Underexposed

Smithsonian adds photos to Flickr Commons

Stephen Shankland — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 20:27:00 GMT

The Smithsonian Institution has begun adding historical photos to The Commons, Flickr's project to host publicly held images.

Felix Nadar is one subject among hundreds from the Smithsonian Institution now visible at Flickr.

(Credit: Smithsonian)

The Smithsonian added 800 photographs from its collection of 13 million images, and 1,...

New geotagging method draws on Flickr photos

Stephen Shankland — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 22:33:00 GMT

IM2GPS compares a sample photo (top left) to geotagged Flickr photos to find other similar shots (top right) to guess where the sample was taken.

(Credit: Carnegie Mellon University)

Thousands of others have taken the trouble to geotag their photos, so why should you have to jump through a lot ...

Q&A: Google's open-source balancing act

Stephen Shankland — Wed, 28 May 2008 11:00:00 GMT

Chris DiBona's job--manager of Google's open-source programs--is a balancing act.

Google consumes a lot of open-source software for its own highly profitable business. But as he oversees the search powerhouse's open-source work, DiBona has to ensure that the company reciprocates. It can't be all take and ...

Google could pick Git to manage Android code

Stephen Shankland — Fri, 23 May 2008 14:54:00 GMT

Releasing 8.6 million lines of source code and expecting open-source programmers to join Google in its development is a technological challenge.

But when Google does make its Android mobile phone software an open-source project later this year, it looks likely it will take a page from the Linux playbook ...

Ubuntu to announce its mobile Linux in June

Stephen Shankland — Thu, 22 May 2008 21:06:00 GMT

Canonical will announce Netbook Remix, its version of Ubuntu Linux tailored for mobile devices, in two weeks, Chief Executive Mark Shuttleworth said.

"We're announcing it in the first week of June. It's called the Netbook Remix," Shuttleworth said in an interview with the Guardian. "We're working with ...

Google carves an Android path through open-source world

Stephen Shankland — Thu, 22 May 2008 11:00:00 GMT

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Google didn't invent open-source programming or pioneer the mobile-phone software market, but when it comes to its Android project, don't accuse Google of playing follow the leader.

Although the company has long used open-source software within its internal operations, Android is Google's highest-profile attempt ...

Mozilla: Final Firefox 3 expected in June

Stephen Shankland — Wed, 21 May 2008 16:28:00 GMT

Firefox fans looking for a major update to the open-source Web browser probably will get a final version of it next month.

"We're looking for final ship sometime in June," said Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla's vice president of engineering, in an interview Wednesday. Mozilla, which was spun out of ...

Yahoo hopes users will help pinpoint photos

Stephen Shankland — Wed, 14 May 2008 19:33:00 GMT

BURLINGAME, Calif.--Think of it as crowdsourced cartography.

In about three weeks, Yahoo plans to launch a project called Corrections in which users of the Flickr photo-sharing site can help with a thorny computing problem: providing the name of the place where a photo was taken.

Flickr's geo

...

Red Hat lives on the edge with Fedora 9

Stephen Shankland — Tue, 13 May 2008 15:57:00 GMT

Red Hat on Tuesday released the ninth incarnation of its enthusiast version of Linux, making a move that rival Ubuntu couldn't: the inclusion of the KDE 4 user interface.

That's because Fedora and Ubuntu have different approaches to new projects such as KDE 4, which is new, significantly ...

Firefox add-on infected with Trojan remnant

Stephen Shankland — Fri, 09 May 2008 14:24:00 GMT

Update 4:15 p.m. May 12: The file was actually infected with a remnant part of code from the Xorer Trojan, not with the full Trojan itself, according to a follow-up Mozilla blog post. The remnant "does not infect the user's machine with the virus (and) is a ...