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A group of programmers has forked OpenOffice.org, the open-source rival to Microsoft Office that Oracle acquired when it bought Sun Microsystems.

The group, called the Document Foundation, published beta versions of its software, called LibreOffice for download on Tuesday. And although the group invited Oracle to offer its OpenOffice trademark, they made it clear they're willing to proceed without the software and now hardware company.

"Developers are invited to join the project and contribute to the code in the new friendly and open environment, to shape the future of office productivity suites alongside contributors who translate, test, … Read more

Google has finally announced the winners of its Project 10^100 contest, which will award five different projects a total of $10 million.

The contest was first announced back in 2008 but has taken quite a long time to reach its conclusion, after Google changed the project to focus on "themes" rather than specific ideas. Sixteen themes were selected exactly a year ago, and the public was given an opportunity to vote on the themes most worthy of funding.

Organizations then submitted specific proposals for the five most popular ideas, and the list of winners follows below:

• The … Read more

A week after U.S. Vice President Joe Biden warned that the government would start cracking down on illegal file sharing, the feds swooped in and seized assets belonging to operators of accused movie-pirating sites.

The government on Wednesday also took control of at least seven of the sites in question: Movies-Links.tv, Now-Movies.com, TVShack.net, Filespump.com, Planetmoviez.com, ZML.com, ThePirateCity.org, Ninjavideo.net, and NinjaThis.net. More than a dozen bank, investment, and advertising accounts were seized, and authorities served search warrants on residences in several different states.

Authorities are searching for operators of the sites … Read more

WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif.--Joseph Gordon-Levitt has certainly benefited from Hollywood.

As a young actor, he made his debut in the movie "Beethoven" and had roles in "Third Rock From The Sun" and the movie "10 Things I Hate About You." More recently he starred in a leading role in "(500) Days of Summer."

But, despite being a product of Hollywood, Gordon-Levitt also thinks that there are plenty of good ideas from people with no access to traditional filmmaking technology. The good news, he says, is that today anyone with a laptop can … Read more

Two nonprofit groups with a history of criticizing Facebook's privacy policies put out splashy messages on Friday to voice their opposition to the social network's latest changes: The Electronic Frontier Foundation published a timeline of Facebook's privacy policy modifications over the years, and liberal activist group MoveOn.org launched a Facebook group called "Facebook, respect my privacy!" in response to its new "Instant Personalization" option that shares a significant amount of profile data.

The two groups' tactics are somewhat different. But like a cadre of U.S. senators who have recently raised concerns … Read more

eSolar is partnering with a power plant developer to offer utilities a soup-to-nuts approach for designing, building, and installing thermal solar power plants, the solar start-up announced Thursday.

Power plant developer Ferrostaal will act as a general contractor to build the plants, while eSolar will provide the solar thermal field technology design and development. The two plan to initially offer the service in Spain, the United Arab Emirates, and South Africa.

eSolar, which was created by Idealab and funded by Google.org, makes utility-scale thermal solar systems that operate differently than conventional solar plants. Instead, using solar panels to convert … Read more

Google.org, Google's philanthropic arm, has announced a cloud-based method for analyzing deforestation around the world, in a much more up-to-date manner than was previously possible.

Using Google's terabytes of satellite imagery, it allows scientists to look back over time at any location in the world to see how the forest has changed. Going beyond visual comparisons, it uses the power of cloud computing to do actual measurement of deforestation. Much more rapid analysis of the images than is possible on a single desktop computer pinpoints locations of most recent activity. This allows authorities to locate illegal logging … Read more

At the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, Google.org, Google's philanthropic arm, announced a cloud-based method for analyzing deforestation around the world in a much more up-to-date manner than previously possible.

Using Google's terabytes of satellite imagery, it lets scientists look back over time at any location in the world and see how the forest has changed. Going beyond visual comparisons, it uses the power of cloud computing to do actual measurement of deforestation. Much more rapid analysis of the images than is possible on a single desktop computer pinpoints locations of most recent activity. This lets authorities locate … Read more

Google.org demonstrated a new platform on Thursday that, if implemented in conjunction with a proposed United Nations program, could provide a significant tool to combat climate change.

Its new "high-performance satellite imagery-processing engine" can process terabytes of information on thousands of Google servers while giving access to the results online.

The platform, which was demonstrated on Thursday at the International Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, would allow anyone using the tool to monitor whether or not trees were being chopped down in a given forest. It analyzes satellite images to show forest changes over a given time … Read more