Open Source

In my Editor's Note this week, I wrote about CARPOOL, a non-profit campus organization at Texas A&M University that provides free rides so students can avoid the deadly mix of drinking and driving. My focus was on the homegrown technology behind the effort, and how that technology is being shared with other universities. In hindsight, I should have stressed the urgency of sharing it as efficiently and as broadly as possible.

In Wednesday's IT Blogwatch, we join celebrity polymath Stephen Fry in celebrating 25 years of the GNU Project. Not to mention Kermit Bale...

Stephen Fry has The Nearly Complete and Utter History of GNU:

Wow! That's my one word review of Google Chrome. Read the rest of my first look of Chrome for why I'm giving it a 'Wow!'

According to a news story by Computerworld's Heather Havenstein, Google's shiny new Chrome browser isn't part of an attempt to kill off Firefox or IE. It's an attempt to kill off Windows. While I initially took that statement with enough salt to alarm my doctor, after an initial tryout of Google's new browser, I ain't so sure.

Google has several good reasons to create a Web browser of its own, but they don't include killing off Internet Explorer or Firefox. Microsoft, however, does have reason to worry. Big ones.

In Tuesday's IT Blogwatch, we watch bloggers get all in a tizzy about Google's super-dooper new browser project, Chrome. Not to mention Assembles Elucidation and other Error'd...

Nancy Weil reports:

It's great that Red Hat and Novell can make money from Linux, but you can run your business on Linux and not spend a dime on commercial Linux.

Cisco and PostPath will finally break Exchange's iron grasp on business e-mail.

Linux is more secure than most operating systems, but Not if you don't practice basic security measures

Linux and open-source fans are always ready to stomp on Microsoft's proprietary programs, so why do we not only give even more proprietary Apple a free pass, and actually love Apple's devices?

Novell and Microsoft working together makes sense, it really does, but could we stop with the FUD that Linux users need legal protection already?

Mo' problems in Thursday's IT Blogwatch, as Microsoft and Novell extend their "deadly" embrace. Not to mention George Lucas's new look...

Eric Lai reports:

Angelina Jolie pregnancy was not a hoax; John McCain is not going to Vietnam as part of his presidential campaign; and Paris Hilton has not gotten married. But, if you click on the link in any of these fake MSNBC "BREAKING NEWS" e-mails the sender will attempt to shove malware into your PC.

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Do you like the special effects in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull; 300; The Golden Compass; Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix; and I Am Legend? The animation in Star Wars: The Clone Wars; WALL•E; or Ratatouille? You can thank Linux for all of them.

Welcome to a special IT Blogwatch EXTRA: where appeals fail to stop Microsoft's Open XML becoming an ISO/IEC standard. Not to mention a self-test for idiocy...

Elizabeth Montalbano drinks alphabet soup: