OStatic

April is fast approaching, and that can mean only one thing -- the jackalopes have returned from wherever it is that jackalopes overwinter, and they're making their way to mirrors and torrents near you. The alpha stage of the Jaunty Jackalope (Ubuntu 9.04) release is now behind us, and the first beta version was sighted on mirrors worldwide just moments ago.

While the world won't see the official Jackalope release until April 23rd, the Ubuntu team invites any interested in Jackalope (bug) hunting to download the beta version and join the party.

One of the goals put forth for Ubuntu's Jaunty Jackalope at the last Developer Summit, the development of a unified, hands-off notification display, has finally made an appearance in the testing release, according to Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth.

The new notification display is designed to behave similarly regardless of desktop environment, and deliver notifications in an non-intrusive manner. An overview of what Shuttleworth calls attention-management guidelines is outlined on the Ubuntu wiki, describing how to design notifications that get the user's attention, inform, and then effortlessly get out of the way.

The development team working in this area is aware of at least 35 applications that need extra attention to work well with the new system, and its current focus is to address these issues and identify other applications with similar quirks.

Foxmarks syncs bookmarks in Safari, Internet Explorer. The Foxmarks browser synchronization platform now works with proprietary browsers. It's always been a hit with mobile users.

Chrome getting faster JavaScript. Chrome developers have swapped a built-in third-party software package in favor of their own as part of a browser speedup.

Google just added 1.5 million books to your phone. Google has 1.5 million public domain titles scanned and digitized in a small-screen format.

Marten Mickos, Sun's SVP of databases, to leave in a reorg. This follows the resignation of MySQL co-founder Monty Widenius, and a big quarter for MySQL.

Does Microsoft subvert the virtualization space to harm Red Hat? BoycottNovell looks into allegedly suspicious partnerships and revenue sharing.

Facebook joins OpenID. Facebook has joined the board of the OpenID Foundation and will host an OpenID Design Summit.

If you were unable to attend (or follow along with) the events at the Ubuntu Developer Summit, the highlights and more controversial proposals are now being discussed in the wider community.

One proposal for Ubuntu's Jaunty release was to unify notification display and interaction between GNOME and KDE. It's an idea that's been met with nearly every reaction imaginable, but Mark Shuttleworth has a very reassuring post on his blog that explains some of the reasoning behind this proposal.