Earlier this month the commission, Europe’s top antitrust regulator, issued formal objections to the deal, arguing that it posed a threat to competition in the market for database software.

The deadline for a final ruling has been put back to Jan. 27 from Jan. 19, which amounts to six additional working days for Oracle to win over the skeptical regulator.

“Oracle requested the extension in order to have the opportunity to further develop its arguments in response to the commission’s concerns,” the commission said in a weekly statement on the status of ongoing merger investigations.

The commission’s concerns center on Oracle acquiring MySQL, an open source database developed in Europe and bought by Sun a year ago for $1 billion. It argued in its statement of objections that the acquisition of the most significant open source database on the market by Oracle, the proprietary database market leader, could harm competition.

Oracle responded angrily, accusing the commission of not understanding the database market. It claims that MySQL is aimed at a totally different type of client from the ones that use Oracle’s database products.

However, the commission, as well as many observers, argue that even if the products don’t compete at the moment, Oracle’s ownership of MySQL could stifle the software’s development. This could have a negative long term effect on the database market, they said.

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The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) offered few details Thursday about the exact nature of the glitch, which caused major delays and flight cancellations in airports across the country. But in a statement, the agency blamed a “software configuration problem” within the FAA Telecommunications Infrastructure (FTI) in Salt Lake City.

That problem brought down a system used mainly for traffic flow and flight planning services for about four hours this morning. The flight management system — it’s called the National Airspace Data Interchange Network (NADIN) — was affected because it relies on FTI services to operate, the FAA said. There was no indication that the disruption was the result of a cyberattack, the FAA said.

FAA experts were investigating the outage and meeting with Harris Corp., the company that manages FTI to “discuss system corrections to prevent similar outages,” the agency said.

In an e-mailed statement, a Harris spokesman said the company is working to “evaluate the interruption” to prevent future outages. “FTI has proven to be one of the most reliable and secure communications networks operating within the civilian government. Safety and security is our highest priority,” the company said.

A spokeswoman for the Professional Airways Systems Specialists (PASS) union, which represents more than 11,000 FAA employees, told Computerworld the problem arose when scheduled maintenance on FTI in Los Angeles corrupted a router in Salt Lake City. A back-up router that should have kicked-in when the primary router went down failed to do so, resulting in the widespread outage, she said.

The $2.4 billion FTI program was introduced by the FAA in 2002 to replace seven FAA-owned and leased telecommunications networks. It provides a range of voice, data and video communication services for operations and mission support at more than 4,000 FAA and Defense Department facilities, according to Harris. The FTI network provides switching and routing services, as well as centralized infrastructure security monitoring services for the FAA.

An audit of the program released by the FAA’s Inspector General last September cited concerns over delays in the project’s implementation and doubts about the promised cost-benefits the network was supposed to yield. The report also noted several technical problems that had caused unscheduled outages to air traffic control operations.

“In some cases, these outages have involved simultaneous loss of both primary and back-up FTI services, which not only disrupts air travel but also creates potential safety risks,” the inspector general report warned, pointing to several incidents in recent years.

On Sept. 25, 2007 for instance, all FTI services were lost at the Memphis Air Route Traffic Control Control Center (ARTCC), disrupting air traffic control for several hours and causing 566 flight delays, the report said. The problem stemmed from a “catastrophic failure” of an optical network ring that was supposed to offer built-in fault tolerance. The FAA was vulnerable to the same issues at Atlanta and in Jacksonville.

Another incident occurred on Nov. 9, 2007, when all primary and alternate FTI services were lost at Jacksonville, resulting in 85 flight delays. “We also found that when FTI outages occur, the services are not always restored within contractual timeframes,” the inspector general’s report said. In some cases, where services are supposed to be restored within three hours, Harris took twice as long to fix the problem. “Several areas remain critical watch items for decision makers as FAA moves forward with FTI,” the report said.

Others have been critical of the program as well. PASS, for instance, has in the past voiced concern over safety and efficiency issues related to FTI.

PASS spokeswoman Kori Blalock Keller said the FAA needs to hold Harris accountable for the problems. “If they are going to provide service, we need to make sure they are reliable and they are quick” to respond to outages, she said. Although several FAA technicians were on hand in Salt Lake City today, they couldn’t do much to help out because the FTI system is managed by Harris, she said.

According to Keller, the incident will likely prompt Congress to ask the FAA Inspector General for another review of the system. The National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) has also expressed frustration over FTI. After the failure in Memphis, the organization blasted the network as “unreliable [and] lacking suitable backup” and called it a source of “great frustration and deep concern” for FAA technicians and air traffic controllers. Bill Curtis chief scientist at CAST Software and co-author of the Capability Maturity Model used in software development today, said the outage highlights the havoc that can be created when something goes wrong in large, highly interconnected systems such as the FAA air traffic control system.

“It’s not just one system, but a system of systems,” he said. “If one of them starts behaving in a funny way, it starts propagating out and causes problems in other systems,” said Curtis.

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However, Google also made it clear that Chrome will not be able to replicate everything that other operating systems do. For example, Chrome OS will only run Web-hosted applications and its peripherals will have to comply with specific hardware reference designs. This means it will not even be able to run applications built for Google’s own Android mobile operating system.

As such, when the first Chrome OS netbooks hit the market at the end of 2010, Google expects them to be “companion” devices whose owners will also have conventional PCs in their houses.

“There are applications today that aren’t available on the Web. We’re really focused, as the use case for this device, that most people who buy this device next year, we expect them to have another machine [with a conventional operating system] at home,” said Sundar Pichai, vice president of Product Management at Google. “The goal of this device is for it to be a delightful experience for you to be on the Web. That’s the scenario we’re focusing on.”

“There will be some things this will not be able to do. If you’re a lawyer and are planning to spend your entire day editing contracts back and forth, this isn’t the right machine for you,” Pichai added at a press conference at Google’s Mountain View, Calif. headquarters that was webcast.

As such, it seems that the Linux-based Chrome OS will also require that end-users be very comfortable with cloud computing and its basic idea of keeping applications and their data stored in a vendor data center.

In exchange, Google is promising an operating system that it says will be exponentially faster at booting up and significantly more secure than conventional PC operating sytems like Microsoft’s Windows and Apple’s Mac OS.

Google is taking the right approach by narrowing the scope of the Chrome OS to netbook devices and Web applications, said Gartner analyst Ray Valdes. “It would be a mistake for Google to try to do a conventional operating system. That war was fought and won long ago, mostly,” Valdes said.

People who evaluate Chrome OS using the criteria commonly applied to conventional desktop OSes are missing the point. “Some people have been asking: ‘Can I run full-fledged Photoshop, or full-fledged Excel on Chrome OS?’ and ‘What about all the device drivers from all the vendors and the peripheral cards?’ These were never part of the mission,” Valdes said.

To succeed, Chrome OS will have to revitalize the netbook market, which has been slowing down as conventional laptops get cheaper and the line between these two types of devices gets blurred, Valdes said. It will also be critical for hardware vendors to make a genuine commitment to the Chrome OS, and not just use it as a bargaining chip to get better Windows license prices from Microsoft, he said.

In a demo, Google officials showed a Chrome OS device booting up in seven seconds, and said they hope to make that even faster. The Chrome OS interface will be Google’s Chrome browser and will be based on application tabs. Because Chrome OS doesn’t need the usual OS software to support local applications and processes, it can run much faster.

“We want Chrome OS to be blazingly fast. From the time you press ‘boot’, we want it to be like a TV,” Pichai said. “You turn it on, and you should be on the Web using your application.”

In addition to a faster boot up, Google is designing the Chrome OS to have a speedier performance in general by mapping it tightly to the Chrome browser and requiring unique hardware specifications.

Chrome OS’ simplicity claim begins with the familiarity of its browser-based interface, where every application is a Web app and there are no desktop-type programs, Pichai said. “The users don’t have to install programs, nor software, manage updates, nothing. It’s a Web app, it’s a link, it’s a URL,” he said.

If someone loses their Chrome OS netbook, they should be able to buy a new one, log in and access all their applications and data, as well as any personalized settings instantly, because it will all be cloud-based, Pichai said.

For security, Chrome OS places each application within what Google calls a “security sandbox,” stripping applications of the usual, broad access rights they have in conventional operating systems, and thus limiting their ability to do damage if compromised by malware. If Chrome OS detects a security problem, it has been designed to reboot itself to address the problem.

“Chrome OS runs completely inside the browser security model, which is very different from how traditional operating systems run today,” Pichai said.

Chrome OS devices will not support hard drives, only solid-state storage devices, and it will encrypt and synchronize data continuously between the computer and the cloud.

Other vendors will be able to take the Chrome OS, which is freely available as open-source software, and adapt it to work with other browsers if they choose, Pichai said.

“Call us dumb businessmen, but we’re really focused on user needs … and I think there is a real user need to be able to use computers easily,” said Google co-founder and President of Technology Sergey Brin.

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On your end, the best thing about Office 2010 Beta is that you can use it free-of-charge for nearly a year: The preview won’t expire until Oct. 31, 2010.

But what does our expert say? “Anyone interested in Office should get a copy of this beta,” wrote Preston Gralla in his first-take review. “It was solid and performed well without crashing once. I experienced none of the slowness that you sometimes do with betas.”

You can find out whether Gralla’s right by downloading the beta and giving Office 2010 a spin yourself. But where is it, how do you install it, what do you need to run it, and how do you get rid of it if it’s a can of worms?

Questions, questions, questions. Here are our answers.

When can I download the beta? That’s easy: Now. Microsoft rolled out the beta during a keynote at its Professional Developers Conference (PDC) mid-day Wednesday.

Where do I get it? The public download is available from the Microsoft site, on this page.

Office 2010, by the way, is the first Microsoft suite to be offered in both 32- and 64-bit versions. Choose the version that fits your operating system. You can check to see whether you have a 32-bit or 64-bit edition of Windows 7 by clicking the Start button, then clicking Control Panel and System Maintenance. Click System.

Follow the instructions here for checking Vista and XP.

Is Microsoft limiting who can download the beta, like it did with the Technical Preview, or the number of people who can have it? No, there is no numerical cap on the number of downloads for Office 2010.

It’s unclear whether Microsoft will set a time limit on Office 2010 Beta, as it did for Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) last summer. “I’m not sure if we have a specific plan to shut off availability at some point,” said Numoto. Microsoft does plan, however, on making sure “millions and millions” of users are able to download and try the preview, Numoto added.

What edition of Office 2010 is the beta? At the Nov. 18 debut, the version offered everyone was Office Professional Plus 2010, the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink collection.

That’s odd, even ironic, since Professional Plus is the feature-laden edition that will be available only to enterprises and organizations that purchase licenses in volume when the final ships next year. Professional Plus includes Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, OneNote, Access, Publisher, InfoPath, SharePoint Workspace — formerly called Groove — and Communicator.

Earlier on the Office 2010 Beta site, Microsoft had listed three different versions that would be made available to users: Professional Plus, and the to-be-sold-at-retail Office Home and Business, and Office Professional.

So, what happened to the other versions? Why aren’t they part of the beta? Microsoft’s Numoto said the company still plans to offer versions other than Professional, but wouldn’t say when. “We’ll make additional offerings after today,” he said Wednesday, getting only as specific as “fairly shortly.”

If Microsoft comes through on that promise, it will end up delivering three of the five editions of Office during the beta. A trio will be sold at retail — the low-end Office Home and Student, as well as Office Home and Business and Office Professional — while two Office Standard and Office Professional Plus, will be sold only to volume licensing customers.

How’s the Office 2010 download process going? Good — so far.

A few users yesterday posted messages on the beta’s support forum saying that they were unable to reach the download page, but it may have been a local issue, since most of those who complained said they were in Germany. We didn’t have any trouble accessing the site, retrieving a product key or grabbing the beta.

But the question was legitimate. Last month, a major snafu in the downloading of student discount copies of Windows 7 led hundreds to gripe that they were unable to install the new OS. And last January, when Microsoft launched the beta of Windows 7, a debacle forced Microsoft to restart the roll-out because of server overloads.

What do I need in order to install the beta? Microsoft has set the minimum requirements for the beta as a 500MHz or faster processor; 256MB or more of memory; 3GB of free hard drive space; and Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3), Windows Vista SP1, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008 SP2, or Windows 7.

Microsoft made it clear that you shouldn’t need to upgrade your hardware to run Office 2010, assuming you’re already running its predecessor. “You don’t need to replace hardware that is capable of running Office 2007; it will support Office 2010,” the company said in its own FAQ for the beta.

How big is the download? The 32-bit version weighs in at about 685MB, while the 64-bit version tips the scales at 750MB.

Do I need a product activation key? Yes. To use the Office 2010 beta beyond 30 days, you’ll need to activate it with the 25-character key that you’ll receive prior to starting the download. That key is valid only for the beta, and can’t be used to activate a copy of the final when that launches sometime in the first half of next year.

Hint: Print out the page that shows the key, as Microsoft suggests.

I’ve been running the Office 2010 Technical Preview. Can I upgrade that to the beta? No, says Microsoft.

In an e-mail sent to Technical Preview testers last week, Microsoft said they must uninstall that version before installing Office 2010 Beta.

We found that out the hard way when the beta repeatedly refused to install on an XP-based test system; it took several trips to the Add/Remove applet to scrub the Technical Preview from the PC, including one to uninstall the virtualization component that the earlier edition added when it was installed with Microsoft’s new “Click-To-Run” technology. More on Click-To-Run in a bit.

Can I upgrade my existing copy of Office to the beta? Yes, but you may not want to. When you install Office 2010 Beta, you can choose between and “Upgrade” or “Customize” options. The former upgrades your current version of Office, replacing it with Office 2010.

Down the road, however, when Office 2010 Beta expires, you’ll have to reinstall the earlier edition by digging up the installation CD. That’s a good reason to nix the upgrade idea.

Instead, you can choose the Customize option, which installs Office 2010 Beta alongside your existing version so you can use both. You’ll still need to reinstall one, possibly two, applications from your older edition once you stop using Office 2010 Beta, however.

What will I have to reinstall? Outlook, Office’s e-mail application, and SharePoint Workspace, formerly called Office Groove 2007, cannot coexist with previous versions on your computer. Microsoft says that you have to select one version of Outlook and SharePoint Workspace/Groove 2007 to install: You can’t run two copies of Outlook on the same PC, in other words.

What if I don’t see the Upgrade and Customize options when I install Office 2010 Beta? You sure you’re not hallucinating? Or, if you’re reading this post-launch, maybe a long time post-launch, that means Microsoft has managed to kick Click-To-Run into gear. When the beta’s delivered using that technology, you won’t have a choice: By design, Office 2010 Beta will install side-by-side with any existing version.

What’s this Click-To-Run you keep talking about? Click-To-Run is a new technology that Microsoft debuted in the Technical Preview that went out to a small group of testers in July. Essentially, it “streams” pieces of the suite as you begin a download, letting you start using the suite within minutes. While you work with the trial, the remainder of the code is downloaded in the background by Click-To-Run.

Microsoft has said it will use Click-To-Run to deliver free trials of Office 2010 when the final bits ship next year, and hinted earlier this month that it would use the technology to offer the beta of Office Home and Business 2010 this week. That didn’t happen.

“We’re working to make that available as soon as possible,” said Numoto, who declined to explain why Click-To-Run wasn’t being used immediately.

An interesting facet of Click-To-Run is that it not only speeds up the process of starting to use Office 2010, but also runs the application in a virtualized environment, separating it from the rest of Windows, and thus, other applications.

“This means that [users] have private copies of their files and settings, and that any changes they make are captured in the virtual environment,” said the Office 2010 engineering team in a blog post two weeks ago. “The effect is [Click-To-Run applications] don’t end up modifying any other software installed on the system. With few exceptions, only user data actually passes through the virtual environment to the local system.”

