Palm CEO Ed Colligan has confirmed the new Palm OS won't be finished until the end of 2008. Originally scheduled for release by the end of this year, the operating system's launch date has continued to be pushed back, despite the added attention of the engineers freed up by the scrapping of Foleo last month. The new OS will allow Palm to release a whole range of products, including something similar to the ill-fated Foleo. Development is, apparently, progressing 'as well as possibly could be expected'.

Trolltech has unleashed a Windows CE version of Qt, its cross-platform application development framework. Qt/WinCE, made available today as a downloadable technology preview, is scheduled to see its final release 'late in Q1 2008', the company said. Qt is an application development framework aimed at enabling developers to compile binaries for Windows, Mac, and Linux OSes from a single code base. Qt's API (application programming interface) comprises some 400 C++ class libraries, Trolltech says.

"Some time ago, I switched to Google's Picasa Web Albums online photo management software. Although it's simple to use, Picasa Web has been missing too many features for too long, and after Google locked me out of their software for a few days due to a bug of some sort, and their iPhoto plug-in stopped working, I decided it was time to start checking out the alternatives. I have played with a few services, and judged them based on a number of criteria. I've tested the following services: Picasa Web Albums, Flickr, Zoto, Zooomr, SmugMug, Photobucket, Facebook, and MySpace. Read on for my initial results."

SkyOS contributor Peter Speybrouck released his first version of a SkyFS/BFS reader for Windows. This application allows you to view the file structure and copy files from both SkyFS and BFS partitions. Additionally, it can read the file attributes supported by these filesystems. The application does not yet work on Windows Vista.

A review of Linux Mint Celena. "I think Celena is a breath of fresh air. It is the best GNOME distribution I have ever used. The artwork is simply amazing, I think PCLinuxOS must take a hint or two from Celena. Strong emphasis is given to integrating the theme with applications. I can see the hard work Mint developers have put behind custom applications like Mint Menu, MintUpload, MintAssitant and Mint Control Center. They have done a commendable job and made our lives easy. They have not followed the trend and have included KDE applications, wherever they felt the need."

Bill McEwen of Amiga, Inc. writes in a public letter: "Over the last several months and in fact couple of years, Amiga has continued our software and business development and generally kept quiet. This path of quietness was chosen so that we communicated only when there was a development that culminated in a product that could be purchased. In recent weeks, our being quiet has been interpreted as weakness or an open invitation to attempt harming our business relationships and opportunities with partners and customers."

Developer Stardock has released WindowBlinds 6 today. It is a utility that allows users to customize the look and feel of Windows by applying "skins" to change the user interface of the OS. WindowBlinds 6 can make Windows XP look virtually identical to Windows Vista (including blurred glass). Thanks to hardware acceleration, a typical XP system dressed to look like Vista will perform faster than Vista still. WindowBlinds 6 also adds full skinning support to Windows Vista, making it the first and only program to support full Windows Vista customization. CNet takes a quick look at this new release.

A flurry of RISC OS news today all crammed up into one item. There is a story on Java and RISC OS, a semi-announcement to a new source code release of RISC OS 5 by ROOL, and the Faraday medal for the man who designed the BBC Micro and ARM architecture - Professor Steve Furber. In addition, there is a piece on last week's news about the think tank Globalisation Institute's advice. The head of the organisation (who is a former RISC OS magazine journalist) seems to think unbundling RISC OS from the Iyonix is a possibility. Interestingly, the reports excludes Macintosh computers from unbundling. Update: The Intel Mac VirtualRiscPC beta has gone on sale.

"After several months of silence, Microsoft last month finally revealed some concrete information about Windows Vista Service Pack 1, which I translated into my Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Revealed showcase. If you haven't read that article, please do so now: This preview, which is based off of more recent beta code and an in-depth discussion with various people working on SP1 at Microsoft, builds off of that article, but provides more information and detail. Windows Vista SP1, finally, is a known quantity."

The RISC OS On Linux project has released the first alpha-quality version of their live CD. "A first attempt at a Live CD has been uploaded here (169MB download, a bzipped iso), the space has been kindly donated by Ned Abell. This CD should boot into a desktop with Tux on the right and disc icons for /home/rolf and /tmp, on the left of the Iconbar. In /home/rolf are three apps that should work immediately, !Terminal, !Viewer and !Vim. !NetSurf needs a little help to run, as does Inkscape, which has no application directory yet." ROLF is a user space layer above the Linux Kernel, providing a superset of the RISC OS look and feel on Linux.

Java Platform, Standard Edition 6 focuses on performance, with expanded tools for managing and monitoring applications as well as diagnosing common problems. This article outlines the basis of monitoring and management in the Java SE platform and provides detailed information about the relevant enhancements in Java SE 6.

The Amiga world is an interesting one to follow. As an outsider, it is almost impossible to fully understand all the processes at work over there. The various companies, the individuals, the developers, The Three Men And A Cow who own an AmigaOne - they are not making it any easier. The past few weeks have seen quite a few news items regarding the Amiga platform. Did they help in creating a clearer picture of where the Amiga stands?

SFLC has released a code analysis of the infamous ath5k driver in Linux. SFLC has also - in the aftermath of the OpenBSD-Team vs. Linux-Team 'License Flame War' - released a paper on what 'copyrightable' means, as well as one on proper usage of non-GPL'ed code in GPL'ed projects. All as part of guidance for developers wishing to use permissive licensed code in GPL'ed projects. Groklaw naturally also has a take on this.

The LLVM Project recently released a new version of their compiler, optimizer and code generators. LLVM includes a drop-in GCC-compatible C/C++ and ObjC compiler, mature optimization technology (including cross file/whole program optimization), and a highly optimizing code generator. For people who enjoy hacking on compilers and runtimes, LLVM provides libraries for implementing custom optimizers and code generators including JIT compiler support. This release is the first to provide beta GCC 4.2 compatibility as well as the new "clang" C/ObjC front-end, which provides capabilities to build source-to-source translators and many other tools.