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Computer engineer Bassel Khartabil has dedicated himself to making software free and open for years, and now his friends are asking for his freedom from the Syrian government's detention.

Khartabil was reportedly taken in an ambush on March 15 -- the first anniversary of the Syrian uprising -- during massive arrests. And while it's unclear why Khartabil was detained, activists say the government is known to take people randomly and without reason. It is a scary time, particularly for those who are willing to gather and share information, according to activists.

The 16-month old Syrian crisis has claimed … Read more

Since installing the beta version of Messages (on day one), I have quite enjoyed its capability to sync with my iOS device messages as well as Google Chat, AIM, and other Jabber accounts. Today though, Messages did not open as expected.

At first I thought it had something to do with the beta version running out. Recently, Apple took down the capability to download Messages, so perhaps disabling the beta version was part of the plan all along. But, that doesn't really make sense without a clear replacement intact.

With Mountain Lion still being tested, I needed to find … Read more

If you crack the front panel on your iPad, you can either live with it, buy a new one, or fix it.

For those with an AppleCare+ or other warranty that covers accidental damage, the choice is obvious. Get the unit fixed or replaced. If your iPad isn't under warranty, you don't want to buy a new one, and you're ready to tackle a challenging, but satisfying do-it-yourself fix, here's a guide for replacing the front panel.

Before you begin Before you tackle this fix, I encourage you to watch my video on what to know before trying to fix a smartphone or tablet. … Read more

NEW YORK--Industry consortia are pervasive. But they often don't amount to much -- a spate of press releases, a series of progressively less energetic meetings making little progress, and the eventual fade to black. And even most successful consortia tend to be about vendors cooperating on specific standards and technologies. Important, but very limited in scope.

The Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA) has been an exception. It announced in October of 2010 with a membership including more than 70 global IT leaders, representing $50 billion dollars in annual IT spend. Intel has been the organizing force and is the … Read more

Intel will not join a chip-related alliance aimed at making it easier for software developers to take advantage of the compute power locked up in graphics silicon.

Advanced Micro Devices, ARM, Imagination Technologies, MediaTek Inc., and Texas Instruments announced the Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) Foundation on Tuesday.

Here's how Lisa Su, an AMD senior vice president, described it in a phone interview with CNET.

"The point is, even if you put a really powerful CPU next to a really powerful GPU, if these [chips] don't interact and the applications don't know when it's better to … Read more

Much ado has been made of Apple's decision to ditch Google's mapping technology in favor of an in-house solution for the Maps app in iOS 6. Yesterday's WWDC keynote failed to shed light on how Apple plans to accomplish that task, but an anonymous tipster leaked iOS 6 beta screenshots showing TomTom attribution information, later confirmed by CNET.

Also included in Apple's mapping initiative is OpenStreetMap and at least 15 other mapping data providers (AND, DigitalGlobe, Intermap, LeadDog, others).

While the attribution lists a number of map data providers, Microsoft is conspicuously missing. So how is … Read more

If you're looking for a way to share Internet connectivity from one of your Android devices to another tablet or laptop, this guide can help you. Open Garden is an app that will broadcast your Internet signal to devices around you via Bluetooth, in hopes of creating a seamless mesh network. The idea behind the app is to make the connection process easier so you can spend more time being productive or surfing the Web. Here's how to get connected:

Install Open Garden on your mobile device that has a connection to the Internet. This would … Read more

The mysterious Flame malware used domain names registered with fake names to communicate with infected computers in the Middle East for at least four years, researchers said today.

Someone began creating the 86 domains and more than 24 IP addresses that host the command-and-control (C&C) servers as early as 2008, using fake identities and addresses in Austria and Germany to register them with GoDaddy and others, Roel Schouwenberg, senior researcher at Kaspersky Lab, said in a Web conference with reporters this morning. He speculated that stolen credit cards were used for the transactions.

The IP addresses point to … Read more

If America's Wi-Fi routers could vote, they'd likely reelect President Obama by about 6 percentage points.

That's just one of the unprovable conclusions I reached after looking at some clever new research by OpenSignalMaps, an Android app that relies on its crowd of users to keep track of all kinds of wireless data signals around the world. The app has gathered a database of almost 75 million geolocated routers worldwide and OpenSignalMaps co-founder James Robinson decided to parse some of that data for sentiments toward the president after noticing how many nearby routers were expressing themselves politically. … Read more