Haiku is aiming at a tentative May 10 release for R1 Alpha 2. Ingo Weinhold, one of the recently contracted developers, is the acting release coordinator. Testing of nightly pre-release builds is encouraged.

So, we have Microsoft slowly but surely trying to be a better citizen in the computing world - with the emphasis on trying. After years of dragging their feet, the company is finally implementing web standards in Internet Explorer, there's a boatload of interoperability information now, that sort of stuff. And then, just when you think they're starting to get it - they go behind our backs to do something incredibly insipid. It's small, you'll barely notice it, but dear lord, it's really, really annoying.

A lot is happening around Palm the past few weeks. The company put itself up for sale, with HTC and Lenovo being the most important candidates. HTC has now backed down, leaving only Lenovo as the major contender. In the meantime, Palm's CEO Jon Rubinstein continues to believe the company can go at it alone, but is nonetheless open to the idea of being bought - while also opening the door to licensing the webOS.

"After a long delay, eComStation 2.0 GA will finally become reality. It will be released in time to be presented at the Warpstock Europe 2010 event which is held in Trier, Germany, from May 14 to 16. We consider eComStation 2.0 to be the biggest overhaul of OS/2 so far. Together with a team of both hired and volunteer developers, we have extended the functionality, removed limitations, updated hardware support as far as possible, and resolved close to 1000 issues that had been reported since the release of eComStation 1.2R. The new eComStation 2.0 GA is the result of several years of combined efforts and investments."

A version of the McAfee antivirus software used in the corporate and public sectors misidentified the svchost.exe file in Windows XP systems as malware, sending the affected machines into a loop of restarts. Only users of McAfee VirusScan Enterprise on Windows XP service pack 3 were affected, but the fallout was pretty severe, with hospital and police systems among those taken down.

Yesterday Phoronix showed proof of Steam's Linux client existence via its Mac OS X launcher that is currently in closed beta, then this morning they showed further signs of Linux support. Since 2008 it was known that Steam and the Source Engine would come to Linux. As an update, they even pointed out the download link for the Steam Linux binary from their store.

Well, this was about as inevitable as Apple not losing a super-secret iPhone prototype: Google and Adobe have pretty much formed an alliance against the iPhone, in true the-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend style. The agreement between the two companies is clearly a big middle finger towards Apple and the iPhone. Update: Apple has finally added a framework to Mac OS X that will enable accelerated Flash video content - something Adobe has been asking for. This should enable Adobe to greatly improve Flash video performance on Mac OS X. Anyone know about Linux?

Let me take you by the hand and lead you into cell phone land. Dell - of all companies - has "leaked" its line-up of upcoming Android and Windows Phone 7 phones, and contrary to any common sense, they're stunning. On top of that, Android has been ported to the iPhone (dual-boot capable, baby), and a clever tool has been released that completely automates overclocking your Palm Pre (Plus).

"Microsoft will formally launch Windows Embedded Standard 7 at this month's ESC (Embedded Systems Conference) in Silicon Valley. A keynote by Kevin Dallas, the company's general manager for Windows Embedded, will introduce the new OS and "outline a refreshed product roadmap for the embedded market", according to an email sent to beta testers this week."

The tools used to boot Linux are changing. Specifically, the Grand Unified Bootloader is now officially in maintenance mode only, and GRUB's developers have abandoned the original GRUB in favor of an entirely rewritten package, known as GRUB 2. Discover GRUB 2's new capabilities and how to use it.

"If you're a BlackBerry fan, there is probably not a single thing you have been looking forward to more than what we have right here - screenshots and full details of RIM's upcoming operating system, OS 6.0. One of our AT&T sources has not only showed us the brand new OS, but has also given us some screenshots that we could share. Since we have seen OS 6.0 in action first hand, we will break it down for you guys, along with all the other screenshots."

Recently, Apple changed its iPhone OS developer agreement to prohibit the use of programming language other than Objective-C, C, C++, and JavaScript running in WebKit. This has the effect of pretty much pre-emptively killing Adobe's CS5 iPhone developer tools, as well as several other, similar tools. Adobe has now said it will cease development of the iPhone development tools. To make matters really interesting, Apple has actually replied directly to this news.

And thus, the fun continues. A few years ago, Apple bought PowerPC processor company PA Semi, whose technology, some claim, ended up in Apple's A4 processor. Some PA Semi people, however, left Apple shortly after the acquisition, opting to found a new start-up company instead. This company, Agnilux, has now been bought by Google.

"The Internet is one of the world's most important means of free expression. Yet censorship of the Web is growing; more than 40 governments censor information today, up from about four in 2002. And some governments are blocking - or proposing to block - content even before it reaches their citizens. Authoritarian countries are building firewalls and cracking down on dissent, dealing harshly with anyone who breaks the rules. We at Google believe that greater transparency will lead to less censorship online. That's why we are launching a tool that will give people information about the government requests for content removal and user data that Google receives from around the world." Biggest problem I've seen: figures are absolute, not relative (i.e., they are not comparable per country).