University of Lagos E-mail & Internet Support Services

my first report from the OpenOffice.org 2010 conference in Budapest: Cool extensions, the power of OpenDocument, what Oracle thinks of OpenOffice and what Microsoft thinks of office files standards

A few minutes ago, the Ubuntu development team unleashed the Beta version of the up-coming Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) operating system, due for release in October 10th, 2010.

In the previous article, A look inside a MySQL Daemon plugin, we were introduced to the MySQL Plugin API. It talked about the most simple plugin type—Daemon plugins. It starts with the basic structure of a plugin—what a plugin declaration should look like, what plugin types are, and so on. Then it described features common to all plugin types—initialization and de-initialization callbacks, status variables, and configuration system variables.

A personal information manager (often known as a PIM tool) is a type of collaborative software that can help you manage your life by offering personal organising functionality. This type of software enables you to more efficiently manage and plan your business and personal life by keeping track of contact information, appointments, tasks, diaries, to-do lists, and birthdays.

Many of the facts about Samsung's Galaxy Tab Android tablet were already available before IFA, but today's presentation at the consumer electronics fair in Berlin did offer a further few surprises: The 7 inch device includes a fully functional mobile phone and could, therefore, also be regarded as a giant smartphone. This also means that it meets the access criteria Google has stipulated for the Android Market – and that users can conveniently tap into a vast selection of apps, which is not the case with most of the other Android tablets currently available.

Samsung showed off its Galaxy Tab, an Android-powered iPad alternative at Germany's IFA 2010 trade show. The device features a 7-inch display, front-facing camera, 3G and is the first tablet to come loaded with Android 2.2 Froyo and Flash 10.1.

To me its apparent that trying to develop the Linux desktop marketplace using traditional ideas and avenues simply hasn't and isn't going to work. We've been waiting for a decade for the year of the Linux Desktop to happen. I think thats proof enough that using proprietary ideas to drive the Linux desktop market forward is not working.

Valve is all too familiar with gaming folks out there. They are the guys behind the awesome STEAM online gaming platform. They were in a bit of controversy recently when they denied all reports of a Linux version of their famous online gaming platform. But once again, Valve is in the news.

As browser competition continues to heat up, 2010 looks like the year when the market was repeatedly disrupted. Internet Explorer has not managed to gain share for a third month in a row. Firefox is leveling out while Chrome and Safari continue to grow. Opera? It's hanging on to relevance. Between July and August, Internet Explorer dropped 0.34 percent, a drop smaller than June's or July's gain. Firefox, meanwhile, went up 0.02 percent, Chrome gained 0.36 percent, Safari was up 0.07, and Opera dipped 0.08 percent.

In the last couple months I have posted my disgust about two different online education systems that are being used at various colleges around the United States. My dislike for these systems stems from the fact that even though they are web based, they do not adhere to Web Standards. Today I would like to talk about an online education system that is accessible to all students, not just those running Microsoft Windows.

When I first started with graphics - I plotted pixels onto the screen by calculating a memory address and then poking the corresponding value. Times have changed since then. My murky history contains gwbasic, STOS, HiSoft Basic (compiled!), VisualBasic (numerous versions) until I found C and AES (on the Atari ST), Win16 (that is Windows 3.1) and even Presentation Manager on OS/2 (in the pre-Warp days).

Organizers of the Southern California Linux Expo 9x have announced that the Call for Papers for SCALE 9x opens Wednesday, Sept. 1, with five speaker tracks. With the continued growth of Open Source software in business, SCALE will address the need for system management knowledge by adding a speaker track focused on system administration. Combined with the two specialized tracks -- Beginners and Developers -- and the two general interest tracks, SCALE 9x will have content for every attendee.

In the first installment of this article we looked at getting Google's Scripting Layer for Android (SL4A) downloaded and installed on your Android phone. We examined the basics of writing scripts using Python and even included a short script to set a few of the profile settings. This time we'll take a look at some of the sample scripts found on the SL4A website and talk about how you might write a script of your own.

As of Red Hat's news last week, there are now four competing standards for building so-called open source clouds. It's shaping up to be quite a battle of the titans. Contenders are: Amazon Web Services via Eucalyptus Systems; Rackspace and OpenStack, Cloud.com and Cloudstack; Red Hat's DeltaCloud. Companies like Intel, Dell, Citrix, HP, IBM, Cisco are all lining up behind one or more. But some experts says that the ultimate standard may not even have shown itself yet.

A new survey by management consultants Accenture has shown that Open Source Software (OSS) has reached what the firm describes as a ‘turning point’ in the corporate sector.

Dell’s 17-inch Studio 1747 laptop is a beefy desktop replacement that ships with Windows 7. But how does it fare with Linux instead? A few days hands-on with the laptop shows that the machine is almost perfect, save for one fatal flaw.

Have you ever wanted to move mail from an old account to a new account? This tutorial will show you how to use fetchmail with PostfixAdmin.

The latest Debian Project News recently announced a code freeze in preparation for a new release by the end of 2010. It's a sign of the times that the news went mostly unreported. Which makes me wonder: What is Debian's role today?

Oracle suing Google over Java could be a good thing for MeeGo. If any good is to come out of Oracle suing Google over Android, the one to benefit could be MeeGo, the Intel-Nokia joint-venture mobile operating system.

Lightweight notebooks usually have lightweight specs, but as John Brandon discovers, the Dell Vostro V13 is an exception to the rule…