Posted 03/19/10 at 08:07:26 PM by Ryan Whitwam

It’s often said that HTML5 will take over the web and push out the current mishmash of standards. Microsoft and Adobe would like to respectfully disagree with that. At the recent Open Source Business Conference executives from both companies said they believe the future of the web will include their proprietary formats, Flash and Silverlight.

Microsoft did have nice things to say about HTML5 though. They plan to use the standard in conjunction with their own plug-ins. Adobe too said they’d utilize HTML5, pointing to their web tools space. Of open source in general, both execs agreed that it could be an efficient way to distribute software.

The battle for multimedia delivery is still just getting under way, but plug-in (especially Flash) have a big head start. Do you think HTML5 will come out on top, or are we looking at a mixture of standards?

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Posted 03/17/10 at 05:23:43 PM by Ryan Whitwam

Google Gesture search for Android was released just about two weeks ago to largely positive reviews. The free app allows users to draw a character on the screen and have it recognized and used to search the phone. It is very accurate and stable, but the only problem was that it could only be used on Android 2.0 and higher phones. That means only the Nexus One and Droid. But yesterday evening El Goog decided to make it available to users of Android 1.6.

Not only that, but the app is available in all countries where the Android Market is available. The new version also includes various performance improvements and bug fixes. We’re stoked that users of the venerable G1 and HTC Magic can get in on the gesture search action, but those running 1.5 based Sense UI and MotoBlur devices are still left out in the cold. HTC and Motorola are expected to release 2.1 based updates to their Android skins in the coming months. Until then, let’s spare their feelings and downplay how cool Gesture Search is

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Posted 03/15/10 at 07:02:23 PM by Ryan Whitwam

Novell has perused the most recent list of the top 500 supercomputers in the world, and nine of the top ten run on Linux. Not only that, but 85% of the entire list run Linux. It’s not hard to guess why Novell might take an interest in this; Novell’s SuSE Linux is the distro of choice in six of the top ten supercomputers.

After tabulations were complete, Novell wasted no time patting themselves on the back. “Supercomputers are helping to push the boundary of science and knowledge around the world, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell has been chosen as the optimal operating system to power many of these HPC environments for good reasons,” said Novell VP of Business Development Holger Dryoff.

The current king of the supercomputer hill is the Jaguar computer at the US Department of Energy Oak Ridge lab. It's quite a monster of a machine, capable of 2.3 petaflops. It runs Linux, but not Novell's SuSE. Rest assured, as soon as one of these supercomputers develops sentience and proceeds to wipe out humanity, odds are it will be running on open source. There will be no blue screen to save mankind.

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Posted 03/12/10 at 10:41:02 AM by Paul Lilly

Mozilla this week made available the first beta of Thunderbird 3 for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Codenamed "Lanikai," the latest release introduces a few changes to the open-source email client, many of which take place under the hood.

Built on top of the Gecko 1.9.2 platform (the same engine powering Firefox 3.6), Mozilla says you can expect improvements in stability and memory, fixes to improve upgrading from Thunderbird 2, fixes for auto complete, tabs, and activity manager, and several design improvements and corrections to the interface.

As with any beta software, you should expect a few bugs, and there are a handful of known issues in Thunderbird 3. Kaspersky's Anti-Spam extension is disabled, for instance, and you may run into some SMTP issues.

If you still want to give it a try, you can download a copy right here.

Release Notes
Changelog

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Posted 03/08/10 at 07:13:21 PM by Ryan Whitwam

So AT&T finally has their first Android phone, the Motorola Backflip. Whether or not you like the unusual design and Yahoo search (really?), it runs Android and it’s on AT&T. That by itself is remarkable. Now that the phone is available, users are finding yet another surprise that separates this from all the Android phones that came before it. It turns out that the option to allow apps from non-Android Market sources has been disabled.

