The content on this site is my own and does not necessarily represent my employer’s positions, strategies or opinions.
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W3C pulls former Novell CTO for CEO spot
“Filling a position left open since 2008, former Novell CTO Jeffrey Jaffe has taken on the role of chief executive officer for the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium).”
tags: novell, w3c
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Second Life’s virtual money can become real-life cash – washingtonpost.com
“Last year, as the physical economy withered, Second Life’s economy blossomed, with user-to-user transactions topping $567 million in actual U.S. currency, a 65 percent jump over 2008. About 770,000 unique users made repeat visits to Second Life in December, and the users, known as residents, cashed out $55 million of their Second Life earnings last year, transferring that money to PayPal accounts.”
tags: second-life, virtual-world
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What to expect from HTML 5 | Developer World – InfoWorld
“HTML 5 aims to change all that. When it is finalized, the new standard will include tags and APIs for improved interactivity, multimedia, and localization. As experimental support for HTML 5 features has crept into the current crop of Web browsers, some developers have even begun voicing hope that this new, modernized HTML will free them from reliance on proprietary plug-ins such as Flash, QuickTime, and Silverlight.”
tags: HTML
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Major League Baseball to Stream ESPN Events – NYTimes.com
“ESPN had previously used the services of Move Networks, based in American Fork, Utah. But Move’s system required that customers download a special video player that uses Microsoft’s Silverlight technology, said John Kosner, senior vice president of ESPN Digital Media. The network wanted to make its site easier to use by moving to a supplier that used Adobe’s popular Flash software, which operates within the Web browser.”
tags: baseball, espn, silverlight, microsoft
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
I was having a problem last week with my Mac: even though I set my default system browser to Google Chrome, one application just refused to believe it wasn’t Firefox any longer. (And no, that application wasn’t Firefox itself!)
Though I tried several times within Chrome and Firefox to toggle the system browser to end up being Chrome, that one application was being recalcitrant.
Today I got an email from my friend and IBM colleague Kelvin Lawrence with the workaround to the problem: go into Safari and under Safari > Preference > General toggle the browser to something non-Chrome and then back to Chrome. This seems to do something a little extra and it did the trick. That one application now opens web pages in Chrome.
Thanks for the fix, Kelvin!
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IT PRO | Q&A: Mark Kingdon on Second Life for business
“At the CeBIT conference in Hanover this week, Kingdon told IT PRO that more business functions would move to worlds like Second Life, for meetings, simulations and more – especially after the launch of more user-friendly systems, like the beta of its new viewer, which allows document sharing.”
tags: second-life, virtual-world
Gamasutra – News – BigWorld Debuts New Indie, Academic Engine Licenses
“Hoping to offer its tools to a new userbase, engine developer BigWorld is launching three new licenses geared for indie, student and small commercial MMO developers.
BigWorld Technology suite intends to offer a “complete technical architecture” for online game and virtual world developers, and includes BigWorld Server Software, Content Creation Pipeline, 3D Client Engine Package, and Live Management Tools & Instrumentation.”
tags: bigworld, virtual-world
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Hands-on: a close look at Ubuntu’s new non-brown theme
“Canonical is updating Ubuntu’s look and feel with a new style that departs from the popular Linux distribution’s traditional brown theming. The new theme, which was announced yesterday as part of an initiative to overhaul Ubuntu’s branding and visual identity, will be used in the upcoming Ubuntu 10.04 release, codenamed Lucid Lynx.”
tags: ubuntu, linux, theme
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
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New York State Trout Season Opens April 1 – NYS Dept. of Environmental Conservation
“Trout season opens April 1 in New York State, and anglers can again look forward to a great year of fishing, thanks to the natural diversity of angling opportunities within New York and management of the state’s fisheries by DEC.”
tags: NYS, fishing
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How Sun’s need to control the code cost them the company | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com
“Real Free Software projects like Linux completely give up centralized control and ownership, in favor of a decentralized model that means contributors keep ownership and see direct benefits to participation, with no one party being able to take advantage over others.”
tags: linux, open-source, sun, oracle, solaris
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Twitter Drops MySQL For Cassandra — Cloud databases — InformationWeek
“Guess what? Cassandra is going to tweet. The open source Cassandra data management system is going to replace the MySQL database system at Twitter, the latest of several MySQL replacements at social networking sites, according to Ryan King, a software engineer at Twitter.”
tags: twitter, cassandra, mysql
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Release Notes/Second Life Beta Viewer/2.0 – Second Life Wiki
“Thank you for downloading the Beta release of Viewer 2, the next generation Second Life viewer that combines an easy browser-like experience with complete shared media capabilities. This new viewer is designed with the average resident in mind, so it has nearly all the capabilities currently available in Viewer 1.23, but it’s been reorganized into a friendlier and more intuitive user experience. This guide is designed to help you quickly reorient yourself to the new viewer and allow you to take full advantage of the new features available exclusively in Viewer 2 – in particular, Second Life Shared Media and the new enhanced Second Life Search.
