TimeCanada was "kind enough" (someone could say that they have screwed up, and they now link their index page to Time.com - but we know a few tricks of our own to link to the 'right page' which they try to hide) to write a story about Apple's new iMac, that is supposed to be revealed tomorrow during Steve Jobs' keynote speech at MacWorld SF. At this writing, the article is still up but hidden from the front page of TimeCanada, and the date on the article is January 14, 2002. If the article will be taken down, visit Slashdot for details and lots of comments. Our Take: I am personally very dissapointed, if this is indeed the "big secret" that Apple was keeping and was hyping enormously all week. Firstly, I was waiting for something else as the "secret weapon" than an iMac update (no matter if this update may be big), and as I read in the article, while it does not give any hardware specs except the fact that the new iMac will have DVD burning capabilities, the prices start at $1300 up to $1800 USD for the highest model, and that $1300 is $300 more than the previous low-end iMac model. I do not care about DVD burning (I only want playback) and even if the new iMac can do.. coffee, simply put, this is just too expensive for me, as I was expecting to buy a new G4-based iMac for $999 as I wrote recently. Plus, the new iMac looks like an egg (that's not necessarily bad though :). Update: Updated link and many pictures of the new iMac.

"So what is the deal with these Java guys? We get more than our fair share of personally-challenged individuals in this industry and many seem to hoard around some new mega-hype technology. Based on very little, these individuals crusade as to how this new way revolutionizes everything that came before. They ridicule anything that doesn't fit into their new model, mock the intelligence of anyone who disagrees and feel they can occupy the moral high ground. This is not an anti-Java article. Many of us have seen all this before, lived through it and even partaken in many of the crusades as the rally calls are made. Can the same be said of other engineering principles? Do bridge or airplane designers start a new crusade every few years, demanding all old bridges and aeroplanes were rubbish and should be pulled down and replaced with virtual bridges or virtual airplanes?" Read the rest of the editorial at Angrycoder.

Sony, Toshiba and IBM have reached a basic agreement on jointly developing a new operating system to be released in 2005 for computers capable of high-speed Internet connections. The OS will allow personal computers and home appliances to exchange huge volumes of data, including the high-resolution graphics of a television screen, through a broadband connection.

"If KDE and GNOME are the Hatfield and McCoy of Open Source graphical desktop environments, then theKompany.com and Ximian are not exactly kissing cousins. But the philosophical beliefs of the two businesses are converging, and the community is settling down to a broader acceptance of commercial software. Assuming computer users choose their desktops before they choose their desktop applications, ostensibly theKompany's and Ximian's target markets are non-intersecting sets. But their business practices and philosophies on Open Source have been scrutinized, discussed and compared at length in public." Read the editorial at NewsForge.

"Thanks to display technology, the world is going flat. No, it's not deflating, nor was Columbus wrong (or at least not entirely). It's our desktop displays that are getting flat-- buyers have decided that flatter is better, and flat-screen sales have gone through the roof. How did this happen, and what impact might these developments have on your future purchases?" Interesting article at ExtremeTech.

"Intel will debut the Northwood Pentium 4 chip with 2.0GHz and 2.2GHz models next week. With double the cache and DDR memory, PCs equipped with the smaller and faster new chips promise to give AMD a new level to surpass." Read the story at ZDNews.