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Sam Dean
Apr-2009

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Tomato and dd-wrt Supercharge Your Home Wi-Fi Performance, and Boost Reliability

A few weeks ago, on the WebWorkerDaily blog, I did a post called The Home Wi-Fi Reboot: Don't Neglect It. It discussed a problem I was having with my home Wi-Fi network, where I was occasionally getting dropped connections. I solved the problem I had by doing a cycled reboot of my router, access points, computers, and checking all physical connections, followed by a channel change on my router. (Changing channels can get rid of interference problems with other wireless devices.)

I was really interested, though, in several of the reader comments that came in about using open source firmware on a wireless router. Here are the two open source firmware products that readers mentioned to me, and why you want to know about them if you have a home Wi-Fi network. You can get a better wireless signal and improved performance with these, and much more.



Confirmation: Motorola Will Deliver an Android-Based Set-Top Box

Recently, we've covered several new opportunities, including non-phone platforms such as netbooks, e-ink devices, and set-top boxes, for Google's open source Android operating system. Today, GigaOm and Information Week are discussing confirmation of what is likely to be the first fully-realized, non-phone hardware implementation of Android: a set-top box from Motorola called au Box. It's being made by Motorola for Japanese Internet service provider KDDI, and, according to Information Week, it will be capable of playing DVDs and CDs, transferring music and video to a mobile device, and ripping and storing files. That sounds a lot like full-blown computer, and there is another way the au Box will be a lot like a computer. Here are more details.


OStatic Buffer Overflow

Google Chrome update offers tab micromanagement options. The 2.0.174.0 update released Thursday adds features such as the ability to remove thumbnails from the New Tab page.

The five best, new things in Ubuntu Linux 9.04. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols cites his favorite additions.

Canonical's Mark Shuttleworth: Oracle is a litmus test for Linux, Ubuntu. Here's what he has to say about the lack of Oracle certification for 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope.

Common public license (CPL) merged into Eclipse. The two licenses were already similar, so a merger made sense.

Zamzar now converts text to speech. This free application was already useful for file conversions, and now you can take advantage of text-to-speech features for documents, PDFs and more.



6 Must-Have Firefox Extensions for Enhancing the Apps You Use Most

Here at OStatic, we've often covered the most useful extensions for Mozilla's Firefox browser. The extensions, of course, are what make it such a compelling browser to use. There has been a general trend among Firefox extensions toward extending the way the browser helps you get more out of the applications that you use all the time. In this post, you'll find six of the best examples of these app-helper extensions, which you can grab and install in minutes. Whether you use Google, Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, applications on mobile devices, or popular development tools, you'll find top-notch, efficiency-boosting extensions here.


Linux-Based Livio Radio Serves Up Personalized Pandora Music Streams

Recently I've come to really like Pandora, the free, automated music recommendation and Internet radio service created by the Music Genome Project. If you haven't tried it, it does an uncanny job of serving up artists and songs you may not have heard of, based on similarities to artists and songs that it already knows you like. Pandora's skill at this is based on how the Music Genome Project indexes over 400 attributes of songs in its database, relying on analyses from human musicians and on algorithms. Now, Livio has a $150 Linux-based Internet radio (shown) that plays back both personalized streams from Pandora, and streams from over 11,000 other stations. Especially for those who like Pandora, this radio looks appealing.


OStatic Buffer Overflow

Will telcos embrace open source and what if they did? British Telecom cut costs by 97 percent on a telco project using an open source model.

Cisco's missing data center acquisition. Open source company Reductive Labs, creators of the Puppet project, should be on Cisco's radar.

Can the open source Songbird music player and manager compete with iTunes? Library management and options are easier to control.

How FOSS makes better programmers. You can think of it as a testing ground for new programmers.



Why Isn't Open Source Even Considered at the U.S. State Government Level?

Earlier this month, Computerworld reported on the Texas state Senate banning Windows Vista from use in government agencies. Specifically, Senator Juan Hinojosa proposed the ban because of the many reports of problems with Vista. Microsoft officials reacted angrily, saying we're surprised that the Texas Senate Finance Committee adopted a rider which, in effect, singles out a specific corporation and product for unequal treatment. Hinojosa has proposed Windows XP and the upcoming Windows 7 as alternatives, but why wasn't moving to an open source solution even considered? That's the gist of an interesting letter sent to Hinojosa, and here are some of the good points it makes.


How Will Novell and Canonical Answer the Open Source Channel Alliance?

As Kristin noted earlier, this week, Red Hat and IT services distribution provider SYNNEX announced the formation of the Open Source Channel Alliance. The alliance is squarely aimed at taking federated and logically connected collections of top open source applications and platforms straight to resellers. I think Matt Asay gets it right when he refers to the move as pulling a Microsoft, in terms of aiming to leverage the sales channel. I suspect that all of the commercial open source players involved with the alliance will be well served by the arrangement, and, as The Var Guy notes, the alliance begs the question of how Novell and Canonical are going to react.?



True Knowledge's Semantic Answer Engine Now Offers an Open API

True Knowledge, an innovative semantic answer engine that?s currently in closed beta, has opened its API, as WebWorkerDaily reports. ? If you?re a developer, the API offers the enticing possibility of adding knowledge-based functionality to your apps, writes Simon Mackie. Answer engines are different from search engines in that they provide answers to questions, rather than the ability to search for keywords in content, he adds. The True Knowledge application is a combination of an interpreter (which examines your query and turns it into a form that the app can use) and a knowledge base, which is expanded by its users over time. Check out more in Simon's story here.?


Training: The Missing Link in Business Adoption of Open Source?

When we recently covered the results from North Bridge Partners' survey on the future of open source, I was struck by an answer that the majority of respondents gave to this question: What do you see as the key barrier to open source adoption in business? The most popular answer to that question was unfamiliarity with open source solutions. The question was asked in an open-ended way, so I assume that some people giving that answer are probably unfamiliar with the actual existence of open source software that could benefit them, and others are aware of the existence of the software, but don't know how to use the applications.

That last branch of the problem implies that training is more important than many providers of commercial open source offerings think it is. Today, I've been looking at the market research results from IDC's annual Worldwide IT Education and Training Vendor Analysis Study. (PDF) In it, Red Hat is named the commercial software provider that does training and education best. Here are some important reasons for that finding.?



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