During iPad’s announcement earlier this year Free Software Foundation hired a Steve Jobs look-alike (attempted) actor outside the event to express what they think about Apple’s closed platform model. At that time, most of us might have laughed it off. But in light of recent Apple announcement, rules putting more restrictions on an already heavily controlled platform, this seems very appropriate.

Opera Mini, the world’s most popular mobile Web browser, was submitted to Apple App store more than 16 days ago and there’s still no news from Apple whether Opera Mini will be accepted or not. According to iPhone Dev Center 95% of new Apps are reviewed in the last 7 days, which makes Opera Mini a special case where Apple needs more than double their average review time to come up with a decision.

Opera made a compelling case for Opera Mini on iPhone by demonstrating how Opera is six times faster than Safari on iPhone and uses less bandwidth by compressing 90% of the data sent to your mobile device. Apple has a history of not approving apps that duplicate core functionality of the iPhone but is some special cases Apple breaks its own rules. Another possibility that Opera Mini might be rejected is the fact that Opera doesn’t use webkit as their rendering engine which all third party browsers are required to use in order to be accepted. (There is a possibility that Chrome might me ported to iPhone because it also relies on Webkit rendering engine.)

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iPhone hacker @musclenerd just released a jailbreak which was ported by other iphone OS hackers in less than 24 hours. Details are still coming but video of live rooted iPad already out.

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Mark Shuttleworth introduced the new Ubuntu 10.10 code named Maverick Meerkat with a bold vision and impressive goals. He hopes that with Maverick Meerkat, Ubuntu will continue to lead the way for Linux in personal desktop market with radical changes in desktop interface and overall performance.

Some of the goals he highlighted for Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat:

- A new design track and “cloud and server” track. Continuing on the works done on Lucid Lynx.

- A new Ubuntu theme called “Light”.

- Main focus of Meerkat will be to make the OS the lightest, fastest OS is all aspects. As computers are getting more mobile, emphasis are given on performance increase in mobile platforms.

- Ubuntu Netbook Edition will get a new interface.

- A new initiative called “Social from the Start” to make Ubuntu desktop experience more collaborative and social. As people relies more and more on storing information on the cloud, Meerkat will work on synchronizing such information so that you can access it from anywhere.

Overall it seems that there will be much more radical changes than what we have already seen on beta releases of Lucid Lynx. This can only mean good thing for Linux as Ubuntu leads the way in popularizing Linux to the masses.

You can read more about Marks vision with Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat here.

I have pointed out in the past how Microsoft has a habit of spreading misinformation about other browsers to help portray IE as a safer, faster with overall superior browsing experience. In the past they went as far as paying for browser security reports to make IE8 look better in comparison. This time the Product Manager of Internet Explorer Pete LePage relied on misguided and selective information to make Chrome look like a privacy menace. They are now threatened by Chrome, a browser that is not even two years old and has only about ~10% market share.

Product Manager of Internet Explorer Pete LePage talking about IE8 and Chrome’s privacy concerns. (Need Silverlight to play video, hosted by MSFT)

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