Google and Apple seem to have taken on left- and right-hand roles, with neither quite sure what the other is up to. After Google’s long-hyped iPhone Voice Search application’s rocky launch, they have again hit a pothole:

Does Google Mobile use private APIs?

Surprisingly enough, Google appears to use both dynamic linking and calling unpublished APIs … it looks like Google decided that it was better to get the job done and provide a richer user experience to the end user than to live according to Apple’s exact dictates.

Google admits flouting Apple App Store rules

Google has acknowledged breaking the official rules of Apple’s iPhone software-development kit when it created the latest version of the Google Mobile application for the iPhone, but denied a more serious charge.

Reports like the following piss me off:

A flaw has been found in Windows Vista that could allow rootkits to be hidden or denial-of-service attacks to be executed on computers using the operating system.

Asked about the severity of the flaw, Unterleitner pointed out that administrative rights were needed to execute a program calling the function that would cause the buffer overflow.

Source: Kernel vulnerability found in Vista.

So an “evil person” would need a root account, to run an exploit that could potentially give him access to a root account… Isn’t this kinda like saying an exploit has been discovered that allows hackers to permanently delete your documents and settings folder… if logged in as an administrator, a hacker could shift-delete your personal folders!

The report itself actually isn’t the annoying part, the little flame-war in the comments between Linux and MS zealots is typical of the single-cell mentality shared by the two factions, and makes me wish someone would provide some venture capital for this to be developed.

A couple of weeks old, but still news to me: Windows 3.x retired.

Who remembers the hotdog stand theme?

Resource Nation has an interesting article on how Obama Raised 87% of his Funds through Social Networking.

In January, Obama set a record for donations in one month by raising a total of $32 million dollars, $28 million of which was raised online. From these $28 million in online contributions, 90% were under $100, with over 250,000 contributors.

This really shows the power of micro-donations, in a way similar to crowd-sourcing.

It appears that Vodacom, HTC and Google are hashing out a deal that will see the G1 hitting local shores sometime next year. I would love to get my paws on one of these just to play around with, though I don’t see myself purchasing one unless it’s cheap enough that it doesn’t need to be subsidised on top of a the existing cost of a contract *cough*iPhone*cough*.

Read the rest of the rather sketchy details at MyBroadband.

In long-awaited anticipation the free competitor to Microsoft’s Office Suite, OpenOffice.org v3.0.0 Final will be officially released sometime today. OOo v3.0.0 was already available for download on some of the mirrors since late last night. I assume given the time-zone differences the official release details will be shortly forthcoming. Their site is currently down so it’s probably a safe bet that they’re currently updating as I write this article seeing as when I checked 2 hours ago it was working fine and contained no details regarding the official release.

I’ve long maintained that OOo, while not exactly a poor comparison to the very mature and comprehensive suite that is MS Office, it is not the brilliant masterpiece that supercedes MS Office that so many people claim it to be. However for a free office suite it is definitely not lacking in features or functionality, so it should be interesting to see what v3 Final brings to the table and see how much closer it comes to truly rivaling MS Office.

Added: Local Mirror #1 (http) Local Mirror #2 (ftp)

I present to you, dear reader, the three greatest covers of “The Final Countdown” to ever appear on the internet.

Coming in at number 3, mostly because of the sheer audacity:

Number 2, I hope you guys are touring near me!

The pinnacle of human achievement (seriously), #1: