At the 2008 Professional Developer Conference, Microsoft unveiled its cloud operating system, Windows Azure. Azure is the operating system that acts as the development, service hosting, and service management environment for the Azure Services Platform. This platform aids developers in publishing services and applications on the internet. Microsoft has released the latest CTP for Azure.

The first screenshots of Office 14, the sucessor to Office 2007, have been leaked onto the internet. The screenshots include "Access 14, Excel 14, Groove 14, InfoPath Designer 14, InfoPath Filler 14, InterConnect 14, OneNote 14, Outlook 14, PowerPoint 14, Project 14, Publisher 14, SharePoint Designer 14, Visio 14, and Word 14." Office 14 has no official release date yet.

Netbooks using the forthcoming Intel Atom N280 are expected to tip up between the second and third quarters of 2009. The N280 is the follow-up to the Netbook class leading N270 Atom CPU that finds its home in practically every netbook on the market today.

Breaking news out of Cupertino: Apple's CEO Steve Jobs has announced he is taking a medical leave of absence, stepping down as CEO of Apple from now until June 2009. Steve Jobs announced this new turn of events in an email to all Apple employees today. Tim Cook will assume the CEO position for the time being.

Microsoft Research has been working on a new gimmick for XBox Live subscribers, something called "Kodu" that allows kids (and parents, perhaps?) to design their own games without prior knowledge of programming, and all done on the XBox console.

This article describes an implementation of high availability for a composite application using Linux-HA. Delivering high availability to composite applications can be challenging. Because composite applications consist of several distinct applications, each with different availability requirements, configuration is complex.

And so the court case between Apple and clone-maker Psystar continues. Claims are being thrown back and forth between the two companies, ranging from Apple invoking the DMCA, to Psystar claiming Apple's Mac OS X copyright is invalid. We can add a new one to the list. Court documents reveal that Psystar claims it has bought its copies of Mac OS X fair and square - including some directly from Apple.

After Nokia purchsed Trolltech last year, doubts arose about how Nokia would handle the dual licensing model of Qt, the advanced cross-platform toolkit which lies at the base of the KDE Free software desktop. As it turns out, these doubts were unfounded, as Nokia today announced it's going to add the LGPL to Qt's licensing model, starting with Qt 4.5.

In the future people may interact with computers via a touchscreen or voice commands, but presently, keyboards are still one of the major ways to interact with a computer. The Tech Report has acquired a modern buckling spring keyboard, the Das Keyboard Professional, for review. Being a hardware review site, they have to compare the Das Keyboard Professional against something, so Cyril pits it against his personal Model M.

"I discovered recently the truth of the old saying that necessity is the mother of invention. Yes, I finally did it. I bricked my beloved EeePc. I had just installed the Smart package manager and a subsequent reboot saw me stuck in, well, an eternal boot loop. Impulsive mixing of repositories always ends in tears - but not being able to boot? Argh! To rub salt into the wound I had mislaid the Xandros DVD to do a reinstall and I didn't even have an external CD/DVD drive anyway. Organised or what?" Read the full story at Freesoftware Magazine.

While we're on the subject of netbooks today, I ran across a story by Ars Technica's Erica Sadun, who writes for Ars' Infinite Loop (Apple) section. She poses that Apple already sells a netbook: the iPod Touch and the iPhone. I've heard many people make this claim before (including Steve Jobs himself), but I find it very hard to see the iPod Touch and the iPhone as netbooks.

At the end of 2008, the OSNews team made a short list of the tech-related things they would like to see in 2009. On my list was the hope that we'd see more competition in the netbook market, which is now dominated by Intel's Atom platform, resulting in manufacturers all releasing essentially the same machine, but with a different badge and case colour. Where are Intel's competitors? We know AMD is on its way, we know that the Chinese are producing some noteworthy chips, and that the ARM chip is jumping up and down screaming for attention - but where is Via's Nano platform? Shouldn't it be here already?

In a blog post on the Windows 7 Team blog, it was announced that the 2.5 million unit limit of the Windows 7 Beta will be lifted for two weeks. Whether or not the limit is reached, those wishing to get the beta will be able to do so until January 24th.

You may have thought Mozilla could not open up beyond its current state, but you may be wrong: Aza Raskin, Mozilla Labs' UX Lead and Sebastiaan de With, a freelance icon designer, have completely opened up the process of designing a new logo for Mozilla Ubiquity. The second round of conceptual exploration has just started, and the popular vote is very welcome on the blog or in the comments. What's your favorite concept, and why?