On this page you’ll find highlights of many of Viewer 2’s basic features, but there’s much more to learn for Second Life content creators, developers, and other power users.”
tags: second-life
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451 CAOS Theory » Dual of denial – on the success and failure of dual licensing
“Where we do see dual licensing used, it is more often in enabling users that are unwilling or unable to use the GNU GPL to make use of the underlying code. In that way, dual licensing can be used to serve two different user groups, rather than attempting to cross- or up-sell open source users with a commercial version.”
tags: 451, open-source, license
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
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Ubuntu Linux Now Available to Fed Customers on GSA Advantage – PCWorld Business Center
“Canonical’s Ubuntu has become third Linux operating system approved by the General Services Administration for use by federal purchasers. It joins Linux distributions from Red Hat and Novell, already available through the GSA Advantage purchasing program.”
tags: ubuntu, linux, government
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IBM BigSheets to preserve fleeting Web data | Software, Interrupted – CNET News
“The new analytics software project, called IBM BigSheets, helps extract, annotate, and visually analyze vast amounts of Web information using a Web browser. The British Library is using a prototype of the software to archive and preserve massive amounts of Web pages to ensure the data doesn’t disappear over time.”
tags: ibm, bigsheets, analytics, cloud, open-source
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Browser Wars: The Sequel – BusinessWeek
“For the first time in years, energy and resources are being poured into browsers, the ubiquitous programs for accessing content on the Web. Credit for this trend—a boon to consumers—goes to two parties. The first is Google (GOOG), whose big plans for the Chrome browser have shaken Microsoft out of its competitive torpor and forced the software giant to pay fresh attention to its own browser, Internet Explorer. Microsoft all but ceased efforts to enhance IE after it triumphed in the last browser war, sending Netscape to its doom. Now it’s back in gear.”
tags: browser
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
OSS 2010, the 6th International Conference on Open Source Systems, will take place on the campus of the University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana, USA, from May 30 to June 2.
From the conference website:
Over the past decade, the Open Source Software (OSS) phenomenon has had a global impact on the way organisations and individuals create, distribute, acquire and use software and software-based services. OSS has challenged the conventional wisdom of the software engineering and software business communities, has been instrumental for educators and researchers, and has become an important aspect of e-government and information society initiatives. OSS is a complex phenomenon and requires a interdisciplinary understanding of its engineering, technical, economic, legal and socio-cultural dynamics. The goal of OSS 2010, the first IFIP WG 2.13 conference to be held in North America, is to provide an international forum where a diverse community of professionals from academia, industry and public administration can come together to share research findings and practical experiences.
Evidently I am on the Program Committee.
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Linux kernel R&D worth over 1bn euros • The Register
“How much would it cost the European Union to cobble together the Linux kernel from scratch?
The development costs would reach over a billion euros (or about £900m, or $1.4bn USD), according to researchers from the University of Oviendo, Spain. Jesús García-García and Mª Isabel Alonso de Magdaleno are set to present this open source thought experiment at the European Union’s Conference on Corporate R&D next month.”
tags: linux, open-source
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Hungry? How About An Open Source Restaurant | NetworkWorld.com Community
“Imagine just finishing a great dish at a restaurant and wishing you could make that at home. Well at the Instructables Restaurant you can do just that. In fact not only can you get the “source code” of the dish you ate, but you can download the plans to the furniture and fixtures as well.”
tags: restaurant, open-source
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A word of caution when trying the Second Life Viewer 2 Beta with current OpenSim | justincc.org
“However, according to John Hurliman the version of the OpenMetaverse library currently being used by opensim has a problem dealing with at least one of the new inventory packets in the 2.0 Viewer. This means that it’s not impossible that using the viewer with OpenSim today could inadvertently destroy some of your inventory items.”
tags: opensim, second-life
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The Leader – News from Wrexham & Flintshire – ‘Second Life’ director talks social networking at Glyndwr University
“More than 100 budding businessmen and women are expected to attend the first ever pan-Wales virtual business conference at Glyndwr University.
The event, part-funded by the Welsh Assembly Government, will hear from virtual business experts and top young entrepreneurs.
John Lester, operations director at Linden Labs, founders of Second Life, is set to deliver a talk on opportunities in the virtual world from the United States via a video link-up.”
tags: second-life, virtual-world
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
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VMware vs. Red Hat: The Next Virtual Machine Management Battleground — ServerWatch.com
“Two areas where Thadani said he believes Red Hat’s KVM-based virtualization currently has an advantage over VMware are price and application support. Exact costs depend on the number of hosts and machines being virtualized, as well as the operating systems concerned. However, using RHEV instead of VMware could result in between 40 percent and 80 percent costs savings, he claimed. Red Hat guarantees that, because RHEV is built from the same kernel as RHEL, any Linux application that runs on RHEL will also run in a RHEL virtual machine virtualized on RHEV. If it doesn’t run properly in this way, Thadani said Red Hat will provide support to fix it so that it does.”
tags: vmware, red-hat, virtualization, kvm, rhev-h
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Novell Cloud Security Service Nears Launch | The VAR Guy
“Novell continues to push beyond the SUSE Linux market. Among the major moves: The company is beta testing Novell Cloud Security Service, which is scheduled for general availability in May or June, according to Novell sources attending the Parallels Summit in Miami. Here are the implications for hosting providers and cloud integrators.”
tags: cloud, novell, security
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Safari 4: Installing and Running it on Ubuntu Linux | Daily World Buzz
“Here’s an interesting tutorial that we would like to share with you on Daily World Buzz. It was written by Jun Auza of TechSource from Bohol. It’s a simple step by step tutorial with screenshots of how to install Safari 4 and use it in your Ubuntu Linux OS.”