It has long been held that obtaining apps from the Android Market was just a polite suggestion from Google. Users could get apps from various third-party stores and websites. Additionally, many beta apps are only distributed in this way. The reason for the change is currently unclear and no one is talking. This leaves the Backflip in much the same place the iPhone is, stuck with apps from only a single source, and in this case, a much smaller source.

AT&T has certainly had their way with Android here. Consider the removal of Google search, the addition of lots of AT&T bloatware, and now the locking down of app installs. This makes us wonder what AT&T’s Android strategy will look like. Will future Android handsets be similarly limited?

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Posted 03/08/10 at 10:01:01 AM by David Murphy

Listening to the Maximum PC podcast #131 this past week (I'm behind) brought back some fond memories.  Not only was there a little glint in my eye because I was actually mentioned on said podcast, but I was also tearing up a bit at the realization that the very art of podcasting could serve as an excellent Freeware Files roundup.

Thus, here we are!  Podcasting is a huge topic in itself, so I'm trying to bridge a bunch of different worlds in this week's list of awesome applications.  Just interested in listening to podcasts?  Don't worry--I've got you covered.  Looking to make a Maximum PC (or Freeware Files) fan podcast of your own?  You'll find a fun trick or two within the bits and bytes of this week's post.  Tired of all the same-ol', same-ol' podcasting programs that you read about on all the other tech sites (like iTunes, cough cough?)  Well, I'll do my best to surprise you with a new app or two!

Even if, like me, you think that 99-percent of all podcasts are lame and not really worth your time, you can also use some of the enclosed apps and utilities to exert some editing influence over existing audio files.  As well, you'll even find an awesome player for video and music files that even comes with a built-in Bittorrent download capability.

As always, slap on your favorite pair of headphones and click the jump--it's podcasting time!

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Posted 03/03/10 at 06:03:50 PM by Ryan Whitwam

The Linux faithful should see quite a change when they download the next major release of the popular Ubuntu distro. Version 10.04 is expected to come with a heavily revamped default theme. Yes, gone are the days of the brown default theme that has graced Ubuntu installs since its introduction in 2004.

Canonical has evolved the look ever so slightly as the OS has gone through revisions. The look has been getting decidedly brighter as time goes on with oranges creeping into the desktop color scheme. An expected black/orange redesign back in the 8.04 days never materialized, but the idea of a visual refresh never went away.

The new theme uses “light” as the model. The iconic logo has also been refreshed slightly with a thinner font and overall reduction in size. The Canonical design document claims, “We're drawn to Light because it denotes both warmth and clarity, and intrigued by the idea that 'light' is a good value in software.” There are two different looks currently posted on the wiki page, it is unclear which will be the new default theme. Both have purple and orange elements, while one makes heavy use of slate grey, and the other uses light tans. These are still in the early stages, but it seems clear that Ubuntu will never look the same again.

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Posted 03/03/10 at 10:00:00 AM by David Murphy

Open-source is not about the money.

The software world has gotten this point pretty well by now.  Sure, you can wrap additional elements of a larger business plan around an open-source offering.  But even at its core, the concept of open-source isn't really designed around capitalistic ideals.  If anything, it's more communistic in its focus: everybody shares an equal stake in a project, and anybody is free to assert their individual ownership in a piece of work by advancing it toward a new direction as they see fit.

But these... these are just the tools of the revolution, as Marx might have said.  When it comes to actual content itself--the very bits and bytes of progress that open-source tools help create--the current crop of major content creators and distributors are behaving like dictators in an open world.  And it's costing both them and us rather greatly. Instead of reaping the success of a community-driven groundswell for their assets, these companies would rather lay down the hammer and stifle all innovation in an attempt to control their futures to a "T."

Two recent examples from Lawrence Lessig and the band OK Go really hit home the biggest elements that are wrong with our current system of open information distribution on the ‘net.  If it's not the owner of the content acting like an idiot, it's the system we've allowed to propagate that virtually criminalizes content sharers without a second thought.

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