Vincent Maher

In a nutshell, <i>Turok</i> is a first-person shooter in which you have to shoot and slice your way across a planet teeming with dinosaurs and hostile humans. If this doesn’t excite you, then let me explain further: the dinosaurs don’t like you or your human enemies.

The announcement of a $3,5-billion takeover of Macromedia by Adobe Systems has sent a shockwave across the web development community. It would seem, on the surface, that this is a match made in heaven — two of the most powerful companies in the industry finally pooling resources, skills and strategies. But as one scratches the surface, it becomes clear that Macromedia product users should be concerned.

Last week users of the Wikipedia.org published its one-millionth article, making it the world’s largest and fastest growing encyclopedia according to the Wikimedia Foundation. A "wiki" is a website that allows users to edit and contribute to its contents with no limitations. This means, practically speaking, that any person can go onto a wiki and change the pages and save them with little or no technical knowledge at all.

"Last week, close to 500 African journalists and information and communication technology (ICT) policy-makers gathered in Grahamstown at the annual Highway Africa conference. In the run-up to the conference, I had the opportunity to teach two groups of mid-career journalists about the broader issues around reporting on Open Source Software. I must admit, it was an eye-opener," writes Vincent Maher.

The new breed of citizen journalist, the person who blogs, takes photos on their mobile phone and uploads them to a mobLog (mobile weblog), records video, sends it to a video blog and participates in what is commonly becoming known as the "We Media", relies heavily on Open Source Software, often running on Linux servers.