tags: safari, ubuntu, linux, browser
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Microsoft Plays Catch-up — Sub-$70 Linux Virtual Desktop
“Userful Corporation, the world leader in multiseat Linux desktop virtualization, today announced that 30,000 schools worldwide have chosen Userful virtual desktops to reduce computing costs and improve computer-to-student ratios. Microsoft recently announced its own multi-seat solution, Microsoft Windows MultiPoint Server 2010, seven years after Userful pioneered the technology on Linux back in 2002. Another classic case of Linux vs. Windows, only this time Linux has the upper hand with Userful having already sold 750,000 seats.”
tags: linux, desktop, virtualization
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What if content management were 3D? – FierceContentManagement
“During our conversation, I began thinking about what it would be like if someone designed a content management system in three dimensions. Think about how useful it would be to get all your company’s content laid out in front of you in a graphical view in which you could literally walk inside the system. How cool would that be?”
tags: content-management, 3d, virtual-world
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10 Ideas for Leveraging Virtual Events – Joerg Rathenberg : Target Marketing
“While more cost-effective than physical marketing events, virtual events offer another huge advantage: detailed information. As opposed to physical events, where often the only lead data consists of business card content, virtual events enable marketers to track and evaluate every move of each attendee within the environment, resulting in highly qualified sales leads.”
tags: marketing
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New World Notes: Second Life 2.0 Analysis: Epic Win for Userbase, Competition Killer… But Not Mass Market Game Changer (Yet)
“We keep using the web because we already know the answer to the why question — we use the web for destination sites, for locating information, online shopping, etc. etc. With a service that looks and acts like the world, the why question is more profound, and overwhelming. It’s why I believe an achievement system, or even an leveling ladder with experience points for exploring the world, creating content, and so on, is necessary. Not to turn Second Life into an MMO, but to give new users an activity structure that will inspire them to get the full breadth of Second Life and its possibilities.”
tags: second-life, virtual-world
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Second-day thoughts on the new Second Life viewer – Computerworld Blogs
“And search won’t solve the what-to-do problem. The only solution is to connect newcomers with like-minded people. The best communication mechanism for Second Life is the oldest one on the planet: Word of mouth. You find out about things because your friends tell you about them.”
tags: second-life, virtual-world
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Five essential design sites | Create | Creative Notes | Macworld
“When it comes to working on creative projects, even professional designers need a little help now and then. There’s no shortage of Web sites they can turn to for visual inspiration and advice. And, for the most part, civilians like me can take advantage of those very same resources. Whether I need specific technical instruction or just some good ideas, these five sites are where I turn to first.”
tags: design
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Most of these kinds of discussions that say that there are two kinds of people or ten best ways of doing something are extremely subjective and involve gross simplifications. I plead guilty here but want to make a few points about the nature of software today and how people think about it.
There’s a tremendous amount of buzz in the industry today about open source software, but there is, of course, a huge amount of use of “that other kind of software” that variously goes by the name of “proprietary,” “closed-source,” “traditional,” or “commercial” software. None of those terms work well in practice.
Let me break down software into three categories:
Continue reading Thinking about open source: There are three types of software …
A little overagressive on the links today, but there’s a lot going on …
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The Apache Software Foundation Announces the 15th Anniversary of the Apache HTTP Web Server : The Apache Software Foundation Blog
“The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) — developers, stewards, and incubators of 138 Open Source projects — today announced the 15th anniversary of the Apache HTTP Web Server.
The ASF’s first project became the world’s most popular Web server software within the first six months of its inception. The Apache HTTP Server today powers nearly 112 million Websites world-wide.”
tags: software, apache, open-source
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Red Hat News | Red Hat Enterprise Linux: A Decade-Shaping Technology
“Last week, eWEEK Labs published their picks for the top 25 technologies that changed the decade. They judged their selections on the impact the technologies had on the past 10 years, while also considering the affect that these technologies will have on the future of IT. Among the winners – which included innovative technologies such as the iPhone, the Blackberry, Blade Servers and Bluetooth – was our leading operating platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux.”
tags: linux, red-hat
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A handbook for the open source way, written the open source way | opensource.com
“Write a book about building community the open source way… and write it with a community, the open source way. Meaning, open the text up, allow interested users to contribute, and see what happens.
Brilliant.
The book is entitled The Open Source Way: Creating and nurturing communities of contributors and you can access the current text here and the wiki for contributors here.
I caught up with Karsten Wade, who is leading the project, to learn more.”
tags: open-source, books
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The Open Source Way – Red Hat
“This guide is for helping people to understand how to and how not to engage with community over projects such as software, content, marketing, art, infrastructure, standards, and so forth. It contains knowledge distilled from years of Red Hat experience.”
tags: red-hat, open-source, community
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Julian Lombardi’s Blog: Better Cover Your Assets
“I really liked Metaplace and used it as part of my virtual worlds course here at Duke last semester. I’m so relieved that the shutdown happened between semesters! I’m also relieved that I didn’t invest much time in building Metaplace-based educational environments for my students (which I was seriously considering). The rapid fall of Metaplace really underscores that any effort to invest in a platform where content (or the organization of content) is stored on a third party’s servers is a very risky proposition.”
tags: virtual-world
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For Developers (The Chromium Projects)
“Find information about how Chromium works, how to participate in the development of Chromium, or just how to build it yourself.”
tags: Chromium, open-source
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OOoCon 2010
“The 2010 OpenOffice.org Conference will take place from August 31st to September 3rd in Budapest, the capital of Hungary.”
tags: ooocon, openoffice.org
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MISYS Open Source Solutions Enters Strategic Partnership with Markit – MarketWatch
“Misys Open Source Solutions (“MOSS”), a division of Misys Plc (FTSE:MSY.L), today announced a partnership with Markit, a leading, global financial information services company, to promote the Misys Environmental Registry System (“MERS”), the new carbon management emissions reporting solution that will be released March 31, 2010.”
tags: open-source, environment
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Second Life seeks mainstream adoption – Computerworld Blogs
“Viewer 2.0 is far more organized than before, and that makes it easier to use. It brings the most important functions to the surface, while less frequently used tools are hidden in menus, available when needed but not jumping out to confuse the beginner.
