Software Free

If you can't get enough of social networking -- and clearly we can't -- make sure and pencil in the 4th annual Social Networking Conference taking place July 10-11 in San Francisco. The San Francisco chapter will focus on my favorite topic, enterprise social networking and on mobile social networking. The keynote speaker will be Britt Selvitelle of Twitter, who's talk, cleverly entitled "What's Love Got To Do With It?" will touch on why it's not enough to make passionate users, but also "passionate creators" (a reference to Twitter's wildly popular API, no doubt).

While the many Linux groups are trying to push the mobile market, Nokia has taken Symbian OS open source (via Matt Assay), under the Eclipse License. The Symbian Foundation will push Symbian as the most proven, open and complete mobile software platform.

This is big news, from multiple aspects. Symbian is already the dominant OS in the mobile market. Opening it up will lure in a lot of developers and businesses to perhaps adopt it in new ways.

I can't help noticing the number of Asus EEE PCs around now, it is strange to think that twelve months ago these weren't really about and there was still discussion of when will be the "year of the Linux desktop". Of course, events took a different turn, and suddenly the desktop didn't seem so important anymore. The real prize was a computer that was small and convenient, inexpensive and easy to carry about. The EEE PC came supplied with a version of Linux called Xandros (which I'd never heard of until then), but more importantly, in a fatal blow to the argument that Linux is too difficult for non-technical users, it came with an "Easy mode" menu that made finding and running applications very easy, with a tabbed menu and large icons.

The New York Times' David Pogue put together a super-helpful list of ways to block text message spam on your cell phone, covering most major wireless carriers. Each involves logging in at your cell...

Yesterday I treated myself to a new mobile internet "dongle" to go with my Asus EEE PC. I decided to go for the Huawei E169G usb modem as it matches my black EEE, however there is a small problem with getting this device to work straight away. The problem is that the E169G is a composite device, which basically means that it will ask as a USB memory stick until it is sent a command to tell it to be a modem. The EEE doesn't know about this so you can't use it straight away as a 3G modem in the connection wizard. Fortunatelty, back in April Dale Lane documented in his blog how to send the modem the right command to be able to use it wil the EEE, his blog post on the topic is worth reading as it explains the background to the issue.

Google has made it a lot easier to re-order and change what gadgets show up on your personalized Google Mobile page. Head to your iGoogle page, hit "Settings," and scroll down to Mobile. You can add...

One of my aims for this year is to learn the Python programming language. Why?

You've always been able to email yourself with a phone call through voice-to-text service Jott, but with the introduction of Jott Feeds, Gmail (and Google Apps) users can now have a summary of their...

At a recent meeting of the World Association of Newspapers, one of the topics of conversation included the results of the second annual World Digital Media Trends report, which revealed that digital platforms of newspapers are growing at a double-digit rate worldwide, as the world increasingly goes on line.

Wow; just how far has Linux come in the mobile space? It will outship Windows for smartphones in the next 5 years. Consider that smartphones may not even include the Motorola lines that run Linux (but are not “smartphones”).

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/06/05/smartphone_os_linux/

Smartphones running Linux look set to become far more commonplace within the next five years, market watcher ABI Research has forecast.

The firm’s VP, Stuart Carlaw, reckons that Linux will feature on 23 per cent of smartphones by 2013. He added that that share of the market will put the open source operating system in second place in the smartphone popularity stakes, putting it behind Symbian and ahead of Microsoft’s Windows Mobile worldwide.

Polopoly wants to take their user-generated content capabilities mobile. They've determined that the best way to do this is via the integration of a mobile offering called AIMO from Arena Interactive.

Oh those young persons! How they love their social networks.

New research results indicate that millenials (those born between 1981 and 2000) are also eager to embrace mobile Web 2.0 technologies, which include cell phone-based blogging, multimedia sharing, location-based socialization services, gaming and chat.

Nearly every new webapp on the block offers some kind of text message integration, but not all of them are the kind you'll want to keep on every phone you own. However, there are a few contact...

Today VIA launched their OpenBook, an innovative subnotebook platform. You can buy it now and also download the raw CAD files released under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareaAlike 3.0 license, meaning you can get the raw machine files to make whatever case or version you want, as long as you release your modifications under the same license and give attribution back to VIA. The VIA press release today states:

Canonical will announce Netbook Remix, its version of Ubuntu Linux tailored for mobile devices, in two weeks, Chief Executive Mark Shuttleworth said.