"Popfly, a platform developed by Microsoft to help people create and share games with their friends, was shut down this week, according to a blog post on the project's Web site. It's not a total loss to the gaming community, however, since Microsoft decided to open source the code and host it on CodePlex for anyone who still wants to tinker with the game engine."

"Since the last update from around the time of 1.1alpha2, Thusnelda has moved to the SVN trunk where work has concentrated on final features, cleanup and testing for the Theora 1.1 (Thusnelda) final. We're very close to the complete 1.1 and have already released two 1.1 release candidates. We'd optimistically scheduled final 1.1 release for last week, however we're taken some additional time to do more testing/tuning of the two-pass rate control."

Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister questions whether the ideal of a truly standards-compliant Web will ever be possible given ongoing disagreements over HTML 5, including those most recently set in motion by Microsoft's latest concerns over the spec. "While some items on Microsoft's list seem like quibbles, others are valid issues," McAllister writes. And with others in the working group supporting the proposed additions in question as they stand, an impasse could conceivably be the end result. "Disagreements are an inevitable part of any standardization process. But if disagreements lead to irreconcilable differences, it calls in to question the validity of the final standard." So where does that leave HTML 5?

Genesi just launched the Efika MX 'smarttop' - an ARM-based Linux device with HD video capability. Based on the Freescale i.MX515 processor (800Mhz ARM), it includes WiFi, Bluetooth, HDMI, and only consumes about 7W of power.

Among OSNews readers, Slackware is a surprisingly popular choice when it comes to Linux distributions. A new release came out today, Slackware 13, which comes packed with improvements, and even a whole new port.

The recent release of the PS3 Slim brought about joy for those who were waiting for a less expensive/smaller gaming system and indignation for those who were waiting for a Linux experimental machine of the same type as there was no "OtherOS" or Linux option on this model. Why? we cry sadly. Because, the deep, omniscient voices of two Sony representatives boom back.

A complaint you hear quite often is that the Linux desktop environments, which mostly refers to KDE and GNOME, are trying too hard to be like Windows and Mac OS X. Now, even James Bottomley, Distinguished Engineer at Novell, Director of the Linux Foundation, and Chair of its Technical Advisory Board (put that on your business card) states in an interview that he believes the Linux desktop is too much like Windows and Mac.

"It's turning out to be a busy week for Nokia. Days in advance of NokiaWorld in Stuttgart, and a couple of days after lifting the curtain on its first netbook, Nokia has announced the Nokia N900, the successor to its almost four-year-old lineup of Internet Tablets. The N900 follows in the footsteps of the N810 with its slide out keyboard, but adds for the first time built-in 3G (Nokia calls it 3.5G) functionality, making the N900 the first Nokia tablet with the ability to go online without a WiFi connection or cellphone pairing. It's also the first Nokia device to run Maemo 5, Nokia's homegrown Linux distro."

We're certainly not done yet with Snow Leopard on OSNews! The operating system will be officially released tomorrow, but that hasn't stopped various news outlets from cranking out reviews of Apple's latest big cat. As usual, the reviews are fairly consistent: this latest release is the best yet. In addition, very welcome news for Tiger users: the Snow Leopard "upgrade" disk can upgrade Tiger installations too, and performs no checks to see if Leopard is installed.

Yesterday we reported that Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, due for release coming Friday, contained some form of malware and/or virus protection. Since the scope of this protective measure was not yet known - nor if it even existed at all - I thought it would be best to write another post detailing that yes, it's real, and yes, it's all relatively crude.

When Windows Vista was launched, the Free Software Foundation started its BadVista campaign, which was aimed at informing users about what the FSF considered user-restrictive features in Vista. Luckily for the FSF, Vista didn't really need a bad-mouthing campaign to fail. Now that Windows 7 is receiving a lot of positive press, the FSF dusted off the BadVista drum, and gave it a fresh coat of paint.

It just goes to show you how much people love Apple. Would anyone ever post an article about SanDisk's five worst products, or Toshiba's five worst products? We complain because we love, so stop yer whinin' fanboys. Wired compiled an entertaining list from the Apple rogue's gallery. I spent a few minutes trying to think of my own list of crummy Apple products, and I realized that they were mostly things that I hated not because they weren't good, but because they didn't live up to the hype, or my high expectations, or they were just too ahead of the curve. The QuickTake, mentioned by Wired, is a great example of that. Too early.

The Finnish company behind the open-source file system NTFS-3G, Tuxera, has announced it has signed a confidential intellectual-property agreement with Microsoft about creating a Linux exFAT driver which they will sell to Linux OEMs. They are in talks with Microsoft about an open source exFAT driver.

"No, Billy, USB thumb drives are not made in a magical land with fairy dust and Unicorn tears, and they're not born in the space beneath the Razzleberry waterfall. Yes, we're as shocked as you are. Luckily, the gang at Netbook News are on hand to set us straight with this video of the Kingston Manufacturing Plant, which offers us a rare glimpse into all of the stamping, printing, baking, cutting, and packaging that goes into getting you the portable storage you crave."