Microsoft won’t release study that challenged success of Munich’s Linux migration

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By switching from Windows to its own Linux distribution, LiMux, Munich has saved over ¬11 million (US$14.3 million) so far, the city announced in November. But a Microsoft-commissioned Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) study conducted by HP suggests that the city’s numbers are wrong, and claims that Munich would have saved ¬43.7 million if it had stuck with Microsoft, German weekly Focus reported earlier this week.

via Microsoft won’t release study that challenged success of Munich’s Linux migration | ITworld.

I find it funny watching numbers being fudged.

As Obama heads back to office, a battle rages over the tech that got him reelected

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Ryan and others argue, because the Obama tech team built on top of open source code — code that has been shared publicly and can be “forked,” essentially edited, by anyone. “The things we built off of open source should go back to the public,” says Manik Rathee, who worked as a user experience engineer with OFA. The team relied on open source frameworks like Rails, Flask, Jekyll and Django. “We wouldn’t have been able to accomplish what we did in one year if we hadn’t been working off open source projects,” says Rathee.

via As Obama heads back to office, a battle rages over the tech that got him reelected | The Verge.

I think this is all kind of silly.  The code is probably not that novel.  I’d be more interested in simply learning more how they did it and I might be interested in their development process more than the actual code itself.  Although this team seemed to have done a good job, it was Obama who won the election — not the programmers or the program.  I find it funny that the non techie politicians want to keep all of this proprietary like the code itself has some sort of value.  I’m sure in 4 years this program will be so obsolete no one would think of using it.

Line, The Messaging App That Took Japan By Storm, Crosses 100M Users And Enters The U.S.

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Line gives you free voice calls (like Skype or Facebook’s new overhauled app). Then there’s basic messaging, but Line is a bit goofier with sillier emojis and stickers. There are teddy bears juggling eggplants, bunnies with flames of anger in their eyes, and a shy balding man surrounded by little sparkles and flowers. (Yes.)

via Line, The Messaging App That Took Japan By Storm, Crosses 100M Users And Enters The U.S. | TechCrunch.

Japanese trends do sometime take off here in the US.  100M is quite a large set of users.  Facebook has about 1000M users.

Internet TV Startup Aereo Could Help Cord-Cutting Catch On

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Aereo began a year ago in New York City and is now expanding into 22 markets. It is going after the growing contingent of TV “cord-cutters” who would rather watch on-demand content online than pay for cable or satellite packages. Aereo charges a minimum of $8 a month for a subscription.

via Internet TV Startup Aereo Could Help Cord-Cutting Catch On | MIT Technology Review.

The interesting thing about this idea is that they somehow figured out how to associate a single antenna to each subscriber.   Content delivery networks, which this seems to be, are difficult to implement on a large scale.

Yammer Competitor Jostle.me Raises $3.1M For Enterprise Sharing Platform Anchored By Pictures, Not Text

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Visualization is what binds Jostle.me. You can view activities that are popular across the organization and how people relate to each other.

via Yammer Competitor Jostle.me Raises $3.1M For Enterprise Sharing Platform Anchored By Pictures, Not Text | TechCrunch.

I find it interesting the different ideas people come up with.  This might be useful in certain situations.

Hands On With Kim Dotcom’s New Mega

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So what’s to stop Mega from going down just the way Megaupload did? Mega’s privacy, which is a no-foolin’ stroke of genius. See, all of your files are encrypted locally before they’re uploaded, so Mega has no idea what anything is. It could be family photos or work documents, or an entire discography of your favorite band. Poof: online and easy to share. And importantly, Mega doesn’t have the decryption key necessary to get in. See? It’s a masterstroke of copyright subversion.

via Hands On With Kim Dotcom’s New Mega: This Service Could Dismantle Copyright Forever.

Technically you should be able to do this with any cloud storage service.  The key here is that the encryption is done locally.  There are many ways to encrypt your stuff locally so why would it matter which cloud storage provider you use?  Maybe I’m missing something but this doesn’t seem all that novel of an idea other than perhaps the new Mega provides the software and user interface to make the entire process easier.  Mega is supposed to launch tomorrow so more information will surface.

Pirate Party Battles LEGO Over Copyright and Trademark Injunction

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The timeless plastic bricks of LEGO can be built into predetermined items such as a car or house but can also be formed into any shape, the options limited only by the creativeness of its builder. However, turn LEGO bricks into a controversial item and the company’s lawyers could soon be breathing down your neck.

via Pirate Party Battles LEGO Over Copyright and Trademark Injunction | TorrentFreak.

This is happening in Czechoslovakia.  It amazes me at how creative companies get  over claims of ownership.

Facebook Messenger app change allows free calls via WiFi

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Using software, rather than hardware, the latest update of Facebook’s Messenger app now lets U.S. users place voice calls over WiFi. The rollout follows reports of Facebook testing voice call features in Canada earlier this month.

via Facebook Messenger app change allows free calls via WiFi – The Washington Post.

You might want to be careful about this after reading this article on slashdot:

Facebook Lets You Harvest Account Phone Numbers

KeePass Password Safe

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KeePass is a free open source password manager, which helps you to manage your passwords in a secure way. You can put all your passwords in one database, which is locked with one master key or a key file. So you only have to remember one single master password or select the key file to unlock the whole database. The databases are encrypted using the best and most secure encryption algorithms currently known (AES and Twofish). For more information, see the features page.

via KeePass Password Safe.

I haven’t tried this yet.  Using something like this requires a complete paradigm shift as to how one uses the web.  I currently have a password system in my head that has worked for quite some time.  It will be interesting how useful this is in real life use cases.  Having the ability to have some other entity remember usernames and passwords can lead to very secure authentication.  There will be no way to  authenticate however if one does not have contact to this password database which could be a problem.