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AV Linux can turn a new or old PC, or an Intel-powered Mac box, into a workstation for audio/graphics/video enthusiasts.AV Linux is a specialty distro much in the style of the CAELinux distro for engineers and scientists and the Musix distro for audio and music production that I reviewed in recent weeks. AV Linux is not your typical Linux desktop....

Selling direct is a breeze -- kind of. You control everything -- you choose the salesperson, you provide the training, you establish the payment structure, and you decide on the marketing message used to reach customers, among other things. When you sell through the channel, howevr, things get complicated. You need to depend on your partners to hi...

Scientists have created a computer simulation that not only models the evolution of the universe down to the formation of individual galaxies, but also matches astronomical observations Unlike earlier efforts, the simulation depicts ordinary matter in the form of hydrogen gas from the very beginning....

More than 100 companies in the tech industry have come together to battle a proposal by the Federal Communications Commission that they say could irreparably harm the open Internet Firms including Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Google, Kickstarter, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Netflix, Twitter, and Yahoo signed an open letter to the FCC advocating the benefits of...

A California jury on Tuesday reached a decision in a long-running courtroom dispute between Apple and Samsung over their respective claims of patent infringement. The jury's findings were mixed, with both Apple and Samsung able to claim some sort of victory but neither emerging as the decisive winner. Both companies were found to have infringed th...

Nintendo won't include same-sex romantic activities in English editions of an upcoming life simulator game The company has faced pressure, including a fan-fueled social media campaign, to let users have gay relationships in Tomodachi Life, a game whose characters are modeled after real people....

Despite coming from one of the world's most well-known tech companies,Microsoft, Windows Phone has a freakishly odd smartphone brandingproblem. From what I see out there, most consumers barely know what aWindows Phone is or how it works or why they might want one. Businessusers tend to be more aware of it -- particularly the PC laptop-totingones -...

While the new 2014 Toyota cars have a lot to love with their advanced technology and navigation, there is also, very surprisingly, something to hate. This tech comes at a high price: loss of privacy. Toyota knows exactly where you are at every moment of every day -- period. Is that what we want? Don't get me wrong -- I have been a big fan of Toyot...

Migrating to a different operating system is never easy. Keeping the Windows opened or not chewing on a MacIntosh can be a frustrating and costly experience. Buying new upgraded hardware to keep up with costly new software releases is often an exercise in futility Running a Linux distribution at home or in a small office environment can be a produc...

There is a business problem that comes up in the life of every company, and these days it seems that a lot of companies face it at once. It's the question of how to transition from one business model to another without clobbering your current revenue flow. Even if a company's executives really want to change its model, the reality is that the cu...

Small businesses have been an elusive market for sellers of online advertising. That's because the value proposition of those ads is a tough sell Facebook hopes to reduce some of the resistance in the small business community to advertising online with a series of summer boot camps, dubbed "Facebook Fit," that combine business advice with a soft se...

The market is waiting with bated breath to see the exact size of Alibaba's IPO, but investors in Yahoo, which owns about 23 percent of Alibaba's stock, don't seem impressed. Yahoo's shares closed Wednesday at US$34.07, down 6.6 percent Yahoo's stake is worth about $26 billion based on the fair value of about $109 billion Alibaba assigned to its sha...

Microsoft is expected to debut a smaller version of its Surface line of tablets later this month. The company reportedly will showcase the device for the first time, along with other new Surface models, at a New York City event on May 20. The smaller version of the Surface will run on Qualcomm processors rather than the Nvidia and Intel chips Micr...

Future Tense Central and Etransfr have debuted Chadder, an app that sends private encrypted messages The app is one of a growing number of security products built around encryption technology and touted as secure that hit the market following Edward Snowden's massive data dump revealing the extent of the U.S. government's reach into consumers' digi...

It's natural to reach for a pad and pen when you need to take notes, but the end result can be frustratingly limited. Handwritten notes have to be transcribed or scanned to become part of a permanent digital record On the other hand, clicking away on a keypad doesn't quite cut it for all situations....

Internet companies are showing no signs of slowing down when it comes to innovation, specifically in the area of physical retail. Smartphones and tablets are the new darlings of e-commerce companies, and they now are being used to provide immersive and entertaining shopping experiences. Many of the characteristics of online retail shopping are be...

After launching its Atom text editor into beta back in February, GitHub on Tuesday announced that the software is now fully open source under the MIT License "Much of Atom's functionality is provided by packages, and every Atom package has been open source since the day we launched the beta," explained GitHub developer Nathan Sobo. "Today, we're op...

Six major ISPs providing residential broadband services are refusing to augment their networks unless content providers pay more, according to Level3 Five of them are in the United States and the last in Europe. While Level3 has not named them, it has repeatedly mentioned writing to AT&T about broadband throttling....

The White House has demanded urgent action on climate change amid the release of a report that spells out the looming threats to America and the global population More than 300 experts, led by a 60-member federal advisory committee, worked for several years to create the latest National Climate Assessment. The previous version was published five ye...

Google on Monday announced it is rolling out a new feature for Google Now that aims to blend the brick-and-mortar and online retail worlds Available now for Android phones, the feature notifies users when they're physically near a store that might have a recently searched-for item available. For instance, a person who searched on Google for a speci...