Rumors about a Google phone have been flying for months. And since they started around the time that Apple was releasing its game-changing iPhone, it should come as no surprise that we all started to get the idea that Google might get into the hardware game and release a gPhone handset featuring Google software.

But according to the New York Times, while Google has developed a few prototype handsets for internal testing, what the company is really working on is a mobile operating system. Or to put it another way, what the company is really working on is a way to serve up advertisements on your mobile device.

Google will offer up its OS to hardware manufacturers, so perhaps one day you'll be able to get a Treo running PalmOS, Windows Mobile, or a Google operating system. The OS will be Linux-based and will include Google applications including mail, directions, possibly a web browser, and probably some sort of mobile version of Google Docs & Spreadsheets.

Remember Amiga? Back in the day, the computer/software maker was a serious contender. But the company hasn't released a new product in years, and apparently Amiga OS4 has been tied up in legal disputes.

Well, a new day is dawning, and Amiga CEO Bill McEwen says the company will be announcing details on Amiga OS5 later this year. He also says it will be "better than OS X," although he politely declined to give any supporting evidence for that assertion. You know, like telling us about a single feature that would be included in the new OS.

McEwen does say OS5 will scale "to its host hardware," meaning the operating system will run on everything from mobile phones through desktop PCs.

[via Slashdot]

Bowing into pressure from customers, Microsoft has decided to continue selling the Windows XP operating system in stores for another five months.

Previous versions of operating systems released by Microsoft have generally been available for up to two years after the shipment of a new OS. Microsoft had planned on cutting XP in stores just one year after the release of Vista, however, due to its slow sales and customer demand Microsoft has added a few more months and will let it stay on store shelves until mid 2008.

Many current customers have not been interested in switching to Vista, with computer giant Dell even going so far as to start up offering XP pre installed on new PC's instead of Vista early this year. Now what does that say about a new OS compared to a six year old one?

If you've switched to Vista, how is it working out for you? Do you recommend upgrading yet?

Microsoft is getting together security updates for Windows 2000. There are five security bulletins that are set for release on September 11th 2007 that will update a version of the Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool on Windows Update, Microsoft Update, Windows Server Update Services and in the Download Center.

Of the five updates deemed an "important update" for users, only one has been considered critical. These fix bugs that could exploit flaws without any user interaction. The other non critical updates have to do with fixing remote code execution and elevation of privileges on in such applications as Windows Live Messenger and Windows SharePoint Server.

And the rumors keep rolling in on Google's phone development. This magical device that will be host to Google's powerful services like Gmail and Search while on the go. This time a person inside HTC has confirmed the development of the device.

The rumors specify that the Gphone will be shipping from Taiwan, and is scheduled to launch Q1 of 2008. The team at Google has been going over the current 20 HTC models on the market and finalizing its handset design. Gphone will have a specially built version of Google Maps, just as the iPhone does, with built in GPS compatibility. Previous reports stated that the device would not have GPS, and that it would support both 3G and EDGE platforms. Gmail and Calendar will be present, with Google Talk becoming part of the phone in a VoIP mode. As for the operating system on the Gphone, the insider said it would use Windows Mobile 6, however some think that a Linux OS would be more realistic. As for price, there have been buzzing's that the device would stay in the range of only $100. Will it be unlocked? We will have to wait and see, but chances of that are fairly slim.

Vista took a while to come to fruitation, and now that it's out, and somewhat patched, businesses are having a hard time deciding whether it's worth it to update.

A new survey by PatchLink Corp. suggests that businesses see XP as being far more secure than Microsoft's new Vista operating system, and have decided not to migrate to the platform. 87% of respondents in the survey stated that they would be happy staying with their existing version of Windows, with only 2% currently running Vista.

Just last year 50% of CIO and IT network admins said that they believed that Vista would be far more secure than XP, so why the big change?

Could developers be moving towards Linux and handhelds? A new study says they are! Evans Data has published a study that found that Windows developers are dropping slowly, with 65% of software being written for Windows this year compared with 75% last year. The shift began two years ago, and seems to be drastically increasing.

Why this change? Web browsers are becoming capable of running advanced applications both on and offline, making desktop operating systems seem less important.

What are your thoughts, should developers keep their focus on browser/web based applications like Apollo, and forget about developing for multi operating systems?

Getting around Wikipedia could take shorter than you have been previously use to. For instance, do you know about the keyboard shortcuts?

Keyboard shortcuts aren't a well known feature for users of the popular online encyclopedia, but they do exist. I recently came across a post by Steve Rubel reminding me of this fact.

These keyboard shortcuts work with any browser, and on both PC and Mac platforms, and don't need to install any special Greasemonkey script, and will surely speed up your time when searching for useful content.

