Stories by: Liz Tay

International open source group, LinuxChix, has this week announced the election of a new international coordinator to head the women-oriented community.

A research team of electrical and computer engineers in the U.S. is taking a new approach to electronics that harnesses the spin of an electron to store and process information. Dubbed 'spintronics', the new technology is expected to one day form a basis for the development of smaller, smarter, faster devices.

Worldwide FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) community LinuxChix, last week announced its latest Australian chapter aimed to encourage women in computing, AussieChix.

Australian new media giant Fairfax Digital has come under fire for its connections with a fraudulent search marketing campaign. The campaign, which drew traffic to Fairfax-owned RSVP.com.au by manipulating search engine results, has sparked debate on issues in the $1b affiliate marketing industry.

Games may not be the end-all method of teaching and learning, but they do trump traditional textbooks in some respects, claims communications scholar Douglas Thomas.

Cool. Sassy. Hip. When New Zealand consultancy Catalyst IT started up in 1997, it had none of those attributes. What it did have, however, was a vision to make open source software the preferred option for local businesses, and it was that vision that eventually led to the company's current financial success.

An international scientific collaboration has managed to whittle down the equivalent of 420 years of work on a single PC to no more than four months, with the use of Grid computing.

The Dunc-Tank project has been the topic of much debate in the Debian community since it was launched in September last year. Aimed at overcoming Debian's notorious delays in meeting its scheduled releases, Dunc-Tank collected donations to test the effect of funding on open-source software development.

A stranger walks into a bar. All of a sudden, everything stops; conversations are put on hold as patrons turn to appraise the newcomer, and the sound of glasses being set down on their coasters seem almost deafening in the silence.

Last year was certainly a good year for Australian IT job hunters, with reports of 'skills shortages' peppering headlines across the country. Sadly for recruiters, the situation will not change much in 2007, according to this month's Biannual Labour Market Update from APESMA (Association of Professional Engineers, Scientists and Managers, Australia).

When existing computing facilities were not meeting the growing need of students and teachers at the Lorien Novalis school in Dural, NSW, students suggested that the school investigate open source software as a cost effective way of improving its computing power.