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Microsoft and Novell expand their interoperability partnership with Microsoft buying up to $100 million in SUSE Linux certificates. The partnership helps enable SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and Windows Server to work together in the datacenter. Moreover, the companies will continue to work collaboratively on virtual-ization, systems management, directory and identity federation, document format compatibility, acces-sibility technology, and the Moonlight multimedia framework.

Following some developer complaints of slow progress, Google Inc. on Monday released an updated version of the Android software development kit as well as a timeline for future releases. In addition to fixing "tons of bugs," the update includes a "ton" of user interface changes, according to a blog post written by Dan Morrill, a developer advocate at Google. It also includes new applications such as an alarm clock, calculator, camera, music player, picture viewer and messaging application.

Some cloud computing vendors, such as 3tera and Nirvani, push their own proprietary platforms and tools, which forces adopters to limit their options and work in a restricted or closed architecture. When these established vendors say cloud, they mean their cloud. As a result, Web developers may believe that, in order to use cloud computing, they must accept limitations in the way they write and build their applications. But that view is a misconception; open standards for cloud computing are already in place and are being tweaked. This does not mean that a single cloud computing platform is universally available. But just as some vendors have developed their own proprietary platforms for working in the clouds, so have various open source companies and communities.

Linux has no shortage of audio and video players, but if you want to devote you whole system to multimedia use, you need the Xbox Media Center (XBMC). Although initially designed for the Xbox gaming console, XBMC has been ported to other platforms. The Linux port of XBMC that I use is quite usable, especially for video playback, despite the fact that not all XBMC features have yet been ported. XBMC began life as the Xbox Media Player with its first open source release in 2002 before growing into an all-in-one media center app in 2004. The developers began porting the media center to Linux only last year. Currently precompiled binaries are available for various Ubuntu releases. If you don't use Ubuntu, you can also compile XBMC from source.

Canonical, the commercial sponsor of the Ubuntu Linux distribution, is now a member of the Linux Foundation (LF). The foundation, a nonprofit organization supporting the accelerated growth of Linux, announced Canonical's membership on Tuesday. Ubuntu community members have been active participants in a variety of workgroups at LF, including the Linux Standard Base, Desktop Architects and Driver Backporting groups. In addition, Canonical supports a range of other open source projects including Bazaar, Storm and Upstart.

Google is finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel with its long-awaited and much-hyped Android phone platform. This week has seen two significant developments: the first Android-powered device officially being approved by the FCC, and the beta version of the Android software development kit being released by Google.

A federal judge has lifted a gag order on three MIT students who were barred from talking publicly about security flaws they discovered in the MBTA's automated fare system, even as a lawyer for the transit agency acknowledged the CharlieTicket system has security flaws.

Scalix collaboration platform, with its latest release version 11.4, aims to be a good alternative to Microsoft Exchange. Based on the HP OpenMail platform, discontinued by Hewlett-Packard in 2001, it has been further developed by Scalix and now acts as an enterprise email and group calendar server with the option of integrating systems like ERP, CRM, and billing into the Scalix system using its open API. It is compatible with most LDAP authentication mechanisms, such as those in Windows Active Directory, Novell eDirectory, and Red Hat Directory Server. The most prominent feature of Scalix is its Exchange compatibility; you can use an Outlook client to access the Scalix platform.

The majority of servers supporting the Fedora Linux distribution were back online on Tuesday following a mystery disruption. Last Thursday (14 August) Fedora project leader Paul Frields took the unusual step of advising users not to download or update their software, as a precaution while the Fedora team responded to an unspecified issue. He warned ahead of time that service outages were likely.

Vista’s death march picked up some pace yesterday, after a metrics researcher revealed that nearly 35 per cent of PCs built to run the Windows operating system have been downgraded to XP. In a survey of more than 3,000 computers, performance testing software developer Devil Mountain Software estimated that more than one in three new machines had either been downgraded by vendors such as Dell, or by customers once they bought the PC.

