As part of my year-end planning I look at what charities to donate to, since charitable contributions are tax-deductible. Here’s a list of charities with ties to free software, open source, and information technology.

Even people who don’t live and die by their mobile phones sometimes need to send SMS messages. Did you know you can do that from your computer? Likewise, it’s easier to clean your mobile phone of all the numbers you’ve not been dialing in the last few years using a mouse, rather than navigating repeatedly through the phone’s menu system. Here are some Linux tools that can help you manage your cell phone.

If you want to make the most out of your Java-enabled handheld device, you can write Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME) applications (also called midlets) on Linux and run them on your mobile platform. Here’s how easy it is to get started; we’ll write a HelloWorld application you can run on your cell phone.

Thomas Howe is a telecommunications developer and consultant who is passionate about the role of open source software in the telephony industry. He calls open source the "next generation" of telecommunications, and works with large enterprise companies to help them design phone systems that fully integrate with their business flow. "Only open source can do that," Howe says.

High-end project management tools and low-end to-do utilities are a dime a dozen these days. But what if you need something less complicated than a full-blown project management application, but more flexible than a simple to-do list? In that case, give jWorkSheet (JWS) a try. This tiny Java-based tool offers basic project and task management features sprinkled with worksheet-like capabilities. The result is a simple yet functional tool for keeping track of your projects and tasks and the time you spend on them. It’s especially useful if you bill per hour and a need a simple utility to track your time.

Whether you refer to online maps occasionally or on a daily basis, you can add several extensions to your Firefox browser to make Web-based mapping services even more useful.

Lisa Hoover talks about highlights from the past week — and a little about next week’s stories, too, including a "sneak peek" at the Asus EeePC.

Arena Solutions produces and sells a hosted, subscription-based product lifecycle management (PLM) tool for manufacturing companies. Arena founder and CTO Eric Larkin uses open source tools to develop, secure, and maintain the software-as-a-service product. He believes that open source is the path to success for subscription software. "It’s a more cost-effective way to build and scale a SAAS business," he says.