Apple's OS market share increased by nearly 32% in the last year. Windows Vista and Linux also increased their shares by 8% and 18%, respectively, to end the month accounting for 16.14% and 0.88% of the online OS market. The full results from the survey can be found here. The results came as there is increasing speculation about the new version of OS X having a business focus.

Despite holding grassroots appeal among guerrilla IT workers fed up with IT's sluggish responses to their requests, Google Apps' traction in the enterprise remains overblown. Sure, Google claims more than 500,000 companies have signed up for Google Apps, but according to Gartner, only a handful of employees at each company uses the tools. Comparing that with Microsoft Office's 500 million users, Garnter analyst Tom Austin calls Google Apps' cloud-computing impression on the enterprise 'a raindrop.'

Learn XML schemas that provide solutions for all sorts of problems, from the basics of Web services to data description. Also, cover database-like solutions that involve contacts and invoices. The schemas in this article were chosen for their usefulness and utility, plus their impact on the XML community in how information is shared and exchanged using the XML format.

CodingExperiments.com posted an interesting article by utilizing the Google Trends system to show the trends in the Linux ecosystem. While these trends don't mean "market share", they are interesting and pretty accurate in terms of what average users care about. According to it, "Ubuntu" might even overtake the word "linux" in Google's searches.

Not as sick as you might think. Building on the output of the synclient program, the Perl code presented here allows you to assign specific application functions to "Three-Finger Swipe," as well as open- and close-pinch gestures on your Linux laptop. So if you've been wanting your Linux device to act more like your iPhone, here's a start.

InfoWorld's Tom Yager speculates on the road ahead for Symbian now that Nokia has established the Symbian Foundation to lead the OS into its open source era. The Foundation -- which includes five Symbian licensees, three major wireless carriers, and two embedded semiconductor manufacturers -- is certainly a motley crew, yet, as Yager writes, 'If Foundation members could agree on a set of objectives, it might be able to drive a new device from concept to wireless network deployment in a fraction of the time it takes today.'

Building Telephony Systems with OpenSER is a new book from Packt, which acts as a step-by-step guide to building a high performance Telephony System. Written by Flavio E. Goncalves, this book teaches users how to develop a fast and flexible SIP server using OpenSER, an open-source VoIP server based on the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), an application-layer control (or signaling) protocol for creating, modifying, and terminating sessions with one or more participants, including internet telephone calls, multimedia distribution, and multimedia conferences. This book is a well illustrated, step-by-step guide to building a SIP based network using OpenSER.

The Sabayon Linux project has released version 3.5 and are now also officially sponsored by the NLnet Foundation. Highlights are: a new look, Linux kernel 2.6.25.9, X.Org 7.3, Compiz Fusion 0.7.6 and, and a new binary package manager called Entropy. Distribution screenshots are available here.

"Firefox 3 has been out for two weeks now and it's time to hack it. The newest version of Mozilla's browser has plenty of new features, including the site identification button, the Bookmarks Library and what has become known as the "Awesome Bar" -- and how to hack them all."

We've been talking about desktop Linux in the business world for years. in 2008, it seems, a lot has changed and improved, and a lot has stayed the same. A Computerworld article takes a look at the state of desktop Linux in the enterprise, and examines the benefits and the pitfalls, looks at the various vendors and their offerings, and talks about how to work well with Windows and other commonly-used platforms and applications.

"After the recent release KDE 4.1 beta 2 and openSUSE 11 with KDE 4.0.4, some critics have been especially vocal in expressing their displeasure with the KDE 4 user interface paradigms. The debate has grown increasingly caustic as critics and supporters engage in a war of words over the technology. The controversy has escalated to the point where some users are now advocating a fork in order to move forward the old KDE 3.5 UI paradigms. As an observer who has closely studied each new release of KDE 4, I'm convinced that the fork rhetoric is an absurdly unproductive direction for this debate."

"A year ago, page after page of ink was spilled by prophets of doom fretting about the iPhone and how it would surely not be as good as this or that other phone. Were they right or did the first year of the iPhone live up to its hype?"

It appears that Snow Leopard, the new Mac OS X, will be aimed at business and enterprise users, signaling Apple's push to take Windows head on outside the consumer and education markets. Slated for availability six months prior to Windows 7, Snow Leopard will not only improve performance but also bring Microsoft Exchange Synchronization into the OS itself — evidence that Apple is targeting the enterprise, seeking to capitalize on corporate disappointment with the Vista transition.

Quantum computers could become a reality very soon, opening up some fantastic possibilities -- including tele-portation, says Richard Gray.