A new netbook for European schools runs Linux on a Chinese-designed processor. With a generous 10-inch, 1024×600 display, the 2.4-pound Emtec Gdium boots Mandriva Linux from removable USB flash keys, running it in 512MB of DDR2 RAM on a 900MHz Loongson-2F processor made by STMicroelectronics (ST).

T-Mobile has admitted it'll be launching an Android phone this year, and with Google finally allowing developers access to version 0.9, we'll soon see if the Android has managed the finesse of an iPhone with Nokia-grade functionality. Version 0.9 of Google's platform is now available for download, with a redesigned user interface and some significant improvements in functionality, as well as lots of eye-candy to seduce the iPhone crowd. But Google's revolutionary platform is still lacking some of the features we've come to expect of a smartphone, including hardware on which to run it.

Buoyed by a court ruling and prospects for new mobile phone products, The SCO Group says it is on track for a Phoenix-like rebirth. The company believes those two factors have finally given it the breathing room to emerge from bankruptcy and continue its traditional computer server business, as well as market promising new mobile products and pursue its high-profile legal battles.

With increasing interest and influence in the open source movement, women in Australia and New Zealand are pushing their way into a normally male-dominated arena. Recently, the Australian and New Zealand branches of Linux Chix merged their chat and instant messaging forums to maintain better communication and strengthen the scope of their influence.

Growth in Linux vendor Red Hat's Asia-Pacific engineering and support business has resulted in a move to new premises. The world's biggest specialist Linux company's Brisbane, Australia, site is now its largest engineering centre in the region.

Open source software adoption is high in Asia, but the level of contribution from the region's open source developer community leaves much to be desired, says a prominent figure in the open source industry. David Axmark, co-founder of the popular MySQL database, said during a media session here Tuesday that usage of open source software continues to grow significantly across the region.

As regular Deeplinks readers know, EFF's Coders' Rights Project is defending the rights of three MIT students who were prevented from presenting their research on security vulnerabilities in Boston's transit fare payment system. The students were hit with a temporary restraining order that silenced their planned presentation at DEFCON. At first glance, the issues at play may appear obscure, and of interest only to technical researchers and lawyers. But as we noted in a post last week, the right to publish without pre-publication review is part of the purpose of the 1st amendment, and one of the reasons Americans fought the Revolutionary War. (The MBTA's stance is all the more ironic, considering Boston's role in that war.)

[More follow up in regards our DefCon 16 review. - Scott]

The entity behind one of the most popular desktop interface, GNOME Foundation is doing the right thing at the right time. The foundation has hired Stormy Peters as the executive director. We reached out to Stormy and conducted an e-mailed interview to understand how is she planning to take the computing world by 'storm'. Here is the complete interaction with Stormy.

[Four days old but I thought it still worthy; it being a decent Interview. - Scott]

Four years ago I wrote an article for the Linux Journal about my use of Linux software for music instruction. A lot has changed since then, so I thought I should update that article to reflect my current use of Linux in my work as a music teacher. I'll follow the presentation of materials as I organized it in the original article, but first I'll share some observations about the changing nature of my trade. I'm interested in how and where my younger students hear new music. Some of the old channels still work for them, especially live shows, but television and radio have little appeal. On-line music services such as iTunes and Magnatunes are very popular, many students have directed me to music tracks and performances on YouTube and MySpace sites, and the Guitar Hero games have inspired some students to learn tunes they may not have heard elsewhere. Surprisingly, very few have ever tuned in to an Internet radio station. Students still share mix CDs, but of course the iPod is now the preferred portable media player.

Windows Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer abbreviated MSIE), commonly abbreviated to IE, is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems starting in 1995. It has been the most widely used web browser since 1999, attaining a peak of about 95% usage share during 2002 and 2003 with IE5 and 6 but steadily declining since, despite the introduction of IE7. Microsoft spent over 100 million dollars (USD) a year in the late 1990s, with over 1000 people working on IE by 1999.