Nov 15th, 2008 · Confirming recent comments by Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, an independent report released Friday found that OpenOffice.org's free office suite is five times more popular than Google Docs. This was according to a survey of 2,400 adult Internet users conducted …
Nov 2nd, 2008 · David Gerard passes along a posting on Google's official blog announcing that they have extended the three-nines SLA for the Premier Edition of Google Apps from Gmail alone to also cover the Calendar, Docs, Sites, and Google Talk services. 99.9% uptime …
Sep 12th, 2008 · SkyHook Wireless has been wardriving the US for years creating a huge database mapping wireless routers' MAC addresses to their physical locations. They provide an minimally documented API (doc here) which allows anyone to query the database directly …
Aug 9th, 2008 · Slowly but surely Google has taken over my computing life.How can I back it up? Bit by bit with their mantra, hip image and brilliant services. Google has gained my trust and all my data. I am doing almost all of my computing in the cloud. Google Reader, …
Jul 22nd, 2008 · TechCrunch announced that they are planning to design their own $200 web tablet device. Quoting: 'The idea is to turn it on, bypass any desktop interface, and go directly to Firefox running in a modified Kiosk mode that effectively turns the browser into …
Jul 8th, 2008 · tkrabec alerts us to a CERT advisory announcing a massive, multi-vendor DNS patch released today. Early this year, researcher Dan Kaminsky discovered a basic flaw in the DNS that could allow attackers easily to compromise any name server; it also affects …
Jul 8th, 2008 · A number of readers have noted Google's open sourcing of their internal data interchange format, called Protocol Buffers (here's the code and the doc). Google elevator statement for Protocol Buffers is "a language-neutral, platform-neutral, extensible …
Apr 1st, 2008 · Channel News reports that Google took an important step forward Monday in its rivalry with Microsoft Office Live, reporting that Google Docs will allow users to edit word processing documents offline. Google said users of its Google Docs word processing …
Mar 15th, 2008 · The folks on wikileaks have published a new interesting and shocking report: FBI Electronic Surveillance Needs for Carrier-Grade Voice over Packet (CGVoP) Service. The 88 paged document, which is part of the CALEA Implementation Plan was published in …
Mar 10th, 2008 · Biology post-doc Dr. Michael White takes a look at the '2007 Best American Science and Nature Writing' and doesn't like what he finds in an article called Bad Science Journalism and the Myth of the Oppressed Underdog. Turns out it's not just political …
Mar 8th, 2008 · krquet notes an InfoWorld article on Sun's plans for the iPhone. After studying Apple's newly released SDK docs for 24 hours, Sun decided it was feasible to develop a JVM, based on Java Micro Edition, for both the iPhone and the iTouch. An analyst is …
Feb 20th, 2008 · Infoworld's Cringely has an interesting take on the Julius Baer bank trying to silence WikiLeaks.org — and how stunningly stupid they've been. 'But the bank's solution is so mind-bogglingly stupid, you have to wonder if these guys need help getting …
Feb 15th, 2008 · In response to a query from a member of the EU Parliament, an EU commissioner issued an official statement (.DOC) saying that, while they do not violate any laws, secret printer tracking dot codes may violate the human right to privacy guaranteed by the …
Feb 1st, 2008 · BoingBoing is relating a hair-raising tale from the UK anti-ID-register group 'NO2ID' that claims to have a leaked government document [PDF] detailing how the UK government plans to "coerce" citizens into a national ID register. "UK campaigners NO2ID …
Jan 23rd, 2008 · Much drama is unfolding prior to the OOXML Ballot Resolution Meeting in Geneva, currently schedule for the end of February. After that there's a subsequent 30 day period while countries can still change their vote. As a result, Bob Sutor is recommending …
Jan 21st, 2008 · BoingBoing is reporting that the FBI may be burying the existence of a document that proves US officials stole nuclear secrets for eventual sale to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. "One of the documents relating to the case was marked 203A-WF-210023. Last week, …
Jan 15th, 2008 · The Burton Group, an IT research company, published a study urging that enterprise organizations adapt OOXML rather than ODF. Their reasons include things like "ODF is controlled indirectly by Sun," "MS Office is cheaper than OpenOffice.org," and "OOXML …
Oct 18th, 2007 · Looking through an article on the smartphone office suite Quickoffice, I noted a claim by a company executive that OpenOffice users usually save their documents in a Microsoft format, e.g. .doc. Hence the company has no plans to support .odf. I guess …
Oct 3rd, 2007 · whurley just posted a blog about Microsoft's announcement To Make .NET Libraries available under a crippled 'Open Source' program using their new Microsoft Reference License. The post includes the official pr doc from Microsoft as well as several points …
Sep 26th, 2007 · Now that XML is the de facto standard (for good or ill) for doing message passing, I find that I need to give XML examples in the documentation that we produce. We're stuck with Word and up till now I've just been doing the examples as cut and paste from …
