TECHNOLOGY TOOLS of theTRADE taxi receipt to double-sided pre-order, and the P Tablet, a from the Android Market. The legal documents, all in a single folding device that features two unique form factor of the P pass. Data can be sent to Excel, 5.5-inch touch screens is listed Tablet allows two different Word, Outlook, Quicken, Turbo- as available soon. Sony is a little screens to be used. You can Tax, and other formats. The late with a tablet offering, but read e-mail on the top screen database can scale to approxi- they have arrived ahead of the and manage and write with a mately 1.5 million receipts. The last big shoe to drop, the Ama- keyboard displayed on the NeatDesk software can import PDFs and zon tablet due late this year or bottom. For video, the bottom Scanner statements, and it can create early next. Both the P and the S screen can be for the controller, The NeatDesk Scanner creates searchable PDFs from scanned tablets offer access to Sony and, for websites, both screens and saves images, text, and documents. The built-in search World of Entertainment and can combine to provide a large data files converted with its capacity uses keyword and content services. They feature single page. www.sony.com “Intelligent Text-Recognition” advanced search techniques. The “Video Unlimited,” which will software. The NeatWorks soft- scanner is a compact 8.5" be released at the device Logitech iPad ware identifies and extracts key 7.5" 7.3", and it weighs launch, along with a service Speaker information from the files and 4.4 pounds. The PC version runs called “Music Unlimited,” a The sound from the three small then organizes the information on Windows XP,Vista, or Win- cloud-based digital music ser- speaker vents on the bottom of into an easily managed data- dows 7 (32-bit and 64-bit), and vice. Both tablets are PlaySta- an iPad is acceptable but not base. Individual slots in the there’s a Mac version that tion Certified and will provide great. But if you’re taking a scanner let you stack and requires Mac OS X v10.5.8 or access to the Sony Reader Store presentation on the road, you process up to 10 receipts,10 later. View a demo at cloud-based Personal Space ser- might want to amplify the business cards,10 docs, or as www.neat.com vice. With these tablets, you’ll sound for the others in the many as 50 pages at a time in be able to control your home room. Logitech offers an auxil- the automatic document feeder. Sony P and S entertainment devices and share iary speaker for the iPad that You can scan up to 24 pages Tablets content wirelessly with Wi-Fi clips onto the edge of the per minute in color, grayscale, or The Sony S Tablet, a wedge- streamed to other devices. The screen and plugs into the black and white, and the size shaped, 9.4-inch touch-screen apps that run on the Sony speaker jack at the top. The rub- range goes from the smallest computer is now available for tablets include those available berized clip holds the iPad or other tablet and raises the screen at one end. The batteries that drive the speaker can be charged over a USB connection and will last up to eight hours. The speaker comes with a soft traveling bag and a USB-to-mini USB charging cable. Logitech 58 STRATEGIC FINANCE I October 2011 TECH FORUM Tux Turns 20 By Michael Castelluccio, Editor There was a birthday celebration the last week of August that escaped most people’s notice. A software program that began as one Finnish student’s hobby turned 20 on August 25, and geeks around the world observed the day. The pro- also has a larger set of stereo of memory, it’s an interesting gram is Linux, and it’s a computer operating system (OS) speakers that feature a wireless exercise that might open up like Windows or OSX. For the average person, that’s about Bluetooth connection that can new possibilities for your com- as exciting as sand, but, then again, the average person is be placed as far as 50 feet away puter. This isn’t an experimental likely to be more knowledgeable and care more about from the tablet source. The wire- version of Linux. The Ubuntu chips that come from Lay’s than the ones from AMD. less speakers have built-in kernel is in its 11th iteration, But take away the silicon chips that help move, orga- rechargeable batteries that run and it’s a powerful, secure, nize, light, and heat our world, and the impact would be up to 10 hours on a charge. The uncluttered operating system. devastating. In a similar way, OSs toil away in the back- wireless version also comes with A lot of free software runs on ground reading millions of lines of code deep within our a soft case. www.logitech.com the system, including the full- computing devices, allowing them to correctly follow the featured OpenOffice from instruction sets of the apps and programs we see doing The Ubuntu Oracle. The OpenOffice software things on the surface (monitors and cell phone screens). Operating System suite has word processing, The Linux OS is remarkable for several reasons. First, One of the best ways to try out spreadsheets, presentations, it isn’t the product of a corporation like IBM (developer the Linux operating system for graphics, databases, and a of the AIX system) or think tank like Bell Labs (creator of desktop or laptop computers is number of utility applications. the UNIX OS). Nor is it strictly the product of one devel- with the Ubuntu system. You OpenOffice is available in a oper. It has been created by hundreds of programmers can download it for free and number of languages, stores all worldwide, and it has stubbornly remained free, as in easily set up your laptop or oth- your data in an international “available at no cost,” to whoever wants to load any of its er computer to dual boot two open standard format, and can variants, called flavors, on any kind of computer or systems. If you have a computer also read and write files from device from their TiVo to supercomputers. Today, Linux that runs on an older Windows other common office software is one of the most widely distributed OSs, and its most system that you’re no longer packages. Like Ubuntu, it’s rapid growth is in the fastest-growing market segment— happy with, or if you have a free. www.ubuntu.com and mobile computing. netbook with a decent amount www.openoffice.org HISTORY Before we look at the origins, just a word about the folk- lore. Linux doesn’t have a logo. Instead, it has a penguin. Like Disney’s mouse, Tux (that’s the penguin’s name) is the program’s identifier even though he’s likely to assume different shapes and costumes depending on the Linux variant. As the story goes, Linus Torvalds, the Finnish stu- dent who created the open source system, was visiting the National Zoo and Aquarium with the Canberra Linux continued on next page October 2011 I STRATEGIC FINANCE 59 TECHNOLOGY TECH FORUM Users Group in Australia, and he was bitten by a Operating Systems Used by the Fairy Penguin. His fondness for the little crea- 500 Top Supercomputers (in percent) tures inspired him to suggest the penguin as a fitting mascot for the software. One version of the story claims the penguin’s name means (T)orvald’s (U)NI(X). Others think the name is just a reference to the feathered formal attire of the penguin, its (TUX)edo. On August 25, 1991, Torvalds, a student at the University of Helsinki, posted the following notice on a computer bulletin board online: “I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu) for 386 (486) AT clones. This has been brewing since April, and is starting to get ready. I’d like any feedback on things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat…I’d like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions are welcome, but I won’t Chart created by Benedikt Seidl promise I’ll implement them:-).” Since then, the group Linus reached out to that summer and has recently overtaken Apple’s iOS as the biggest selling 20 years ago have formed into the coding consortium that smartphone system. Android is built on the Linux system. together writes, edits, and tests the developments to the Lin- But it isn’t only the Android devices and the Googles, ux kernel. Writing in his book, Open Life: The Philosophy of Facebooks, and Amazons of the world running on Linux. Open Source, Henrik Ingo estimated that “As of 2006, More than 90% of the world’s supercomputers are now run- approximately 2% of the Linux kernel was written by ning Torvalds’s “hobby system.” See the chart above from the Torvalds himself. As thousands have contributed code to Top 500 Supercomputer sites that shows the OSs used by the Linux kernel, such a percentage represents one of the supercomputers. largest personal contributions to the overall amount of This group includes Watson, the IBM artificial intelli- code. Torvalds remains the ultimate authority on what new gence computer that this year defeated the two human code is incorporated into the standard Linux kernel.” Jeopardy television show champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter.