Well, this was pretty inevitable, wasn't it? We had Google employees detailing that their company has pretty much given up on Windows, forcing employees to use either Mac OS X or Linux. In what surely comes as a total surprise, Microsoft has responded to this report. Regarding the security claims, "the facts don't support the assertion", Microsoft states.

Fragmentation. You'll often hear people say this is a major problem with Google's Android platform; there are many devices running multiple different versions of the mobile operating system, leading to fragmentation. Dan Morrill, Android's open source and compatibility program manager, addresses this issue in a blog post, and details what Google is doing to fight it. The gist: it's a non-issue - according to Google, that is.

And the award for Most Boring And Non-descriptive Press Release Title 2010 goes to Microsoft for "Microsoft Outlines Business Opportunities for Hardware Makers Across Windows Platform". The press release itself appears to be about as interesting as watching paint dry, until you reach that small part where it says Microsoft has released the first community technology preview of Windows Embedded Compact 7 (1).

"I am pleased to report that the GCC Steering Committee and the FSF have approved the use of C++ in GCC itself. Of course, there's no reason for us to use C++ features just because we can. The goal is a better compiler for users, not a C++ code base for its own sake. Before we start to actually use C++, we need to determine a set of coding standards that will apply to use of C++ within GCC."

"Microsoft has pumped out voice recognition software for years, but the company has a curious aversion to publicizing the fact. With Windows 7, Microsoft's speech recognition has become a decent productivity tool and one that the company should be proud to proclaim as an OS feature. For the casual speech recognition user, nothing beats free - especially when one considers the $100+ price points for third-party software. But is it powerful enough for serious users?"

Google employees have always had a remarkable amount of freedom when it comes to what operating system they wanted to run on company computers - Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, it was all fine. Since the China attacks, however, this has changed: Windows is no longer welcome on Google computers.

While Microsoft is indeed incredibly profitable, it's not going as well as it seems. The company is still riding high upon its Windows and Office offerings, but when it comes to new markets, Microsoft hasn't been as successful. Jean-Louis Gassee provides some very interesting insights into the company's past ten years.

It's time for Computex! This means loads of gadgets and related stuff to flood the internet, so let's get started by focussing on ASUS. The company showed off two interesting tablets: the Eee Tablet (which is actually a notepad) and the Eee Pad (which is actually a tablet). No, this doesn't make any sense, but product naming hasn't been a strong point at ASUS for a while now. There's also the ExoPC Slate (not from ASUS), which has a pretty interesting user interface.

The journey that started 18 months ago to create a next generation Amiga on commodity hardware has now reached its first major milestone by becoming a completely driver native Aros system powered by the energy efficient Intel Atom processor. This has been achieved with the supply of hardware and in some cases financial rewards to key developers in the Aros world. The plan with the following steps has been to create a base reference platform for Aros and the Amiga community to build on and support.

I've been meaning to write this for some time, and for all the time I delayed the more poignant the point I wanted to make started to become as new news came out further solidifying my angle. When I begun writing this article the iPad had not yet been revealed, iPhone OS 4 was not on the map and Apple had not yet purchased Lala. You've probably just noticed that all of these events in fact point toward Apple embracing the web more and in this article I will point out why this is not the case because I believe Apple's agenda here is similar to something we've already seen in recent history.

"The Free Software Foundation is up in arms over Apple's iTunes Store Terms of Service, suggesting that these terms fundamentally conflict with the terms of the GNU Public License. The foundation has warned Apple that a version of GNU Go distributed by the App Store makes Apple liable to comply with GPL terms that allow free sharing of code, but warned that its 'Usage Rules' violate those terms. The fallout could potentially affect any app that uses GPLed code."

"The developers behind the KDE desktop environment have released the first beta of version 4.5. Although the major focus during this development cycle is stability, the release also brings some nice new features and user interface improvements."

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.

One name was conspicuously absent from the list of companies backing Google's WebM project and the VP8 codec. Despite other chip makers and designers being on the list, like AMD, NVIDIA, ARM, and Qualcomm, Intel didn't make an appearance. Yesterday, the company made its first careful commitment to the WebM project.