OStatic

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?

Not content to dominate search and online advertising, two operating systems, and cross-platform browser, Google is now getting into the programming language business as well. Yesterday Google announced Go a brand-new systems programming language. Why does Google need Go? According to the FAQ on the site, Google saw a gap in the existing systems programming languages, and the company decided it was worth trying again with a new language that has taken ideas from other systems programming languages as well as scripting languages like Python and JavaScript.

A snappy little Webbook appropriately named litl made its debut this week, bringing with it an interesting twist on the ultra-portable computer craze. It's a lot like the Chumby (a perennial favorite of the OStatic staff), in that it lets you share content with other users, connect to the Internet, and add modules to collect data from your favorite Web sites.

Litl's operating system is rooted in open source -- Ubuntu, to be exact -- but its uniqueness lies in the sleek design. When not being used as a laptop, users can prop it up like an easel then set it to display photos or stream content from Weather.com and other popular Web sites.

Opponents of cloud computing cite data loss and vendor lock-in as a primary dangers of relying on such services. They're valid points, but since cloud computing isn't going away anytime soon, it's time to start finding solutions instead of simply sounding alarm bells.

Today's guest editor, Rafael Laguna, CEO of Open-Xchange, shares his thoughts about what it would take to make cloud services more reliable and trustworthy.

The organizers behind the 8th annual (SCALE) announced a call for papers this week. There are a total of five speaker tracks this year including tracks for beginners and developers, and the selection committee is looking for presenters to speak on a wide variety of topics of interest to the FOSS community. Organizers are also willing to help set up tutorials and labs for speakers who want to take a hands-on approach.

People Power, a new open source-based green tech startup launches today with the goal of helping people reduce their carbon footprint and control energy consumption in their homes. More than just a cost-analysis Web site that lets you compare and contrast the cost of using various appliances, People Power is also developing devices that communicate wirelessly to connect a home's appliances with a specially designed local network, so users can track energy use in real-time.

The benefit to consumers is readily apparent -- lower energy bills and better stewardship of our earth's resources -- but the company also points out how developers can benefit from involvement in the People Power project as well.