Week in Review: IE6 woes continue

Calls to kill of IE6

This week kicked off with the Department of Health asking NHS staff to stop using the troubled Internet Explorer 6, after a host of security concerns hit the aged Microsoft browser.

The warning was despite the UK government so far refusing to follow the lead of France and Germany and recommend departments upgrade.

After another flaw was uncovered this week - what, did no one bother to look at the thing any other time in the last nine years? - one web developer started an e-petition demanding the government take action. Find out why he did so in our interview with Dan Frydman here.

Microsoft issued its bulletin for next week's Patch Tuesday, but the latest flaw isn't set to be fixed so quickly, so expect an out-of-band patch in the next few weeks.

Tablet talk

Apple and Adobe continued quarreling over the lack of Flash on the iPhone and iPad, slinging blame like a pair of whingeing spoiled children this week. Who cares whose fault it is? Just sort it out, or we're buying Google, be it Android or Chrome.

And just when we started having such unloyal thoughts, mock-ups of a Google Chrome tablet emerged - check out the photos here.

Not sure you want either Google or Apple? Don't worry - the advent of the iPad should kick off more development in the space. And all the new models likely won't look like flattened out phones, either.

Best of the rest...

It's not often we get to discuss poetry on the platform that is IT PRO, but thanks to departing Sun chief Jonathan Schwartz we get to consider his goodbye message, tweeted in Haiku form on his last day.

Symbian went fully open source, as Nokia looks to compete with rivals Apple and Google, while the OFT is looking into the T-mobile/Orange merger.

And a new report suggests spending too much time online can make us all depressed... so go get some fresh air, or something.