Google launches source code hosting program

Search giant Google has launched a new project hosting service for open source software. Designed to leverage the robust Subversion version control system, the new service provides repository hosting and support for issue tracking. With extremely limited functionality and plenty of rough edges, the nascent open source project hosting service is noticeably inferior to most other Google betaware. Despite the deficiencies, the project has potential, and it will probably become more useful as it continues to evolve. The main page bears the common open source meme "Release early, release often," a principle that Google seems to have embraced with great enthusiasm given the raw status of the system.

The service is far from ready for production use. With the exception of the issue tracking feature which has a very nifty (albeit buggy) filtering list view widget, the interface is plagued with an uncharacteristic lack of useful ajax flourishes.

The project search feature isn't particularly useful yet. The issue tracking search feature is much better, but like most of the rest of the system, it still falls short of functionality offered by alternative software development project management solutions. The web-based repository view is extremely simplistic, and it doesn't seem to provide a means of viewing earlier revisions. Source code display is also very simple, and syntax highlighting is not yet supported.

With only a fraction of the features available in competing technologies, gaining dominance in the open source project hosting field will present Google with an uphill battle. Sourceforge, a widely used open source project hosting service operated by VA Software subsidiary OSTG, is widely recognized as a leader in the open source hosting niche. With over 100,000 registered projects and over 1 million registered users, Sourceforge has a tremendous following and broad community recognition.

Nokia Tests Cellular Wi-Fi Phones

Nokia, the world largest handset maker, has begun testing technology in a Finnish city that lets users to make calls on both cellular and Wi-Fi networks and switch between networks without interruption.

Nokia's new 6136 phone automatically transfers voice or data connections from GSM networks to Wi-Fi when the device recognizes a compatible wireless network, Doug Dawson, a spokesman with Nokia, says. And, vice versa, when users make a call or data transfer via Wi-Fi and step out of the Wi-Fi network's coverage area, the connection is transferred to a GSM link without interruption.

Around 50 people in Oulu, Finland, are testing the new service as part of a two-month pilot initiated by Nokia in cooperation with Finnet and the City of Oulu. The city has been offering free access to Wi-Fi hot spots since last year as part of a project to spur wireless Internet service.

GPLv3 draft tones down DRM language

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) unveiled a second draft of the GNU general public license version 3 (GPLv3) Thursday which adopts a different, more measured tone than the initial take released in January.

The biggest change is the replacing of strident language around the issue of DRM (digital rights management).

The variations in the two drafts reflect different levels of involvement in the process. "Draft 1 was exclusively the work of the FSF," said Eben Moglen, an FSF board member and one of the authors of the draft. "The second draft is reflective of broader opinion, of the FSF and thousands of other people around the world." After bringing out Draft 1 at the start of the year, the organization initiated a period of public debate on the proposed license.

Created by Richard Stallman in 1989 for the GNU free operating system project, the GPL was last fully revised 15 years ago. The license gives users the right to freely study, copy, modify, reuse, share and redistribute software, and govern a good deal of free and open-source software (FOSS) including the Linux operating system, MySQL AB's database and the Samba file and print server project.

Yahoo and Symantec to launch Internet security service

Yahoo and Symantec aren't exactly the most natural of partners. The former is one of the few success stories of the original dotcom bubble, a web portal and search engine that makes its money through online advertising. The latter makes most of its money from selling subscriptions to antivirus software for PCs.

Nevertheless, the two have decided to partner up for a new marketing venture. Symantec will offer its existing product, the Norton Internet Security Suite, as a 30-day trial download from Yahoo. The product will be branded "Norton Internet Security provided by Yahoo!" and will be available through the Yahoo web site as well as through the Yahoo Toolbar for Internet Explorer. A 12-month subscription to the software will cost US$49.99, a US$20 discount over the regular price. Norton Internet Security 2006 currently features a software firewall, antispyware and antivirus utilities, and parental web controls.

Okay, so that's the marketing angle, but what is the benefit for both companies to enter into such a partnership? Yahoo, like most Internet companies, is anxious about real and perceived concerns over the safety of Internet commerce. The rise of spyware, spam, botnets, and phishing attacks reduce confidence in the Internet as a viable platform for financial transactions. By promoting Symantec's products, Yahoo is essentially saying that they are aware of the problem and are offering a possible solution.

