Sometimes you just need to take a short break, relax and have fun. A great way to do so is to check out some funny web comics, and we here at Pingdom are big fans of comics that dive into the slightly more geeky aspects of life. Once a tech geek, always a tech geek…

So, sit back and relax, take a few moments to yourself and check out some of the best tech comics around.

Enjoy!

The PC Weenies

By Krishna Sadasivam.

The PC Weenies covers tech, engineering, IT and software development (in other words: a wide array of tech geekery) in an original and very funny way. Not to mention that it’s beautifully drawn as well.

Read more of The PC Weenies.

bLaugh

By Brad Fitzpatrick and Chris Pirillo.

bLaugh calls itself “the un-official comic of the blogosphere”, which is a suitable description. There is plenty of satire and comedy to be found here. It’s not being updated anymore but there’s a rich archive of very funny stuff. (The Yoda strip at the upper right corner of this poster is also from bLaugh.)

Read more of bLaugh.

User Friendly

By J.D. “Illiad” Frazer.

User Friendly is pure geek humor guaranteed to make you smile. It’s been featured in many computer magazines and websites around the world.

Read more of User Friendly.

Kopozky

By Heyoka.

Kopozky is a quality comic about the everyday life in a web design agency, featuring the archetypal boss, administrator, copywriter, designer, developer, etc. It hasn’t been updated for a while now, but there’s plenty of fun to be found in the archive.

Read more of Kopozky.

Geek and Poke

By Oliver Widder.

Geek and Poke is full to the brim with satirical observations of the IT industry and general Web trends.

Read more of Geek and Poke.

OK/Cancel

By Kevin Cheng and Tom Chi.

OK/Cancel focuses on issues related to usability and interface design, and makes fun of everything from usability specialists, interaction designers, industrial designers, and more. It hasn’t been updated in a while, but there’s a big archive.

Read more of OK/Cancel.

The Joy of Tech

By Nitrozac and Snaggy.

The Joy of Tech follows the latest tech trends with its own strangely appealing, almost instruction manual-like comic strips. Funny stuff!

Read more of The Joy of Tech.

Wait, here are 7 more funny tech comics!

Here are some other great comics you might also like to check out that definitely fall within the tech geek category.

Each one links to a strip we thought was a little bit extra funny.

• Glitchtown by Rasmus Pettersson. Funny stuff about the good old Internet. (The author is actually Swedish, in other words a fellow countryman to us here at Pingdom!)
• InkTank by Barry T. Smith. Lots of IT-related fun.
• Penny Arcade by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. One of the all-time great web comics. Mostly focused on gaming, but there is plenty of general geekery in there as well.
• Comics by Randy Glasbergen. This is not a regular web comic, but there’s a big archive with IT-related comic strips that are really funny.
• Help Desk by Christopher B. Wright. Fun perspectives on tech and above all, tech support. One of the first web comics (it started in 1996).
• Bug Bash by Hans Bjordahl. Can software development be funny? Yes it can!
• Dilbert by Scott Adams. The granddaddy of all geeky tech comics. You didn’t think we’d forget this one, did you?

We’re sure to have missed some good ones, so if you know of other funny and geeky tech comics, please share!

Have you ever wondered how much money Google, Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Yahoo, Amazon and other tech giants have in the bank? What kind of assets do they have, how much spending money do they have? The vague answer is, “a lot.” But if you want to find out exactly how much, read on.

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Microsoft and open source, those are two things that traditionally don’t mix. Quite the opposite; the more hardcore members of the open source community tend to view Microsoft as just one step below Satan.

But while much of the open source community has little love for Microsoft, Microsoft is actually trying desperately to send some love back. The Redmond giant may have its own business reasons for doing so, of course, but that doesn’t change the fact that Microsoft is contributing to open source in more ways than most people are aware of.

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What do Android, Visio, Flash, Hotmail, Google Analytics and Powerpoint all have in common? Can you guess?

The answer is: None of them were created by the companies who now own them. They were acquisitions.

These products have continued to develop at their new homes, but the seed of innovation that sparked an actual, new product came from the outside. The key word here is innovation.

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We all know Google is huge and their wide range of services are bound to have a fair share of competitors, but you may be surprised just how wide-ranging Google considers its competition to be.

Here below we have included a quote from Google’s latest SEC filing with some very interesting information about what Google has to say about its competition.

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Big sites and services like Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter and many others rely heavily on open source software to run their operations. Happily, this isn’t a one-way street. They are also giving back to the open source community, not just by contributing to existing projects, but sometimes by open sourcing their own internal projects, giving back something completely new.

And what these popular sites can contribute is often quite valuable. Since they tend to be very large, they run big operations and have been forced to create solutions for scalability and performance problems that most other sites simply don’t have to deal with.

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