Click-to-Run adds a virtual drive to Windows, marked as the “Q:” drive.

According to Numoto, Click-To-Run will be used at some point to deliver the beta of Home and Business, the edition that includes Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint and OneNote.

What languages are supported? Microsoft has limited the beta to English, Chinese, French, German, Russian and Spanish. Japanese had been on Microsoft’s list as recently as last weekend, but by Wednesday, that version had vanished.

Does Microsoft provide support for Office 2010 Beta? Microsoft doesn’t do its usual technical support for pre-release software, so your only option is online. You can browse the support material on Office.com, or ask other beta testers for help in the user-to-user forums.

When does Office 2010 Beta expire? Halloween 2010.

Microsoft’s pretty adamant about that. In the end-user licensing agreement (EULA) that accompanies the beta, the company starkly says: “The software will stop running on 31/10/2010. You will not receive any other notice. You may not be able to access data used with the software when it stops running.”

No warning? Really? That’s not what Numoto said. “You do get warnings as the expiration date approaches,” he said in a follow-up e-mail message yesterday.

Do I get to try Microsoft’s online edition of Office? Yes and no.

In September, Microsoft launched an invite-only test of Office Web Apps, the name it slapped on its Google Docs competitor. But with Office 2010 Beta, the company’s opening three stripped-down Web-based programs — Word, Excel and PowerPoint — to the public.

Although enterprises will be able to test the full Office Web Apps — including OneNote Web App, which Microsoft only recently finished — by running them from a SharePoint 2010 server, consumers will have to wait. “We should have a full-featured beta [of Office Web Apps] for consumers early next calendar year,” said Numoto. “Until then, consumers will continue to get the Technical Preview of Office Web Apps.”

Microsoft has posted more information about deploying Office Web Apps on a beta of SharePoint 2010 in a blog post.

Will Microsoft release an updated preview before it ships the final version of Office 2010? No. “We’ll be going from beta to RTM,” said Numoto, referring to the “release-to-manufacturing” tag that Microsoft slaps on finished code.

There will not be a release candidate, or RC, preview of Office 2010, Numoto added.

How do I get rid of the beta if it’s junk? Get to Windows’ Control Panel and pick the uninstall applet. On XP, it’s called “Add or Remove Programs,” while Vista dubs it “Uninstall a Program.” Windows 7 hides it, though: Click “Programs” from the Control Panel, then “Programs and Features;” pick Office 2010 and click “Uninstall” at the top of the list.

You’ll have to reinstall your previous version of Office using the original media if you replaced it with the beta; even if you only added Office 2010 so that the two were side-by-side, you’ll have to reinstall the older edition of Outlook.

When will Office 2010 ship? No news there. Yesterday, Microsoft stuck to its vague timeline of the first half of next year. Nor will the company be announcing pricing for the various editions of the new suite until that release date gets closer.

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During its annual shareholders’ meeting, CEO Steve Ballmer also dismissed market share gains by Apple Inc.’s Mac computer to “a couple of tenths of a percent” and said that many young people would eventually outgrow their preference for Macs.

“Some of it is marketing, some of it is phase of life,” Ballmer said in response to a shareholder question about Microsoft’s poor perception among younger buyers. “The truth is we do quite well, even among college students.

“Windows 7 gives us a real opportunity to get back that audience,” he continued. “With the down economy, people understand that the Mac is a lot more expensive for essentially the same computer” as Windows 7.

NPD Group reported earlier this month that first-week retail sales of Windows 7 in North America were 234% higher than Vista’s were at launch. Those Windows 7 sales include pre-orders that Microsoft and partners began taking in June.

The Mac has been making strong market share gains for most of this decade, though that has been limited mostly to North American consumers. In the most recent third quarter, Apple’s unit shipments grew 6.8% year-over-year to give it 8.8% of the U.S. market, according to Gartner Inc. It ranks in fourth place, behind Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Acer Inc.

Ballmer said Microsoft plans to keep investing in Web search, the Windows Mobile operating system, and cutting-edge technologies, such as the Xbox’s in-air motion controller, Project Natal.

He defended the Windows Mobile OS from a questioner, saying it was a “small but important fact, that we have quite a bit more market share than Android. We have about 10%-12%, Android has 3%, iPhone about 20%, RIM 20%-25%, and Nokia about 45%.”

“It is a competitive game,” he continued. “We have a lot of opportunities to improve our products and market position.”

Addressing persistent rumors of a Microsoft-manufactured phone, such as a Zune Phone, Ballmer said, “We think we have the right strategy, which is to focus on the software, not build a phone, and offer a diversity of phones like we offer a diversity of Windows PCs.”

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A year and half after Microsoft released Surface, just 250 companies are developing applications for the touch system, Microsoft officials revealed during its Professional Developers Conference 2009 (PDC09) held here this week. Some 5,000 copies of its free Software Development Kit (SDK) for Surface have been downloaded, they added.

Compare that with the 100,000 iPhone SDKs that were downloaded in the four days after its launch on March 6, 2008.

Some observers question whether such a comparison is valid — deployment of the $12,500 to $15,000 Surface tabletop PC is limited mostly to hotels, health clinics, banks and other customer-facing businesses looking for a new spin on the computerized kiosk.

The Surface’s April 2008 launch came amid a massive economic downturn that still has businesses shy about investing in new technology, leading to a chicken-and-egg situation where developers are holding off developing Surface apps until the economy improves.

Brad Carpenter, general manager of Microsoft’s Surface team, said he remains patient. “For interest to scale out takes time,” he said in an interview at PDC this week. “There are more and more apps every day. So we feel like we are making progress.”

He pointed out that Microsoft now has 250 Surface partner companies, up from 180 six months ago and 60 a year ago. Similarly, the 5,000 SDK downloads is more than 3 times the 1,500 six months ago, and up sixteenfold from 300 a year ago.

To accelerate development of applications for Surface, Microsoft announced that the Surface SDK is now available without charge to all developers. The SDK was previously available free only to members of the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN).

Microsoft noted that the SDK includes a simulator that lets developers see how their programs would run on a conventional PC. It lets users plug in multiple USB mice to simulate how multi-touch technologies work.

The SDK runs on Vista today, but Microsoft said the next version will be based on Windows 7. With adequate hardware, Windows 7 offers multi-touch capabilities. Carpenter declined to say when the next version will be available.

Microsoft disclosed that it is also integrating the touch and object-recognition controls for Surface into the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) version 4. That version of the WPF graphics subsystem is due in 2010.

WPF support should help developers more easily create Surface-enabled apps, Carpenter said, as well as make Surface applications run similarly to Windows 7 touch-enabled software.

Carpenter said that the Surface is now available in 18 countries, including 16 in Europe. New customers include Hard Rock Cafe, Barclays Bank and mobile operator Vodafone, which has deployed Surfaces in 62 retail stores to provide customer service.

Surface’s stumbling blocks also continue to be its high price and bulkiness.

Microsoft is working on a less-expensive version of Surface which will likely be thinner and wall-mountable, like an LCD television, said Carpenter. The technical difficulty would be packing cameras behind the touchscreen to enable object recognition capabilities, as well as the PC hardware — an Intel Core 2 Duo processor mounted on a desktop motherboard. But, Carpenter said, “I definitely believe it’s do-able.”

However, when asked whether future Surface versions would enable in-air gestures like the Xbox 360’s Project Natal, Carpenter sounded less optimistic. “We are mostly focused on touch. In-air gestures is not something we are enabling yet,” he said.

Carpenter wouldn’t talk about the cost of new Surface versions, but did say a new version should be coming soon. “Our goal was to have a consumer version of the Surface in two to four years. We are on track for that,” he said.

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As first reported by ZDNet blogger Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft has kicked off a private beta of Office Starter 2010, the ad-supported edition that the company will offer computer makers in lieu of the ancient Microsoft Works, which has been discontinued.

Office Starter will include on-screen advertisements, the first desktop edition of Microsoft’s longstanding suite to do so. The ads will be limited to a space in the lower-right-hand of the applications’ windows.

