OStatic

Free music service Last.fm announced today that it's now available for handheld devices that use the Android platform. Like the Web-based version, users can stream radio stations, track listening habits, and get personal music recommendations. Last.fm users can also get artist information, view their personal music files, and access event and tour information.

Aduim is a free, open source instant messaging (IM) application created especially for the Mac OS X operating system. Unlike IM tools like AOL Instant Messenger or GoogleTalk, Adium can be used to connect to several different messaging services at once. Adium?s easy installation, robust features, and outstanding community support make it a must-have in every Mac user?s toolbox.

Ramesh Natarajan is giving out free copies of his ebook, Linux 101 Hacks (the password linuxrocks starts the download). Though it targets a more experienced audience than the Ubuntu Pocket Guide and Reference download Sam covered last month, it looks like a handy reference for those common command line tasks that arise every so often -- but not often enough that you completely recall how to do them.

Linux 101 Hacks can best be described as a study guide for beginning systems administrators ( Linux 101 ). It focuses entirely on terminal use -- from using the command line to manage system processes, search and sort files, and make remote connections to using common text-based utilities (such as fdisk).

Bugs, system conflicts, and errant bits of code add unique challenges to the technical area of open source development. They also affect a project's community -- and as any community manager can tell you, developing a healthy community is often more difficult (and has higher stakes) than rogue code.

Management is tough all round, but managing open source projects is different still. Most developers are giving their time because the project interests them, and non-developers join because they find the project useful, and they want to share their enthusiasm. But a community not being any one remotely homogenous group means that passions sometimes run high, and it's not always easy to keep a project's community -- it's life -- moving forward.

It may have just gotten easier. Ubuntu's Community Manager, Jono Bacon, announced his upcoming book, The Art of Community will be available later this year.

It shouldn't surprise anyone to find that the number of books about the Ruby language, and about Web development using Ruby on Rails, has soared over the last year. Many books tell you how to write Rails applications, but very few tell you how to put them into production. Deploying Rails Applications, published recently by the Pragmatic Programmers, does try to answer these questions, and does so quite well, introducing a variety of programs and techniques that can make the difference between a painful deployment and a pain-free one.