ReadWriteWeb

Cloudnumbers.com, a cloud-based high-performance computing platform for complex computing, is now open for beta. Cloudnumbers.com will eventually support math and statistics environments like R and NumPy, specialized scientific software like AutoDock, and video rendering applications like Blender. For now it's specifically looking for users to test its R environment.

It looks like HP's investment in Palm is starting to pay off. Today, Palm's mobile operating system has been updated to a new version: webOS 2.0. The refreshed OS, now released to the Palm developer community via a beta version of the webOS 2.0 SDK (software development kit), includes a number of updates and new features - features that already have some claiming that webOS rivals should "be worried."

It's tempting to give Apple's iPhone credit for the birth of touch-based computing, but it was not the first touchscreen user interface - nor is it the only one in existence today. Long before the iPhone, touchscreen LCDs were common, as were touch smartphones from Palm, Sony Ericsson, HTC, and others. In addition, back in 2001 - long before the iPhone launch - Microsoft began work on Microsoft Surface, a touchscreen tabletop computer. Yet it was the iPhone's multi-touch capabilities along with its stellar design that really got the ball rolling for touch computing. The only question that remains now is what will come next?

Before the term "cloud computing" became a throwaway word used to describe everything from web mail to Facebook, people were dreaming of a day when the OS would disappear and everything we needed would run from the cloud. Fast-forward to 2008, and we can tentatively say that the moment has arrived...well, almost. A company called Good OS (yes, the same company behind the failed Linux-based Everex desktops introduced last year) has introduced new software called Cloud which boots a computer directly into a customized Chrome-like web browser. Now that this cloud OS has arrived we have to wonder: is this really what we wanted?