Microsoft has been thinking about Windows 8 for a while now even through the production of Windows 7. Some information has been gathered by our friends over at Ars, and all of this said information points to possible 128-bit versions of Windows 8 and definite 128-bit versions of Windows 9. Update: Other technophiles better-versed than I in this whole 64/128-bit business pointed out that it must be for the filesystem (such as ZFS described in this article) rather than the processor and memory scheme.

After long negotiations and back and forths between the EU, Microsoft, and other browser makers, Microsoft's browser ballot proposal has been amended and offered up for debate yet again by the EU; this time around, it will actually be tested out by consumers. A number of changes have been made since the first proposal, so let's take a look.

"Today's Google-Verizon marriage means feature-rich phones will now be available on the top wireless network - and spells the end, writes Douglas Rushkoff, of Apple's dominance."

The KDE team has released version 4.3.2 of their Free software desktop environment. It's a minor release which comes with a number bugfixes and enhancements, with the focus being KMail and KWin. It'll find its way to your distribution soon enough.

The patent wars rage on. Eolas, a company that before won US$585 million from Microsoft in 2003 in a suit that challenged the use of ActiveX and AJAX, is now after twenty-three separate companies allegedly because their precious patent was spoiled by all of them.

Before the iPhone, we were content with stylus-based interfaces that worked well - mostly - for what you needed to do. Then came the iPhone. From a pure feature perspective, it was (and is) lacking, but it more than makes up for it by being a polished product that's easy to use. The iPhone shook the entire industry up, and while newcomers have done relatively well (webOS, Android) Windows Mobile is now so far left behind you can barely see it any more. Windows Mobile 6.5 is supposed to be the first step towards modernising Windows Mobile - but it fails miserably.

Palm has just announced a number of changes its webOS development platform that should really be welcomed by developers. They are fully blessing application distribution outside of the App Catalog, open source developers will no longer have to pay a dime to have their applications in the App Catalog, and Palm will also open up all their analytical data for developers to use. Instant update: the official press release is out too.

Adobe has come up with a way to let developers write Flash applications for Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch devices, even without the support of Apple. Adobe has been trying to work with Apple for more than a year to get its Flash Player software running on Apple's products, but has said it needs more cooperation from Apple to get the work done. It has now come up with something of a work-around. Flash Professional CS5 will include an option for developers to take the code they wrote for devices that do include Flash Player, compile it to run as a native, stand-alone application on the iPhone, and sell it through Apple's App Store.

Just when you thought you saw it all. So, we all know about Psystar, the two lawsuits between them and Apple, and all the other stuff that's been regurgitated about ten million times on OSNews alone. Well, that little company has taken its business to the next level - by announcing an OEM licensing program.

Ah, the tablet computer. For over two decades now have companies tried to get the public to buy the darn things, and yet, despite all the efforts, promises, analysts, and even personal involvement by Bill Gates, they simply never took off. Recently, the tablet has seen renewed attention - but will they succeed now?

Software licensing. As home users, it's already an incomprehensible mess of legalese that nobody cares one bit about. However - we home users have it easy. The situation for business users and people managing IT departments is even worse (proprietary software, mostly, of course). Microsoft is a major culprit in this regard, and while the company acknowledges that the situation is messy, they claim they can't really do anything about it.

Acer is the latest smartphone handset maker to shift its resources from Windows Mobile to Android. And with competing OSes grabbing marketshare and attention daily, an observer couldn't be faulted for assuming that Microsoft's mobile OS initiative is in terminal decline. But it's quite possible that the mobile computing market is growing so fast that there will be room for all these players, and more.

Adobe and various members of the OpenScreenProject announced today news about the upcoming release of Flash 10.1, the first Flash version to get released as a full browser plugin for various smartphone platforms.

Mozilla Firefox has been outperforming Internet Explorer for a number of years, and its latest version is even faster than ever. However, there is a new, lean, free web browser on the block which runs web pages at lightning speed. It goes by the name of Google Chrome.Tweak the right settings and with some experimentation, Firefox can keep pace with Google Chrome. Unknown to many of its users, Firefox has a raft of options that can unleash the browser's true potential. With just a few minutes of your time, you can make your daily web browsing more enjoyable.Read more