If there's one thing several people are really, really good at, it's ruining the web. The latest attempt is something quite insipid, something that had me scratching my head a few times before I realised what was going on. When copying and pasting text from certain websites, content would be added to your clipboard without you knowing about it - something like "Read more at". John Gruber finds this just as insipid as I do, and investigated a little further - while also coming up with a way to block this nonsense. Seriously - this is right up there with those in-text underline ad things.

Like Research in Motion, Nokia is playing catch-up, software-wise, to the iPhone OS and Android, which is funny in a cruel way because both Nokia and RIM have a far larger market share than both of them. Nokia has put out a preview video of their upcoming N8 smartphone, which runs the latest Symbian version, Symbian^3. Nokia, like RIM, has got work to do.

Now this is an interesting article, written by Lukas Mathis. He makes the interesting case that the gesture-based interface, as seen on the iPad and many modern smartphones, is actually more akin to the command line interface than the graphical one. He also offers a number of solutions for that pesky problem of gestures being anything but discoverable.

As most of you probably know, Apple does not allow competing browsers into the App Store. As such, browser makers are forced to come up with inventive solutions to still get their name out there among iPhone users, and after Opera's successful attempt, Mozilla is going to take a stab at it too. Their solution is different, but no less interesting - especially if you're already a Firefox user.

"Facebook has introduced its newly overhauled privacy controls, and most critics should be pleased this time around. The company noted during a press conference Thursday that the site today is very different from how it was when it first started in 2004, admitting that the privacy controls had grown into something of a Frankenstein monster as the company kept adding on features. Thanks to feedback from users, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, Facebook has completely revamped its offerings and has begun slowly rolling out the change to users."

Yesterday, the technology world was full of this whole "market capitalisation" thing where Apple overtook Microsoft and became the biggest technology company in the world. Illustrating the futility of this stuff, the situation has already been reversed today, but before the end of the day, Apple may overtake Microsoft again. Or not. Or it may start raining unicorns. No, we're not going to keep track of this stuff. I'm just mentioning it here so nobody can accuse us of being anti-Apple. So, here it goes: for one night, Apple was the biggest technology company in the world by market capitalisation. I hugged my Macs and iPhone.

With the just released version 10.05, the Genode OS Framework reaches out to new application areas by providing a solution for subjecting all processes to mandatory access control, and adding the infrastructure needed for high-quality audio processing. On the way towards running general-purpose OS workloads, the port of the Webkit-based Arora web browser running as a native Genode process marks a pivotal point for the project.

Hewlett-Packard knocked IBM from the top spot in worldwide server revenue during the first quarter, as the market for x86 systems picked up but sales of Unix and mainframe systems continued to decline, Gartner said on Tuesday.

"Today we are announcing the project release of MeeGo v1.0. This release provides developers with a stable core foundation for application development and a rich user experience for Netbooks. The MeeGo Netbook user experience is the first to appear, with the development of the MeeGo Handset user experience moving to the open in June."

Well, this was as inevitable as the tides rolling in. The New York Times is reporting that the US Department of Justice is investigating Apple's tactics in the digital music market. The antitrust probe is still in an early phase, and is said to focus on "the dynamics of selling music online".

Looking at the past few week of Google news, you'll be forgiven for thinking Google doesn't do anything else beyond making Android. While there's sexier stuff going on within Google, the company is also still trying to improve its core user service: search. They've launched encrypted search today, and it will be rolled out across the world in the coming days.

EyeOS has released version 2.0 Beta. "After several months of hard work we're happy to announce the immediate availability of the official release of eyeOS 2.0 Beta. And even more: the new release doesn't come alone but with the brand new eyeOS.org website, which has not ben redesigned for the last 2 years now. eyeOS 2.0 Beta can be downloaded from the new downloads page and tested from a Beta test server in eyeOS.info."

"It's game time for Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive. Microsoft disclosed a series of management changes on Tuesday that will alter the shape of its business unit responsible for products like the Zune music player, Xbox gaming console and phones. Most notably, Robbie Bach, the current head of the entertainment and devices group, will retire from Microsoft after 22 years at the company. As a result, Mr. Ballmer will take a more hands-on role in Microsoft's gadgets and games by having various division heads report directly to him." Maybe we'll finally see an Xbox that doesn't sound like a tornado. I recently finally got the opportunity to fiddle around with a PlayStation 3 (the big one), and by god, the Xbox is a joke, construction-wise, compared to Sony's beast.

Pat Volkerding has released Slackware 13.1. "We have chosen to use the 2.6.33.4 kernel after testing the 2.6.33.x kernel branch extensively. Slackware 13.1 contains version 4.4.3 of the KDE Software Compilation. Several Xfce components have been updated as well. Xfce continues to be a great lightweight desktop that doesn't get in your way. If you haven't looked at this great desktop environment lately, you might want to give it another try. If you prefer GNOME, there are teams online producing GNOME for Slackware."