Intel officially closed the books on the Pentium era on Thursday with the Core 2 Duo, its most important product launch in 13 years. Two classes of Core 2 Duo processors were released Thursday. PCs based on the Core Extreme processor are available immediately. However, 'Extreme' is an appropriate description for both the performance and price of those systems, and they are only appropriate for the deep-pocketed performance-starved user. Mainstream systems at more affordable prices will start to appear in early August, Intel CEO said.

"Trolltech today released an initial technology preview of Qt Jambi to its commercial customers and the open source community for testing and feedback. Qt Jambi is a prototype technology that enables Java developers to utilize Qt."

Hi-Mobile.net sent us over for a review the first ever phone that ships with UIQ 3.0: the Sony Ericsson M600i. This 3G SymbianOS 9.1 smartphone is one of the most popular this summer (selling at below 375 USD) and so we decided to give it a whirl too. Read on for more info, pictures, screenshots and a video of the device, the P990's little brother.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer wrapped up a meeting with financial analysts Thursday by promising that the company would make sure it releases new Windows versions more quickly. Also, Microsoft on Thursday showed a prototype of a cell phone-based computer that could one day find a use as a cheap PC for emerging markets.

"The second discussion draft of the GNU General Public License version 3 was released on 2006 July 27, along with the first discussion draft of the GNU Lesser General Public License." Included are audio introductions by Eben Moglen. Update: Torvalds, after looking at the draft, wasn't impressed.

Google has created a repository system for software development much like SourceForge. The system even checks new project names against SourceForge's database to ensure no one sets up conflicting names. Greg Stein, an open source engineer within Google and chairman of the Apache Software Foundation, said: "We really like SourceForge, and we don't want to hurt SourceForge or take away projects." Instead, Stein says that the goal is to see what Google can do with the Google infrastructure, to provide an alternative for open source projects.

"Here's your fast guide to SearchOpenSource.com's most-read how-tos on Windows-Linux relations. These tips can either help you migrate from Microsoft's operating systems and applications to Linux and open source software or make them peacefully coexist. Get the scoop on Knoppix, using Excel with open source databases, file sharing with Samba and more."

The SkyOS team has released a long-awaited update to its operating system. This new update brings full desktop compositing, various toolchain updates (everything is now compiled with GCC 4.1.1), new versions of various applications, 440 fixed bugs, and much more.

"Firefox 1.5.0.5 is a security update that is part of our ongoing program to provide a safe Internet experience for our customers. We recommend that all users upgrade to this latest version." Improvements to product stability were made, several security fixes were added, as well as changes for the Frisian locale (fy-NL). Buter, brea, en griene tsiis; wa't dat net sizze kin, is gjin oprjochte Fries. No, I'm not either.

The eighth annual O'Reilly Open Source Convention kicked off Monday at the Oregon Convention Center. The first two days at OSCON are all about tutorials, with half-day presentations by key contributors to open source projects discussing how to make use of their tools. OSCON has several tracks, including tracks for Web applications, databases, Perl, JavaScript and AJAX, Ruby, Linux, programming, and business.

Microsoft has shipped the release candidate for IronPython 1.0 on its CodePlex community source site. IronPython is a project that implements the dynamic object-oriented Python language on top of the Microsoft Common Language Infrastructure. IronPython is both well-integrated with the .Net Framework and is a true implementation of the Python language.

After a bit over 20 months, work on ROCK 3 has been completed. ROCK is a Distribution Build Kit. This means it is a tool to create and maintain GNU/Linux distributions. With a few keystrokes and some patience, you can have a generic distribution up in a short time. With some more work, you can adjust its package selection. With the help of freshmeat and the power of autotools you can add new packages in a heartbeat. The ChangeLog is available and the Roadmap for ROCK 4 is already there, too.

Given the lack of qwerty keyboards on most touchscreen-based PocketPC phones and PDAs, this (recently freed for personal usage) input method will change the way you feel about your device. TenGO is using predictive text with only 6 buttons and in this video you can witness a woman writing 72 words per minute with her stylus. The buttons are pretty large and so finger typing is pretty fast too (at least 45 wpm which is faster than typing T9 on a cellphone or on Blackberry/Treo's crammed thumbboards). Version 2 of the software is even more powerful and available for $25.

Microsoft plans to automatically push Internet Explorer 7 to Windows XP users when the browser update is ready later this year. IE 7 will be delivered in the fourth quarter as a 'high priority' update via Automatic Updates in Windows XP, Gary Schare, Microsoft's director of IE product management, said in an interview Tuesday.