Visual effects, to varying degrees are often negated from being a key component of usability. I can, for the most part, concede that to be the case. While well-designed effects can improve productivity by providing visual cues to what is going on, many only provide minimal benefits. Icons are not such a case, and that's why I think the Tango Project is more important than it might first seem.
Determined, marketing savvy, pushing the limits, glitzy. These are the kind of phrases that one thinks of when describing “in” companies that focus on consumers. While the types of actions that fit these labels originally made for controversy when applied to the GNU/Linux segment, Linspire plowed ahead on the new frontier of the GNU/Linux average user and is using its real world savvy to accomplish its single minded goal: desktop Linux for the rest of us. To find out more about this fascinating mover-and-shaker in the sector, OfB's Timothy R. Butler talked with Linspire's new CEO, Kevin Carmony, a few weeks ago about some of Linspire's choices and the future of GNU/Linux.
Just over a year ago, I wrote an article, “Why GNOME's Got it Right,” which outlined why I thought the GNOME Project was clearly the Free Software desktop project with the best vision of the future. KDE's Appeal Project, which has been brewing for some time now, looks to a different set of issues that need solving and has some very smart minds at work on solving those problems. In a few words, KDE's got some of “that vision thing” too.
Trusted Computing is generally associated with Microsoft, and, as of a short time ago, now Apple as well. On the other hand, little time is spent on the idea of integrating Trusted Platform Module support deep into GNU/Linux and other Free Software desktops. Maybe it is time for that to change.
In a series of articles (part I, part II) during the month of July, OfB's Timothy R. Butler explained why he felt that KDE needed to move beyond the Qt toolkit it uses as a foundation. In that series, he asserted that the licensing of Qt is becoming a stumbling block to the desktop's adoption. Eric Laffoon, the project lead for KDE's Kdewebdev module, takes exception to Butler's arguments and makes the case for his view on the issue of Qt, below.
EXCLUSIVE. Earlier reports circulating around the Internet concerning Apple's inclusion of a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip in Intel-based Macs were incorrect, OfB was informed. News of the inclusion of the chip, based on the technology formerly known as Palladium, had spread across the Internet as wildfire in recent days and many news outlets, including Open for Business, had published commentary on the dramatic revelation of the technology's inclusion.
Word came out earlier this week that Apple's Mac OS X on Intel developer kits depend on TCPA, still often known by its old name, Palladium. While Odysseus is long since dead, it is easy to see why Apple may be fearful of piracy as it moves to the x86 platform. The question is: exactly how does this impact the end user? That is not exactly clear just yet.
Atmel Corp. and Bionopoly LLC's FingerGear division on Monday introduced the Bio USB Flash Drive. The Flash-based thumbdrive storage device uses fingerprint recognition technology to secure data. It connects to the computer using USB 2.0. The Bio USB Flash Drive is available initially in 256MB capacities for US$149.
Intuit has released Quicken 2006, which includes such new features as a Smart Payee feature, scheduled transactions and .Mac backup.
GNOME 2.12 will be released to the world on September 7th, 2005, culminating 6 months of very exciting work by members of the project. A number of exciting technologies come together in GNOME 2.12 that will set the standard for free software desktops to come. Here is a sample (by no means an exhaustive list) of some of the outstanding work that has gone into GNOME thanks to its many contributors.