A new version of ScorchOS has been released. ScorchOS (formerly known as ApolloOS) is still in the pre-alpha stage but aims soon to provide a minimal GUI-based operating environment which others can improve, extend and learn from. Don't expect to be using your latest productivity tools on it however for a good long while! This is a hobbyist operating kernel based on bkerndev and inspired by the MikeOS project. At the moment it shows the next step you can take with the kind of tutorials you may find on osdev.org.

Geeks.com, known for their cheap digital cameras, sent us in the Kodak EasyShare Z1485 IS, a 14 megapixel digital camera with a 720p HD video recording capability. Geeks also threw in a Peak 8 GB Class 6 SDHC card to properly test the camera's HD capability. We are taking the camera for a spin, and we have a small HD video shot for your own evaluation.

Following in the footsteps of Apple and Google, Research in Motion is planning to open an online store for its popular Blackberry smartphone. The store, dubbed Blackberry App World, aims to be a "convenient location for BlackBerry owners to download 'games, social networks, personal productivity applications and so much more.'" App World will feature freeware apps along with for-pay apps. The pricing for applications will start at free then jump to $2.99 at the low end and $999.99 on the high end. At the moment Blackberry App World is only open to developers, but there is a sign up page for users who want to be notified of when App World goes live for the public.

Following in the footsteps of distributions like Ubuntu and Fedora, the openSUSE project has announced it will move to a fixed release schedule. However, contrary to the two aforementioned distributions, openSUSE will have an eight month release schedule. The new schedule was announced in an email by release manager Stephan Kulow.

The Palm Pre made some serious splashes earlier this year when it was announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It was promised the device would ship in the first half of 2009, and despite rumours the Pre was going to be delayed, Palm has now officially stated (the page break hides the fact that those are two separate links) that the Pre is still on track for H1 of 2009. The marketing machine is also ramping up.

Plymouth is a freedesktop.org project to create a flicker free graphical bootup system designed and developed by Red Hat and included in Fedora 10. Red Hat has been working on Xorg drivers and within the Linux kernel to improve and enhance the kernel mode support needed for Plymouth. Fedora 10 included support for many ATI cards and this is being developed further in Fedora 11 to cover Intel and Nvidia cards as well. Plymouth supports a flexible and powerful plug-in system which can be used to create Plymouth themes. Fedora includes several of them including a simple progress bar and the solar plugin. Now additional work is being done to improve many things and this will land up in Fedora 11 as well.

Ertan D. has managed to install and run Android on the Dell Axim X51v, and there's a video demonstrating the working system, complete with a lovely sound track to keep one company. Android currently isn't completely friendly with the handheld computer as it still lacks WiFi support and has some power management issues (to name a few), but it's still a good beginning. Though the Axim was discontinued several years ago and is aging and getting more and more out of date when compared to today's mobile devices, the X51v still packs a punch with its 624 MHz processor, 3.7-inch VGA screen, and 2700G graphics processor. Ertan hopes to develop the project further to a point when Android can be a viable replacement OS to Windows Mobile 5 on the X51v.

The ReactOS team has just put out its latest newsletter, and it contains some interesting information on the progress being made. However, it also provides some definitive insight into what, exactly, the project is trying to recreate - a topic of some confusion.

For Windows 7, Microsoft has made some changes to User Account Control to counter the criticism that UAC was too intrusive. It didn't take long before several holes were poked in Windows 7's default UAC settings, and now one is left to wonder: is it wise to sacrifice security for (perceived?) usability? Ars has an editorial that deals with this question.

Under pressure from popular phones from Apple and Research In Motion, Microsoft hopes it has put in place changes that will help it meet that mobile competition faster, said CEO Steve Ballmer on Wednesday. "There are opportunities for us to accelerate our execution in this area," he said. "We've done a lot of work to make sure we have a team that will be able to accelerate it." Microsoft, which recently said that a Windows Mobile software update will come later this year, has been criticized for failing to improve its platform to better compete with the iPhone and other new touch screen phones.

To add to the amounting anecdotes of late, another Acer Aspire One review appears. Not to be confused with Thom's or Eugenia's, which were different models, this review concentrates on the ZG5 version of the Acer Aspire One and how well Windows XP, Windows 7, Ubuntu 8.10, and Moblin 2 run on it, particularly in the everyday-netbooker's sense of functionality with word processing and Internet applications. Read on to get the full scoop on the One and these selected systems.

"We speak to Steve Bourne, creator of the Bourne shell, or sh. In the early 1970s Bourne was at the Computer Laboratory in Cambridge, England working on a compiler for ALGOL68 as part of his PhD work in dynamical astronomy. This work paved the way for him to travel to IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center in New York in 1973, in part to undertake research into compilers. Through this work, and a series of connections and circumstance, Bourne got to know people at Bell Labs who then offered him a job in the Unix group in 1975. It was during this time Bourne developed sh."

Microsoft has released the release candidate for Vista's second service pack to the public. "Microsoft has released the Release Candidate build of Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 to the public. The build number is 6002.16670.090130 and it contains 691 hotfixes."

Details are scarce at the moment, but testers familiar with the recently leaked Windows 7 build 7048 confirm that Internet Explorer 8 is now an optional component in Windows 7. This is most likely a direct consequence of the EU investigation into the bundling of IE. Still, a few questions remain.