It seems that after Intel, just about every chip maker wants a piece of the netbook pie. AMD is an obvious competitor, but VIA is also eyeing the little notebooks. However, more exotic options like the Chinese Loongson chips and ARM's Cortex A-8 and A-9 chips are also among the contenders. We can now add a new contender: Freescale.

After far too long a wait, today, Google released the first beta of Picasa for Mac. Picasa is a free, powerful photo management tool that includes many photo editing operations that the Mac native iPhoto lacks. In addition, Picasa is tightly bound to Picasa Web Albums, the first 1GB of which is also free, in contrast with Apple's MobileMe, which runs $99/year.

The FreeBSD 7-STABLE branch saw its first point release today. Don't let the point release moniker fool you, though, as FreeBSD 7.1 comes packed with a number of pretty significant changes, such as support for OpenSolaris' DTrace, as well as a new, more efficient scheduler.

Last week, Gizmodo rumoured that that Apple CEO Steve Jobs' health was in a very bad condition, so bad in fact that the "inevitable news" would arrive coming Spring. Then, Apple characteristically declined to comment on the rumour, meaning Gizmodo's story couldn't be verified. As it turns out, Gizmodo's story does have a hint of truth, but luckily, Jobs' health isn't even remotely in as bad a condition as they made it out to be.

Keryx provides a way to download software and updates for Ubuntu systems that have little or no connectivity to the internet. Simply put Keryx on your pen drive, use it to create a new project file which retains a copy of your software sources and other system details, then take the pen drive to a computer with a better connection. Via its Synaptic-like interface, users can then select all updates for download, plus select any other software they may want to install, complete with dependency resolution.

Reviewing the first beta of an important release like Windows 7 is never an easy job to do. A confouding factor is that many people have already made up their mind about Windows 7; not because they have tried it, but because it's a Microsoft product, and therefore it sucks. At OSNews we try to judge products by their own merits, not by the parent company that created it. Read on for a set of impressions regarding the Windows 7 beta.

Even though the EULA accompanying the beta build of Windows 7 prohibits the publication of benchmark results (good luck enforcing that one, Redmond), everybody and their dog will still compare the Windows 7 beta to Vista and Windows XP. Adrian Kingsley-Hughes is one of those benchmarking the beta, and according to his results, the Windows 7 beta beats both Vista and XP in just about every scenario.

Netbooks run either Windows or Linux, and both are readily available in shops all over the world. The Linux variants chosen by several netbook manufacturers are usually derived from desktop distributions, and obviously, Windows is a desktop operating system as well. However, netbooks have small displays, and both Windows and GNOME/KDE and some of their applications aren't always suited well for such an environment. Enter Android, Google's Linux-based phone operating system. It is suggested that Android-based netbooks will appear on the market in 2010, maybe even sooner.

"You probably have seen or heard about HomeGroup by now. We demonstrated it at PDC this year during Steven's keynote, it was mentioned a few times at WinHec, and some of you may have even tried it on your PCs with the PDC pre-beta build of Windows 7. HomeGroup represents a new end-to-end approach to sharing in the home, an area in which Windows has provided many features before - the intuitive end to end is what's new. HomeGroup recognizes and groups your Windows 7 PCs in a 'simple to set up' secure group that enables open access to media and digital memories in your home. With HomeGroup, you can share files in the home, stream music to your XBOX 360 or other devices, and print to the home printer without worrying about technical setup or even understanding how it all works. This blog post is designed to give you a behind-the-scenes look at how we designed HomeGroup."

Information Week released what they deem the top ten stories dealing with open source for the year of 2008 earlier this month. Reminisce all of the happy memories we've had of open source throughout this past year: nestle with netbooks, gallop with Google, frolic with Fedora, cuddle with copyrights, and even get your hands on a juicy murder mystery.

"Judgment day has arrived for owners of 30GB (and only 30GB) Zunes. The music player inexplicably entered a worldwide coma last night, and players are completely non responsive."

iMAndroid has screenshots and a video of Google's Android mobile platform running on the Neo Freerunner. "Some new shots & specs exclusive to iMAndroid have emerged. The pics are of Neo FreeRunner device running Android Platform. A little fuzzy, but its very likely that Neo FreeRunner will be the second Android Phone!"

Steve Jobs' health has been an important topic of rumours ever since he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in mid-2004. He was treated successfully, and recovered from his ordeal. Ever since then, rumours of possible health problems popped up regularly, which were only ignited further by Apple's recent announcement to drop out of MacWorld San Fransisco, with Steve Jobs not delivering the famous keynote speech coming January. Gizomodo threw a whole lot of oil on the fire today by publishing information which they claim comes from a source which has always been 100% accurate.

Indie game developer Wolfire Games gives 5 solid reasons why games developers should support Mac OS X and Linux."Obviously supporting Mac OS X and Linux means you tap into another platform and expand your potential market base. That much is clear. But surely adding an extra 5% is negligible, right? Wrong. Not all five percents are created equal." For their game Lugaru, they go on to claim "supporting Mac OS X and Linux directly increased sales by around 122%."