OStatic

Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) released the source code this week for its PC-based mapping application, FalconView. Until now, the software's primarily user has been the U.S. Department of Defense, but is now accessible to local and state governments, emergency responders, educational institutions, and anyone who wants to check out what kinds of mapping tools governmental agencies like the Air Force have used (the Air Force uses FalconView in conjunction with its Portable Flight Planning Software.)

FalconView has advantages over most of the free mapping software products because FalconView can be used without an active Internet connection, says FalconView development team member Joel Odom. Someone can take a file they're viewing in another program and look at it in FalconView to get a top-down two-dimensional view that they can thoroughly analyze even if they're in a boat in the middle of the ocean without a satellite uplink and downlink.

Google kicked off the launch of its Chromium OS project today with a presentation on Chrome OS. The first thing you'll notice is that the name of Google's consumer product will be Chrome OS, while the open source project is named Chromium OS. My guess: Google will bless the usage of the Chrome OS name by granting trademark rights to those who comply with Google's standards. Google didn't say that, but that's what I would do. Word is that the video of today's announcement will be available on YouTube in a day or so.

The next thing I noticed is that Chrome OS will be completely cloud-based . As in, no local data. As in, all web apps all the time. As in, it's only useful to the extent that there's an internet connection. This will likely prove to be a Google Rohrschach test. Those already predisposed to disliking anything Google does will find this horrifying. Those who think Google is the bee's knees will conclude that it's not completely evil and, indeed, is the next logical evolution of desktops-in-the-cloud technology.?

The Google phone is coming soon. There are rumors that Google is getting into the phone-building business.

Netherlands' open source policy goes double Dutch. A report from an open source conference in Amsterdam.

Has Windows Mobile lost 28 percent market share in a year? That's what Gartner researchers report.

KDE 4.4 due out in February of 2010. Here is what to expect.

When Nokia announced that it was launching the Symbian Foundation to great fanfare, it had within its grasp that rarest of opportunities to move swiftly and become the dominant open source mobile platform. Alas, just one and a half years later, they have seemingly ceded that position to Android. Instead of recognizing the threat from Android and making strategic changes to counter, they instead criticized Google's closed-door development of Android before releasing a line of code themselves. When criticizing competitors, it helps to have your own house in order first.

?In October, the Symbian Foundation released the Symbian kernel sources to the world, and the rest of the world (read: developers) collectively responded, Great. Where's my Android phone? I've often lauded Google for its ability to fuse the marketing, PR and developer benefits of open source projects into one seemless operation. It would seem that Symbian could stand to learn a few things. The question is, is it too late?