As for Symantec, the firm is finding itself under increasing pressure from both freeware antivirus solutions and bundled Microsoft applications such as the improved firewall in Windows XP SP2 (which is improved still further in Vista) and the free Windows Defender (formerly Microsoft AntiSpyware). Hitching a ride on the Yahoo bandwagon will help Symantec gain exposure and potentially increase sales.

AMD Confirms Plans to Buy ATI

Advanced Micro Devices has agreed to buy Canadian graphics chip vendor ATI Technologies for around $5.4 billion in cash and stock, the companies announced today.

AMD sees the merger as a way to offer integrated products for the mobile computing and consumer electronics markets, it said. From 2008 onwards, it intends to offer a new range of integrated processing and graphics chips for custom applications, it said.

The acquisition, which is subject to shareholder and regulatory approvals, would turn AMD into one of the world's largest providers of graphics chips. ATI reported net income of $31.9 million on revenue of $652.3 million during its fiscal third quarter, which ended on May 31. At that time, the company said revenue for the current quarter would be between $620 million and $690 million.

In the last fiscal year, a combined AMD and ATI would have made sales of around $7.3 billion, the companies said.

ATI and AMD expect to complete the deal in the fourth quarter, subject to approval of ATI shareholders and U.S. and Canadian regulators.

B'lore techies put OpenSolaris on CD

Bangalore’s techies are creating some cutting edge stuff. Moinak Ghosh, an engineer at Sun Microsystems, has taken the lead on Solaris 10, the flagship operating system (OS) of Sun, and come up with a new version called BeleniX.

Moinak has taken the whole OS and created an abridged LiveCD version. The significance here is that this OS does not require installation as it can run from the CD itself.

BeleniX was developed by Moinak during his spare time, along with developers from the open source community . The team included Venkata Kishore, Sriram Popuri, Pradhap Devarajan and Gangadhar Mylapuram.

The basic version was launched way back in October 2005 without a graphic user interface (GUI). But this latest format of the OS has generated huge interest. BeleniX (in Celtic, that’s the Sun God of Belinas) has had nearly 16 releases till date and close to 5,000 CDs have been given out so far. It has also witnessed some 33,000 downloads. Moinak is excited about the manner in which BeleniX is getting enhancements from developers worldwide, given its open source platform.

"The complete OS boots and runs from a CD-ROM without touching the hard disk. A desktop environment is made available to the user in 1 minute and 40 seconds. The main aim of this initiative is to generate greater interest in the Indian open source community for OpenSolaris."

OpenSolaris is the open source version of the Solaris operating system, which allows developers across the world to work and improve the OS. It is easily downloadable.

A CD can take up to 700 MB data. When this acted as an obstacle to create a LiveCD version, Moinak and his team came up with a compression technology to accomodate 1.8 GB of software.

Bangalore has the second largest active OpenSolaris user group worldwide. While the interest in enhancements to BeleniX is huge, a student in one of Bangalore’s major colleges is working on putting the whole version on flash memory. If this happens, it may not be long before we carry our entire hard disk in our pocket.

Second draft of GPL 3 due Tuesday

The Free Software Foundation Inc. (FSF) is due to release the second draft of the GNU general public license version 3 (GPLv3) Tuesday, according to sources close to the organization.

Created by Richard Stallman in 1989 for the GNU free operating system project, the GPL is a popular license for free and open-source software (FOSS) including the Linux operating system, MySQL AB's database and the Samba file and print server project. Last fully revised in 1991, the GPL gives users the right to freely study, copy, modify, reuse, share and redistribute software.

The FSF released the first draft of GPLv3 in January and two areas of the proposed license in relation to software patent licensing and digital rights management (DRM) generated plenty of debate.

One of the draft's provisions requires large software distributors who own patents and cross license patents with their peers to "shield downstream users" of their applications against any potential patent infringement claims. The other provision prevents GPL-licensed software from being used in DRM copy-protection software.

Back in January, the organization planned to continue to receive feedback on the initial draft until early May and then start work on the second draft of the license. At that time, it was hoping to release the second draft in late May.

If the second GPLv3 draft meets with the general approval of the FOSS community, it could be the final version of the license, although the FSF didn't think that was likely in January, planning a last-call third draft for the fall.

