Sean Michael Kerner

From the ‘Talk To Me Goose‘ files: Ubuntu is out this week with the release candidate for Ubuntu 10.10, loaded with all kinds of Linux goodness including a new kernel and updated applications up and down the stack. From a user-facing desktop perspective, there is one key thing that jumped out at me immediately – […]

From the ‘Let’s Re-invent the Web‘ files: Google is launching a new web format for images called WebP this week that aims to provide faster images for the web. While I personally believe that it’s a great idea to have faster images, having a new image format might not be the right way to go […]

Zend has big designs on the cloud. The company, one of the leading commercial vendors backing the open source PHP language, has a multifaceted strategy for building applications for cloud environments. For starters, Zend has a new partnership with cloud computing provider RightScale for development and testing of PHP applications. The firm is also touting […]

Network-equipment maker Netgear made its name in the consumer space but a slew of new product announcements makes it clear the company has designs on even bigger business opportunities. As Enterprise Networking Planet reports, the company’s new 10 Gbps managed switch and network management system will give small and midsized companies an alternative to offerings […]

From the ‘Open Source = $$$‘ files: Over the years, I’ve heard a lot of different people try and explain the economic proposition that open source and Linux offers. One of the best such explanations I’ve ever heard came on CNBC’s Mad Money show this week during which host Jim Cramer was interviewing Red Hat […]

From the ‘Not Far Now‘ files: I had thought that GNOME 2.30 was going to be the final GNOME 2.x release — I was wrong. Today the GNOME Foundation released GNOME 2.32, which is interesting in some ways, but isn’t the monumental release that we’re all waiting for in GNOME 3.0. “It’s a smaller release […]

Novell has issued the first major update to its in-house Linux appliance building program since the beginning of the year. The SUSE Appliance Toolkit 1.1 offers integration with Amazon’s cloud-based Web services, as well as support for virtualization technologies. Novell is billing the release of the new SUSE Appliance Toolkit as a twin victory for […]

It could be a sign that Skype is coming of age. While generally thought of as a consumer technology, Skype has been courting the enterprise market, and is getting a big boost in its efforts thanks to a new partnership with Avaya. Under the agreement, Avaya will begin supporting Skype’s VoIP communications in its networking […]

From the ‘Pimp My Browser‘ files: The Mozilla Jetpack project for next generation Firefox browser extensions got an interesting update this week. In the new Jetpack 0.8 SDK there is a new Windows API which will give add-on developers great control over browser window and tab operations. “The windows module provides easy access to browser […]

From ‘Autonomous Computing’ files: Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google sees a very bright future for his search company. During a webcast keynote yesterday the the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, Schmidt talked briefly about where search is headed and a possible future ‘Serendipity’ engine. The Serendipity engine is all about autonomous search – something that Schmidt described […]

The beta version of Fedora 14 might not be the flashiest release the Red Hat-sponsored community Linux distribution has seen, but it promises many utilitarian updates, including support for the most up-to-date open source programming languages. Fedora 14 also includes support for the SPICE virtualization technology that Red Hat acquired through the 2008 acquisition of […]

Where does one CodePlex begin and another end? Many people weren’t entirely clear, as two Microsoft-backed open source efforts of the same name often saw their respective roles and activities get confused. But that all ends now, with the CodePlex Foundation rebranding itself as the Outercurve Foundation in an effort to disambiguate between it and […]