Microsoft announced Office Starter 2010 more than a month ago, but said it would not be available to the public until the completed Office 2010 suite ships sometime in the first half of next year.

Office Starter will include reduced-functionality versions of Word and Excel, the suite’s word processor and spreadsheet, but will not be a time-limited trial. Microsoft hopes that customers will like what they see and pony up the money for the real deal, such as the entry-level Office Home and Student 2010 or the more expensive Office Home and Business 2010. Prices for Office 2010 have not been set, and last month Microsoft refused to say whether Office Starter users will receive a discount if they purchase a for-a-fee edition.

Today, Microsoft confirmed that it has launched a preview of Office Starter 2010 to what a company spokesman said was a “select group of users.”

Also included in the Starter beta, said the spokesman, is a new feature called “Office Starter to Go” that lets testers run Word Starter and Excel Starter from a USB flash drive. According to Foley, Office Starter to Go will run from the flash drive on Windows Vista and Windows 7 systems.

Microsoft also sent invitations to a larger group of testers for a preview of the “Click-To-Run” mechanism it plans to use to deliver some final editions of Office 2010 next year. In messages sent to people who had tested the Technical Preview of Office 2010 last summer, Microsoft urged them to try the Click-To-Run delivery.

Last weekend in an FAQ posted to its Web site, Microsoft hinted that it would offer the public a beta of Home and Business using Click-To-Run, but those plans have been put on hold, said Takeshi Numoto, the corporate vice president for Office, in an interview earlier this week. “We’re working to make that available as soon as possible,” said Numoto.

Click-To-Run is a new technology that Microsoft debuted in the Technical Preview that went out to testers last July. Essentially, it “streams” pieces of the suite as users begin a download, letting them start running the suite within minutes. It also runs Office 2010 in a virtualized environment, separating it from the rest of Windows and other applications.

Unlike the Office 2010 Beta that went live on Wednesday, the Click-To-Run version of Office 2010 Home and Business must be installed alongside existing versions of Office on the PC; it’s not possible to upgrade from Office 2003 or Office 2007 to the beta of 2010. Testers must also first uninstall the Technical Preview before installing the Click-To-Run edition of the beta.

The beta of Click-To-Run Office Home and Business 2010 includes Excel, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint and Word. Like the standard download of Office 2010 Beta, the version delivered via Click-To-Run expires Oct. 31, 2010.

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The ready-to-run Chrome OS has appeared on several peer-to-peer BitTorrent tracking sites, including Mininova.org and Pirate Bay. The Gdgt Web site has also posted a free download of the Chrome OS disk image. Users must create an account with the site to access the download.

The operating system, which Google bragged will be faster and more secure than rivals when it ships late next year, can be run in a virtual environment using a desktop application, such as those available from VMware or Sun Microsystems.

According to notes appended to several of the BitTorrent downloads, users compiled Chrome OS from the bits that Google publicly released as part of its move to take the operating system open source. Yesterday, Google also posted instructions on the Chromium Projects site for creating a build from the source code.

To run the Chrome OS build, users must launch a virtual machine client, such as VMware’s Workstation, or for the Mac, Fusion, then install Chrome in a new virtual machine. VMware offers free 30-day trials of both Workstation 7 and Fusion 3 on its site. The free VirtualBox, a Sun-hosted open-source virtual machine, does the trick as well, users said on the file-sharing sites.

VMware’s free VMPlayer also lets users try out Chrome OS.

Although Google didn’t provide directions on how to run Chrome OS in a virtual machine, several Web sites took up the slack with step-by-step installation guides. TechCrunch, for example, has published instructions that walk users through the process with VirtualBox.

Download traffic has been heavy on some of the Chrome OS builds. One of the files found via a search on Pirate Bay, for example, sported about nearly 3,000 “seeders,” the term for a computer that has a complete copy of the torrent file and is able to share it with others.

The posted files are large: A compressed version of a VMware-ready Chrome OS build tips the scales at 281MB.

While Microsoft has predictably pooh-poohed Chrome OS as nothing for it to worry about, some analysts have argued that Google’s entry into the operating system market marks the beginning of a “fight to the death” between the two technology giants.

