Stories by Jon Gold

Canonical announces Ubuntu Apps Showdown

Linux developers will soon have a chance to compete for prizes of laptops and smartphones, thanks to Canonical's announcement today of the Ubuntu App Showdown contest.

Linaro boasts up to 100% speed boost for Android

Developers at open-source nonprofit organization Linaro have posted a set of code tweaks for Android, enabling up to 100% increases in performance, compared to a vanilla version of Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0).

Cerf: Secret wartime projects drove 'incredible' advances

The Enigma cypher machine used by the German military in World War II is still a tough nut to crack today. The total number of ways it can be configured for every letter is around 150 million million million. That's enough to keep it beyond the reach of all but the most determined of brute force attacks.

Can Mozilla right the ship?

Several years ago, Mozilla was a real up-and-comer -- its Firefox browser was the first serious challenger to Internet Explorer in a long time, and the company's identity with open source enhanced its public perception as a worthy upstart.

Cerf: IPv6 'launch' was 20 years in the making

The official World IPv6 Launch event yesterday, passed with little if any attention from the typical Internet user. For some in the Internet engineering community, however, the day marked the culmination of two decades' worth of work.

Splashtop releases virtual Windows 8 environment for Android tablets

Want to try out Windows 8's Metro interface, without having to ditch your Android tablet? Now you can. Remote desktop vendor Splashtop announced Wednesday that it would add Android support to its Windows 8 Metro testbed product, which allows users to simulate a Metro tablet environment.

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