Randall Hyde’s book is now out in it’s second edition.

Google’s OpenSocial
Google is developing a thing called “OpenSocial. It will be an “API” (Application Programming Interface) for social network websites. Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING are implementing the software.
OpenSocial is built upon Google Gadget technology, so you can build […]

From Thomas Claburn at Information Week:
The new look has been made available to about 1% of all Gmail users and is being rolled out to the rest on an ongoing basis.
Google…on Tuesday confirmed it is giving Gmail a new look.
…
They’re calling it “Gmail 2.0,” …
“Google during the recent Analyst Day announced they want to release […]

Stop Interrupting Me
Your computer is, at its most basic level, a clock that runs very quickly, but as it cycles, it considers interacting with the electronic machinery around it. These moments of consideration are called “Interrupts” and it is only at the moment of an interrupt that something may … or may not happen.
Since […]

Some guy eating dog food. He later tried Ubuntu Linux and liked it much better…
I’d like to recommend five blog posts regarding the process of switching from whatever non-Linux operating system you happen to be using now to Linux (in particular, but not necessarily, Ubuntu).
I also want to make a few comments about problems […]

According to the European News Agency Expatica.com, the Dutch Consumer’s Association Consumentenbond has evaluated Microsoft Windows Vista, and determined that it is not ready for general use owing to its inability to operate peripherals, tendency to crash systems, and so on.
(The Consumentenbond is a private independent product testing organization roughly similar to Consumer […]

October 13th was the seventh birthday of the Office Suite OpenOffice.Org. This is an OpenSource office suite that will look familiar to anyone using Microsoft Office, WordPefect Office, etc. It has a word processor (Writer) that does pretty much everything Microsoft Word does, but with a more logical layout for menus and some other […]

Or at least, I’m going to take it as an endorsement. Consider this:
Ubuntu is generally regarded as one of the more consumer-friendly versions of Linux, so the Linux PC experience is similar to what you would get with a Windows-equipped Dell. When you start the machine, the screen looks familiar; preinstalled applications can easily […]

The Gimp, as it might appear running on Windows
I do, although it has some limitations at the higher end … like dealing with NEFs and such. But it is fast, powerful, and works well.
I’m talking about The Gimp OpenSource image manipulation software application (”GIMP = GNU Image Manipulation Program. GNU […]

It is not official, but it is close. The ISO has been reviewing OOXML and members are leaking their votes. Standards Blog has been keeping track, and according to the rough equivalent of exit polls, Microsoft’s format will fail.
The official count and announcement of the results is expected in just a few hours […]

In case you can’t read the fine print:

… and by extension, the rest of us.
The Working Group in Sweden charged with voting on document standards had been polled, and it was pretty clear that the group would vote against Microsoft’s OOXML “standard” for all the usual reasons. It is not really an open standard, it does not really work, and so […]

The German government will fund the German edition of Wikipedia.
They will fund experts to write material about renewable resources via the Renewable Resources Agency (FNR) which in turn recieves funding from the German Ministry of Nutrition, Agriculture and Consumer Protection.
[source]

It seemed to me, forever, that “PC’s” and “Macs” had a fundementally different look and feel. I don’t mean the design of the user interface or the design of the hardware. I mean how the screen looks when you are looking at it, and reading stuff on it.
Then about a year ago I […]

SEATTLE — — Microsoft Corp. [MSFT-Q] will make changes to the program that helps Windows Vista users search their hard drives, in response to antitrust complaints from Google Inc., [GOOG-Q] according to a U.S. Justice Department report issued late Tuesday.
Google filed a 49-page document with the Justice Department in April claiming Vista’s desktop search tool […]