open source

LG at work on WebOS-based HDTV, report says

The the slow pendulum swing toward the smart TV is about to hit WebOS.

LG has teamed up with Gram, the organization established by HP to handle the WebOS project, to create a television that will be running on the open-source operating system, according to a new report from WebOS Nation. That blog reports that LG and Gram have been working closely for several months on the project.

The road to Gram has been a long and hard one for HP. In 2010, the company made the ill-advised decision to acquire Palm for $1.2 billion. After a few product … Read more

Google releases Web site speedup software

As part of its "make the Web fast" effort, Google has released version 1.0 of a module designed to improve the very widely used Apache software that's very widely used to host Web sites.

The Apache Software Foundation's flagship project is Web server software that delivers Web pages to people's browsers when they request it. It can be extended, and Google believes its mod_pagespeed extension for Apache is ready for use, Google said in a blog post.

"Users prefer faster sites and we have seen that faster pages lead to higher user engagement, … Read more

Pulling back from open source hardware, MakerBot angers some adherents

You likely know MakerBot Industries as the poster child for the new era of 3D-printing. You might not know that, until last week, the company and its CEO, Bre Pettis, were considered shining lights in the open-source hardware movement.

Think of open-source hardware, OSHW, as the physical equivalent of open source software. The Open Source Hardware Association, founded just this past March, offers an extended definition for OSHW. Its Statement of Principles sums things up thusly:

Open source hardware is hardware whose design is made publicly available so that anyone can study, modify, distribute, make, and sell the design or … Read more

What users are saying about open clouds

Cloud openness, and what "open" means exactly in the context of cloud computing -- whether on-premise or in a public cloud--are hot topics at the CloudOpen conference, which is being held by the Linux Foundation in San Diego this week. CloudOpen is a new event being run in parallel with LinuxCon.

That those on stage and in the audience at this event favor openness is hardly news. Nor is the fact that an open cloud is a challenge that goes beyond open source. During a panel moderated by Red Hat's John Mark Walker, Greg DeKoenigsberg of Eucalyptus … Read more

Forget LinkedIn: Companies turn to GitHub to find tech talent

LinkedIn is so 2011.

In the red-hot market for skilled software engineers, companies looking to make great hires are discovering that relying on traditional services that showcase candidates' work histories -- but not their actual work -- is a great way to miss out on the best available talent.

These days, there's a new game in town -- GitHub, a place where hiring managers and recruiters alike are increasingly turning to find not just the potential employees who look best on paper, but the ones that actively (and publicly) demonstrate their capabilities.

Last month, Andreessen Horowitz, one of the … Read more

Free-software activists hope for detained engineer's freedom

Computer engineer Bassel Khartabil has dedicated himself to making software free and open for years, and now his friends are asking for his freedom from the Syrian government's detention.

Khartabil was reportedly taken in an ambush on March 15 -- the first anniversary of the Syrian uprising -- during massive arrests. And while it's unclear why Khartabil was detained, activists say the government is known to take people randomly and without reason. It is a scary time, particularly for those who are willing to gather and share information, according to activists.

The 16-month old Syrian crisis has claimed … Read more

Innovation in the forecast at 'Cloud' conference

NEW YORK--Industry consortia are pervasive. But they often don't amount to much -- a spate of press releases, a series of progressively less energetic meetings making little progress, and the eventual fade to black. And even most successful consortia tend to be about vendors cooperating on specific standards and technologies. Important, but very limited in scope.

The Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA) has been an exception. It announced in October of 2010 with a membership including more than 70 global IT leaders, representing $50 billion dollars in annual IT spend. Intel has been the organizing force and is the … Read more

Chrome OS gets a real desktop

The bottom line: If at first you don't succeed, update and update again. Regular Chrome OS updates over the past year have made it faster, with better offline support and more compatibility with traditional file formats. But it's still only for die-hard Googlers.

Review: Welcome to the Chrome channel. Google's operating system started off last year as being little more than all Chrome, all the time. Updates made over the past year have given Chrome OS users better file format support, faster navigation, revised menus, dramatically improved offline abilities, and a new, traditional-looking desktop.

But if you … Read more

After more than 30 years, Grid Beam modular construction system comes to market

This year at the San Francisco Bay Area Maker Faire, trying to juggle my own interests (talk to cool people) and my 5-year-old son's (build or break stuff), we both hit paydirt at the same time when we stumbled across the Grid Beam exhibit.

My kid spent 45 minutes in the hot sun inventing and screwing together a life-size car-like contraption, and I got to dive into the minutiae of the product with its creators, Phil and Richard Jergenson.

Grid Beam is Erector Set meets IKEA. The hardware is standard 2x2 wood beams with holes drilled through every 1 1/2 inches (which is the actual width of a 2x2 beam), and standard furniture bolts that will be familiar to anyone who's ever assembled a futon frame.… Read more