The C language, which displaced Java as the most popular language in the Tiobe Programming Community monthly assessment in April, has maintained its number 1 spot in the May report released this week. But a high-profile member of the PHP community is questioning the accuracy of the index itself.

The announcement last week that the Wikimedia Foundation will switch from Google Maps to OpenStreetMap for its cartographic needs marks the latest in an increasingly long line of high-profile defections.

After 244 years in print, Encyclopaedia Britannica announced that it will stop printing its iconic gold-lettered reference books, thus becoming the latest victim of the success of the crowd-sourced online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Instead, Britannica will focus on its online and educational products and says, "change is OK, really."

A literal reading of this survey question leads inevitably to a pair of correct answers: absolutely yes and absolutely not.

Mozilla yesterday extolled the impact of its 12-hour participation in Wednesday's anti-SOPA strike, saying Firefox users and fans generated over a third-of-a-million emails to the U.S. Congress.

Given the week that just was there's really only one topic I can write about: The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA).

A day after an estimated 10,000 websites went dark and more than 7 million people signed a Google.com petition opposing two controversial copyright enforcement bills, opponents of the bills said there's more work to do.

Several major Internet companies and thousands of concerned users are successfully lighting up social networks to spread opposition to controversial anti-piracy bills now under debate in the U.S. Congress.

The Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act are getting more negative attention, as major websites such as Wikipedia plan to protest the bills with blackouts on Wednesday. Even Google will join the action, with a link on its homepage explaining why the company opposes the legislation.

Wikipedia and its users are planning more than 300 celebration events across six continents for the 10th anniversary of the free, online encyclopedia that has become an Internet juggernaut by spreading access to information with a model that lets anyone edit its articles.

The most popular Web sites are under increasing pressure to add support for IPv6, a long-anticipated upgrade to IPv4, the Internet's main communications protocol.

Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia built on the backs of a seemingly never-ending supply of free labor, is in a bit of a bind.

Wikipedia's just announced plans to restrict the editing of some of its articles. Under the new system, any changes made to pages of still-living people will have to be approved by an "experienced volunteer" before going online.

As you may have heard, Microsoft plans to pull the plug on the Encarta Web sites and software later this year. Bummer! I can't say I used the service all that much, but I'm saddened to see the demise of such a well-known reference resource.

Coming up with a great technology product or service is only half the battle these days. Creating a name for said product that is at once cool but not too cool or exclusionary, marketable to both early adopters and a broader audience, and, of course, isn't already in use and protected by various trademarks and copyright laws is difficult--to say the least.