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Google has developed a prototype cell phone that could reach markets within a year, and plans to offer consumers free subscriptions by bundling advertisements with its search engine, e-mail and Web browser software applications, according to a story of The Wall Street Journal. More info here and here.

Firefox add-ons, or extensions, are small programs that run inside the browser in order to customize some behaviors. In theory, it is possible to develop and maintain a multilingual, multiversion and multiOS Firefox add-on. In practice, there are many obstacles to overcome in order to create and to maintain a working Firefox add-on in one language for one Firefox version and for one OS.

I have so much to thank Bill Gates for: introducing me to the baffling joys of consumer computing with Windows 95; teaching me the meaning of fear and dread with Windows 98; leading me to the sunlit uplands of Windows XP; getting me out of Microsoft altogether with the arrival of Vista. I hardly know where to start. And if I hadn't flown into a high-minded anti-Microsoft, down-with-Bill-Gates fury at the start of this year, would I ever have stumbled upon ZenWalk? I doubt it.

A recent Google acquisition of DoubleClick for a whopping USD 3.1 billion has turned many heads. The recent past certainly does not fit into Google's traditional non-aggressive attitude towards acquisitions for monopoly in the market. DoubleClick Inc., a spearhead in ad-serving, is only one of many companies acquired by Google. A comprehensive list can be seen here. Beside Google's acquisitions, this article will also explore some changes in Google's philosophy and potential threats to web community.

Microsoft plans to extend its mainstream development tooling to Silverlight, its Flash challenger, and add support for dynamic languages. At the Mix '07 Web developer and designer conference, Microsoft executives said the company will allow .Net developers to create applications for Silverlight, its alternative to Adobe Systems' Flash format. Microsoft on Monday released an alpha version of Silverlight 1.1 that will allow people to write applications using .Net applications such as C#. Version 1.0 of Silverlight will be available this summer.

"Gran Paradiso Alpha 4 is now available for testing. New features in this development milestone of Mozilla Firefox 3 include the FUEL JavaScript library for extension developers, a redesigned Page Info window, improvements to offline application support and Gecko 1.9 bug fixes. Several Mac OS X additions have also been made, including support for Growl notifications, improvements to the Cocoa user interface and an initial version of the Breakpad crash reporting tool."

In this article, I'm going to explore the idea that the 8 bit home computer not only had a great deal to offer the prehistoric early-humans of 1985 but that it may also have a place in the modern world; perhaps, there is something that we can learn from it. Having identified the laudable, worthwhile elements of this class of machine, I'm going to make some suggestions towards a scheme that would embody these characteristics in the form of a machine that would have a place within the modern world.

Let me begin by telling you a little story. Some time ago I needed to run a script at work once a day. We had tons of machines ranging from big Unix servers to Linux desktops. Due to various reasons the script could only be run on a desktop machine. However using cron was disabled on desktops. All other machines allowed cron.

Jon "Hannibal" Stokes is co-founder and Senior CPU Editor of Ars Technica. He has written for a variety of publications on microprocessor architecture and the technical aspects of personal computing. He recently published his first book Inside the Machine - An Illustrated Introduction to Microprocessors and Computer Architecture. We interviewed him to discuss how hardware bugs are dealt with, the use of reserved bits, the performance and efficiency of console CPUs and GPUs, the possibility to build a Playstation 3 cluster, and what future connection he sees between CPUs and GPUs.

I have been both a Windows and Linux user for a long time (I started with Windows 3.1 and RedHat 5.1 kernel 2.0.x if I recall correctly) and have stuck with both for various reasons. I'm writing this article not as a DIY lofty vantage platform by which I can bash MS nor as a 'Why you should switched' flame bate piece, but have tried to keep an open mind and reflect the actually experience that I have had with Vista so far, regardless of OS political propaganda. Please keep in mind this is still an opinion piece and most probably to be taken with a pinch of salt.

I've been an Arch user for roughly 3 years. I'm pretty much familiar with it all - The way it boots, its configuration and its package management. I've also heard a lot of good things about Ubuntu, and wanted to try it for a long time. So, two weeks ago, I took the plunge. These are my findings.

Lyx is an open source, structured document creation system. Conceptually, it falls somewhere between a markup editor and a word processor. The creators of Lyx have coined the term WYSIWYM (what you see is what you mean) to summarise the approach that Lyx takes to document creation.

After MacOSX and Linux start to become viable alternatives to Windows on the desktop, more and more applications are developed to be cross- platform; all potential users can run them on their platform of choice. In the following article I will discuss different ways of creating a cross-platform application and their (dis)advantages for the user.

Shock and awe; Windows Vista has been released to the hounds (that would be us). As just about every publication has reiterated a thousand times over it took 5+ years of design and development and cost USD 5.5 billion both directly and indirectly. We were promised (maybe not even promised, but bullshitted) a revolutionary operating system and what we got is for you to determine for yourselves. I personally think it's a disappointment to say the least.