual) the domain of Firefox for OS X, which (as usual) worked well. The browser-based blog publishing tool I use doesn’t require ActiveX (I unfortunately can’t say the same thing about many of my publishing company’s other online utilities) so I was able to directly pull material from OpenOffice into Firefox, then publish it from there.GoogleGoogle house cleaning frees JaikuGoogle has decided to clean house and close many services that are either redundant, not very successful or unrelated to Google’s core business. Most significantly for the open source community Google plans to release the Jaiku Engine as an Apache licensed project.Changes for Jaiku and Farewell to Dodgeball and Mashup EditorWith the open source Jaiku Engine project, organizations, groups and individuals will be able to roll-their-own microblogging services and deploy them on Google App Engine. The new Jaiku Engine will include support for OAuth, and we’re excited about developers using this proven code as a starting point in creating a freely available and federated, open source microblogging platform.Gmail Grew 43 Percent Last Year. AOL Mail And Hotmail Need To Start Worrying.Google launched Gmail only four years ago, and it is now the fourth most popular e-mail service on the Web after Yahoo Mail, AOL Mail, and Windows Live Hotmail. In 2008, it saw some serious growth in the U.S. Google doesn’t break out the number of Gmail users, but comScore estimates unique monthly visitors. According to the latest stats, the number of people visiting Gmail grew 43 percent last year to 29.6 million. In contrast, the much more massive Yahoo Mail grew 11 percent to 91.9 million uniques. AOL Mail finished in second place for the year with 46.6 million uniques (plus another 7.2 million visitors to AIM Mail), while Hotmail actually declined 5 percent to 43.5 million.Google’s Microsoft ComplexJust because Microsoft and Google share a strategy doesn’t mean they’re similar companies in other respects. Google differs from Microsoft in at least one fundamental way. The ends that Microsoft has pursued are commercial ends. For the most part, it’s been in it for the money. Google, as Grimmelman notes, has a strong messianic bent. Google is not just out to make oodles of dough; it’s on a crusade – to liberate information for the masses – and is convinced of its righteousness in pursuing its cause. Depending on your point of view as you look forward to the next ten years, or even the next 300 years, you’ll find Google’s crusade either comforting or frightening. It’s worth remembering that Google’s chokepoint is not just an economic chokepoint. It’s also a cultural chokepoint.GridThe Globus Alliance’s First Google Summer of CodeThe Globus Alliance is a community of organizations and individuals developing fundamental technologies behind the “Grid,” which lets people share computing power, databases, instruments, and other on-line tools securely across corporate, institutional, and geographic boundaries without sacrificing local autonomy. Globus currently hosts more than 20 projects, actively developed by a community of more than 100 committers, and spanning a variety of technology concerns on grid systems.Grid.org HPC Community Hits Growth MilestoneGrid.org, the online community for open source cluster and grid software, announced today that the site garnered over 100,000 unique visitors in 2008, with the highest traffic generating from the UniCluster, Amazon EC2 and HPC Thought Leadership discussion groups.FundingSeneca College gets $50,000 grant to work on Eclipse WTPComputer science students will get to contribute code to the open source Eclipse Web Tools Platform project. Why the open source approach recalls academia of days gone byIdenti.ca Gets Funding to Make Open-source Twitter VariantIdenti.ca’s plans to build an open-source alternative to Twitter got a vote of confidence this week with an investment from the VCs at Montreal Start Up. While the amount of the financing wasn’t disclosed, Montreal Start Up Managing Partner John Stokes said the firm invests between C$150,000 ($120,135) and C$400,000 ($320,329) per deal.MozillaQuo Vadis, Mozilla?: 3-Point Plan for World DominationMitchell Baker, chairperson of the Mozilla Foundation, has presented a plan in her blog whereby Mozilla will have Web world domination by 2010.This past weekend Mitchell Baker “proposed a set of goals for the next two years… to move the Mozilla mission forward.” Her proposal wasn’t meant as a technical spec but more a set of ideas. In fact, the details of her plan encompass three points. about:mozilla – Final 2010 goals, Firebug, add-ons, Labs, Snowl, Community theme, Camino, and more…In this issue… * Mozilla 2010 goals finalized * Firebug 1.3.0 final released * Time to update your add-ons for Firefox 3.1 * Labs update: December 2008 * Snowl: new release and blog posts * Mozilla community themeDigital Tipping Point: Clip of the DayDigital Tipping Point: Dirk-Willem van Gulik, road builder for the Information Super-highway 02 (2004) [Embedment notice: your Web browser does not supportthe tag. Firefox 3.1 supports it.]Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating. Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. Permalink Send this to a friend
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