Computer tech

The next version of Ubuntu will get multitouch interface abilities, catching the Linux operating system up to Windows and Mac OS X in at least one domain.

"Every single major PC manufacturer has been asking for a touch story on Linux. This has been one of the major missing points for Linux in the PC ecosystem," said Mark Shuttleworth, founder of the company called Canonical that develops and supports Ubuntu. But multitouch support will arrive in the next version of Ubuntu, 10.10, aka Maverick Meerkat.

Adding multitouch isn't easy, particularly in the open-source world of Linux … Read more

A new option for Amazon Web Services has arrived: the raw computing power of supercomputing clusters now widely used in research circles.

The service, called Cluster Compute, is a variation of one of the earliest services Amazon offered, EC2, or Elastic Compute Cloud. Compared with the standard EC2, Cluster Compute offers more processing power and faster network connections among the cluster's computing nodes for better communications, Amazon said Tuesday. The service retains the same general philosophy, though: customers pay as they go, with more usage incurring more fees.

The cluster service, which is available with Linux and a customer'… Read more

I remember watching in the early '90s a profusion of basic games flood the Windows world, spurred by the success of Windows 3.1 and Visual Basic and shared freely over the young Internet.

Later that decade came a profusion of Web pages as developers got their start with the burgeoning Internet, often beginning by copying and pasting code from another Web site.

Windows and the Web clearly showed how making a programming foundation approachable and easy to use can help lure a new generation of developers--and how developer interest and activity were instrumental in that foundation's later commercial … Read more

It's easy to see how the iPhone 4's high-definition 1280x720 video would be a handy feature. It's an entirely different thing to see just how impressive it can be in the right hands.

In this case, those hands belong chiefly to Michael Koerbel and Anna Elizabeth James, students at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts, who wrote a short video called "Apple of My Eye." Koerbel recorded it with an iPhone 4, and James edited it on the same hardware with Apple's new iMovie app--all in less than 48 hours. … Read more

Google has started sending out Android 2.2, aka Froyo, to those with its Nexus One phone.

"Starting today, Nexus One users will begin to receive the Android 2.2 (codenamed Froyo) over-the-air software update on their phones," according to a Monday blog post about the Froyo update. "This update will be rolled out gradually to phones--and most users will receive the notification by the end of the week."

Froyo adds better performance; the ability to turn the phone into a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot other computers can use to access the Internet; better support for Microsoft'… Read more

Despite years of investment in its Symbian operating system, Nokia has picked the Linux-based MeeGo instead to go head to head with Apple's iPhone and other higher-end smartphones.

The Nokia N8 will be the last of the flagship N-series smartphones to use Symbian, Nokia told CNET Australia, and confirmed the move in a Reuters interview. "Going forward, N-series devices will be based on MeeGo," a Nokia spokesman said, though it will continue to offer Symbian lower down the product line.

Years ago, Nokia was the dominant phone maker, but it's struggled to reclaim its past glory. The N-series change indicates the company's bets on Symbian--including Nokia's acquisition of full Symbian control from other partners and its subsequent release as open-source software--weren't sufficient to make the operating system a top-end competitor.

In contrast, the iPhone 4 appears to be increasing Apple's considerable clout in the mobile market, and application developers' products also run on the iPod Touch and iPad devices that also use the iOS operating system. At the same time, Google has been making steady gains with its Android operating system, with 160,000 new Android phones activated daily, and various partners plan Android-baesd tablets and other devices. … Read more

Two men who led one element of Amazon.com's successful cloud-computing services have launched their own a start-up called Nimbula to focus on a private version of the technology.

Cloud computing takes several forms, but Amazon Web Services generally delivers building blocks available over the Internet that developers can use to construct their own higher-level services. Nimbula, in contrast, focuses more on a "private cloud" approach geared for companies building their own computing services based on a similar but in-house approach.… Read more

Google has released a tool to let command-line aficionados use several of the Net giant's services with the full glory of a text-based interface.

The tool, called GoogleCL, offers commands to control the contents sites of YouTube, Blogger, and Picasa, and the Google Apps sites of Docs, Calendar, and Contacts.

For example, people can create a photo album, change a document in a text editor, delete all blog posts mentioning a certain word, list all videos, or add a calendar appointment.

Command-line tools aren't for most folks--do you relish the prospect of typing "google youtube post --category … Read more

Offering a direct competitor to a widely used Amazon.com service, Google on Wednesday launched an early version of an Internet-based storage system.

As with the better established Amazon Web Services (AWS) option called Simple Storage Service (S3), Google Storage for Developers provides a mechanism to tap into data that Google houses and keeps safe and accessible.

The service is designed to offer low-level access to information stored on the Net. Web sites and Web applications can tap into the data as needed, and Google charges through a utility-computing model that means the more customers use, they more they pay. … Read more