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Linux Magazine's top 20 companies for 2008

There are some notable omissions from Linux Magazine's list of the top-20 companies for 2008 (MuleSource, MySQL, etc.), but it's an interesting list because it doesn't read like a standard list of open-source companies. Or, rather, it takes a more expansive, "Long Tail" view of what an open source company is.

Hence, the list includes the usual suspects like Alfresco (correctly reading that Alfresco is a serious threat to Sharepoint's growing dominance), Mozilla, Ubuntu/Canonical, Red Hat, and rPath, but also Google, Yahoo!, and...Microsoft.… Read more

Google's sky gets podcasting, maps with dragons

While computer monitors and TV screens continue to become the size of small stars, there's no beating the real thing short of visiting a planetarium, or lately--Google Earth. Yesterday Google unveiled the second iteration of Google Sky for Google Earth at the Astronomical Society's annual conference in Austin, Texas. Among the more notable additions is podcasting that's been integrated into the Earth and Sky layer. These short 90-second podcasts will tell you anything that's coming up this week (or that's historically taken place), and you can listen to them right from the app via … Read more

Google's new motto: "Don't be arrogant"

If this sounds like a tall order for Google - renowned for its elitism - it's because it is. Yet a call for humility is precisely what Google CEO Eric Schmidt seems to believe will keep Google firing on all cylinders, according to the New Yorker.

[Google is] run by three computer scientists we're going to make all the mistakes computer scientists running a company would make. But one of the mistakes we're not going to make is the mistake that non-scientists make. We're going to make mistakes based on facts and data and analysis. What … Read more

What's the best Web site for geotagged photos?

Readers of this blog will have inferred I'm a fan of geotagging--in fact, I'm trying to label all my photos with the tags that show where the picture was taken, even though the geotagging process is complicated.

I'm betting that much of the value of geotagging lies in the future, for example, when I might have a harder time remembering which hike a particular picture came from. But can anything useful be done with those geotagged photos today?

Based on my scrutiny of a handful of sites--Google's Picasa, Yahoo's Flickr, SmugMug (the only … Read more

Rain and shine hit Google Maps and Google Earth

Two of the most useful online services have got to be maps and weather.

With this in mind, The Weather Channel Interactive is offering a new mapplet for Google Maps that lets people add customizable weather layers to maps and see weather data on Google Earth (download it for Windows or Mac OS X).

One click and you can see the clouds over San Francisco on Google Maps. Pop-up bubbles provide more detailed information like current conditions including temperature, humidity, wind speed and UV Index. You can also find links to forecasts and track storms.

The weather information combines data … Read more

NewsGator drops fees for news readers

NewsGator is making its latest consumer news readers available for free.

The updated products are FeedDemon 2.6, NetNewsWire 3.1 for the Mac, NewsGator InBox 3.0 beta, NewsGator Online, and NewsGator Go for mobile gadgets. Premium subscriptions formerly cost $19.95 or $29.95 per product.

The tools synchronize content fed to the Web, as well as to desktop and handheld devices including the iPhone, BlackBerrys, and those running Windows Mobile.

Each account will include features that were formerly offered only in premium editions. Users who have paid for NewsGator products on or after December 9 can request … Read more

Interoperability through open data, Google and Facebook style

Google and Facebook are joining ranks on DataPortability Workgroup. As the ReadWriteWeb put it, "Good bye customer lock-in, hello to new privacy challenges." While the process of opening up data may well take a long time, it's instructive that the web is doing what the offline software industry has thought tantamount to corporate suicide: Opening up.

Data has been the web's lock-in point, as Tim O'Reilly, in particular, has championed. Some believe this is the only way to make a buck: Remove customer options such that they're forced to continue doing business with a … Read more

gOS coming to more devices--including an ePC competitor

gOS, the Linux-based operating environment that Everex put on its low-priced gPCs it sold at Wal-Mart Stores, is getting a nice little update and support by more Everex computers, including one ultra-tiny laptop.

See our first gOS review: Almost the Google PC.

The 2.0 version of gOS, or "Rocket," has a freshened user interface with a few new features, such as a multiple desktop switcher. It also has support for Google Gears, so you can use the few offline/online apps that support it on the gOS devices. Currently, Google Reader is Gears-enabled, as is Zoho Writer … Read more

Obama Girl a draw at Google-YouTube press party

MANCHESTER, N.H.--Not content to host a pair of YouTube presidential debates with CNN, Google and YouTube are now aggressively schmoozing the political press corps in New Hampshire.

Shmooze Exhibit A was last night's primary-eve election party here that Google held on the third and fourth floors of a converted mill building that now houses this former industrial city's SEE Science Center. Its motto: "Getting kids from toddlers to teens excited about science since 1986."

In theory it was open only to press, but we noticed a few interlopers, including a Facebook Washington representative, the … Read more