There’s a Linux distribution for every occasion and the main purpose of Jolicloud is to present a web enabled GUI for netbooks and similar devices. I’m going to take a look at a preview release of the forthcoming 1.1 version. Under the hood, it’s based on the Ubuntu long term service release (10.04), and the front end is handled by a combination of the Chromium web browser and a full screen user interface that eschews overlapping windows.
Netbooks are the obvious target of this distribution, and by default, it’s setup as a …

Bing is putting social gaming into search results pages, letting users play a title without ever having to visit its specialty Bing Games site, or the publisher’s hosted game page on social networks like Facebook.

The first social title to be offered with this functionality is Happy Island from social gaming company Crowdstar. When a Bing user searches for the game in Bing, the full playable title will show up as an embedded result on the top of the page using technology from Sibblingz. Users can then play through the first …

The Humble Indie Bundle is back! Independent gaming company WolfireGames are once again letting you set the price for five of mutli-platform DRM-free games.
The games making up the bundle include the first ever Linux releases of platform puzzler ‘Braid’ and side-scrolling action game Coretx Command, the launch of new game Revenge of the Titans as well as indie favourites Osmos & Machinarium.
The bundle is only on offer for the next 7 days. Set your price (don’t be a grinch) over @ humblebundle.com

The latest iteration of web browser Opera has been released.
Adding in many new features, refinements and obligatory performance boosts, it’s an essential upgrade for Opera fans and well worth a punt for the curious.
This minute-and-a-bit video by Opera demonstrates the new features succinctly. For the stat hounds the the full change-log for Linux is here.
Download @ opera.com

Personal data collected by Google’s UK Street View cars has been deleted.
The UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), which has been criticised for not taking a more hardline stance against Google, confirmed the deletion.
The first batch of wi-fi data, which included snippets of e-mails, URLs and passwords, was deleted in November.
But legal wrangles in other countries meant that the remaining data, all of which the firm said was collected in error, took more time to erase.
“We can confirm that the UK data has now been deleted, and that this has been …

Independent research suggests that Bing has cornered 12.7% of the market in the 12 months since it launched.
However Google has 62.6% and Yahoo 18.9%, according to figures from ComScore.
At a Microsoft summit to discuss Bing’s progress, the search engine’s executives admitted that there was “a long road ahead” for the site.
“There is something that we are doing that is clearly resonating but that said we are a low share player,” Satya Nadello of Microsoft’s online division told BBC News.
“We have barely gotten into double digits but we want this to …

BBC News has a new look from today, the first major redesign since 2003.
It has everything you might expect from a 2010 redesign: share buttons for Twitter, Facebook, Digg, better links to related stories that provide context and a crisper, less cluttered design with more white space.
There’s also more emphasis on video, with suggested video stories in a high-profile box on the top right of every page and a bigger, better.
The BBC design is conventionally safe and easily navigable for its least web-savvy users, but is definitely more attractive, graphically …

Mozilla has released the first beta of its Firefox 4 web browser, enhancing the user interface and adding an array of new features.
Firefox 4 Beta, developed on the Gecko 2.0 web platform, offers a revamped add-on manager and comes with a built-in crash support tool which will prevent the web browser from crashing even if vital plug-ins like Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight and Apple Quicktime freeze.
The browser, which also comes with HTML 5 capabilities, WebGL support for 3D rendering and offers support for …

Adobe Systems has released an emergency security update to fix 17 vulnerabilities in its Reader and Acrobat applications, including two critical bugs that are being exploited by hackers in the wild.
The vulnerabilities were first reported by Adobe on 4 June, along with another critical vulnerability in its Flash player, which was patched within a few days.
The security patch for Acrobat and Reader had been scheduled for release on 13 June, but was moved forward by the company because the vulnerabilities addressed were being exploited by hackers to install malware onto end users …

Details of Microsoft’s plans for its Windows 8 operating system has been leaked on the internet.
A PowerPoint document, allegedly part of a Microsoft presentation given to a Hewlett-Packard executive and dated April 2010, indicates that Windows 8 will include support for facial recognition technology and will be compatible with tablet computers.
The UK’s Daily Telegraph reports that the source of the original leak has been removed from the internet, but tech blog
Microsoft Kitchen has posted a detailed analysis and screenshots of the presentation.
According to the leaked presentation, Microsoft is focusing on reducing the …