Monthly Archive:: October 2009

Windows Mobile 6.5: “There’s No Excuse for This”

  Submitted by Moulinneuf Windows 32 Comments
Before the iPhone, we were content with stylus-based interfaces that worked well - mostly - for what you needed to do. Then came the iPhone. From a pure feature perspective, it was (and is) lacking, but it more than makes up for it by being a polished product that's easy to use. The iPhone shook the entire industry up, and while newcomers have done relatively well (webOS, Android) Windows Mobile is now so far left behind you can barely see it any more. Windows Mobile 6.5 is supposed to be the first step towards modernising Windows Mobile - but it fails miserably.
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New Rules to End ‘Blogger Payola’

Legal 18 Comments
"US regulators will for the first time crack down on bloggers who fail to disclose fees or freebies they get from companies for reviewing products. The Federal Trade Commission, decided to update its nearly 30 year old guidelines to clarify the law for the vast world of blogging. Offenders could face eventual fines of up to $11,000 (GBP 6,900) per violation."
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Palm Frees up webOS Development

Wireless 15 Comments
Palm has just announced a number of changes its webOS development platform that should really be welcomed by developers. They are fully blessing application distribution outside of the App Catalog, open source developers will no longer have to pay a dime to have their applications in the App Catalog, and Palm will also open up all their analytical data for developers to use. Instant update: the official press release is out too.
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Adobe Brings Flash Apps to the iPhone

Wireless 9 Comments
Adobe has come up with a way to let developers write Flash applications for Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch devices, even without the support of Apple. Adobe has been trying to work with Apple for more than a year to get its Flash Player software running on Apple's products, but has said it needs more cooperation from Apple to get the work done. It has now come up with something of a work-around. Flash Professional CS5 will include an option for developers to take the code they wrote for devices that do include Flash Player, compile it to run as a native, stand-alone application on the iPhone, and sell it through Apple's App Store.
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Linux Saves Aussie Electrical Grid

  Submitted by Moulinneuf Bugs & Viruses 19 Comments
A Windows virus hit the display consoles in the control room of the Australian national electricity grid, presumably leaving the managers bind to the system status. Luckily, system administrators had Linux-based systems for development that could be swapped out for the disabled Windows machines. It seems as much of a failure to properly maintain the Windows machines as a failure of judgment in using a virus-susceptible OS for mission critical systems, but it's fun schadenfreude fodder for Windows haters.
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Admin’s Guide to Deploying Windows 7

Windows 1 Comment
InfoWorld's J. Peter Bruzzese takes an admin look the key decisions and options you'll have to address to ensure a successful migration to Windows 7. Bruzzese's guide -- which includes a hands-on video tour of Windows 7 and a deep-dive PDF report that provides Windows 7 benchmarks -- examines hardware and software compatibility issues, addresses the licensing question, and lends insight for those Windows shops considering the virtualized desktop route.
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Ballmer: Licensing Problematic, But Don’t Expect Any Changes

Microsoft 14 Comments
Software licensing. As home users, it's already an incomprehensible mess of legalese that nobody cares one bit about. However - we home users have it easy. The situation for business users and people managing IT departments is even worse (proprietary software, mostly, of course). Microsoft is a major culprit in this regard, and while the company acknowledges that the situation is messy, they claim they can't really do anything about it.
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Windows Mobile to Lose Marketshare, but Continue Growing

  Submitted by Moulinneuf Wireless 10 Comments
Acer is the latest smartphone handset maker to shift its resources from Windows Mobile to Android. And with competing OSes grabbing marketshare and attention daily, an observer couldn't be faulted for assuming that Microsoft's mobile OS initiative is in terminal decline. But it's quite possible that the mobile computing market is growing so fast that there will be room for all these players, and more.
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Windows 7 to Usher in Crush of Cheap Laptops

  Submitted by Moulinneuf Hardware 8 Comments
Manufacturers are taking advantage of the Windows 7 release to roll out a slate of new laptops, and the big trend is low prices. We wrote a couple of weeks ago about Netbook watchers predicting that Windows 7 will be licensed too high for value-priced netbooks. But licensing fees don't seem to be preventing laptop makers from aggressive pricing on their new laptops, even ones with premium features and finishes.
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Firefox Tips

  Submitted by linuxlinks Internet 17 Comments
Mozilla Firefox has been outperforming Internet Explorer for a number of years, and its latest version is even faster than ever. However, there is a new, lean, free web browser on the block which runs web pages at lightning speed. It goes by the name of Google Chrome.Tweak the right settings and with some experimentation, Firefox can keep pace with Google Chrome. Unknown to many of its users, Firefox has a raft of options that can unleash the browser's true potential. With just a few minutes of your time, you can make your daily web browsing more enjoyable.Read more
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Dell’s Instant-on Linux Board: Useful, or Waste of Time?

  Submitted by twitterfire Hardware 85 Comments
We already introduced Dell's new laptop wonder, the Z600, to you earlier this week. What makes this laptop special is that it contains a small ARM motherboard which runs a special version of openSUSE Linux, allowing for instant access to basic functionality like checking email, browsing the web, and playing multimedia files. What's news, at least for OSNews, is that research from Dell has shown that people spent 70% of their time in the Linux environment.
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Cloudera Desktop Released, Simplifies Hadoop Even More

Databases No Comments
A while back, we covered the release of the free Cloudera distribution of Hadoop-- handy software to manage data across a multiplicity of servers-- the same software behind Yahoo!, Facebook, and other successful companies. Though Hadoop and Cloudera's Hadoop have been truly stellar at what they do, it's all essentially been done via command line, which for many people isn't the most productive or user-friendly type of interface. The folks at Cloudera knew this, so they've gone ahead and created a graphical interface to communicate with Hadoop.
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OpenID: What Should We Do?

OS News 43 Comments

Our identities online are becoming ever more valuable to the companies that we entrust them to. What happens though when a company just ups and closes shop (Pownce, for example) and deletes your stuff? Sure, the individual files you'll have on your computer anyway, you won't have lost anything as far as bits and bytes are concerned--but what about friendships you've built up with people who you only know through the service. Your data should be portable so that you can take it to any service and not lose those relationships that you've built up in one walled-garden when it collapses, or you decide to move on. OpenID tries to solve this brand-centric problem by placing you at the centre of your data and allowing the sites you trust access through a single sign-on. OSnews is contemplating implementing OpenID and would like your feedback, but there are a few questions to consider--please read on for details

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Google Bites Bing back, Recovers All Usage Losses Since Spring

Google 20 Comments
"If the last two months should be interpreted as Microsoft suggests, with Bing's gradual ascent in usage share against Google as a sign of Bing's inevitably catching up, then a similar interpretation of September's numbers from live analytics firm StatCounter should be taken as a sign of Bing's ultimate demise. A sampling of five billion or more US page views from Web sites accessed by StatCounter in September reveals that, of the world's top three search services, Google's usage share has climbed back just above 80%, and is flirting with last November's peak of 81.14% -- meaning Google is back to serving four out of five US-based general queries. Bing's usage share in the US descended by 1.13% to 8.51% for the month of September, while Yahoo's dove 1.1% to 9.4%. Google's share among the top three has now climbed above where it stood in May (78.72%), when Microsoft changed the name of Windows Live Search."
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