Thursday, Google said that the first netbooks powered by Chrome OS won’t reach shelves until late in 2010.

Chrome OS, the operating system that Google released to open source yesterday, has been compiled and posted for download on several file-sharing sites, Internet searches showed today.

The ready-to-run Chrome OS has appeared on several peer-to-peer BitTorrent tracking sites, including Mininova.org and Pirate Bay. The Gdgt Web site has also posted a free download of the Chrome OS disk image. Users must create an account with the site to access the download.

The operating system, which Google bragged will be faster and more secure than rivals when it ships late next year, can be run in a virtual environment using a desktop application, such as those available from VMware or Sun Microsystems.

According to notes appended to several of the BitTorrent downloads, users compiled Chrome OS from the bits that Google publicly released as part of its move to take the operating system open source. Yesterday, Google also posted instructions on the Chromium Projects site for creating a build from the source code.

To run the Chrome OS build, users must launch a virtual machine client, such as VMware’s Workstation, or for the Mac, Fusion, then install Chrome in a new virtual machine. VMware offers free 30-day trials of both Workstation 7 and Fusion 3 on its site. The free VirtualBox, a Sun-hosted open-source virtual machine, does the trick as well, users said on the file-sharing sites.

VMware’s free VMPlayer also lets users try out Chrome OS.

Although Google didn’t provide directions on how to run Chrome OS in a virtual machine, several Web sites took up the slack with step-by-step installation guides. TechCrunch, for example, has published instructions that walk users through the process with VirtualBox.

Download traffic has been heavy on some of the Chrome OS builds. One of the files found via a search on Pirate Bay, for example, sported about nearly 3,000 “seeders,” the term for a computer that has a complete copy of the torrent file and is able to share it with others.

The posted files are large: A compressed version of a VMware-ready Chrome OS build tips the scales at 281MB.

While Microsoft has predictably pooh-poohed Chrome OS as nothing for it to worry about, some analysts have argued that Google’s entry into the operating system market marks the beginning of a “fight to the death” between the two technology giants.

Thursday, Google said that the first netbooks powered by Chrome OS won’t reach shelves until late in 2010.

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Von Tetzchner and company have already admitted to building an Opera incarnation for Steve Jobs’s mobile status symbol in the the Opera test lab, but after this story was mangled by the New York Times this fall, Von Tetzchner made it clear that the company had not submitted the browser to the iPhone App Store.

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“The App Store, now with over 100,000 applications available, is clearly a major differentiator for millions of iPhone and iPod touch customers around the world,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “The iPhone SDK created the first great platform for mobile applications and our customers are loving all of the amazing apps our developers are creating.”

“The App Store has forever changed the mobile gaming industry and continues to improve,” said Travis Boatman, vice president of Worldwide Studios, EA Mobile. “With a global reach of over 50 million iPhone and iPod touch users, the App Store has allowed us to develop high quality EA games that have been a huge success with customers.”

“With 10,000 downloads a day, worldwide customer response to our I Am T-Pain App has exceeded our wildest expectations,” said Jeff Smith, CEO of Smule. “The App Store has given us a unique opportunity to create and grow a very successful business, and we’re looking forward to an exciting future.”

Apple continues to improve search and discovery with new features including Genius for Apps, App Store Essentials selections, sub category listings and more valuable customer reviews. With the recently introduced iTunes® 9, it’s also now easier than ever to organize and sync your apps right in iTunes and they will automatically appear on your iPhone or iPod touch with the same layout.

The release of iPhone OS 3.0 this summer made over 100 new features available to iPhone and iPod touch users including Cut, Copy and Paste; MMS; landscape view for Mail, Text and Notes; stereo Bluetooth; shake to shuffle; parental controls; automatic login at Wi-Fi hot spots and Push Notifications. These new features have been incredibly popular with customers and there have already been more than two billion Push Notifications sent to apps available from the App Store. Additionally, the recently introduced In App Purchase feature for free apps means leading developers will now be able to offer customers the choice of buying content, subscriptions and digital services from directly inside their apps.