ReadWriteWeb

Jolicloud, the company whose online operating system was doing personal cloud computing long before Google's Chrome OS ever existed, is today announcing several major changes to its core products. First, its cloud-connected operating system will be rebranded, changing its name from "Jolicloud" to "Joli OS," in order to avoid confusion with the company's other product, its online desktop.

The online desktop, a Web-only version of the Jolicloud interface, lets you access your personal files, folders and Web apps from a browser. Now that desktop, currently a Chrome Web Store app, will come to a number of new platforms, including additional browsers, the iPad and Android devices.

What's the hottest mobile operating system (OS)? The one that customers desire the most and plan to upgrade to next? According to Nielsen's new data, it's practically a tie between iPhone (iOS) and Android. In the analytics firm's latest mobile report, it found that 30% of users will choose iPhone (iOS) while 28% of users will buy an Android device.

For those who have never owned a smartphone before, the choice is apparently getting tougher. When feature phone users were asked what their next desired mobile operating system will be, 25% said they just weren't sure. In comparison, only 13% of current smartphone owners said the same.

Even though Apple has very little interest in seeing Adobe's Flash run on the iPhone, the enterprising hackers behind the Spirit jailbreak tool have apparently managed to port Flash to the iOS platform. While the details are still murky, this video shows a well known Flash clip on a jailbroken iPhone.

The fact that this video was shot by Comex - the developer behind the Spirit jailbreak - leads us to believe that this video is most likely genuine. Assuming this is true, it will also be interesting to see if these hackers will manage to run Flash content inside the iOS's version of Safari.

Emanuele Vulcano is making waves with his latest Infinite Labs release. The grad student recently released SwapKit - a new iPhone OS exchange protocol that allows developers to share data between locally installed iPhone apps.

Google Chrome has begun taking submissions from third party developers. In a blog post written earlier today, Google is asking developers to contribute to the Chrome extensions gallery - an act that will put third party applications on both the Chrome browser and eventually the operating system.

As iPhone and Android users, it's easy to forget that Facebook hasn't been fully optimized for all touchscreen phones. Many of us sit here from the comfort of our sleek mobile applications, never knowing the drudgery that Palm owners have to face as they type in URLs to open their favorite services. Well Palm owners, you're in luck. As of today, Facebook has redesigned its mobile site for touch devices (x.facebook.com and iphone.facebook.com) and launched a new domain name at touch.facebook.com.

...but What About the Other Web Browsers?

We don't know much about the upcoming OS from Google, Chrome OS, so most of the news we read about it involves speculation or, sometimes, rather terrible attempts at faking some supposedly official screenshots. However, we recently stumbled on a tidbit of actual news that proves how tightly integrated the Google Chrome web browser will be with the operating system. Of course that makes sense - it is called "Chrome OS" - but it makes us wonder if Google will be required to support other web browsers on their new platform? After all, it's one thing to integrate your own browser with your OS (as Microsoft does with IE) but it's another thing to not even offer a choice. What will Google do? Will they go the "evil" route?

Late last year, we boldly proclaimed that your next computer might be a Linux PC. Thanks to the ever-growing market for the low-end machines dubbed "netbooks," this seemed like a real possibility at the time. But then, MSI's U.S. sales director Andy Tung had to come along and burst our bubble saying that the Linux machines were seeing a higher return rate than their Windows counterparts. For a while, that seemed it would be the end of hope for this next big "Linux for consumers" push. Or it was at least until this month, when Todd Finch, Dell senior product marketing manager, made a very different claim. He noted that return rates for Linux machines were about the same as those for Windows. Is this a second chance for the Linux netbook? Perhaps. 

According to the Mozilla Team and the Firefox Twitter account, the spunky orange browser will reach 1 billion downloads at approximately 3:45 a.m. PT tomorrow morning.
Because Microsoft's Internet Explorer is currently shipped on most Windows machines, IE still maintains its lead as supreme ruler in web browser land. But the very fact that Firefox requires users to recognize the existence of an alternative browser and actively install it, means that 1 billion downloads and 31% market share is a monumental feat.

Here in the U.S., your choices in phones running Google's new Android operating system have been limited. If you weren't a fan of the T-Mobile G1 form factor - a design best for heavy texters thanks to its slide-out keyboard - you were pretty much out of luck. No more. Word has it that Samsung will soon be releasing their own Android smartphone for use on both the T-Mobile and Sprint carriers.