Twitter suffers disruption

Twitter has fixed a major bug that saw many of its users appear to lose all followers and friends, says the BBC.

The problem began when a flaw was uncovered that allowed people to force others to "follow" them on the site. People who typed "accept" followed by a person's Twitter name forced the user to be added to their list of followers. It only worked through the Web site and not through third-party software used to access the site.

Twitter was quick to respond to the flaw, but was forced to reset accounts as it cleaned up the damage. The reset made it appear as though users had no followers, or weren't following anyone else.

Microsoft is releasing its Office Web Apps (OWA) element of the Office 2010 suite on 12 May, states V3.

OWA comprises versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. The solutions are cross-platform, accessible from a Web browser. OWA has limited functionality compared with the full client, and is largely for viewing documents.

OWA is being marketed by Microsoft as complementary to the full Office 2010, rather than as a replacement.

Mozilla has confirmed the next major upgrade to its Web browser will be with the release of Firefox 4.0, writes The Register.

The company's roadmap shows version 4.0 will arrive in November, with the first beta expected in June. The former Firefox 3.7 will be released as Firefox 3.6.4.

The primary aim of Firefox 3.7 is to cut down on crashes caused by plug-ins, says Mike Beltzner, lead Firefox developer. Mozilla is working on its beta known as Lorentz, which offers out of process plug-ins that operate independently of the browser. The technology will debut with version 3.6.4.

Canonical has unveiled the Unity UI, an interface for netbooks, with the company looking to trample on Google's Chrome operating system (OS), says PC Pro.

The interface has been designed to make better use of screen space, to be more touch-friendly, and consume fewer resources than the traditional Gnome desktop environment.

Unity will appear on two versions of the OS, including the existing Netbook edition and a new OS called Ubuntu Light.