Early this week, we reported that South Africa became the first nation to appeal the ISO's approval of Microsoft Office Open XML. Now they have been joined by a second appellant, Brazil, and the second round of charges are even more heated than the first.

Google's Linux-based Android platform for mobile phones has drawn a lot of attention since it was announced in November of last year, from phone makers as well as users. Now it appears the platform is about to cross the finish line, and Google is putting its developer search into overdrive.

If anything should be a maxim for operating a successful website, it's this: Stay on the good side of the search engines. Search engines drive web traffic, and if you set them off, they can drive that traffic right past your site without a second thought. This moves us to wonder: What the heck is going on with the Belgian press, and who told them it was a good idea to agitate Google?

The Chinese government hasn't — at least in the last century or so — had the public perception of being particularly open. From infamous anti-protest activities to the Great Firewall of China the ruling powers have a history of keeping pretty tight control of who hears what and how they hear it. It's possible that things are changing, however, as an official-looking profile of Premier Wen Jiabao has turned up on Facebook.

Just about everyone who has shopped for a computer online knows that Dell will promise the sun, moon, stars, and a free kidney to snare shoppers for their made -to-mass-measure systems. What a sizable number in New York, and we suspect just about everywhere else, have learned is that Dell is just as good at finding a reason to dodge their doubtful deals — and now the courts have discovered it as well.

Facebook — the No. 2 social network and perennial hangout of the college set — has a habit of exercising strict, sometimes iron-fisted control over user data, particularly who — including the users themselves — gets to use it. If the rumor mill has it right, though, that's about to change, as Facebook is reportedly on the brink of releasing their Facebook Platform under an Open Source license.