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Apple's Juicy 2012 Hardware Harvest December 22, 2011 
While 2011 was a year full of momentous moments for Apple, 2012 has the potential to outshine them all, especially in hardware. It will be the first full year in which Apple must steer its gigantic ship without Steve Jobs, and the pressure to surprise and delight will be intense.
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Carrier IQ and the US' Escalating Privacy Risk Level December 14, 2011 
Not many news stories are as astonishing as the recent revelation by a 25-year-old researcher about the Carrier IQ software that is installed on most modern Android, BlackBerry and Nokia phones. Carrier IQ software collects massive data from these devices, then "correlates and aggregates the data for near real-time system monitoring and business intelligence."
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Top 5 Linux Predictions for 2012 December 13, 2011 
Linux continues to grow both its reach and credibility among enterprise IT users and customers, bringing competition, price and time-to-market pressure and options to key markets such as cloud computing and mobile software. Looking at the coming year for Linux, these are the key areas to watch: cloud computing, Platform as a Service, Android, the automobile industry -- and not the desktop.
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Gift Ideas for the Apple Addict December 08, 2011 
Most people I know have a hard time finding the right gifts for a lot of the people in their lives, and I'm no exception: I'm picky, and often enough in weird, demanding ways. For instance, while I like some shades of blue, others irritate me. As for Mac and Apple fans, they tend to be demanding, too.
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Open Source and the Open Road, Part 2 December 06, 2011 
The connected car is on the verge of going where no vehicle has ever gone before. Presently, many cars enable drivers to pair their mobile music and phone devices with their vehicles' sound systems. But cars with telemetry that will connect to cloud-based navigation and entertainment services could soon be common.
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Linux Mint Is a Refreshing Palate Cleanser November 23, 2011 
The Linux community and Linux users are at odds over the transition from GNOME 2 to GNOME 3 as the backbone desktop environment for the OS. Ubuntu's developers muddied the situation with its newcomer Unity desktop alternative. Given the situation, Linux Mint may offer the best solution if you need time to adjust to the radical changes in the GNOME 3 desktop.
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Open Source and the Open Road, Part 1 November 22, 2011 
A new wave of really cool devices will soon do more than simply integrate your mobile gadgets with your automobile. Pairing your smartphone with your car's sound system and on-board navigation platform is already old hat. Car makers are now looking at how to expand that concept to enhance the notion of your car being treated as one big mobile device.
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An iPad Lover Plays With Fire, Part 1 November 22, 2011 
I'm a happy owner of an iPad 2, but I bought a Kindle Fire anyway. It seems like a silly purchase, on the surface -- after all, what can a Kindle Fire do that an iPad can't? Hmm. Not much of anything, really, except run Android apps and play nicely with Amazon.com's growing world of content.
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Tight Couplings, Loose Couplings and the Knowable Unknown November 02, 2011 
A couple of years ago I read The Black Swan and was so taken by the subject matter that I wrote a column about it. The book had to do with the kinds of unknown issues that can strike even well-understood processes. Now, Leo Sadovy, a vice president at SAS, has taken the concept further in a blog just posted Tuesday.
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The Enthralling 'Steve Jobs' - Brilliance, Weirdness, Warts and All November 01, 2011 
If you are on the fence about whether to buy and read Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, I have an answer for you: Do it. However, I should warn you, the book isn't for the faint of heart. It's 656 pages in the hardcover edition, which translates to a couple thousand on your iPhone if you buy it as an e-book.
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What Open Source Can Learn From Steve Jobs, Part 2 November 01, 2011 
The blind hatred of Free Software Foundation President Richard Stallman toward proprietary programs is such that he has given speeches in which he advocated for software piracy. Stallman wrote this the day after Steve Jobs died: "As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, 'I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone.'"
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What Open Source Can Learn From Steve Jobs, Part 1 October 25, 2011 
The passing of Steve Jobs earlier this month triggered reactions that spanned the gamut -- from expressions of appreciation and sober reflection to some tasteless extremes of zealotry from a subset of the open source community. We can learn a lot from Steve Jobs, even if we ultimately have different goals.
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The False Economies of the Info Security World October 19, 2011 
Organizations love false economies. It may not be an entirely conscious act on their part, but it's certainly the truth: Hang around any organization long enough, and you'll find at least one instance where it tries to save on doing A but winds up spending more on doing B in the process.
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How Linuxy Is Android? October 18, 2011 
The Kindle Fire, the Android-based tablet Amazon revealed in late September, could well be the next step in the ongoing metamorphosis of Google's Linux derivative into a proprietary operating system. Even if Amazon does not lock down its altered Android platform, it clearly has created a major fork in the Linux road.
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Tizen Could Be a Giant Step Back for Mobile Linux October 11, 2011 
Amid continued traction for Android, there have been a number of other developments for mobile operating systems based on Linux. Given my support for and belief in Linux and open source software, you might expect me to be bullish on the prospects for all of this mobile and device Linux. However, I believe the introduction of the Tizen Linux-based OS is reminiscent of a time when mobile Linux wasn't really moving ahead.
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iPhone 4S: Just Apple Being Apple October 06, 2011 
It didn't take long for journalists, bloggers and commenters to start declaring the iPhone 4S an iFail, a disappointment, a wide-open opportunity for competitors. I was mildly surprised that we didn't see an iPhone 5, but in retrospect, I think I got caught up in the mass hysteria of rumors and supposition by bloggers and analysts alike. My nagging thoughts: Why would Apple deviate from its previous roadmap?
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