Sean Michael Kerner

From the “bug swatting” files: Google’s Chrome browser is now better at handling plugins. That the big thing I take away from the the new Chrome 0.3.154.3 update release. The new update is tagged by Google as containing mostly bug fixes as well as a new download behaviour – which is also an important thing […]

The open source Ruby programming language is growing fast in terms of adoption, thanks in part to the Rails framework — often referred to as Ruby on Rails. Rails, however, isn’t the only game in town when in comes to Ruby frameworks. A new, open source Ruby framework called Merb is now taking shape with […]

From the “cool titles bring $$’s” files: Analyst group 451 Group has a non-public report out titled, “Open Source is Not a Business Model.” To put my views front and center – this report title is clearly an attempt to generate interest with what some might think of as a controversial view. I have somewhat […]

From the “everything I ever learned about programming came from View Source” files: Most search engines search for content. Opera’s new MAMA search (“Metadata Analysis and Mining Application”) is searching for what’s behind the content. It’s all about figuring out what websites are made of in terms of markup and technologies. Sure you can easily […]

Oracle users, it’s that time, again! The company has released its final Critical Patch Update (CPU) for 2008, with fixes for 36 vulnerabilities across the company’s product portfolio. The bulk of the fixes this time come for the Oracle Database Server — though the most severe flaw resides in the Oracle WebLogic Server (formerly BEA […]

From the “Chrome who?” files: Mozilla Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 is now out and its got what Mozilla claims to be ,”..a huge pile of new features for developers.” It’s a claim that I personally won’t argue against. There is the  geolocation spec support which is a  JavaScript API that lets a web page query […]

Microsoft’s latest monthly Patch Tuesday roundup of fixes came with a little something extra today — the company’s first rankings of how likely each vulnerability is to be exploited by an attacker. The update thus marks not just a large patch count — with 20 vulnerabilities spread among 11 advisories, four of which are considered […]

From the “standardization prevents fragmentation” files: The first Beta of LSB 4.0 (Linux Standards Base) is now out, so get ready to start standardizing your Linux apps/distros! I first wrote about LSB 4.0 in July when Linux Foundation exec Jim Zemlin told me he had 50 people in Russia working on it.  My former Jupitermedia […]

Networking giant Cisco is gearing up to expand its Linux platform with a bunch of new hardware. But it won’t be a success without developers to build more applications for the platform, so a little romancing is in order. Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is asking developers to instead think “inside the box” to create applications that […]

From the “this is how we spend our millions” files: Mozilla is starting up a new developer tools lab that will be run by Dion Almaer and Ben Galbraith who are best known as the co-founders of the popular Ajax site Ajaxian. Developer tools are an area that Mozilla itself specifically has not been engaged […]

The office suite, which provides word processing, spreadsheet and presentation applications, has long been among the most heavily used applications on users’ desktops. For much of the Windows-centric world, that suite is Microsoft Office, but for open source users, more often than not, the choice is OpenOffice.org (OOo). Today, OOo is out with version 3.0, […]

From the “sour grapes” files: There is a big Linux event in NYC today and tomorrow – but I won’t be there. The Linux Foundation’s End User Collaboration Summit has some big names presenting including Novell’s CEO Ron Hovsepian, Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth, Red Hat EVP Paul Cormier and an impressive list of financial industry […]