The top of the viewer now looks like a Web browser, with an address bar that contains the 3D coordinates of your avatar’s location, in a form resembling a URL. As with a Web browser, you can embed bookmarks (“landmarks” in Second Life jargon), in the horizontal space below the address bar.”
tags: second-life, virtual-world, viewer, browser
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Second Life 2.0: sneak peek of the new viewer : The Metaverse Journal – Virtual World News
“Overall, Linden Lab deserve kudos for delivering a significantly revamped viewer that should make using Second Life markedly easier for new residents in particular. Linden Lab have consistently stated their commitment to improving the user experience and this is one of the more concrete examples of how that is now being delivered. The proof of Viewer 2’s success will only come with widespread use, but initial impressions are positive. Of course, Linden Lab need to pull off a usability coup to ensure ongoing growth. Combined with potential improvements in grid performance, the horizon seems a little brighter than it has been in a while.”
tags: second-life, virtual-world
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Macmillan’s Future Of Textbooks Looks a Lot Like Wikipedia – DynamicBooks – Gizmodo
“More to the point, it’s a step toward electronic textbooks, and away from the bizarre economy of print textbooks. DynamicBooks textbooks, which will accessible on an computer, as well as the iPhone (and presumably the iPad) will be much—about 50%—cheaper than print textbooks, which are sold at high prices with the expectation that they’ll later be resold.”
tags: textbooks, macmillan, ebook
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
This just popped up and since it is tomorrow and will happen before my Daily Links are published, I though I would note it now. It’s for a webinar on Tuesday, February 23, 2010, at 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM EST.
From the registration page:
On February 10, 2010 the Linux Foundation and the Open Source Initiative held a Strategic Planning Session for lawyers active in support of adoption of free and open source software. The purpose of the meeting was to identify key legal issues that will impact the development and adoption of free and open source software in 2010 and beyond.
Karen Copenhaver, partner at Choate Hall & Stewart and Counsel for the Linux Foundation and Mark Radcliffe, partner at DLA Piper and General Counsel for the Open Source Initiative (OSI), hosted the strategy session. Karen and Mark will report on the key topics that were discussed, who participated, and conclusions. In addition, we will focus on the status of developing a standard approach to delivery of information on the different components in software packages, the so called “Bill of Materials”. The effort is being led by FOSSBazaar with Black Duck’s support
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A Big Victory for F/OSS: Jacobsen v. Katzer is Settled – ConsortiumInfo.org
“The result? F/OSS has achieved a significant victory that will provide comfort to developers that their expectations will be satisfied when they contribute code to a software project. This is particularly significant for projects that adopt so-called “restrictive” licenses, such as the GNU General Public License, which are intended to prevent exploitation of the work of community developers for unauthorized commercial purposes.”
tags: open-source, legal, copyright
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Neowin.net – Revealed: Office 2010 ballot screen for default file format, OOXML or ODF
“Microsoft has made several changes to a Release Candidate version of Office 2010 made available to testers recently. One change in particular prompts users whether they want to use Office Open XML (OOXML) or OpenDocument (ODF) document formats. The prompt only appears in European SKUs of Microsoft Office 2010.”
tags: microsoft, odf, ooxml
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Mike The Coder » My top 10 Gedit plugins
“Gedit can be a really awesome editor if you give it a few plugins and an open mind. Here are a few of my favorites.”
tags: open-source, editors
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Making it as an MMO blogger: The bloggers speak up part 4 – Massively
“A game developer invites you to take an all-expense-paid trip to visit their studio and review their upcoming MMO. They promise a free copy of the game and lifetime account, as well. Would you do the review? Explain why or why not.”
tags: mmorpg
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Is Second Life about to enter its “second life?” – Scoble
“First, the users remained very evangelistic. Second, corporations like IBM found other uses for its islands and kept investing (they now use these islands for training and replacements of expensive conferences). Third, the technology has been steadily improving. Fourth, the company has found new ways to bring new users in and make the experience easier to get into.”
tags: second-life, virtual-world
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Arkansas Times: Education by avatar
“When you think of Second Life (SL), a web-based, user-created virtual world where people remake their own identities, clothing, appearance and lifestyle, you might think of anti-social geeks sitting at home in their mothers’ basements, communicating with other “avatars” and creating a charmed virtual life that in no way resembles their own. And for some users you probably wouldn’t be too far off.
But what started out as a virtual universe where users can create alter egos, interact and actually participate in a virtual economy is being used by universities in Arkansas and elsewhere as a cost-effective, easy-to-use learning tool.”
tags: second-life, virtual-world
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
The GoOpen conference will take place in Oslo, Norway, on April 19 and 20 this year.