Depending on which browser you are in you will have to use hold down this combination of keys, then hit your access key:

• Mozilla Firefox 1.5: hold Alt, press access key
• Mozilla Firefox 2: hold Alt-Shift, press access key
• Internet Explorer: hold Alt, press access key, and then press Enter
• Opera: press Shift-Esc, then press access key
• Mac OS: Control and a key

Check out a cheat sheet for the key shortcuts after the jump:

Skeptics took a guess that Microsoft wouldn't sell many Vista versions, but it looks like that guess has been squashed.

Microsoft sold 20 million boxes of Vista in the first month it was out. Compare that to 17 million copies of XP over the first two months it was available. Its quite a stretch given the few issues that usually pop up with any new operating system, many people usually tend to wait until things smooth over before purchasing.

Microsoft said that it did expect there would be a rush when it first came out, and bet on the fact that it would be their fastest selling operating system ever.

No word yet on how many of the copies sold were from manufacturers like Dell, HP, and Toshiba, versus how many boxed copies were bought off store shelves.

If you are using any of the Adobe products and have the itch to upgrade to Windows Vista, you might want to check out the How Adobe Products Support Windows Vista document (pdf alert). Adobe applications are listed with their current status concerning Windows Vista support and any workarounds that might be needed until official support is available. Adobe plans to keep this document updated as product support for Vista evolves. OS upgrades are so much fun.

As with all new things, especially something as huge as an operating system, adoption of Microsoft Windows Vista is slow. It has been commercially available to businesses for about a month now, but that month has come and gone with too much stirring the pot by enterprises. It isn't hard to see why, the adoption of a new OS is painful, even if the thing is rock solid. There is the user's learning curve to consider, the IT staff and time to install, support, and manage the new operating system, and tons of other factors like interoperability with peripherals, driver issues, proprietary systems that must be rewritten to play nice. Once Vista is adopted in enterprises, it will yield some benefits for those who take the leap, but many companies don't want to put their people through that until Vista is stable, and patched with at least a service pack or two. That could take years.

The theory that Microsoft released Vista in November so that they would have time for vendors to develop solutions that would work with Vista might be close to the truth, maybe Microsoft is hoping that by releasing Vista now the drivers and updates will be ready by the time Vista hits the world's stage and comes to a PC near you in February 2007. Wouldn't it be nice if the OS was at least a bit closer to having lots of stuff work with it when you get it in your mailbox or at your local PC hardware store?

Why software is released and when is always tricky to predict, so here's to hoping that there is some good reason why Vista is out now, and perhaps there will be a slightly brighter light shining on kick-off for consumers. It would be nice. When are you planning on upgrading to Vista, or are you planning to upgrade at all? Let me know what you plan to do below:

Omnidrive is an online storage service offering 1GB of free space that can be accessed from a Windows app or web interface (Linux and mobile clients are in the works). The system allows users to store photos and files from their desktop similiar to a regular OS, and choose to share their files or keep them private. If you find yourself always transferring files back and forth from device to device or sending a lot of files and photos to people, Omnidrive files can easily be shared and accessed by the individuals you choose. When sharing files with a person, the shared file will instantly be dropped into their Omnidrive account, and a notification email sent to them. Omnidrive also has the ability to publish files to the web with a unique URL that anyone can access. There is also a music player that song files can be played through without downloading them first. The Omnidrive dashboard can be accessed either from a web client in any browser, a Windows client, or Mac client application. Omnidrive is a really simple online storage area. Its clean design makes navigation and working with files easy.

Check out some screenshots of Omnidrive in action after the jump.

This marks nearly 10 years of OpenBSD history. As one of the world's best free server operating systems, OpenBSD has had a long and illustrious career. It has many fans out in the blogosphere and among open-source developers. The current version available is 3.9, which you can download free. The emphasis of the OS has always been security and stability, which is why many servers run OpenBSD, as it makes a great foundation for many binary emulations including (but not limited to): Solaris, FreeBSD, Linux, SunOS, BSD/OS, and HP-UX. OpenBSD isn't for everyone I suppose, but many folks who have a need for it really swear by it as their server OS of choice. If nothing else, I wanted to congratulate OpenBSD (and its developers) on sticking around so long and quietly doing the job well. Thanks!

If you haven't heard of ReactOS, here's the 411: ReactOS is an open source operating system intended to be compatible with (and as similar as possible to) Windows XP. The goal is to allow people to run WIndows apps as well as Windows device drivers without actually using Windows. The project has made considerable progress since its inception, but in case, like me, you've never had the opportunity to try it, NeoSmart has a lengthy review of ReactOS. It's mostly positive and includes anecdotes like, "Using ReactOS was a breeze, and once it's complete we believe a normal non-geek user would be very hard-pressed to r Not so good is ReactOS' weak TCP/IP stack. Much of ReactOS' is based on WINE, which provides its Windows compatibility, and as a result it's only as successful as WINE in running Windows apps. While you read the review, take a look at NeoSmart's ReactOS screenshot gallery, or head to the ReactOS web site for more information.

[Via Slashdot]