Yesterday on the radio I heard a segment about the magazine and newspaper business' excitement about the iPad platform, and what it means for their (ailing) business. Let me just say I'm skeptical. It sounds like the primary innovation they're planning is rich-media, interactive advertisements. Because if there's one thing that's wrong with the publishing industry, it's that their ads aren't intrusive enough. At the end of the radio segment, they announced that virtual "issues" of popular magazines on the iPad will cost $3. Let me predict now that this will end in tears. On the other hand, Apple's decision to pre-populate their bookstore with 30K books from Project Gutenberg is a great idea, and will do more for the iPad platform than $3 magazines and Auto ads disguised as VR racing games.

For the first time security researchers have spotted a type of malicious software that overwrites update functions for other applications, which could pose additional long-term risks for users. The malware, which infects Windows computers, masks itself as an updater for Adobe Systems' products and other software such as Java, wrote Nguyen Cong Cuong, an analyst with Bach Khoa Internetwork Security (BKIS), a Vietnamese security company, on its blog.

"We noticed a minor textual change on the JooJoo order page just a few days back, and apparently it was no mistake - Fusion Garage has announced today that its long-awaited tablet PC has started to ship from the factory. For those who pre-ordered (and stuck with it), they'll get theirs as early as March 29th, while everyone can get in line by plopping down their USD 499 after the fact."

It's that time of the year again; that time of the year where news outlets get to indulge in sensationalist headlines about how Mac OS X got hacked in twenty seconds. Yes, CanSecWest just held its Pwn2Own contest again, and they fell like drunk 16-year-olds this time (don't read too much into that one, please).

"GoDaddy.com Inc., the world's largest domain name registration company, told lawmakers Wednesday that it will cease registering Web sites in China in response to intrusive new government rules that require applicants to provide extensive personal data, including photographs of themselves. The rules, the company believes, are an effort by China to increase monitoring and surveillance of Web site content and could put individuals who register their sites with the firm at risk. The company also believes the rules will have a "chilling effect" on new domain name registrations."

So now that the hype machine has been filled with petrol and all fired up, running on all cylinders, what on earth is going to happen to Windows Mobile 6.5? The Next Best Thing has been announced and demoed extensively, the developer tools and emulator are out there, but devices aren't expected to ship until after the summer, probably around the holiday season. This means that Microsoft must still get phone makers to buy Windows Mobile 6.5.

When you spend a lot of time looking at different Linux distributions you get used to reading the phrase, "... is a general purpose operating system with a focus toward..." Sometimes it's a focus toward ease of use, sometimes it's a focus toward improved package management, other times it's security. There are a lot of general purpose Linux distributions out there, which is good, but one thing I love about Linux is its ability to fill a niche. For instance, it would be difficult for me to get through a work week without having tools such as GParted Live, for partition management; Knoppix, for hardware detection; and Clonezilla, for saving and restoring disk images. This past week I had a chance to talk with Steven Shiau, one of the developers behind Clonezilla.

"At last year's PDC, held in November, Microsoft showed a graph showing scores of a variety of Web browsers in the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark, to show off the progress that the company was making with Internet Explorer 9. Another such graph was shown off at the recent MIX event. What was most interesting about the graph was not IE9's progress, but Opera's."

Microsoft has more or less confirmed the existence of its Courier tablet. In a job posting, it mentioned the device, only to quickly remove the Courier name from the job posting as soon as the news got out. "Do you already know everything about Project Natal and the Cloud? Is Blaise Aguera y Arcas' jaw-dropping TED talk on augmented-reality Bing Maps and Photosynth last month's news? Then check out some of the online chatter surrounding new releases of Window Phone 7 series handsets, Internet Explorer 9 and the upcoming Courier digital journal."

Nearly three years after its introduction, the JavaFX multimedia application development platform that Oracle inherited from Sun remains just another entrant in a crowded field, with questions looming about how much momentum the platform can gather. With a debut that saw JavaFX trailing behind RIA technologies such as Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, and AJAX and the emergence of HTML5, some view JavaFX on the ropes, despite Oracle's claims of commitment to the technology. "It's superior , but maybe that doesn't count anymore," says the chair of one Java Special Interest Group. Red Hat CTO of Middleware Mark Little echoed the skepticism building around JavaFX's future, saying that at this stage, JavaFX will survive only if Oracle can build a business around it. "Otherwise, it will die."

There is an ongoing discussion on a Gnome mailing list which points out that Gnome and KDE might collaborate for a new project: a FLOSS alternative to Dropbox.The Gnome and KDE approach is more towards an collaboration tool, but which is very close to Dropbox. The DE independent FLOSS Dropbox alternative idea came because Google Summer of Code is approaching and both Gnome and KDE have a collaboration tool on their list.

OpenDNS today announced that its users now represent a full one percent of all 1.67 billion global Internet users online today. The total OpenDNS user count has now surpassed 18 million, according to leading analytics firm Quantcast, doubling in just 12 months. "We see this milestone as incredibly significant, and a true testament to both the unmatched quality of the OpenDNS service and the world's demand for a better DNS service," said OpenDNS Founder and CEO David Ulevitch, "One percent of all of the world's Internet users is a momentous achievement and our growth rate indicates that number will climb at an even more rapid pace going forward."

It has long been known that in addition to the N900 port of Firefox (released just 49 days ago) Mozilla have been targeting Windows Mobile, drawing ever nearer to a release. They have now decided to put the port on hold, following the news of Windows Phone 7 Series at MIX (and what that holds for Windows Mobile 6.5). "While we think Windows Phone 7 looks interesting and has the potential to do well in the market, Microsoft has unfortunately decided to close off development to native applications. Because of this, we won't be able to provide Firefox for Windows Phone 7 at this time. Given that Microsoft is staking their future in mobile on Windows Mobile 7 (not 6.5) and because we don't know if or when Microsoft will release a native development kit, we are putting our Windows Mobile development on hold."

Two months ago, Google announced its intention to stop censoring search results in China, while also stating it may even leave the country altogether. The announcement followed the news that Chinese crackers had attempted to crack the accounts of human rights activists. The search giant has stayed true to its word: starting today, search results are no longer censored in China. Google employed a clever trick to get there: they reroute Chinese users to the uncensored Hong Kong version of Google. Instant update: China has already responded: "Google has violated its written promise it made when entering the Chinese market by stopping filtering its searching service and blaming China in insinuation for alleged hacker attacks."