OStatic

Sony is a company that has faced many challenges and witnessed a number of disappointments in recent years. At various times, the company has absolutely dominated huge portions of the consumer elecronics market--in televisions, game consoles, portable music players, and more. Now it faces domination in lots of its markets. Many observers feel that the company became unfocused as it spread out to many types of market in the 1990s.

Recently, though, Sony has made a number of notable moves focused on open source. I won't go as far as ZDNet's Dana Blankenhorn and call these moves a revolution, but they are significant, and in several cases they are smart. As Blankenhorn notes, Howard Stringer, who used to be head of CBS and has been chairman of Sony since 2005, may have something to do with Sony's cultural shifts, but it's the shifts themselves that are really of note.?

Wikipedia pushes for Ogg Theora. Wikipedia?s move to support Ogg Theora for video uploads may be the last chance to break the proprietary video monopoly.

Amazon shows need for open eBook standards. The company violated the privacy of Kindle users when it remotely deleted copies of Orwell?s 1984 and Animal Farm from Kindle Readers.

An open alternative for Palm Pre iTunes users. How about the KDE Amarok 2 media player?

Open source and social media: community, collaboration, freedom. Open source is the natural platform for fast-evolving social media and social networking.

Whom does the Google Chrome OS really threaten? Could the real targets be you and your privacy?

If you're heading to the beach this summer, you might want to take along something good to read. Dead tree books are so last century and e-book readers are all the rage. While Kindles are cool, they're not the only game in town for reading the latest best seller. Try these open source options for mobile devices and netbooks instead.