Microsoft has announced the release date of the beta of Internet Explorer 9 - September 15. "Starting today, a select group of VIP web developers, designers, bloggers and press begin receiving their invitations to an event we're holding in San Francisco on September 15th to celebrate the Beauty of the Web and to mark the launch of the IE9 Beta."

"Windows Phone 7 is entering a tough market. Apple's iOS and Google's Android have become well-entrenched, widely used platforms, and both have application stores boasting tens or hundreds of thousands of applications. At launch, Windows Phone 7 will certainly have its virtues - a slick user interface, a first-rate e-mail client, and extensive integration with online services -- but it will also lack a great many features that its competitors include. But the modern, consumer-friendly, touch-friendly smartphone market is still a new one, expected to undergo substantial growth over the next few years. Microsoft may be late to the game, but probably isn't too late - there's certainly no winner yet. And the company has one major strength its competitors lack."

Kaspersky has announced in this article the first trojan specific for Android. "The new malicious program penetrates smartphones running Android in the guise of a harmless media player application. Users are prompted to install a file of just over 13 KB with the standard Android extension .APK. Once installed on the phone, the Trojan uses the system to begin sending SMSs to premium rate numbers without the owner’s knowledge or consent, resulting in money passing from a user’s account to that of the cybercriminals."

"Apple has released security updates for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad to address flaws in both PDF handling and I/O - these flaws had been exploited recently to create a Web-based jailbreak for the company's portable devices. iOS 4.0.2 is available via iTunes for the iPhone and iPod touch, and iOS 3.2.2 patches the flaw for iPad owners."

Not too long ago, Apple added the Video Decode Acceleration framework to Mac OS X, allowing developers to get low-level access to hardware H264 acceleration. Adobe was quite thrilled about this, because they claimed this was needed for Flash video to become hardware accelerated on the Mac. This feature's been in beta for a while now, but yesterday they finally released it as part of a regular Flash Player update. Caveat: Apple's support for this framework can be a bit sketchy.

Today, the Genode OS Framework has seen another feature-rich release, introducing support for hardware-accelerated graphics by the means of Gallium3D, wireless networking via the MadWifi communication stack, a new block-device infrastructure, and Qt4 version 4.6.3. Genode is a modular framework for building special-purpose operating systems, currently supporting 6 different kernels. With the new release, its device-driver coverage reaches a new level and brings the project one step closer towards the goal of shaping Genode to a general-purpose OS.

"We've been trying to find out when HP would launch a webOS tablet since the company first bought Palm, and we're now hearing from several trusted sources that it'll be calendar Q1 2011. We're told Personal Systems Group VP Todd Bradley mentioned the date during an all-hands employee meeting yesterday, and that the project is indeed known internally as 'Hurricane'."

KDE today celebrates its semi-annual release event, releasing new versions of the Plasma Desktop and Netbook workspaces, the KDE Development Platform and a large number of applications available in their 4.5.0 versions. In this release, the KDE team focused on stability and completeness of the desktop experience.

Well, this is interesting. As some rumours already suggested, Google and Verizon have released a joint proposal for a legislative framework regarding net neutrality. This being Google and all, some of you may expect this to be all flower-farting unicorns darting across rainbows, but sadly, that's not the case. This proposal? Well, it's not good.

Ubuntu's community manager Jono Bacon talks in an interview with derStandard.at about the relationship between Ubuntu and GNOME, GNOME Shell, Unity and why the netbook market is that important to Canonical.

Displays built out of plastic instead of glass would be a gadget lover's dream: they'd be rugged and lightweight, and they should be inexpensive to make on "roll-to-roll" systems similar to those used for newsprint. But to develop prototypes for flexible tablet computers and other gadgets with plastic displays, the device makers have had to develop custom equipment.

For the first time since Sun was eaten by Oracle there was an email in my inbox today promising news and updates from the transition. As a valued member of the Sun community, we'd like to make sure you keep abreast of all the latest as we transition to Oracle. A lot of great things will be coming from the combination of Oracle and Sun and you'll want to stay informed! Here's your chance to keep up to date. Simply follow the link below and tell us a little more about yourself to receive news and information about products and events from Oracle. Maybe they are finally realising that we won't wait around forever. Time will tell if this will be substantial. The phrase 'a little slow on the uptake' leaps to mind.

So, now that jailbreaking is easier than ever, right now is probably the best time to dive into the vast array of possibilities that lay ahead in shackle-free land. I've already tricked my iPhone out pretty substantially, but there's always somewhere further you can go. Yes, Flash had already been ported to the iPad, and now the iPhone has received the Flash treatment as well. Jailbreaking required, naturally.

Right before the weekend, we have some interesting news from Hewlett Packard, hardware and software maker, but most of all (at least to me) owner of Palm and its assets. CEO of HP, Mark Hurd, has resigned, effective immediately, after the board found out he had behaved "inappropriately" towards a former HP marketing contractor which "violated HP's Standards of Business Conduct". Cathie Lesjak has been appointed interim CEO while the company seeks a new one.