Chrome ported for Mac, Linux

Although Google has not yet released a Mac or Linux version of its Chrome browser, software developer Codeweavers has made a ported version available, reports The New Zealand Herald.

Called Chromium, the Windows-only browser uses Wine to run on the Mac and Linux platforms.

CodeWeaver CEO Jeremy White writes on his blog that the company was looking for a way to "show off Wine's new maturity, particularly for porting applications. What we needed was a freely redistributable application; one that didn't exist on Mac or Linux, but one that was readily understandable. We thought about Firefox; that was perfect, but sadly, there were Mac and Linux builds."

Want to drill down to see how different iPhone apps are doing? Click around iTunes and collect your own data, or visit the Application Ranking section of Mobclix and see the breakdown of iPhone apps in each category, says The Washington Post.

Paid apps still outnumber free apps. Of the 3 420 apps in the iTunes App Store, a full 2 604 (76%) are paid, and only 816 are free. (About the same ratio since the App Store launched.) Games dominate (31% of all apps), followed by utilities (15%) and entertainment apps (12%).

Within each category, apps can be sorted by rank, price, rating, or release date. Clicking on a specific app will show a chart providing its rank over time - something that can't be seen in iTunes.

Most of the news about today's release of the Zune 3.0 software and devices leaked last week, but one piece of interesting news remained under wraps, CNET News reports.

Microsoft signed a deal with public WiFi provider Wayport and McDonald's restaurants that will give Zune users free access - no password or Web page log-in required - to hotspots in more than 9 800 McDonald's.

This addresses a potential "gotcha" with the Zune's download-from-WiFi feature - the fact that users can't access any hotspot that requires a browser redirect (either to enter a password or accept terms). Now they'll have nearly 10 000 guaranteed places from which to buy or (with a $14.99/month Zune Pass) stream music wirelessly.

Peru will start a nine-month trial of OLPC's XO laptops running a "tweaked" version of Windows XP and Microsoft's low-cost version of Office, Microsoft Office 2003 Standard and Learning Essentials 1.0, says ZDNet.

While the feature in Ars Technica made no mention of the XO's innovative Sugar interface, it looks like these XOs will run a fairly vanilla XP, without the learning-centred GUI that ran on top of the XO's Linux OS.

So what does this mean for OLPC and Microsoft in developing markets? It means too many people still see Windows as the de facto standard for desktop computing, the publication states.