Brian Proffitt

Mobile users are more connected to the Internet than ever. As of December 2011, ComScore estimated that there are 97.9 million smartphone users in the U.S.--nearly a third of the total population.

Almost every one of those devices can provide its location to services in which users choose to participate, allowing them to tell their friends where they are, what businesses they frequent and how those businesses perform. For example, a retail store might offer discounts to entice customers to let their friends know where they're shopping and how good the store is.

Virtual machines are the best way to accommodate different application needs in a datacenter environment. Whether you need to run your apps on a specific platform, or just need to meet scaling requirements, virtualization is the solution to a lot of IT manager's problems, thanks to fast and cheap memory.

But what about the desktop? As a technology writer, I use virtualization all the time, primarily to review new Linux distributions without taking up an entire machine's worth of data and resources. For everyday users, virtualization seems to be an unneeded luxury than anything else. Why would you need to run two operating systems at the same time?

We all know the big 500 pound gorilla of the software-as-a -service world: Gmail. Google's cloud-based application has been capturing the attention (and the messages) of hundreds of millions of users since its 2004 beta launch. With 7 GB of storage space available for every user and the capability to be viewed from any browser on the planet, Gmail has defined what it means to be a successful cloud application.

We all have regrets, of course. There's the time I opened my big mouth and embarrassed my tenth-grade English teacher in front of the entire class. Then there's the time I flubbed a cross-wind landing and drove my Cessna into the grass in front of my entire flight school. And then there was the time with the duck and--well, you get the idea.

Regrets are part of life and we deal with them as we can. Sure we learn from them, if we're smart, but there's no denying that sick little flip in your gut when you recall the stupid incidents in your life.

Fans of Google who were rooting for the company in the Oracle v. Google copyright infringement case over Java may be a bit dismayed after reading the claims from Florian Mueller this week. According to Mueller, there is mounting evidence in the original source files from Oracle's Java and Google's Android that code was indeed infringed.

In fact, Mueller claims that there is even more evidence of infringement than that highlighted in Oracle's recent amendment to the lawsuit, which contains Exhibit J. This exhibit displays evidence that Oracle claims is clearly infringement on the part of Google's Android developers.

I'll say this for Oracle, at least it's consistently contradictory. The executives will extol the virtues of their partners, then turn right around and kick them in the--well, you know--and deploy an "innovative" copy of their partner's free software.

Or they'll claim to love open source, then let a prominent open source project suffer death by ignoring.

Waiting until the last day of the 2009-2010 term, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) handed down its ruling on Bilski v. Kappos today, a case that narrowly focuses on the patentability of a method to hedge weather risks for consumer energy prices, but more broadly represents the patentability of software.

Unfortunately, while the SCOTUS opinion upheld the lower courts' decision to not allow the specific patent in this case, it did not agree with the reasoning the lower courts came to their decision, and has left open the door for continued software patents for the time being.

The new version of Google Docs came out this week, which my colleague Ron Miller has briefly reviewed. One thing Miller pointed out that was of interest to me: the Google Docs interface now provides a ruler.

Rulers, in case you were wondering, are there to provide document creators some reasonable idea of where the text lies in relation to the margins of fibrous/pulp plant material known as paper.

Lately, it seems, there's been a small movement amongst key projects in the open source community to move away from stalwart open source browser Firefox to up-and-coming newbie browser Chromium.

Earlier this month, news came out that in Ubuntu Netbook Edition 10.10 Chromium would be the default browser (though Firefox will still be the default for the other *buntu 10.10 flavors). No official reason was given since several people found this news in some of the 10.10 blueprints.

This morning Matt Asay found a thought-provoking new blog from someone with the alias Newclosed, who's inaugural post raises interesting questions about the role of Google in the IT community.

Things get going right away in the posting, which states in the lede: "I say Google is the new Microsoft and in many cases they are even worse."

I have been increasingly concerned about the moving target that Facebook's privacy policy has become. To the point that lately I have been considering just dumping my account altogether.

It's been no secret that Canonical has designs on getting a solid hold on the netbook market. Today Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth announced a big step towards that ultimate goal: a step that will use a very Light tread.

What Shuttleworth is excited about is Unity: an interface specifically enhanced for wider and shorter screens found on netbook devices and quite a few laptops. Anyone who has been following Shuttleworth's blog has been privy to his public musings about the design challenges of this kind of screen real estate.