From the website:
GoOpen is a two-day event located in Oslo, organized by the Norwegian Open Source Competence Center, founded by the government. We expect 500 participants from Norway and Nordic countries. The target group for this event is decision makers within public sector in Norway, IT professionals, ICT business, private sector, politicians, students and the press. GoOpen will take place in the city center of Oslo. The conference consists of keynotes, tracks and break-out sessions. The conference is arranged in cooperation with among others; ministries, The Norwegian Association of Local and Regional Authorities, ICT Norway in Norway.
More conferences are listed in my Upcoming Linux, Open Source, and Virtual Worlds Events page.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
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Stanford mathematician: In reality, simulation is key to math education
“A massively multiplayer online game requiring players to employ mathematical concepts could revolutionize the teaching of mathematics at the middle school level, according to Stanford mathematician Keith Devlin. That’s the age when math and science proficiency plummets among U.S. students. Devlin says the game project would be so complex and expensive that the federal government would likely have to spearhead it. But, he said, a pilot project showed such a game would be doable.”
tags: stanford, mathematics, education, virtual-world
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Ubuntu Netbook Remix enlightens ARM support
“With a lack of open source 3D graphics support on ARM devices impeding Ubuntu’s use in ARM-based netbooks, Canonical turned to the Enlightment project’s libraries to add visual panache to 2D interfaces. The Canonical project to use the open source Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL) was announced in a blog post by in Canonical Ubuntu Mobile Developer Jamie Bennett, and then echoed by a post at the Enlightenment project. Bennett’s blog post posted two examples of Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR) interfaces based on the EFL technology that should appear in the Lucid Lynx Ubuntu release in April.”
tags: linux, ubuntu, arm, remix
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Sorry, English major, the engineers have triumphed
“In 2008, Nicholas Carr took to the pages of The Atlantic to make the provocative case that Google might be “making us stupid.” His basic worry was that a reliance on the Web was rewiring his brain, that he was skimming along the surface of links, facts, and ideas, but now had trouble engaging in more focused thought and in reading longer pieces of text.”
tags: google
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
This last week my son and I were on vacation and I took along a Simmtronics 10.2 netbook running Ubuntu Linux 9.10 Remix along with IBM Lotus applications like Notes and Sametime. I brought it so I could have reasonable access to the Internet and check in to see if there were any urgent emails I needed to respond to for work.
The screen, as you might guess from the name of the netbook, is slightly larger than ten inches measured diagonally. This is smaller than most laptops but larger than the first generation of netbooks. The screen resolution was 1024 x 600 and the display itself was quite vibrant.
After a few days on Remix I decided I wanted to go back to the regular Ubuntu Gnome desktop and so when I got home I downloaded and installed Ubuntu 9.10 “Karmic Koala.” There’s nothing wrong with Remix, it’s just that I’m used to the regular desktop and I decided the screen was large enough to support it.
Here are some observations about getting the most of that smaller screen while running the Ubuntu desktop.
Continue reading Life with Linux: Adapting to the smaller screen on a netbook
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Joe Sanchez and Leslie Jarmon – The Educators Coop » Second life Learning Curve
“This first video focuses on overcoming the learning curve in Second Life. Over the years I’ve conducted quite a bit of research in this area and i wanted to provide an avenue for current and potential teachers in Second Life to hear directly from students about their experiences.”
tags: virtual-world, video, education, second-life
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Lego creating multiplayer online game | ITworld
“The game will have multiple Lego-based worlds to be explored. Some worlds will have traditional Lego themes, such as pirates, ninjas and castles, while others will be novel for the Lego space. Users can assemble semi-completed components from these worlds into entirely new designs, or they can build new components from scratch, using standard bricks.”
tags: game, lego, virtual-world
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Red Hat Headlines Southern California Linux Expo – MarketWatch
“Red Hat, Inc. /quotes/comstock/13*!rht/quotes/nls/rht (RHT 28.35, -0.83, -2.84%) , the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, and the Fedora Project, a Red Hat sponsored and community-supported open source collaboration project, today announced they will deliver a keynote address and additional presentations at the eighth annual Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE). SCALE is one of the largest Linux conferences in the region, attracting enterprise and industry professionals along with smaller businesses, non-profit industries and Linux enthusiasts.”
tags: red-hat, conference
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Feds look for their avatars in 3-D — Federal Computer Week
“The Agriculture Department plans to award multiple contracts under a program to develop a fully-immersive, persistent 3D experience in a virtual world populated by avatars that can be customized to resemble real-life users, according to documents published on the Federal Business Opportunities Web Site.
The virtual world’s features would need to be at least as good as or better than what’s offered publicly by Second Life or World of Warcraft, according to the statement of work for the project.”
tags: virtual-world, government
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The World’s Most Expensive Island–Online – Forbes.com
“While Storey’s example is extreme, buying and selling virtual goods in videogames and virtual worlds is becoming mainstream. The virtual goods market in the U.S. is estimated to reach $1.6 billion this year, up from $1 billion in 2009, according to research firm Inside Networks. And the U.S. is just a part of the worldwide market, which some experts put as high as $10 billion; countries like China and Korea are major players.”
tags: virtual-world, entropia
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ProtonMedia Upgrades ProtoSphere, the Leading Virtual World for Business | .NET Developer’s Journal
“Today ProtonMedia released ProtoSphere v.1.4, a milestone update of the company’s market-leading 3-D virtual world for business. The new release boasts the seven major features most requested by global life sciences companies to meet their most demanding meeting, collaboration, and learning requirements”
tags: virtual-world, press-release
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OU announces Linux course – The H Open Source: News and Features
“The Open University has announced ‘Linux – an introduction’ a ten week course on the open source operating system aimed at absolute beginners.”
tags: linux, open-source, education
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Chrome OS vs Ubuntu Netbook Remix | News | TechRadar UK
“Although Chrome OS is based on Ubuntu, Google has no intention right now of targeting the mass market.
