Windows Mobile is a relic of the past. Especially compared to Apple's iPhone operating system, it becomes painfully obvious just how outdated, clunky, and unfriendly Windows Mobile has become. Today, Mictosoft has taken its first step in modernising the platform by releasing a sort of alpha release of Windows Mobile 6.5, with a completely revamped interface.

Andrew Doran and Jared D. McNeill have announced in a mailing list post that they are starting a NetBSD Desktop Project with the goal of: "Given a NetBSD CD and a reasonably modern x86 computer, make it possible to install a useful desktop system in under 15 minutes, responding to only a few prompts in the process." Initial plans are being formulated on the project wiki page.

Late last week we ran a story on how the Google Chrome team had decided to use Gtk+ as the graphical toolkit for the Linux version of the Chrome web browser. It was a story that caused some serious debate on a variety of aspects, but in this short editorial, I want to focus on one aspect that came forward: the longing for consistency. Several people in the thread stated they were happy with Google's choice for purely selfish reasons: they use only Gtk+ applications on their GNOME desktops. Several people chimed in to say that Qt integrates nicely in a Gtk+ environment. While that may be true from a graphical point of view, that really isn't my problem with mixing toolkits. The issue goes a lot deeper than that.

In a textbook example of "dweilen met de kraan open", the landmark trial against Torrent website The Pirate Bay will take off today in Sweden. The founders of the torrent website are charged with aiding millions of internet users gain access to illegal content. Basically the entire entertainment industry is amassing against The Pirate Bay, making this one of the biggest trials against internet file sharing in history.

Geeks.com, known for their cheap televisions, sent us in the 22" Vizio VO22LFHDTV model for a review. This full 1080p has the size of a PC monitor, so it was tested as both a TV and a PC monitor, and as a hybrid: external TV monitor for video editing while connected to a PC. Its size makes it ideal for such a scenario, but is it really the ideal product for this kind of usage?

This week at Mobile World Congress Microsoft will release a free technology preview of Microsoft Recite. Microsoft Recite runs on Windows Mobile 6.0 or higher and allows the user to record voice notes and then store, search and retrieve information from them by simply speaking a word that they want to search for.

It was a fun week for OSNews, with many interesting debates on polarising subjects such as the global menubar in GNOME, Chrome using Gtk+ on Linux, and Cuba moving to Linux. We also took a look at Haiku, talked to Nicki Clyne and the CEO of Lunascape, and reported on a few releases of small operating systems. This week's My Take is about the economic crisis.

A new version of the experimental HelenOS operating system has been released. Version 0.4.0 features a simple user command line interface, FAT file system support, application loader and tracer, improved hardware support for ia64, ppc32 and sparc64, and many other improvements over the previous release. Get it from their download page.

Back in 2007, IP Innovation filed a lawsuit against Red Hat and Novell. IP Innovation is a subsidiary of Acacia Technologies. You may have heard of them -- they're reported to be the most litigious patent troll in the USA, meaning they produce nothing of value other than money from those whom they sue (or threaten to sue) over patent issues. They're alleging infringement of patents on a user interface that has multiple workspaces. Hard to say just what they mean (which is often a problem in software patents), but it sounds a lot like functionality that pretty much all programmers and consumers use.

IanOS is an experimental 64-bit operating system written from scratch as a learning experience. The source code is available online and the creator of the OS has made some detailed documentation available to go with the source code. This is an excellent resource for anyone who wants to venture into writing a 64-bit OS. The author makes his intention about this OS clear "I never had any intention of producing a true OS. There are plenty of those about and it would be a very foolish, or vain, person who thought that they could compete with the likes of FreeBSD and Linux. But my interest in computers isn't practical; I just find programming them, particularly at this level, to be a supremely satisfying intellectual pursuit".

Bespin is an experimental in-browser text/source-editor created by Mozilla Labs. Using any modern web browser (that means no IE, obviously), you can edit your projects from any computer, or with the added flexibility of the web - such as online collaboration, decentralisation, and extensibility. Read more for Kroc's review.

The iPhone, Apple's current cash cow and best selling cellular phone in the United States, is a completely closed phone in that only applications from the App Store can be installed on the phone. However, by jailbreaking the iPhone you can install applications from whatever source you want, which might be desirable if an application you want isn't allowed into the App Store by Apple. The Cupertino company has never had an official stance on jailbeaking, but this has now changed: according to them, it's a breach of copyright.

Two interface changes coming to Snow Leopard have been revealed by those who have access to the developer releases of Apple's upcoming operating system. The trash gained a feature to directly move files back to their original locations, and the stacks feature has been improved by making directories browseable within the stacks themselves. They join ZFS, on-demand printer drivers, and location awareness as new features for Snow Leopard.

There's a new essay called "Optimizing Code for Speed" available on Shlomi Fish's site. It covers the motivation, methods and terminology of optimizing code, and provides many links and examples to illustrate this important subject.