Sean Michael Kerner

From the ‘Open Source Essentials’ files: There are lots of different open source media player out there. For me, VLC has always stood alone at the top of pile. Eight years ago, I was part of the team that awarded VideoLAN (the people behind VLC) with the 2004 Open Source Award (then managed by CNET). […]

When it comes to Apple software, the master is continuing to learn from its star pupil. Apple (NASDAQ:APPL) announced today a developer preview of its upcoming Mac OSX 10.8, codenamed Mountain Lion. The developer preview for the Mountain release is coming just over a year after Mac OSX 10.7, codenamed Lion, had its first developer […]

Intel is well known for its server and consumer PC chips. Intel is also in the networking business too and is currently developing a new network communications processor that will help to deliver more performance to networking gear. The new platform is codenamed Crystal Forest and will provide as much as 160 million packets per […]

From the ‘Be Careful What you Click’ files: At the end of last week, Mozilla released Firefox 10.0.1, which fixed a single flaw. Now here we are at the end of a new week, and there is another release with Firefox 10.0.2. This time the flaw is one that I’m familiar with – as it […]

“We are aware that some third parties are circumventing Safari’s privacy features and we are working to put a stop to it.” Apple spokesperson’s comment after the revelation that Google has been abusing Safari’s cookie controls (Wall St. Journal)   “From my perspective, VMware will be open the day they open source vSphere and not […]

From the ‘Would You Like a Mint with your Fedora’ files: The upcoming Fedora 17 Beefy Miracle release is likely to be one of the most feature packed Fedora Linux releases in years. One feature that I’d like to see in it, is the Cinnamon desktop. Cinnamon was started by Linux Mint and has since […]

There is a silver lining in the cloud, just ask Rackspace Hosting (NYSE:RAX). Rackspace reported fourth quarter fiscal 2011 and full year earnings this week, with revenues exceeding $1 billion for the first time in the twelve year history of the company. Rackspace is reaping the rewards of its cloud hosting efforts and is positioned […]

A key part of being open in the cloud as is the case in every other segment of IT, is preventing vendor lock-in. One way that Red Hat is helping to prevent vendor lock-in is by way of the Deltacloud project which was started back in 2009. The project was moved to The Apache Software […]

The Febuary Patch Tuesday update includes nine security bulletins that fix 21 security vulnerabilities. At the top of the February Patch Tuesday update is a cumulative security update for Internet Explorer (IE) web browser that fixes four flaws, two of which are rated as being critical. The IE flaws affect multiple IE versions including IE […]

Internet traffic continues to grow year over year, but one segment is growing faster than any other — mobile. Networking giant Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) today released a Visual Networking Index (VNI) forecast for Global Mobile Data Traffic, showing a dramatic rise over the next five years. “We’re projecting overall growth of mobile traffic for the forecast […]

HP is launching a new generation of server technology that is about more than just the underlying Intel chipset. Today, HP is unveiling Project Voyager, which is part of a multiyear $300 million plus investment to help redefine server economics. Project Voyager is being baked into HP Gen8 server platforms later this year, although HP […]

Red Hat’s new Fedora Project Leader, Robyn Bergeron has a lot of work ahead of her as she helps to grow one of the world’s largest Linux distribution communities. Bergeron was appointed the new FPL last week, succeeding outgoing FPL Jared Smith who had held the position since June of 2010. One of Bergeron’s goals […]