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The organizers behind the O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) announced a call for papers, ahead of the event scheduled for July 19-23, 2010.The convention once again returns to Portland, Oregon after a brief jaunt to San Jose, California. Just about everything related to open source is fair game when it comes to submitting a proposal to the selection committee. "If you have winning techniques, favorite lifesavers, war stories, productivity tips, or other ideas to share, we want to hear from you. We're especially on the look-out for ways to do more with less, design and usability best practices, mobile device innovations, cloud computing, parallelization, open standards and data, open source in government, business models, and beyond," say organizers. Potential presenters can choose to run a 3-hour tutorial, a 40-minute panel, 40-minute group discussion, or a 40-minute presentation. Planners say the proposals should focus on providing actionable information on tools people...

When politicians lace their campaign speeches with “green jobs” jargon, many point to the potential of the solar industry to offer manufacturing and installation jobs. But to be the leader of a cutting edge solar company, there’s one major qualification that keeps popping up: a history in the semiconductor industry. Several events in the solar industry [...]

In what’s sure to be a parade of new netbooks for 2010, MSI is leading the march with news of the Wind U135. Like just about every other new netbook coming soon, the U135 is built around the Intel Atom N450 at 1.66 GHz with integrated GMA 3150 graphics. Sadly, that’s about all that’s new [...]

We've covered mind mapping projects before and now there's a new one to add to the list. Collaborative, Web-based mind mapping tool WiseMapping has recently been released under an open source license and is definitely worth looking at for your team. If you're not familiar with mind mapping software, you really ought to check it out. It's a great way to keep track of research, projects, and brainstorming sessions, and helps keeps on track toward common goals. WiseMapping was designed specifically for use in enterprise and academic settings. Because it's Web-based, the tool can be accessed from any standard browser, no download or plugin required. Creating a map is a dead-simple process. Simply drop your central idea in the middle of a fresh workspace and use the on-screen editing tools to break down its development process and figure out all its important elements. With you're done, you'll have something that resembles a bicycle wheel with all the important data in one place to help...

Christopher "moot" Poole, the young founder of the irascible online forum 4chan, will speak in February at the TED Conference, the elite gathering of thought leaders whose video-taped talks have become immensely popular online.

The football season is upon us, which means that in between shopping, traveling, cooking, hanging out with family, and other holiday-related activity, sports fans are trying to cram in multiple college football games over the next few weeks. The post-season series of bowl games is a daunting one, but it’s fun to imagine what it [...]

Is nothing sacred anymore? Is privacy just an outdated construct in light of new ways to harness personal information? We interview Blippy co-founder Philip Kaplan about his new site for sharing and socializing around personal transaction information.

When General Motors set out to find a new chief financial officer, it looked far beyond the ranks of company insiders that the car company has historically tapped for leaders. But while the man hired for the job — former Microsoft CFO Chris Liddell – hails from a vastly different industry and company, he could bring [...]

The football season is upon us, which means that in between shopping, traveling, cooking, hanging out with family, and other holiday-related activity, sports fans are trying to cram in multiple college football games over the next few weeks. The post-season series of bowl games is a daunting one, but it’s fun to imagine what it [...]

Writing for WebWorkerDaily means I get to see a lot of web conferencing and collaborative tools. This experience can be useful as a lot more of my clients are looking to take advantage of these tools, which, in turn, means that I also have the opportunity to see them used in the wild. Sococo Team Space [...]

Product placement has been key to the production of many web series recently, but it’s about to hit a new level. Brand In Entertainment, a Los Angeles firm specializing in partnering brands with content, will be holding its first-ever auction Jan. 20 at Christie’s in New York for companies interested in inserting their brands [...]

Muse on Hulu Not too long ago, Hulu dipped its toes into the music video biz with a limited deal to bring EMI’s Norah Jones on board to promote her new album. Well, now it seems the company will be pushing further into those murky waters by striking a new relationship with Warner Music Group to [...]

I’m not unfamiliar with video game emulators. I’m not endorsing them, mind you, but I’m not unfamiliar. So my curiosity was piqued when I heard tell of a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) emulator for the iPhone, one that had managed to gain official sanction and was being sold in the App Store. I didn’t get to [...]

