Cloud computing and storage convert physical resources (like processors and storage) into scalable and shareable resources over the Internet (computing and storage "as a service"). Although not a new concept, virtualization makes this much more scalable and efficient through the sharing of physical systems through server virtualization.

Recently I purchased new laptop - A Toshiba A300D. Although my first computer was randomly chosen with absolutely no pre-purchase selection that laptop was very carefully selected among many others. So, I knew that it should work at least at the minimum level with my favourite GNU/Linux distribution - Fedora

Sun has been getting serious about opening up its software for a few years now. OpenSolaris, an open source Unix operating system like Linux and BSD, released in May, is its latest foray into the open source arena. I found OpenSolaris to be a production-ready OS that works equally well on desktops and servers.

A major new version of the VLC media player has been released. 0.9.2 adds a new Qt4 user interface, fullscreen controls, improved playlists, album art support, and new file format support.

This weekend I decided to take the Linux distribution known as gOS 3.0 beta for a spin. The gOS is an Ubuntu 8.04.1 derivative that shows some promise with it’s integration of Web applications. Although they are not affilated with Google, gOS has incorporated many Google online tools into their desktop.

I have been talking about Ubuntu for a number of articles now and how easy it is to use. In this article I will look at the next two upcoming versions and investigate what they have to offer.

The web is no longer just a collection of sites one can visit with a browser. It’s increasingly a rich set of programming interfaces upon which applications can be built. This, at a technological level, is very good news. Interfaces make possible a greater variety of applications. This is an old idea for software in general, but a relatively new trend on the web.