The idea behind Taban is that an web application will simply use HTTP methods (GET, PUT and DELETE) to perform the usual CRUD operations required for persistence, but using JSON as the data exchange format. Taban is (will be) implemented as OSGi bundles and will call out to/depend on a number of OSGi services. db4o is to provide the default implementation of the database.

I've received independent confirmations as to the authorship of Notepad, so I'm inclined to believe it. Sorry you didn't get to go to the award ceremony. The original author of Notepad also served as the development manager for Windows 95. His job was to herd the cats that made up the programmers who worked on Windows 95, a job which you can imagine falls into the "not easy" category. After Windows 95, he retired from the software industry and became a high school science teacher. At a social event some years later, I met him again and asked about the transition from software development manager to high school science teacher. His response: "You'd be surprised how many of the skills transfer."

The public debut of Google Chrome OS today has the press abuzz over the potential of the new web-based operating system. And now that it’s open sourced, you have the chance to try it out for yourself. We’ve put together a step-by-step guide to doing this, for free, in around 15 minutes you will have it running in a virtual machine.

I'm not sure if I want all my data stored on the 'cloud'

The company has confirmed the rumors and the upcoming OS will get a thorough presentation at Googleplex