In part III today, we focus on the desk accessory, popularly known as the widget, applet, mini-app, gadget, or whatever the fashionable term is these days.

"XUL Explorer is a XULRunner application that provides an easy way to experiment with XUL. It’s a simple editor that can preview XUL inline or in a separate popup window. It has a list of code snippets (small fragments of XUL or JavaScript) that can be quickly inserted into the editor. The XUL can be loaded from and saved to files.

Autodesk recently announced plans to donate its coordinate system (CS) and map projection technology to the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo).

The only problem is that it's really more of a Google network PC that could easily be run on hardware that costs significantly less than $199.

In a recent article on Desktoplinux.com, Kevin Carmony, former CEO of Linspire, reported that he has switched to Ubuntu. In the same article he also said that as Linux becomes more mainstream there would be a consolidation of Linux on the desktop. By this, I presume he meant that only a few of the big Linux distributors would be vying for the desktop space through OEM deals.

As component prices drop, the aggressive pricing of commercial Linux notebooks could hamper efforts by One Laptop Per Child to supply inexpensive laptops to children in developing markets.

Give One Get One initiative. T-Mobile is offering one year of complimentary T-Mobile HotSpot access to people who donate an XO laptop to a child in a developing country through the campaign.

the project exemplified the soul of open development, the creators said, by borrowing work from the open source community, adding its own improvements, and then giving it back.