Instead, Chrome OS will be certified to run on specific hardware, which at the very least will need either an x86 or ARM CPU and a solid-state drive (SSD) for storage.”
tags: ubuntu, linux, chrome, google
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
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What happens to Sun’s open-source software now? – Computerworld Blogs
“In general, we know that Sun’s software product catalog will be cut back and that many Sun staffers will soon be laid off. Historically, when Oracle acquires a company, deep cuts are the rule. For example, Oracle fired about 5,000 workers after acquiring PeopleSoft. This time around, Oracle is saying that there will be only about a thousand layoffs. In particular, although no one is going on record, it’s feared that Sun’s open-source groups will take the brunt of these cuts.”
tags: open-source, sun, oracle
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RIM switching to open source WebKit – The H Open Source: News and Features
“At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Research In Motion announced an overhaul of its Blackberry phone web browser. Like the iPhone and Android systems, the new browser is WebKit based and is expected to be available on Blackberry devices later this year. in interviews Mike Lazardis, co-CEO of RIM said “You’ll see how quickly it downloads, how quickly it renders and how smooth it scrolls and zooms in”.”
tags: open-source, rim, blackberry
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Twitter Loves Open Source And Launches A Directory To Prove It – washingtonpost.com
“In recent months, there seems to be a mad rush of companies trying to one-up each other with how open-source they are. Twitter is the latest, as they have launched a directory of all the open source projects they’re currently working on and/or contributing to.The list is fairly impressive. It includes open source projects in Ruby, Scala, Java, C/C++, and other various tools.”
tags: twitter, open-source
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Mobile Platform Competition Benefits Consumers – Reviews by PC Magazine
“Over time, we’re certainly likely to see some consolidation in the smartphone OS market, because there probably isn’t room for 8 or 10 different systems. But for now, the competition is forcing the vendors into a game of leap-frog, adding new features and trying to figure out what will really make users happy. Not all the phone makers or software makers can win in that scenario, but as consumers, we all will benefit from the frenzied activity.”
tags: mobile
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
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Eleven is Louder: OpenSource Operating Systems
“Well, I figured that I should take an opportunity to introduce a few opensource OSs that really haven’t been in the lime light much. We all know about Linux and many of us also know about Darwin and BSD. Still some know about OpenSolaris. Which ever ones you know or don’t here’s a chance to get the scoop.”
tags: open-source, operating-system
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Discussing Unity, Realxtend, Opensim, Blue Mars and Second Life | The ARCH Network
“This blog is all about discussing architecture and design in virtual worlds – so lets discuss it! What’s up with Blue Mars? How is Architecture Islands in opensim coming along? What’s the coolest new architecture-related build in Second Life? What about Unity3D – have you tried it yet? So many platforms, so little time..”
tags: opensim, realxtend, virtual-world, architecture, second-life
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Need some space, or some help getting your architecture-related virtual world project started? | The ARCH Network
“If you’re totally new, and would like to learn more about what virtual worlds are, how they work, and the features of each platform, you can book a 2 hour workshop to help get you started. If you understand the platforms, but need help learning how to build, we can set up weekly appointments to review both basic and advanced building techniques.”
tags: second-life, virtual-world, architecture
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
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CHART OF THE DAY: In Case You Had Any Doubts About Where Microsoft’s Profit Comes From
“Microsoft is the largest, most profitable software company in the world.
And its profits are still being generated by the same engines that have driven Microsoft for years: Office, Windows, and its server division. (Meanwhile, its entertainment and devices division is only recently profitable again, and its online division is a money pit.)”
tags: microsoft
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Business & Technology | Microsoft needs big leap to catch up on smartphone technology | Seattle Times Newspaper
“At this point, just catching up would be a leap forward.
From 2008 to 2009, Microsoft’s slice of the smartphone operating-system market shrank from 13.1 percent to 10.7 percent. Meanwhile, Apple grew from 9.1 to 14.4 percent, and Google’s Android system started with half a percent and grew to 3.5 percent, according to IDC. Research In Motion (RIM), maker of the BlackBerry, rose to 19.6 percent from 15.6 percent.”
tags: microsoft, smartphone
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Who Is Developing KVM Linux Virtualization? — ServerWatch.com
“He said that after examining the project’s mailing list to gauge the activity taking place in KVM development, he found that there were some 884 unique participants in the mailing list, roughly equivalent to the number of active KVM developers. Those participants were spread across 382 unique address domains from somewhere in the range of 250 to 300 separate. According to Day, organizations that participate in KVM range from large corporations, to government and educational organization, as well as individual contributors.”
tags: kvm, virtualization
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
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Q&A: IBM’s Alistair Rennie on the big picture for Lotus | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com
“IBM is spreading access to its Lotus social and collaboration software all over the various computing platforms. But what’s the big strategy here?