A Year Later, Coal-Ash Spill Still on EPA’s Long To-Do List: One year after the failure of an earth-and-ash dam holding back 1 billion gallons of waterlogged ash from a Tennessee power plant, most of the ash that flooded out and covered 85 acres of land, “is still there. And the problem of similar coal-ash [...]

The BBC Trust today gave the provisional go-ahead for the BBC’s Project Canvas, opening the way for more Internet video being delivered directly to UK TVs. The project, which seeks to create a standard that would allow broadband users to connect their set-top boxes and other connected devices to the Internet, could also lead to [...]

Big change in TV distribution is in the wind, if the Wall Street Journal’s reporting on Apple’s “all you can eat” iTunes television plan is true. According to the WSJ, CBS and Disney are considering allowing their entire television lineup to be sold on a single-fee, all-access subscription basis. Consumers will love this, [...]

As reported by others, link-shortening site Bitly has last week launched bitly.tv, which lays out the most-linked (by Bitly) videos in a grid formation, allowing visitors to see “What the world is watching now.” The advantage of bitly.tv is that it offers a real-time look at content that might be trending soon, as opposed to sites [...]

Working as a technical writer and writing for WebWorkerDaily mean I shoot a lot of screen captures to illustrate my documents and posts. I like my screenshot apps to offer flexible capture options and have a light footprint, but I hadn’t found a good one for my Macs yet. Techsmith, the makers of applications including Jing [...]

FreeAllMusic, an Atlanta-based startup, thinks it can buck the trend of flameouts in the free ad-supported music space with a refined model -- and it's already convinced two major labels to come on board.

It’s Tuesday and that can only mean it’s time for our weekly feature, the BlackBerry Buzz. Numbers are out on the top handsets in use for the U.S. market and Research In Motion (RIM) ought to be pleased. Out of the 10 handsets most used in 2009 through October, BlackBerry devices grabbed three spots, including [...]

The third annual Crunchies awards ceremony, scheduled to be held on Jan. 8, 2010, at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco, is approaching. As of now, you can vote for the finalists. Here’s how.

Amonix, a developer of 20-ton concetrating photovoltaic solar systems for utility-scale projects, has bought San Francisco startup Sunworks Solar, a developer of thin-film solar panel factories. Founded in August 2008 (just ahead of the fourth-quarter downturn), Sunworks sought to create a “platform” for utility-scale solar developments, bringing together project finance, manufacturing services, equipment, work with [...]

Business Intelligence (BI) applications have been growing in sophistication for years, and while historically many of the best ones were expensive, tough-to-use tools, there are now numerous easy, free, open-source alternatives. Here are five that can help you better understand your business.

Graphic courtesy of Column Five Media

I’ll say this for being a Time Warner Cable subscriber — for the second year in a row, it’s brought a little extra drama to the holiday season. Last New Year’s Eve, I was prepared to cut the cord on my cable because Time Warner nearly couldn’t work out a deal with Viacom. And now [...]

Perhaps you’ve grown tired of Tweetie, Twitterific or Socialite. Before you resort to Adobe AIR apps like Seesmic and TweetDeck, give Kiwi, the new kid on the block, a try. Fans of customizable third-party clients for other social services like Adium will probably find something to love in this fresh-faced addition to the Mac’s Twitter [...]

When I hear about the processes companies are using to engage in social media-based conversations and communities, I’m a bit surprised that many lack any kind of strategy or written plan. While I’m a firm believer in the need for both spontaneity and frequency in social media-enabled communications, I also believe that whenever a company [...]

Kevin sifts through the thousands of gadgets he tried this year, and serves up the cream of the crop, including some suprises.

Ex-HBO Head Albrecht Joins Starz As CEO; Albrecht spent more than 20 years at HBO and was credited with a string of successes during his stint as president of HBO Original Programming. (paidContent) ESPN360 Scores Bangladesh Cricket Rights Deal; ESPN and Nimbus Sport International have reached a three-year deal for exclusive live coverage of all Bangladesh [...]

By our nature, web workers are dependent on online tools to do our work. Sometimes those tools become inaccessible, though. For example, recently a hosting outage took down 37signals’ Basecamp, an app that many web-based workers depend on heavily. These outages can quickly become crises. How do you know what step to take next on a [...]