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Apple Tells MacBook Pro to Lose a Few
February 13, 2012
Apple is reportedly planning a substantial design overhaul for its MacBook Pro line. The company's next generation of high-end laptop computers will be thinner, lighter notebooks that closely resemble MacBook Airs and feature extended battery life. Traditional hard drives will be replaced with flash-memory-based solid-state drives.
iBooks Author Lets You Build Astounding Texts
February 13, 2012
In my mind, the most important element of any software application is the ability to make users feel empowered, as if they can act on information, make changes, or best yet, create. Apple's new iBooks Author application for Mac OS X lets you create -- so much so that I actually believe that I could write an awesome iBook textbook myself.

The Day Canonical Pushed Kubuntu Out of the Nest
February 13, 2012
Linux fans have had a hard enough time watching the ongoing woes of Mandriva in recent months, so when the news hit last week that Kubuntu was under threat as well, it just felt like too much. "Today I bring the disappointing news that Canonical will no longer be funding my work on Kubuntu after 12.04," wrote developer Jonathan Riddell in a message to Kubuntu developers.
Is GDrive Ready to Come Out of Its Shell?
February 10, 2012
Google may soon launch a paid cloud storage service called "Drive," five years after it first came up with the idea. Google Drive will let consumers store documents, photographs and videos on Google's servers for sharing and easy accessibility from any Web-connected device, according to a report.
Storage Tech Sizzles With Hot, Hot Hard Drives
February 09, 2012
An international team of researchers led by the University of York in England has demonstrated fast data recording on hard drives using heat. They used an ultra-short pulse of heat to reverse the poles in a ferrimagnet in order to write the data.
The Trouble With Mandriva
February 09, 2012
Now that Linux distributions like Ubuntu and Mint are enjoying such widespread attention and success, it's increasingly difficult to remember that not all distros are sharing in the same good fortune. Take Mandriva, for example. This venerable distro dates back to 1998, when it was born as Mandrake Linux, but its last few years have been tempestuous.

Radio Tray: Tiny Web Radio Player Is Handy but Picks Up Some Static
February 08, 2012
If you spend a lot of time at your keyboard, no doubt you dabble a lot in listening to Internet radio. Radio Tray is a relatively new Linux app that can make tuning in to your favorite radio stations a new experience. Radio Tray is a streaming player for online radio that sits on the Linux desktop panel. Think of this app as a shortcut that hides the browser interface.
AMD: Shift Happens
February 06, 2012
Last week was the coming-out party for AMD's new CEO, and his core message was that the market was undergoing a shift -- and when markets shift, leadership changes. His point was that Intel's leadership was at risk and that AMD was poised to take over that leadership. The nature of this change is massive, and I doubt we -- I mean any of us -- are fully aware of how much is changing.

Building the Data Center on Small Victories
February 06, 2012
You don't need to go very far in IT nowadays to find people who are diligently working to do more with less, even as they're working to transform and modernize their environments. One way to keep the interest high and those operating and investment budgets in place is to show fast results, and then use that to prime the pump for even more improvement -- and even more funding -- with perhaps even growing budgets.
Will the Spark Tablet Ignite a FOSS Fire?
February 06, 2012
Now that webOS is making its merry way along the open road, there's no telling what tablets or other mobile devices it may inspire over the upcoming months. In the meantime, the Linux world is all abuzz over what promises to be the very first fully open tablet out there: the Spark, a device slated to ship in May from none other than the KDE Plasma Active community itself.

Leaked Info Offers Glimpse of WinPho's Muscular Future
February 03, 2012
Microsoft is overhauling Windows Phone 8, which is still in development, to make it more competitive with market leaders iOS and Android, according to leaked information. The mobile OS will add support for multicore processors, up to four new screen resolutions, and removable microSD card storage. It will also support near-field communications, the technology that enables e-wallets.
Spark Tablet Coming for the FOSS Crowd
February 03, 2012
The recently announced Spark tablet might prove to be the first Linux-running open source tablet fully capable of being modded by users. It has an open Linux stack on unlocked hardware, and it will come with an open content and services market. The Spark will come under the GNU General Public License from its inception.

WebOS Swings Along the Open Road
February 02, 2012
When HP announced late last year that it would open source webOS, it was hard not to be skeptical. After all, it would be all too easy for a company to whitewash its own abandonment of a project by grandly "donating it to the community." However, that pessimistic view is beginning to fade, thanks to HP's publication last month of an official road map for its webOS plans.
Apple Remakes Final Cut Pro X
February 01, 2012
Apple announced an update Tuesday of its video editing software Final Cut Pro X aimed at quelling dissatisfaction with the product among professional media producers. This latest version of the software, release 10.0.3, is available from the Apple's App Store as a free upgrade for existing Final Cut Pro X users and for $299 for new users. A 30-day free trial version is also available.

SMPlayer: A Flexible, Feature-Filled Media Player With a Frustrating Flaw
February 01, 2012
When it comes to playing audio and video files in Linux, media players pretty much all work the same way and have a very similar user interface. It usually all comes down to features. With SMPlayer it depends on what you want to play. Unfortunately, this bug of sorts is something its developer Ricardo Villalba has yet to resolve in the latest release, version 0.7.0.
Can Anything Stop EMC?
January 31, 2012
A bit over a year ago, the conventional wisdom related to enterprise IT vendors was fairly straightforward: Sheer size and depth of expertise gave end-to-end systems vendors unlimited access to the high ground. As markets recovered from the 2008 recession, enterprise customers would naturally stick with or gravitate toward large established players that could fulfill their every need.

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