"Intel is pleased to announce the BIOS Implementation Test Suite, a bootable pre-OS environment for testing BIOSes and in particular their initialization of Intel processors, hardware, and technologies. BITS can verify your BIOS against many Intel recommendations. In addition, BITS includes Intel's official reference code as provided to BIOS, which you can use to override your BIOS's hardware initialization with a known-good configuration, and then boot an OS."

Google has released a new set of tools for the WebP Image format. The release includes a completely rewritten encoder with improved image quality. Also available is a Windows Imaging Component providing WebP import to any application that supports WIC such as Microsoft Office 2010. There is a side-by-side comparison between the new encoder, the old encoder and JPEG here.

Oh. My. God. When I read this, and browsed the website, my face went like this. Do you remember the Amiga? That fun little computer that was miles ahead of its competition, but in recent years has been dragged through the mud by one shady figure after the next? Here's a new one: Amiga, Inc., the one 'run' by Bill McEwen, has partnered with a company called IContain to slap the Amiga logo on a bunch of low-end, incredibly sad products. Whether this is another shady deal I don't know, but worthy of the Amiga? I don't think so. I'm not putting this in the Amiga category, by the way. I refuse to. Forget it. It's going into our generic category. Fitting. Update: As was pointed out over at AmigaWorld.net, not only are these nothing more than brandless OEM products with Photoshopped logos, the website itself is just a standard, unmodified WordPress theme. Oi. Doesn't instil a lot of confidence, now, does it?

Apple today released a developer preview of Mac OS X Lion, available to Mac Developer Program members through the Mac App Store today, and the final version of Lion will ship to customers this summer. Mac OS X Lion which features Mission Control, an new view of everything running on your Mac; Launchpad, a new home for all your Mac apps; full screen apps that use the entire Mac display; and new Multi-Touch gestures. Lion also includes the Mac App Store, a place to discover, install and automatically update Mac apps.

"Gnome Shell 2.91.90 was released yesterday getting some fine adjustments according to the release announcement: 'This release just about concludes user interface changes anticipated before GNOME 3.0. The only significant change we expect after this release is to add a native network indicator based on NetworkManager 0.9.' Gnome Shell 2.91.90 brings new automatic workspaces, removed minimize and maximize buttons from window titlebars, a PolicyKit authentication agent and more."

The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE. This is the third release from the 8-STABLE branch which improves on the functionality of FreeBSD 8.1 and introduces some new features. For more information, see the 8.2-RELEASE announcement, and the 7.4-RELEASE announcement, ehch has also been released.

Apple has just updated its line of MacBook Pros. Usually, this isn't anything to get particularly excited about, but this time around, they've got a genuine treat: Thunderbolt. Apple is the first to use this new connection technology, developed at Intel and believed to be the copper version of Lightpeak. It's pretty impressive.

"Oracle has claimed that Google derived its Android code from the specifications for 'hundreds' of Oracle's copyrighted Java files, and that at least eight Android files are actually decompiled Oracle object code. Last week, Google asked a federal court to consider dismissing the copyright portion of the patent and copyright infringement suit that Oracle brought against Google and Android last August. But Judge William Alsup rejected Google's request, following a letter from Oracle strongly defending the copyright claims." Also - wait, are we already back to A? Didn't Alsup do the Apple vs. Psystar case?

Ah, something Microsoft really couldn't use right now: problems with the very first update to its Windows Phone 7 operating system. In this very competitive marketplace, in which WP7 is a late newcomer, it can't use major problems like this. The thing is though - how big of a problem is this, really? And, is it even Microsoft's fault at all?

Ever since the successful development and launch of Windows 7, Microsoft has become ever tighter-lipped about Windows development. Sure, it dropped the bomb about releasing Windows 8 for ARM, but that's it. Nothing on features or timetables (other than 'three years after Windows 7'). Well, the usually well-connected (inside Microsoft, that is) Mary-Jo Foley now claims to have a legit development roadmap - and it seems everything is on track for a Windows 8 beta in September 2011.

A first alpha version of a Qt implementation for the Android mobile operating system has been announced by Romanian software developer Bogdan Vatra. Since Nokia in co-operation with Microsoft have announced that it does not intend to develop a Windows Phone variant of the GUI framework, Qt for Android represents the only remaining route/platfrom to providing mobile phone apps developed using Qt.

A list of intriguing rumours from the week that was... Firstly: Dell looking to buy AMD. Having one of its best financial years with revenue of $6.49 billion and net profit $471 million, the 'AMD in crisis' reports just won't go away. While news of execs leaving the company, and the almost total rebranding of its processor line-up won't help to quell this, the company sure looks healthy, at least in the short term. Although demand for its products is rising with demand exceeding supply in some cases. I can't help but think this has all to do with the Windows/ARM announcement.

Your company is ready to upgrade its custom applications from 32-bit to 64-bit. (Finally.) Here's 10 tips to help you make the transition as painless as possible.

Microsoft's Kinect is awesome. Not because of the stupid minigames you can play with it on your Xbox360, but because of all the cool stuff hackers have been able to do with it. As entirely predicted, Microsoft has announced today that it will launch an official Kinect SDK for Windows. The device was already purposefully easy to hack, but official support is always a boon.