User friendly Linux; how people use communications technologies; free client and server software to build virtual worlds. From the Economist Technology Quarterly.

This week's Technology Quarterly from the 9/6/2007 Economist has several articles of interest, all of which seem to be accessible without a subscription:

1. Bringing free software down to earth, which is about entrepreneur and self-financed astronaut Mark Shuttleworth's successful efforts to fund the development of Ubuntu, a user-friendly version of Linux, which is distributed alongside a suite of Open Source applications for desktop PCs and laptops.

2. Home truths about telecoms, about anthropologists' findings concerning the way people use communication technologies. This is a "must read" article, which challenges assumptions about the convergence of digital technologies, and which offers evidence that:

• users are showing a growing preference for semi-synchronous writing (text, chat, email) over synchronous voice;
• private communications are invading the workplace rather than the other way around;
• migrants are the most advanced users of communications technology.

3. Online gaming's Netscape moment? , about Multiverse Network, set up by some of the original founders of Netscape, which has created client and server software (based on open standards), and free for download by anyone who wants to build and host a virtual world.