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Google today is "taking a stand on open source and patents," vowing not to sue anyone on specified patents unless first attacked.

The company, which today announced its Open Patent Non-Assertion Pledge, said to start with, it has identified 10 patents related to MapReduce, a model for processing large data sets. It has pledged not to sue any user, distributor, or developer of open-source software based on patents related to MapReduce.

Duane Valz, Google senior patent counsel, said in a blog post that Google wants to ensure open source software remains open:

As long as e-mail remains the premiere business communication, file compression programs will be necessary. NXPowerLite Desktop Edition stands out in a crowded market by offering plenty of file-managing features and an overall great performance.

Instead of the normal interface most compression programs have, this rather large download boasts a very attractive layout. NXPowerLite Desktop Edition doesn't sacrifice features for looks, though. The program gives you just as many options to manage your files; that is, as long as you're within your free trial, which lasts 30 days. The process of compressing files is quite simple and more … Read more

Cloud computing seems to often get used as a catch-all term for the big trends happening in IT.

This has the unfortunate effect of adding additional ambiguities to a topic that's already laden with definitional overload. (For example, on a topic like security or compliance, it makes a lot of difference whether you're talking about public clouds like Amazon's, a private cloud within an enterprise, a social network, or some mashup of two or more of the above.)

However, I'm starting to see a certain consensus emerge about how best to think about the broad sense … Read more

Last week I reconnected with Jeff Jonas, chief scientist of the IBM Entity Analytics group and a recently named IBM Fellow, about what's going on in the realm of big data.

When I first met Jonas, back in June of 2010, he was focused on how companies are dealing with the deluge of information associated with Big Data. His focus hasn't changed, but he told me his perspective on how we make sense of data continues to evolve -- especially as we move in and out of demand for real-time versus batch data processing.

New Big Data tools … Read more

Leanmap's Excel worksheets help busy people apply lean management techniques to nearly any business. Translean is a set of free worksheets for reducing waste and costs in a wide range of business processes, including transportation, labor, inventory, defects, and production. While most of its worksheets are free, it also includes a couple of try-only tools from the Pro version. We tried it in Office 2010.

Clicking any of Translean's worksheets opens Excel directly, but be sure to extract the zipped download to a familiar directory so you'll be able to browse quickly to it from inside Excel. … Read more

Cinemas dim the lights during showings to help eliminate distractions, making it easier for you to focus on what you came to see. With media sites like YouTube, it's easy to become distracted by the other content on the page like the recommended videos or comments sections. And let's face it, not all videos look good in full-screen mode due to low resolutions. Wouldn't it be nice if you could dim the lights on the rest of the page to cut out the distractions? Well, there happens to be an add-on for Firefox and Chrome that does … Read more

There are times when your feature phone is the only camera you have on hand for a picture opportunity. While you might be grateful that you snapped the shot, you probably won't be thrilled with the quality. The same goes for older digital pictures stored on your computer--happy to have them, but not necessarily happy with them. Here's how to clear up a bit of the grainy noise in your photos, old and new:

Step 1: Download Neat Image--you can find the Windows and Mac versions, and plug-in for Adobe Photoshop on CNET, and other versions on NeatImage's Web site. … Read more

Apple has added a lot of new features in iOS 5, one of them being the ability to edit pictures directly in the Photos app. This feature is very easy to use and almost feels like it has been there from day one, even though it has been noticably absent.

Look through the slideshow below for a step-by-step guide on how to edit photos on your Apple device on iOS 5.

Uploading images is to Net newbies what parallel parking is to new drivers: it takes a lot of trial and error to get it right. And Megabyte-size snapshots hog Facebook bandwidth. Fileminimizer Pictures 3 from Balesio is a free tool that promises to help solve both issues. It resizes image files by up to 98 percent without zipping and without sacrificing quality. Its Facebook Uploader Module also makes it easy to post your pictures on Facebook.

Fileminimizer's interface is businesslike but attractive, with subtle but effective use of color and highlighting to differentiate the various icons and controls. Most … Read more