Sean Michael Kerner

Big changes are afoot at social networking and link-voting site Digg. After building its formidable following on the MySQL database, it’s changing gears and embracing an open source non-relational database that was first created by fellow social networking site Facebook. Digg has been busy testing Cassandra in various aspects of its operations since September 2009. […]

From the ‘What Happened to Firefox 3.6.1?‘ files: No, that’s not a typo. Mozilla is currently scheduled to release its next open source Firefox browser version 3.6.2 on March 30th. The Firefox 3.6.2 release will be joined by the 3.5.9 and 3.0.19 releases which are all now ‘code frozen’ in terms of development. So what […]

Traditional relational databases aren’t going away anytime soon, but proponents of a new approach gathered in Boston this week for the NoSQL Live conference. DatabaseJournal has the report on this new open source approach that’s already been embraced by some of the biggest players on the Web, including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. For most of […]

From the ‘Next Gen Linux Features‘ files: The first alpha milestone of the Fedora 13 Linux distribution is now available and it’s loaded with a number of innovative features. Among the desktop features that users will enjoy is a new automatic print driver installation. That’s right plug and play printers are now here for Linux. […]

From the ‘Coming Clean‘ files: Mozilla today posted a public apology to design firm MetaLab over a design mockup for a new Jetpack feature. Jetpack Flightdeck is an upcoming feature that is intended to make it easier for developers to build next generation extensions for Mozilla’s open source Firefox web browser. The problem is that […]

Microsoft is not the first company that comes to mind when you think open source, but the software giant has been supporting a foundation focused on open source. Codeguru has the latest developments related to Microsoft’s ambitious CodePlex Foundation. When it comes to building a non-profit open source foundation, it takes time to get things […]

From the ‘Human Resources‘ files: I’ve had the good fortune to speak with Simon Phipps – now the former Chief Open Source Officer at Sun – a number of times over the last several years. Phipps always provided insightful comments on licensing and strategic open source issues. His comments and opinion on GPLv3 in particular […]

The “huge fast router” is about to get even faster. Networking giant Cisco has taken the wraps off of a major upgrade to its CRS-1 router, debuting the CRS-3, which promises a capacity of 322 terabits per second. Enterprise Networking Planet has the details on Cisco’s launch of the CRS-3 router, and the field trials […]

p>For Web site owners, security is a significant concern. Browsers can pose significant risks by exposing sensitive information collected during a session, such as cookies and passwords. In response to those security concerns, Quaresso is offering a new spin on the armored browser, thanks to some commercial support from Blue Coat. Enterprise Networking Planet takes […]

From the ‘Summertime Coding Fun‘ files: It’s that time of year again. For the fifth year Google is running its popular Summer of Code (SoC) program which matches students with mentoring organization to develop open source code. And oh yeah, both the mentoring organization and the student get some of Google’s money too. I’ve been […]

Popular Web infrastructure is frequently the target of hackers looking to exploit vulnerabilities to snare sensitive online information. As the most popular Web server on the Internet, the Apache HTTP Web server knows this all too well. But thanks to a new security update, many serious Apache flaws have been fixed. Server Watch has the […]

From the ‘Big Numbers‘ files: Linux founder Linus Torvalds has just pushed out the first Linux 2.6.34 kernel release candidate and he’s included some big stats as part of the announcement. According to Torvalds, the 2.6.34 kernel even in its rc1 stage has 400,000 new lines of code. That’s a staggering number isn’t it? But […]