In an environment predicated upon all users updating as frequently as possible, social microblog Twitter has revealed its hamartia: that it can absolutely not sustain downtime.

Granted, the service experienced numerous outages in the course of two weeks -- to say nothing of the past few months -- but in combing through the Twitter support forum under the heading "May 20: Twitter Downtime," it becomes apparent that every time the site experiences a service disruption, users are left stranded.

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Like Nintendo doling out classic games on the Wii Virtual Console, CBS Home Entertainment has opened up its vault and pulled out some classic shows to be viewed freely on CBS.com and on its partnering CBS Audience Network sites.

Starting today, clips and full episodes of The Love Boat, Beverly Hills 90210, Twin Peaks, Family Ties, and Perry Mason will be available on over 300 participating CBS Audience Network sites. Partners include the recently-acquired CNET and its related subsidiaries, AOL, Microsoft, Comcast, Joost, Sling Media, Veoh, and Bebo.

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Developers of the Linux OS, Apache Web server, and about 250 other different open source projects have removed more than 8,500 individual bugs from their code over the past two years, according to a study released this week.

Linux developers, according to the Scan Report on Open Source Software 2008, accomplished this feat using a scanning Web site developed by Coverity, Inc. with support from the US Dept. of Homeland Security. In this expansive study, researchers reported a 16% reduction in static analysis density since 2006, among many other findings.

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A number of Sprint mobile broadband users have shown their disgust over an internal memo that indicated the company has placed a cap on its mobile broadband service.

In an e-mail and phone correspondence with BetaNews, Sprint officials discussed the reasoning behind its decision to implement a 5 GB per month overall use cap, and 300 MB per month for off-network roaming.

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Now that One Laptop Per Child has unveiled the Windows XP edition of its XO laptop, a top official of the nonprofit group is leaving to form an organization that will extend the reach of the OLPC's original Linux-based platform, Sugar.

Walter Bender, who served as OLPC's president of software and content, will now help to set up the Sugar Labs Foundation, and so will many core Sugar developers.

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Research firm Gartner says that SMS continues to increase in usage, however the increasing prevalence of IM clients on phones is shifting that balance.

Some 2.3 trillion messages will be sent worldwide during this year, a 19.6 percent increase over the year previous. However, at the same time revenues have leveled off due to increased competition.

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Download Hyper-V RC1 for Windows Server 2008 x86 from BetaNews FileForum now.

Microsoft's ambitious, if somewhat reduced, goals of making hardware-supported virtualization a common feature of Windows Server, are one small step closer to fruition this afternoon.

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After selling more than one million Palm Centro smartphones in the United States, Palm announced its lowest-priced smartphone will finally be available to Australia Telstra pre-paid customers starting on May 26.

Available to the US users on the AT&T or Sprint networks, with rumors of a Verizon Wireless version in the works, the Centro features a full QWERTY keyboard, 320x320 pixel touch screen, 1.3 megapixel camera, and Bluetooth technology. On the software side, the phone is powered by Palm OS 5.4.9, has easy access to Yahoo and Gmail, a built-in Google Maps application, and integrated photo and video sharing software.

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Testing in public beta, BBC's Sound Index determines a music artist's popularity based on what people are blogging about, listening to, watching, and downloading, with updates every six hours.

The Sound Index crawlers comb through data from partner sites Bebo, MySpace, Last.FM, iTunes, Google, and YouTube, tallying the most blog mentions, comments, plays, downloads, profile views, and search queries associated with an artist, and ranking them among the top 1,000 most popular.

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Terrorism may be unpopular, but speaking one's mind about the subject is free speech: That's the basis of a response this morning to one prominent US senator's call for YouTube to remove terrorist-oriented videos.

"While we respect and understand his views, YouTube encourages free speech and defends everyone's right to express unpopular points of view," answered the YouTube Team, after Google, the company that owns YouTube, received a letter from US Senator Joseph Lieberman (I - Conn.) asking for removal of all videos on YouTube produced by terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda.

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In personal computers retailing over $1,000, Apple's Mac products comprised two-thirds of all that were sold during the first quarter, research group NPD says.

This number is up from 57 percent in January of 2007, and 18 percent in 2006.

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As international languages are added to Microsoft's ongoing Office Live Workspace beta for users of Office 2007 for Windows, the seams are starting to get ironed out between the online and physical worlds -- most of them, anyway.

Following up on last March's general release of the first beta edition of Office Live Workspace to the general public, Microsoft is making available French, German, and Spanish language editions available for free testers. OLW -- and let's hope the name stays the same for awhile -- is the company's extension of Office 2007, adding the capability for users anywhere to save Office documents directly from their Office applications to an online storage location on Microsoft's servers.

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Microsoft seems to be fighting a losing public relations battle for Vista, as companies continue to criticize the latest Windows operating system.

In an interview with InformationWeek, Symantec's chief operating officer Enrique Salem said his customers in the enterprise sector are sticking with the older operating system.

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Search giant Google has launched in beta a site that allows users to organize their health records online.

The service is much like similar offerings from providers such as Revolution Health. Users can gather their health records from doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies, as well as use the site to track the latest information on health issues.

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EA DICE announced early this year that it would be releasing a free, ad-subsidized version of its Battlefield franchise by summer. Sign-ups for the beta of this upcoming game have opened.

Battlefield: Heroes has drawn a lot of comparison to Team Fortress, taking what would otherwise be a serious game, and turning up the cartoon factor. The result is like if Pixar did a version of "The Longest Day." The story is ridiculous, and the characters are over-the-top.

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