Neil McAllister - Author - PC World Australia

Stories by Neil McAllister

Article | 28/11/2008 This software brought to you by Ovaltine

Are we having a recession yet? Ask and ye shall receive. If the bad news keeps rolling in from Wall Street, coded phrases like "economic downturn" won...

Article | 3/10/2008 Should computer programming be mandatory for students?

If Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the State Board of Education have their way, soon every California student will have to pass an algebra test to ...

Article | 26/09/2008 SDK shoot-out: Android vs. iPhone

InfoWorld has been all over this week's official launch of Android, the new smartphone platform from Google. With its slick interface and open applica...

Article | 12/09/2008 Building Google Chrome: A first look

Last week I said I would look at Google Chrome "from a developer's perspective." I should have specified what kind. I meant I was considering it from ...

Article | 31/07/2008 Exploit reveals the darker side of automatic updates

A recent study of Web browser installations showed that far too few are up to date with the latest security patches. And browsers aren't alone; as my ...

Article | 29/07/2008 SourceForge Award Winners Announced

SourceForge.net's annual Community Choice Awards, designed to honor open source software projects in a variety of categories, have concluded. This yea...

Article | 25/07/2008 Drizzle Project Plans a Stripped-Down MySQL

The open source MySQL database began life as a lightweight alternative to big, resource-hungry database management systems, such as Oracle or Sybase. ...

Article | 14/07/2008 Developers: Firefox 3.1 update should be 'easy'

The release of Firefox 3.0 has been a resounding success, but for some the upgrade path has been less than painless. The latest version of the open so...

Article | 2/07/2008 Making desktop Linux work for business

Today's IT managers face tough choices. PCs that run fine today have an uncertain upgrade path, now that Microsoft has chosen to discontinue Windows X...

Article | 20/06/2008 Nokia: Open source developers should play by our rules

I was a little surprised to hear Nokia vice president of software Ari Jaaski's comments last week. Not long ago, Nokia got off to a great start by emb...

Article | 18/06/2008 Run Windows software on Linux with Wine 1.0

After 15 years of development, Wine breathes a new beginning

Article | 16/06/2008 Google and Yahoo to partner on IM

Most of the attention to the recent Google/Yahoo partnership has focused on the two companies' search advertising plans, but the deal has implications...

Article | 10/06/2008 15 turning points in tech history

Imagine how different the computing world would be if IBM had used proprietary chips in the original PC, rather than off-the-shelf components. The PC ...

Article | 10/06/2008 Open source awards accepting nominations

Is open source software a part of your daily computing life? Now is your chance to sound off about it. Sourceforge.net, an online community that hosts...

Article | 6/06/2008 Is Palm worth developing for?

Palm isn't dead yet! That's the word from Palm CEO Ed Colligan, speaking at the recent media launch of the Palm Centro in Australia. To hear him tell ...