Just a few weeks before the big Ubuntu 7.04 final release comes the first beta. It is an exciting time because this is another big milestone in the open source Linux world.

Here is your week in review with Sunday's Summary! If you missed something, check it out.

It’s here! People were wondering where Mozilla’s next milestone was for Firefox 3 and it has finally come. This release, like other Alphas, are geared towards developers and don’t really include much that casual users would find exciting. Here’s what’s new according to the release notes:

There are many different services that will help you monitor the traffic coming to your site.  Probably one of the most well-known services is Google Analytics which provides a wealth of information so that publishers know everything they need to know about their traffic.  Another service that we recently started using in addition to Google Analytics is called 103bees. If you have a blog, you’ll definitely want to try it out. What’s special about 103bees is that it focuses specifically on the search traffic that’s coming to your blog.

All sites that mention Apple’s next big operating system release, called Leopard, say that the release will be late April or early May. DigiTimes is going against what the rest of the Internet is speculating by saying that the release date will be in October of 2007.

Keyboard shortcuts help perform tasks faster than normal, but one thing always seemed to be missing from my Gmail Inbox. I have always wanted a keyboard shortcut to delete email messages in Gmail and it looks like Digital Inspiration has found one.

It’s pretty well known now that Bill Gates is the World’s richest man, and at the same time, a Harvard dropout. Now Bill will finally get that Harvard degree he started way back in 1973 (and gave up a fear years later as a Junior).

We saw the pictures and mock ups of a Google phone, and people speculated on features that it might have. Now analysts are saying that there’s no secret Google phone in the works. Instead, Google is working on software for mobile phones, and location finding services to work with the iPhone.

In February, MSN Soapbox flipped the switch from private beta to public beta, giving everyone the opportunity to try it out and become loyal users.  It was introduced last September as Microsoft’s version of video sharing, however complaints followed that it was missing important elements that other services offer.

Last week Microsoft released a Windows Update for Vista users to help address some of the application compatibility issues. I haven’t had a bad experience with compatibility lately because many of the programs I use have all been updated.

What would happen if different airlines had different operating systems running them? Maybe something like this…

Mozilla just launched their new Add-ons site (as mentioned in our release calendar located in the sidebar), and the biggest improvements are all in the layout and design.

Zoho’s list of products and tools continues to get longer, and today they just added another to the list. It’s called Zoho Meeting, and it will help you meet online with co-workers or friends as a web conferencing application.

According to Symantec’s annual Internet Security Report, Windows is not only doing well in terms of security, it’s actually doing better than competitors when it comes to the most widely-used operating systems.

You can start preparing yourself to boogie like a fool with a new game sure to get you moving with your Wii called Boogie. I know there are lots of Wii fans hanging out here who like the active games that keep you moving, whether its sports or any other kind of movement.

This isn’t quite as cool as what we’ve come to know (and love) in Linux with XGL, but it is definitely a step in the right direction. Yod’m (Download Mirror)stands for Yet anOther Desktop Manager and is a new virtual desktop manager that’s available for Windows users.

Somehow, Best Buy managed to persuade Apple into giving them two weeks of the Apple TV all to themselves! As we mentioned yesterday, Apple TVs just started shipping. The deal that Best Buy formed with Apple gives them two weeks to sell the unit before any other retailer (other than the Apple store of course)!

We’ve known for about a week that Yahoo! Widget Engine 4 was going to be released this morning, and anyone following our release calendar in the sidebar would have also known that. I remember back when Yahoo! acquired the widget engine and it was still called Konfabulator.

News Corp and NBC are said to be teaming up to take on YouTube, and they’re expected to make an official announcement soon. If rumors are right, the new site could launch this Summer.

Google Gadgets have been around for several years now and number in the thousands (more than 4,400 at the time of this writing). Windows Vista, on the other hand, is still pretty new and the selection of gadgets is slowly making progress with just over 1,100 currently available.