Product review

If you're a Mac user with a need for speed, you'll struggle to find a better browser than Mozilla's Camino. Apple's Safari will win a drag race, but it lacks the customizability that comes with an open-source browser like Camino. Unfortunately, both Safari and Camino fall incredibly short against Firefox because both are heavy on speed and light on community.

For those who want a highly optimized, lightning fast browsing experience on the Mac, you can't do much better than Camino, as TechCrunch writes. But most of us want more than that. We want Adblock … Read more

Though Keith Curtis (@keithccurtis), author of After the Software Wars, spent 11 years programming for Microsoft, once he bit into the open-source software apple, he bit hard. In Curtis' enthusiasm for open source, however, he sometimes confuses his beliefs and aspirations for what open-source software can achieve with the market as it actually is.

I can relate. I have that problem, too, at times.

Curtis makes a wide array of valid points, but sometimes they contradict each other. As just one example, he cites Stanford University research that reveals just .17 bugs per 1,000 lines of code in Linux … Read more

There are times when I think open source is an unstoppable force. And then there's OpenGoo.

OpenGoo declares its mission to be to "make the best Web Office. Period." But then it proceeds to undermine every benefit that a true Web office productivity application, like Google Docs, provides to its users. Like the Web, for starters.

That's right. The first thing that struck me when trying to use OpenGoo (aside from its rather unfortunate name, which is yet another reminder that marketing is an essential function, not an afterthought, for open-source projects) was the download page.… Read more

Some in the open-source camp would have you believe that open source is an all-or-nothing proposition. For such people, to believe that Linux makes for a superior server operating system is also to dedicate oneself to using open source for business applications, personal productivity, mobile, and likely brushing one's teeth. Open source on a proprietary platform like Mac OS X? Perish the thought!

But life is more complicated than that, and it turns out that there is exceptional open-source software for the Mac (or for Windows, for that matter).

The H Online has kicked off a nice "Open Source Stars for Mac OS X&… Read more

VideoLAN's VLC media player, arguably the world's best media player, hit version 0.9.9 in early April. Three months and more than 78 million downloads later, VideoLAN has announced VLC 1.0.0, or "Goldeneye."

Your media will never be the same.

In fact, with VideoLAN's VLC media player for Windows, Mac, and Linux, it doesn't have to be. One of the amazing things about VLC is that it can play anything that you've ever even thought about playing. That random media format that one site in Ecuador requires--VLC likely plays it, … Read more

Red Hat has taken heat over the past few years for allegedly neglecting the personal computer in favor of more profitable enterprise servers. It's a fair critique: Red Hat is an enterprise software company, a decision it made years ago, and to good effect.

But anyone thinking that Red Hat has somehow forgotten consumer markets in its rush to win the enterprise need only try the final release of Fedora 11, its community-focused operating system for desktops and laptops. I've been evaluating Fedora 11 for the past week and find it polished and professional while meeting or beating … Read more

Linux has been growing in importance for years in the darkened server closets. In the server world, Linux's cost and performance benefits have trumped its early weaknesses (Ease of use, etc.), making Linux the heir apparent to the Unix throne.

But that's the server, where geeks write software for other geeks. In the consumer world of personal computers and mobile devices, however, Linux hasn't fared particularly well precisely because the developers of Linux differ so markedly from the vast majority of the user population.

Linux developers, in other words, scratch very different "itches" from those … Read more

Eating tends to be a social thing. Dropping the pounds that result from such sociability, however, is mostly a solitary experience, requiring lonely denial in the kitchen and often lonelier miles on the footpath or bike trail. Small wonder, then, that most attempts to lose weight fail.

It doesn't have to be this way, of course, and an application I've been using on my iPhone suggests a way to open-source the weight-loss experience, making dropping pounds a social, fun experience.

CNET recently profiled several weight-loss applications for the computer, some of which have a social element to them.

It's a good list, but my favorite application by far in this category is Lose It!, a free app for the iPhone.

Lose It! makes it easy to track calories, monitor exercise, and track progress toward weight-loss goals. Because my iPhone is always with me, Lose It! follows me around, too, reminding me how much that bar of chocolate is going to cost me in terms of gym time, facilitating rational calorie intake/burn.

Where Lose It! fails, as do all of these weight-loss applications, is in making this process truly social.

Fixing this would give FitNow, the developer of Lose It!, a serious revenue model that would turn a seemingly universal human desire to look/feel better into a great way to make money.

Here are a few ideas for the FitNow team, several of which Bryce Roberts, a good friend and fellow Lose It! junkie (in fact, it was Bryce's example that got me using the application), offered up while we were mountain biking last week (so that we could gorge on high-calorie foods later in the day :-):… Read more

For years, Linux enthusiasts have tried to win an unwinnable war: displacing Microsoft's hegemony in personal computers with Windows clones. Though Lindows was perhaps the first to make a serious attempt at replicating the Windows experience, all the Linux "desktop" vendors have tried it, and all with the same result:

Failure.

This isn't because Linux isn't any good as a personal computer operating system. It's because such copycat tactics have doomed Linux to always being a cheap facsimile of Microsoft's idea of what the personal computer should look like and do.

With Moblin version 2.0, … Read more