Torvalds to speed up Linux adoption
San Francisco: Linus Torvalds, the creator of the free Linux operating system, will join a computer-industry-backed group to work full time at speeding the adoption of Linux at corporations. As a fellow at Open Source Development Lab, or OSDL, Finnish-born Mr Torvalds will lead the development of Linux, which Torvalds created in 1991 as a university student. Linux is gaining acceptance in heavy-duty corporate computing. Torvalds is leaving struggling chip designer Transmeta, where he was an early employee. Transmeta designs low-power chips compatible with those made by Intel, the world’s No. 1 chipmaker.International Business Machines and Hewlett-Packard, the world’s No. 1 and No. 2 computer companies, respectively, have been building their Linux offerings for the last several years. Sun Microsystems has waffled somewhat on its Linux strategy, but it does sell computers running Linux.
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Google expands content-based ad services
Palo Alto: Google, the leading US Web search engine, on Wednesday said it expanded a program that helps operators of small internet sites automatically place targeted advertising on their content pages and get paid each time a site visitor clicks on one of the ads. While best known for its search technology, Palo Alto, California-based Google gets a hefty share of revenues from its paid listing business, which links advertising to key words used in internet searches.With its new contextual advertising services, Google aims to give the company’s network of 100,000 small to large advertisers targeted venues through which to reach potential customers. Google, which in March unveiled contextual advertising services for internet sites with more than 20 million page views per month, rolled out its new self-serve program called AdSense. The program aims to help operators of less-trafficked sites quickly format their Web pages to receive advertisements that match key words in the content of those individual pages.
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Fat men cost US Inc $12b a yr
Chicago: Fortune 500 companies from carmaker Ford Motor Co to cereal producer General Mills Inc said yesterday they will work together to fight an obesity epidemic in America that is hiking their costs.Obesity shaves $12 billion from companies’ budgets each year because of health-care costs, according to one estimate by the Washington Business Group on Health, an employer group that lobbies on health policy. “There are a lot of interventions that work but we haven’t focused on it,” said Helen Darling, president of the lobbying group. “This is like smoking 30 years ago.” In response, Darling’s group is setting up an institute to co-ordinate efforts across companies to identify costs and potential fixes. Health professionals, including officials from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, will also take part. The group aims to co-ordinate companies’ fat-fighting efforts, holding joint weight-management meetings for workers, setting up a Web site to disseminate best practices about what works and what doesn’t and holding a “corporate summit” to address the issue.
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MS goes to court to stem spam, files 15 lawsuits
Redmond: Microsoft Corp has filed lawsuits against those it claimed were responsible for flooding its MSN Internet service with more than 2 billion unsolicited e-mail messages and vowed to step up its campaign against spam in the courts. The world’s largest software company on Tuesday said that it had filed 15 lawsuits in the United States and the United Kingdom against spammers that had sent unsolicited e-mail touting everything from get-rich-quick schemes to pornographic Web sites. The move to open a legal front in the fight against spam follows recent steps by Microsoft and other Internet industry players to work together to beef up their spam-blocking technology. “We recognise that spam is a global problem,” Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith said at a news conference at the company’s Redmond headquarters. “We are ramping up our efforts to combat spam around the world.” Microsoft filed the lawsuits in Washington state, as well as in California and Britain, against companies and individuals involved in the email spam business.
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