I spoke with Alistair Rennie (right), IBM’s Lotus general manager, about trends like the consumerization of IT and the grand plan for his unit. Here’s the recap.”
tags: lotus
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IBM to support iPhone, Macs with new software | Software, Interrupted – CNET News
“Big Blue is expected to announce Thursday at Macworld San Francisco that it will soon be delivering its enterprise social platform, Lotus Connections, and Lotus Quickr team collaboration package for use with the iPhone and Mac.”
tags: ibm, mac, iphone, lotus
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Groklaw – Packaging Open Source, by Mark Webbink
“There is an article by Mark Webbink, Esq., “Packaging Open Source”, in the International Free and Open Source Software Law Review, Vol 1, No 2 (2009) that I think you’ll find interesting. It compares various FOSS licenses and how they handle compilations and collective works. The context of the article is specifically packaging Linux with an application into a software appliance, but the descriptions of the licenses and how they work are broadly useful in other contexts as well. I am republishing the article here because many of you face choices about what license you will use on your works, so you also need to understand, and others of you are lawyers who would like to understand FOSS licenses better.”
tags: open source
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RHEL 5.5 advances KVM, WiFi
“Red Hat released the first beta of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.5, providing memory allocation enhancements to the KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) hypervisor. RHEL 5.5 also introduces new storage and WiFi drivers, and supports new AMD, IBM, and Intel processors, says the company.”
tags: red-hat, linux, kvm
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Open Innovation: Accessing a canon of open source research
“So one of the things that’s clear is that even though the room represents hundreds of open source conference and journal papers, few of them have read any of the social science research on open source.”
tags: open-source, innovation
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LinuxPlanet – Interviews – What Matters to Open Source: Licensing or Community? – More to FOSS Than Licenses
“For instance, beyond open source’s licensing components is the idea of its community, which in many cases can be the ultimate arbiter of the success or failure of an open source effort: Simply making an application available under an open source license may not necessarily be enough for a project to succeed, nor is adopting an open source license some kind of magic pixie dust that you sprinkle onto a project to make it successful.”
tags: open-source, community, license
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451 CAOS Theory » Open source evolving with the cloud
“Interestingly, the OpenECP project chose to license it under the Affero GPLv3, and we’re watching licensing moves to see if cloud computing prompts more use of AGPL.”
tags: cloud, GPL, open-source
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Ubuntu Opportunistic Developer Week
“The Ubuntu Opportunistic Developer is Ubuntu Community Manager Jono Bacon’s pet project. The idea behind the project is to enable developers to write quick, scratch-an-itch application and making development on Ubuntu fun and more accessible.”
tags: ubuntu, linux
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Yale Daily News – Virtual world, real money in ‘Second Life’
“Yale owns two islands. But you can’t get to either of them by air, land or sea.
They exist only in Second Life, an online universe where people can buy land and trade services.
The University purchased its first virtual island, Elihu, in 2007. While the second island lies fallow and Elihu Island currently has only two projects, people involved with the projects said Yale’s presence on Second Life is a cost-effective teaching tool — each island costs $700 to buy and $147.50 a month to maintain — that they hope the University expands.”
tags: second-life, virtual-world, yale
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
As a complement to my Life with Linux blog series, I’m introducing another series which explores what I can do in virtual worlds and immersive Internet environments on Linux.
Last night I decided to play with OpenSim, aka OpenSimulator, which is, according to its website:
OpenSimulator is a 3D Application Server. It can be used to create a virtual environment (or world) which can be accessed through a variety of clients, on multiple protocols. OpenSimulator allows you to develop your environment using the technologies you feel work best – we’ve designed the software to be easily extendable through loadable modules to build completely custom configurations. OpenSimulator is released under a BSD License, making it both open source, and commercially friendly to embed in products.
I’ve fiddled with it before, but never really got something up and running very long. My new plan is experiment with opensim locally and then install it on my SliceHost account so I can access the virtual world regions from anywhere. My goals for last night were simple:
- Download and install OpenSim on my desktop running Ubuntu Linux 9.10 “Karmic Koala.”
- Create four regions arranged in a square and start them off with perfectly flat terrain. I planned to call the four regions Zeus, Hera, Athena, and Poseidon.
Continue reading Virtual Life with Linux: Standalone OpenSim on Ubuntu 9.10
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LinuxQuestions.org Announces 2009 Members Choice Awards
“LinuxQuestions.org, one of the most active and popular forums for Linux users on the Net, just released the results of its annual Member’s Choice Awards. Readers chose their favorites from text editor to distro, and everything in-between. According to LQ founder Jeremy Garcia, the poll drew more than 13,200 votes from the LQ community.”
tags: open-source, linux
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Open Source Game of the Year – LinuxQuestions.org
See winners in this and other categories.
tags: game, linux, open-source
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LinuxPlanet – Reports – The Linux Desktop Evolves With KDE 4.4 – More Usability
“One of the biggest items to impact KDE 4.4 was Nokia’s release of Qt 4.6 in December 2009. The Qt open source GUI framework is the core user interface framework used by KDE. Qt 4.6 brought KDE 4.4 a number of significant advancements, including noticeable performance improvements and a new animation framework, Seigo noted. “
tags: KDE, linux, desktop
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15 Ways Oracle Can Make Java Better (and Improve Its Stance with Developers) – Application Development from eWeek
“When Oracle acquired Sun, the database giant also acquired the Java technology that was Sun’s lifeblood. Oracle Chairman and CEO Larry Ellison called Java the most important technology Oracle has ever acquired. With ownership and leadership come responsibility. Java’s future is now in Oracle’s hands. This eWEEK slide show presents 15 ways Oracle can improve Java and boost its position in the Java community.”
tags: Java, Oracle, Sun
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Apple’s Virtual Reality Store: Second Life or XBox Live? – ReadWriteStart
“While the rest of the world was caught up with Google Buzz, Apple was quietly granted a patent for a virtual reality App Store. The store patent encompasses details such as seasonal and time-based lighting, color schemes and a basic storefront representation. A few bloggers have already criticized the patent as a relic from SecondLife past, the store may have more use when we consider it in the context of the XBox Live marketplace. “
tags: virtual-world, apple, patents
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3D and you: Catching the next big wave in business :: Editor’s Blog at Local Tech Wire
“Then attend the next Executives Edge” event from Local Tech Wire. It’s set for Feb. 24 at Durham’s American Tobacco Complex Bay 7 venue starting at 11:30 a.m.
