The first official alpha version of Google’s OCRopus scanning software for Linux was released yesterday. OCRopus is built on top of HP’s venerable open-source Tesseract optical character recognition (OCR) engine and is distributed under the Apache License 2.0.

OCRopus uses Tesseract for character recognition but has its own layout analysis system that is optimized for accuracy. The OpenFST library is used for language modeling, but it still has some performance issues. OCRopus is designed to be modular, so that other character recognition and language modeling components can be used to eventually add support for non-Latin languages. An embedded Lua interpreter is used for scripting and configuration. The developers chose Lua rather than Python because Lua is slimmer and easier to embed. This release also includes some new image cleanup and de-skewing code.

My SQL has laid out its software road map through 2009, including some code contributed by Google and security improvements that are due in MySQL 7.0.

Earlier this year Google signed a Contributor License Agreement, which provides the legal framework under which MySQL can include code from another company in its database, MySQL co-founder and Vice President David Axmark said on Tuesday.

Google is secretive about the distributed architecture underlying its services, but it’s known to be one of MySQL’s biggest users, running hundreds or even thousands of its databases worldwide.

The search company has done a lot of work customizing MySQL to meet its special needs, which include better database replication, and tools to monitor a high volume of database instances, Axmark said in an interview at MySQL’s user conference in Paris.

MySQL will include some of those capabilities in future versions of its database, probably in point upgrades to MySQL 6.0, which is scheduled for general availability in late 2008, Axmark said.

Audi on Wednesday revealed an iPhone-like mobile phone that also doubles as a portable music player and enables the owner to unlock his or her car with no key, or turn on the sound system or heating from the comfort of home.

The device can also alert car owners in the event of a theft and even transmit a picture of the thief to the phone.

For now the touch-screen phone is only for a new luxury subcompact concept car, the Metro Project, which the German automaker unveiled at the Tokyo Motor Show.

But the gadget suggests that carmakers are increasingly focusing on mobile devices as new smartphones like Apple’s iPhone create a buzz.

The world premiere of Leopard, the biggest upgrade to Mac OS X, is October 26. And on that big day, the Apple Retail Store is the place to be. Join us from 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. and be the first to experience the world’s most advanced operating system. And if you’re one of the first 500 guests, you’ll go home with a special edition Leopard T-shirt

Ubuntu fanboys have been crying into their beers after discovering internet connection problems with Canonical’s latest open source Linux distribution operating system, dubbed the Gutsy Gibbon.

The latest version (7.10) of the increasingly popular free OS, which launched last week, was punted to the masses by Ubuntu as being “delivered on a stable, easy to use and learn platform”.

But one reader contacted El Reg telling us that he had no choice but to revert back to Ubuntu 7.04 to get his computer working online, because of issues with IPv6 implementation and DHCP-handling.

Indeed, a look at Ubuntu’s community forum suggests that both the upgrade and install of Gutsy Gibbon have been causing big headaches among the Linux-loving crowd.

Many HP and Sony users have also experienced hardware support issues with the upgrade complaining that the latest version is less compatible than its predecessor, Feisty Fawn.

Our reader told us that Gutsy Gibbon’s internet access “whether by wireless; ethernet or USB DSL modem is either impossible without some deft work at the CLI [Command Line Interface] or is incredibly slow (mostly from delay in resolving DNS)”.

Hackers with a Vonage Holdings Corp phone subscriber’s name and telephone number could intercept Internet phone calls by exploiting a weakness in the system, a security firm said on Wednesday.

Vonage spokesman Charles Sahner declined comment on the report by Sipera Systems of Richardson, Texas, which said it informed Vonage of the problem more than a month ago. Vonage had not responded, Sipera said.

Vonage, which has almost 2.5 million customers, was a pioneer in the business of selling low-cost phone services that use the Internet to connect calls instead of traditional phone wires.

Vonage has posted huge losses since it went public in 2006 as it has spent heavily on advertising to recruit customers. It is also the target of patent lawsuits from rivals including Verizon Communications Inc and Sprint Nextel.

While crooks have been long been able to hack into traditional phone lines, they’ve had to physically tap into telephone wires to do so.

Without proper security measures, Internet phone providers risk exposing their customers to such attacks from far away as hackers use the Web to access their networks, said Krishna Kurapati, founder and chief technology officer of Sipera.