Google’s OpenSocial
Google is developing a thing called “OpenSocial. It will be an “API” (Application Programming Interface) for social network websites. Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING are implementing the software.

OpenSocial is built upon Google Gadget technology, so you can build a great, viral social app with little to no serving costs. With the Google Gadget Editor and a simple key/value API, you can build a complete social app with no server at all. Of course, you can also host your application on your own servers if you prefer. In all cases, Google’s gadget caching technology can ease your bandwidth demands should your app suddenly become a worldwide success.
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What does this mean? I don’t know. I’m still working on what a social web site is. Maybe you can tell me.

French Law SuitLaw Suit in France Against Wikipedia Ends. Is Dismissed.

PARIS (Reuters) - A French judge has dismissed a defamation and privacy case against Wikipedia after ruling the free online encyclopedia was not responsible for information introduced onto its Web site.

The U.S.-based Wikipedia Foundation, which is behind the popular compendium, was sued by three French nationals over a Wikipedia article that said they were gay activists.

Judge Emmanuel Binoche ruled that a 2004 French law limited Wikipedia’s liability and noted that contentious references in the disputed article had in any case been removed.

“Web site hosts cannot be liable under civil law because of information stored on them if they do not in fact know of their illicit nature,” Binoche said in his written ruling released at the Paris civil law court earlier this week.
[Reuters UK]

Leopard Launch Not Flawless* But Better Than If It Was Vista

Mac OS X Leopard, the latest version of Apple’s operating system, turns one week old today. An estimated 9 percent of the Mac OS X installed base had already signaled their intention to upgrade last weekend, and those numbers presumably grew by some degree over the last few days.

Most Leopard users seem satisfied. But there have been a fair amount (sic) of complaints from those who were first down the road to Leopard. Most are relatively minor, some were quite annoying, and a few raise questions about how Apple’s operating system strategy might be different when it’s time to ship the next release.

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*What I mean by that is this: No, you don’t necessarily just click on it and it works every time. Sorry, Mac Users, but those machines you use are not Magic Unicorns. They are computers. Deal.

Ubuntu Hardy Heron Will Be Less Gutsy Than Gutsy, More Robust

The Ubuntu Developer Summit (just happening or just ending) involved discussion of the goals for the next release of this leading desktop Linux Distro.

The primary goal for the Hardy development cycle is to make existing features more usable and robust rather than adding a lot of new functionality. This differs significantly from the Gutsy Gibbon development cycle which focused on delivering highly experimental features—like compositing by default—that improved the user experience at the expense of robustness in certain documented areas. Stability and resilience are important for Hardy Heron because it is a long-term support release and will be supported on the desktop for three years.

[source]

Truth in Advertising Takes a Byte Out of Seagate

“Seagate has agreed to settle a lawsuit that alleges that the company mislead customers by selling them hard disk drives with less capacity than the company advertised. The suit states that Seagate’s use of the decimal definition of the storage capacity term “gigabyte” was misleading and inaccurate: whereby 1GB = 1 billion bytes. In actuality, 1GB = 1,073,741,824 bytes — a difference of approximately 7% from Seagate’s figures. Seagate is saying it will offer a cash refund or free backup and recovery software.”

[Source]