Zune all the way

Microsoft has confirmed the existence of the Zune portable music player and says that it will be out by the end of the year. In an interview published in this week's Billboard Magazine, Microsoft GM of Marketing for MSN Entertainment Business Chris Stephenson says that Zune is "a family of hardware and software products" targeting various digital entertainment services.

The Zune has been rumored to be capable of playing digital music, video, gaming, and downloading music over an 802.11b/g connection. Right now, however, Microsoft says the primary focus for the device will be on music. Zune will indeed have the rumored WiFi capability as well as an internal hard drive. Stephenson declined to divulge the full tech specs for the device, saying that those have yet to be decided.

Microsoft hopes to use the built-in WiFi to foster a community around the Zune, enabling users to see one another's playlists, send track recommendations wirelessly, and even share music with one another. In addition, users will be able to send and receive content between the Zune and other Microsoft devices such as the Xbox 360 and mobile devices running the Windows Mobile OS. "The ability to connect the different devices is a key part of the strategy," according to Stephenson. "Whether it's a portable media device, or a phone, or the Xbox or Media Center PC, the idea is you can access your entertainment from anywhere."

Microsoft has demoed the device to the record labels, some of whom are "incredibly excited" by it. One reason for the excitement could be the prospect of breaking Apple's hegemony over the digital music market. Also, the Zune will allow for a limited P2P experience - "controlled sharing" as one label VP describes it—that can still be tightly controlled by the record labels via the hardware.

There is no launch date yet, nor are there any specifics on whether the device will be tied to the joint MTV-Microsoft venture URGE music store. What is certain is that by the time the holiday shopping frenzy rolls around, we'll be seeing a massive marketing blitz introducing the Zune, which should be on store shelves by then. It's not going to be easy to knock Apple of its perch, but with Microsoft putting all of its eggs in a single, oddly-named basket, the iPod is sure to face a challenge like it hasn't seen before.

Tracking Microsoft's portable media device

Reports continue to emerge about Microsoft's plans for a portable media device. Here's a summary of key elements that have surfaced over the past week:

• It would have wireless Internet capabilities, for downloading tracks directly to the device, according to Bloomberg News.
• The device could be launched by Christmas, although the company reportedly hadn't yet briefed key retailers as of last week, casting some doubt on that schedule, according to The New York Times.
• Led by Xbox executive J Allard, the project, code-named "Argo," reflects a broader strategy that would extend the Xbox brand into a variety of digital-media products, according to The Seattle Times.
• Microsoft may be considering giving people free alternative copies of tracks they've purchased from the iTunes Music Store, for use with the Microsoft device, to help convert iPod users, according to some reports.
• The final product name may be the "Zune," according to Gizmodo.
• And the device may look like this, according to Engadget.

Of course, we know from the Xbox 360 that those leaked images, authentic or not, don't always reflect the ultimate reality. But they're still interesting to see. At the same time, just as important as how the device looks and what it does is how much it costs -- one of the key factors we don't yet know.

Google Helps Identify Malware

A little-known capability in Google's search engine has helped security vendor Websense uncover thousands of malicious Web sites, as well as several legitimate sites that have been hacked, the company said today.

By taking advantage Google's binary search capability, Websense has created new software tools that can sniff out malware using the popular search engine. Websense researchers Googled for strings that were used in known malware like the Bagel and Mytob worms and have uncovered about 2,000 malicious Web sites over the past month, according to Dan Hubbard, senior director of security and research with Websense.

Though Google is widely used to search the Internet for Web pages and office documents, the search engine can also peek through the binary information stored in the normally unreadable executable (.exe) files that are run by Windows computers.

Yahoo-MSN IM interoperability still a dream

When yahoo launched Yahoo Messenger Beta v8 and MSN came up with Windows Live Messenger, I thought maybe Yahoo-MSN IM have become interoperable. Even though in Yahoo IM I was able to add an MSN id, WLM didn't get any request. Seems like the two giants failed on first attempt.

Yahoo and Microsoft said late last year that they would launch a service in the second quarter of this year that would allow their customers to send and receive messages and share buddy lists between the two instant messaging networks. With the second quarter come and gone, representatives from both companies say the interoperable service will launch globally very soon.