Google has just dropped a bomb shell: Chrome will no longer support H.264 HTML5 video playback. The open-sourced WebM (VP8) and Ogg Theora video codecs will be the only options for HTML5 video. H.264 will not be dropped immediately, but probably with the next stable build of Chrome.

Google cites plenty of damning reasons for the exiling of H.264. Open codecs are improving faster, thanks to the contributions of "dozens of developers"; open codecs are more readily adopted by browsers and hardware vendors; and most importantly, codecs like WebM and Theora are free. Free from patents, free from licensing fees; free to use however you like.

Mozilla stated a few months ago that Firefox would never support H.264, which now leaves just Internet Explorer 9 as the sole supporter of H.264 HTML5 video. IE9 also supports WebM, however, which means H.264 will hopefully just fade away into patent-encumbered nothingness -- or perhaps Flash, which will still support H.264 video, has finally found its HTML5-era niche.

In other news, frothy blogger John Gruber mentions that this will force publishers and broadcasters to use Flash, or force them to re-encode their content for WebM delivery. The fact is, these companies don't want to distribute their content via HTML5 video. Flash, with its DRM and P2P, is a far more suitable platform for commercial broadcasting. Flash also has the advantage of being universally installed -- again, let's not forget that Firefox never intended to support H.264, and has a much larger market share than Chrome.

Update: apparently Safari also has native support for H.264 video, via WebKit rendering engine.

BleachBit -- the open source system clean-up utility for Windows and Linux -- has added several new features to its latest version that make it an even better tool for removing unneeded files files from your computer. Support for Google Chrome and Chromium has been greatly improved: BleachBit can now remove everything from DNS prefetch data, to autofill history and DOM storage. Support for HTML5 localStorage cleaning has also been improved and now works with Opera.

On Linux systems, BleachBit can now remove swap files (in addition to swap devices). The Windows version has added the option to remove Windows Update uninstallers -- including hotfixes and Internet Explorer patches. BleachBit's list of supported programs has also grown significantly since we last wrote about the program, and it's well worth checking out the full list of features to see just how much digital crud it can remove from your hard drive.

It looks like Chrome OS, Google's most anticipated software project of the year, is on the verge of finally launching. TechCrunch uncovered the fact that the browser-based OS has already hit Release Candidate stage, which is the step that comes right before a full-blown release. Most likely, Google's engineers are now hard at work squashing bugs and getting ready for Chrome OS 1.0.

Further evidence of this lies in a thread over at Google Code where a Google employee referenced 'November 11' a couple of times in reply to new feature requests. As in, Google would only consider adding new features after November 11. And that certainly makes sense, since usually while you prep a software project for release, you freeze any new feature additions and focus on ironing out the last kinks.

So it seems plausible that Google will release Chrome OS on November 11, or at least code-freeze it then and maybe wait until November 19 to unleash it - that's the one year anniversary of the event where they first showed it. Either way, they will be able to make that initially promised 'in time for the holiday season 2010' target after all. And Chrome OS-powered netbooks (or even tablets) could be on your lap very soon.

We have been talking about Sintel Open Movie for some time now. Sintel is Blender foundation's third open movie project after Elephants Dream and Big Buck Bunny which we featured in our 8 stunning Blender made movies post.

Blender Foundation's Sintel Open Movie Project
Sintel open movie project was started almost an year ago it was premiered at Netherlands Film Festival on 27th of september 2010. And later today, Sintel open movie was released online for everyone to watch and enjoy.

OpenOffice's future was doomed from the day when Oracle acquired SUN Microsystems. The eventuality became even more obvious when they pulled the plug on OpenSolaris. Thankfully, OpenOffice is an open source software and leading contributors of the original project has forked OpenOffice and the new project will be called LibreOffice.

The Document Foundation
OpenOffice development community have today announced the launch of  "The Document Foundation" which will develop the new fork of OpenOffice called LibreOffice. The decision was hailed across the lengths and breadths of open source community.

SETI or Search for Extra Terrestrial Life is a project that started some 50 years ago. SETI is one of those science projects that had caught the public's imagination like no other. But with the escalating costs and dwindling manpower, SETI needs a new vision. And if things happened during SETIcon, a weekend conference organized by the SETI Institute to honor SETI’s 50th anniversary, are any indication, the new vision could just be 'Open Source'.

SETI in its 50th Year - The Background

Songbird Music Player was among the most beloved Open Source project and it still is for many, except for Linux users. Songbird is still open source, but developers behind Songbird have decided to discontinue support for Linux and the concentrate on Mac and Windows versions of Songbird. Nightingale is a Songbird fork which is undergoing rapid development and is pitched to become the Songbird alternative for Linux users.

Open Source Software Never Really Dies
This is something we all learned from the history of Open Source software in the past 15-20 years. An Open Source software never really dies.

Filed under: Security, Utilities, Productivity

I've previously covered Eraser for deleting files securely. Eraser stayed installed on my system for a while, and I must say that, eventually, I found it annoying. It autostarted on boot and despite my attempts to keep it from doing so, it persisted.

Just the other day, I finally uninstalled Eraser -- and today, I found FileKiller. It's a tiny (27KB), open source, portable GUI utility for doing the same thing.

Filed under: Developer, Google

"Your mother was right, it's better to share", that's the tagline of one of those awesome RedHat commercials that we featured some time ago. The idea of sharing is infectious and is fast spreading. Take Apertus for example, a project aimed at building an Cinema Camera based on the idea of sharing and mutual respect(read Open Source).

Project Apertus
The original idea came into existence in the mind of a DVinfo forum member who started a thread called "High Definition with Elphel model 333 camera" way back in 2006. The idea was to create a free (as in freedom) and open cinema camera based on Elphel 333 camera.

According to Fortune, Open Source is slowly gaining acceptance in the corporate world. More and more corporates are beginning to see the merits of Open Source and have started embracing it. But all these changes didn't happened overnight. It was rather a painful journey. 'Sharing' was never a good thing for Corporates until recently. These changes were largely brought about by a string of Open Source success stories that happened over the years.

GNU/Linux