A new study released by Net Applications indicates that a decreasing percentage of the Internet population is using Windows as their operating system. Mac OS X is the major gainer followed by Linux. Windows might soon fall below 90% mark (still high) and Mac will enter the double digit. Linux might soon reach single digit (;)). It's currently at 0.8%, a gain of 0.12% compared to last month.
Screenlets is a desktop widget engine similar to gDesklets and Google Gadget. It's simple to install and use. I installed it through Synaptic package manager. Open Synaptic by selecting System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager. Search for screenlets. Click and select install.
Google today released Google Gadgets for Linux which provides a platform for running desktop gadgets under Linux. Google gadgets for Linux is compatible with the gadgets written for Google Desktop for Windows as well as the Universal Gadgets on iGoogle. Google Gadgets for Linux will be open-sourced, under the Apache License.
Mono, an open source project sponsored by Novell has released Moonlight 0.6 with profile 1.0 and profile 2.0. Moonlight profile 1.0 is based on Silverlight v1.0 and Moonlight profile 2.0 is based on Silverlight v2.0. Silverlight is Microsoft's answer to dethrone Adobe's flash player. Moonlight is Silverlight for Linux.
Verizon Wireless along with Mozilla joined the Mobile Linux group (LiMo). It's the first U.S. carrier to join the LiMo Foundation. LiMo already has the backing of large Asian and European carriers, as well as handset makers like Motorola Inc., Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics.
Washington Post reports that U.S. troops in Iraq now fights with viruses, not a viral or bacterial type. It's the PC virus that spread through porno DVDs they buy in bootlegged DVD markets in Iraq. Troops, you don't have to sacrifice watching porno, use Linux to watch them. 
One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project which started with the motto of providing cheaper computer to children in under developed countries seems to be changing their motto. They first promised to keep the laptop cost at $100, but increased it to $200 when they finally released it, citing manufacturing costs. One part of the cost cutting effect was by installing Linux in the XO laptop. Now they are sucking up to the big corporation and planning to install Windows XP. This might need more hard drive space and costs. The reason for the change could be either due to the pressure from the corporate heavy weight or a big pay off from them to use Windows. What's funny is, the same OLPC people cried foul when Intel started the Classmate PC project with Windows installed. It looks like OLPC wants to sell more in U.S. educational institutions than to under developed world since their profit margins will be high here and more schools can afford to buy it.
Casey Coleman, the chief information officer of the General Services Administration said in a web seminar that GSA use a wide variety of open source programs including Linux for its data centers, Bugzilla, for bug tracking, JUnit testing software, the JMeter Apache performance monitoring tool, and Eclipse, which can be used for application development and as a run-time engine.
Google released a beta version of Picasa 2.7 for Linux 4 months back. They removed the beta tag and released Picasa 2.7 for Linux. As I mentioned earlier, some of the new features include
CoRank
Delicious
Digg
Google Bookmarks
Live Favorites
Netscape
Reddit
Slashdot
Stumbleupon
Technorati Favorites
Yahoo MyWeb
Write a comment
No trackbacks
RSS 2.0
Bloglines
MyAOL
Netvibes
Newsgator
Rojo