Google has now splashed into the social networking pond (hmm, ocean really) with its OpenSocial initiative. OpenSocial joins the set of free tools from Google that software developers can use to embed functionality in their web sites. Unlike other Google tools, OpenSocial doesn’t open up things Google like its Maps or News. Instead, the goal is to allow developers to get at social networking information that more and more of us have up on sites like myspace or Linkedin.  

As reported in the New York Times, for $200, you can now buy a cool Linux-based personal computer with a well-designed suite of software right there on your desktop.

Sound like the one laptop per child program? It could be, and I liked the one of those I got to try out at a recent Ethos Roundtable meeting.  

Global battles over computer technology’s future have spread from the server world to your desktop. It’s not just about whether your web site runs on Windows or Linux, it’s about how you will do your work day in and day out. And this new battle is not a two-way, but a three-way confrontation. The competition for the desktop will come to affect how we think about software and daily office work generally.