Oliver Garnham

HP has completed the acquisition of Palm, and announced that it will use the smartphone maker's WebOS in a range of tablet PCs and netbooks.

The technology giant announced the $1.2 billion deal in April and said it would increase the $190 million that Palm spends each year on research and development, with the intention of using Palm's technology in a new range of devices in addition to mobile phones. WebOS is currently used in Palm's Pre and Pixi handsets.

LinkedIn is finally available as a BlackBerry application - 18 months after it became available for Apple's iPhone.

Not releasing the business networking application for RIM's business-focused handsets until now seems like a massive oversight, but LinkedIn has been working with the phone maker to perfect the integration of the app with the capabilities of the BlackBerry.

Microsoft has announced the first service pack for Windows 7, but has yet to reveal when a beta will be available to users.

The software giant said Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) will primarily contain "minor updates", including patches and hotfixes rather than new features.

Web founder Sir Tim Berners-Lee has launched a new government website which aims to provide free public access to official data such as traffic statistics, crime reports and local authority planning information.

The new site, data.gov.uk, has been running in beta since September 2009 and Berners-Lee has been overseeing development since June last year, following an invite from Prime Minister Gordon Brown to take part in the project.

A Dell engineer has released a tweaked version of Google's prototype Chrome operating system that runs on the company's Mini 10v netbook.
Announced earlier this month, Google Chrome OS is a web-centric operating system that's expected to be made available on mini laptops towards the end of 2010. However, Google has already released the code to the open source community to encourage developers to write applications for the platform.

Dell engineer 'Dell-Doug A' revealed his initial conclusions about Chrome OS on the Direct2Dell blog and has made a version of the software available as a USB key image file. It's designed to work on the Dell Mini 10v, although the Dell engineer admits "it's not perfect."

"It will take more than 5-10 minutes for the network connection manager to 'see' the access points and allow you to select and connect - be patient. Use this image at your own risk - it comes to you totally unsupported and very minimally tested," he warns.

However, Dell-Doug A praised Google's netbook operating system: "The browser is extremely fast and makes for a great web-centric browsing experience. Boot time appears quick too - about 12 seconds from hitting the power button."

PC Tools' Malware Research Center is warning web users of another online scam that hopes to piggyback on hype surrounding the new Twilight New Moon film.

The security software developer says the latest trick tempts movie fans by promising them they can watch the film for free, before installing malware on their computer.

The version of Windows that succeeds Windows 7 will include a 128-bit architecture, according to an embarrassing leak from Microsoft's research and development team in the US.

Microsoft employee Robert Morgan appeared to detail the software giant's plans for Windows 8, and even Windows 9, on business networking site LinkedIn, where he listed his job as 'senior research and development'. His profile has now been removed from the main LinkedIn site, but is still viewable in Google's search cache.In it, he says he's "working in high security department for research and development involving strategic planning for medium and longterm projects."

Hackers are continuing to use Twitter to exploit people's PCs with the latest scam redirecting users to the malicious Koobface worm, according to PC Tools.

The security firm says Twitter users may see a tweet in their stream that reads 'my home video :)' or 'cool video! WOW'. The message includes a link that redirects users to a set of spoofed social networking pages and the pages then prompt for a plugin install, often stating 'Flash Player required' which contains the malicious threat with the link 'setup.exe'.

Google has won a landmark ruling in the UK which states that the search giant cannot be held responsible for content that shows up in web searches.

A UK lawsuit filed by distance learning company Metropolitan International Schools claimed that by reproducing defamatory comments that appear in news stories, blogs and forums, Google is liable as a publisher and therefore subject to defamation law.

Google Book Search at a trade event.Google's plans to make the content of millions of books available online are to be investigated by the EU over fears that the service may affect U.S. authors' rights in Europe. Government ministers from the EU's member countries met last week to discuss the implications of Google Books and have announced plans to look at the service in more detail.

"The commission will carefully study the whole issue and, if need be, to take steps," Vladimir Tosovsky, industry minister for the Czech EU presidency, told a news conference. "These are the first steps we are taking in this matter. Who knows what will result?"

YouTube has removed thousands of pornographic videos from its servers following a coordinated attack which succeeded in uploading a catalogue of inappropriate clips to the video-sharing site.

4Chan, a bulletin board for Japanese manga content, has been blamed for the attack, which used the names of celebrities such as Hannah Montana to lure unsuspecting YouTube users to the porn videos.

Apple has sold a total of 17 million iPhones -- including sales of both the original iPhone and iPhone 3G -- since launch, according to the company's vice president of iPod and iPhone product marketing.

Speaking at the launch of Apple's iPhone 3.0 software last week, Joswiak said the figure -- which includes 13.7 million iPhones sold in 2008 -- beat Apple's target of 10 million by a wide margin.