Access has released an update to its Palm OS Garnet VM for Nokia Internet Tablets. New features in the Garnet VM Beta 2 (v1.01b) include full screen support, three hot-swappable display modes (portrait full screen, portrait windowed and portrait landscape), improved performance and various compatibility and app specific updates. Notable new apps that are now listed as compatible include: Google Maps, Snappermail, Pocket Tunes, Kinoma Player 4 EX and CorePlayer.

The Garnet VM is a “virtual machine” essentially acts as an emulator allowing you to run Palm OS applications on a Nokia N770, N800 and N810 Internet Tablet. it supports over 30,000 native software applications written for the Palm OS, including some of the most popular mobile applications on the market, such as Google Maps, Snappermail, DateBk5 and perennially favorite games like Bejeweled, PacMan and Sudoku.

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The original XO OLPC laptop basically just began mass production, yet Negroponte & Co just unvieled the next generation XO laptop today at OLPC’s Global Country Workshop. OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte announced the futuristic looking new model sporting dual touchscreen displays in a smaller tablet folding book-style design.

As you can see from the video and the pictures on Laptopmag.com, the XO 2.0 will be much smaller than the original machine (half the size, according to the press release) and will have a foldable e-book form factor. “The next generation laptop should be a book,” Negroponte said.

According to Negroponte, the second generation of the XO is scheduled to be released in 2010. One of the reasons he is announcing it so early this time around is that he hopes that other manufacturers will actually copy his idea. (via Gizmodo)

After years of conflict and strife, Microsoft and the computing and education project One Laptop Per Child, have worked out a deal that will see Windows XP on the OLPC.

According to the NYTimes,

Microsoft long resisted joining the ambitious project because its laptops used the Linux operating system, a freely distributed alternative to Windows.

“The people who buy the machines are not the children who use them, but government officials in most cases,” said Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the nonprofit group. “And those people are much more comfortable with Windows.”

The alliance between Microsoft and O.L.P.C. comes after long stretches of antagonism, punctuated by occasional talks, between the two sides. Mr. Negroponte, a former computer researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a new media pioneer, said he first talked to Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman, three years ago.

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The LiMo Foundation announced today the addition of Infineon Technologies, Kvaleberg AS, Mozilla Corporation, Red Bend Software, Sagem Mobiles, SFR, SK Telecom and Verizon Wireless as new member companies. Expanding LiMo’s membership to 40 since the foundation’s launch in January 2007, these companies join with existing LiMo members to collaborate on the LiMo Platform – the world’s first globally competitive, Linux-based software platform for mobile devices.

“This latest group of new members demonstrates the rapidly expanding reach of the LiMo ecosystem, and we are very excited by their commitment to further enrich the LiMo Platform and accelerate its adoption within all markets,” said Morgan Gillis, executive director of LiMo Foundation. “It is now clear that LiMo’s transparent and participative governance model and total focus on the handset operating system—which are designed to avoid value-chain distortion—are proving to be very attractive to the whole industry.”

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The Android Developer Challenge is a two-part contest whose goal is to encourage developers to build apps for the new Google mobile platform, code-named “Android.” In this first round, dubbed “Challenge I,” submissions were accepted up until April 14th. Yesterday, the top 50 entries were announced. Each of these application authors received $25,000 to fund further development of their app.

Read Write Web has a good post outlining some of the standouts, while the Android Developer Blog has the full list.

What do you want your cell phone to be able to do? Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Hal Abelson put that question to about 20 computer science students this semester when he gave them one assignment: Design a software program for cell phones that use Google Inc.’s upcoming Android mobile operating system.

In the process, they revealed the power of an open system like Android to shake up the mobile phone industry, where wireless companies are being pressured to loosen the control they have maintained over what devices do. If the brainstorms of these MIT students are an indication, phones will soon challenge the Internet as a source of innovation.

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Microsoft is launching a program to promote the use of its Windows OS in ultra low-cost PCs, one effect of which will be to limit the hardware capabilities of this type of device. Microsoft plans to offer PC makers steep discounts on Windows XP Home Edition to encourage them to use that OS instead of Linux on ultra low-cost PCs (ULPCs). To be eligible, however, the PC vendors that make ULPCs must limit screen sizes to 10.2 inches and hard drives to 80G bytes, and they cannot offer touch-screen PCs.

The programme is outlined in confidential documents that Microsoft sent to PC makers last month, and which were obtained by IDG News Service. The goal apparently is to limit the hardware capabilities of ULPCs so that they don’t eat into the market for mainstream PCs running Windows Vista, something both Microsoft and the PC vendors would want to avoid.

A virtual uprising that broke out among developers questioning One Laptop Per Child’s commitment to open-source software has prompted an official from the nonprofit effort to play peacemaker.

Doubts about OLPC’s commitment to open-source software surfaced after Chairman Nicholas Negroponte criticized Sugar, the user interface that currently works with the Linux-based XO laptops. Negroponte asked developers to extend Sugar’s development to Windows, which will make XO laptops more appealing to customers.

Without touching on the subject of Sugar for Windows, Kim Quirk, director of the technical team at OLPC, on Monday quelled any notion of OLPC abandoning open source.

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