On behalf of Local Tech Wire, I am inviting you to attend this lunch-and-learn event that focuses on the coming tsunami of 3D and what it means for your business.”
tags: 3D, virtual-world
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
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Microsoft’s Office business faces more competition – MarketWatch
“However, the business division’s quarterly decline – which took some of the shine off an otherwise blockbuster performance by Microsoft’s Windows operating system – also underlines the software giant’s need to maintain a key growth engine in the face of increasing competition.”
tags: microsoft
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OpenOffice is the new David Hasselhoff • The Register
“The firm also believes national pride may have its hand in determining a country’s office suite of choice. It noted that strong adoption of OpenOffice in Germany could partially be a result of its origins in StarOffice code, originally developed by the Germany company StarDivision. Meanwhile, Canada has the largest WordPerfect market share (4 per cent) perhaps thanks to Corel Corporation’s Ontario heritage.”
tags: OpenOffice.org
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Novell and Linux Professional Institute Partner on Linux Training and Certification — WALTHAM, Mass. and SACRAMENTO, Calif., Feb. 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ –
“Novell Inc. (Nasdaq: NOVL) and The Linux Professional Institute (LPI) today announced an international partnership to standardize their entry-level Linux certification programs on LPIC-1. Under this program, Linux professionals who have earned their LPIC-1 status will also satisfy the requirements for the Novell® Certified Linux Administrator (CLA) certification. In addition, Novell Training Services has formally agreed to include required LPIC-1 learning objectives in its CLA course training material.”
tags: linux, novell, certification
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Myst Online is alive… again… for the, um, we lost count how many times it died – Massively
“The game that gives Lazarus a run for his money, Myst Online: URU Live, is kicking once more. Cyan Worlds has gotten enough money together again to start up a brand new Myst server as the first phase of making Myst Online an open source project. The cavern that’s online now is mostly the same cavern that GameTap had right as the game went offline”
tags: myst, open-source
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Black Duck patents OSS software license conflict analysis
“Bradley Kuhn, the technology director of the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) expressed dismay this week after learning that Black Duck Software was granted a patent that covers software methods for detecting and resolving open source software licensing conflicts. Kuhn, who plays a major role in the SFLC’s GPL enforcement efforts, contends that Black Duck’s patent is far from novel and describes techniques that he has been using for licensing compliance analysis for over a decade.”
tags: open-source, patents
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
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How to Become a Certified BBQ Judge – Associated Content – associatedcontent.com
“Have you ever watched a BBQ cook-off on television, or gone to one of these live events and thought that judges at these events had the best job in the world? Well they do. However, to get one of these coveted non-paying positions you have to become a Certified BBQ Judge, and this article will show you just how easy it is to meet this requirement.”
tags: bbq
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BuddyPress 1.2 released | WordPressious
“BuddyPress is a bundled collection of plugins and themes for creating a social network service around an installation of the popular open source blog engine WordPress MU.”
tags: buddypress, wordpress, social-networking
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Open Luna Foundation
“The OpenLuna Foundation seeks to return mankind to the lunar surface, first through robotic missions, followed by manned exploration, culminating in an eight person permanent outpost, and to do all of this in a way that it is accessible to everyone. Our research and technology will be open-source, we are privately funded, and one of our specific goals is to reach out to the community and educational systems to spread interest, enthusiasm, and involvement.”
tags: space, luna
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Late Last Year, Google Overtook Apple In WebKit Code Commits – washingtonpost.com
“Now, the author is quick to point out the caveats of the graph (and does so for four paragraphs), and notes that he was hesitant to even publish it because of how easy it is to misinterpret. The graph, while it shows commits, doesn’t weigh more important ones versus less important ones. Nor does it in any way measure the ways in which companies or individuals contribute to WebKit in other meaningful ways. That said, it does clearly show that in late 2009, Google surpassed Apple as the company that now contributes the most (again, in terms of commits) to the project.”
tags: apple, google, chrome, safari, browser, webkit
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Where are the Linux tablets? | Linux and Open Source | TechRepublic.com
“The Linux and open source community does not want to find itself back where it was in the mid-to-late 90’s, where it was relegated to servers and the desktops of fan-boys and uber-geeks. This is not where Linux wants to be. The last five years has blessed Linux with so much growth. But if Linux can not gain a foothold in the tablet PC market, that growth could wither away.”
tags: linux, tablet
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A fresher Linux desktop
“It’s been a long time in the coming but this year Linux will get a makeover, thanks to the Gnome project. In September the Gnome team, makers of one of the most popular desktop interfaces for Linux, will release version 3.0 of their desktop environment and they are promising “big user-visible changes”.”
tags: linux, gnome
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
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