Want to learn about networking without hours and hours of reading or spending money on a college class? Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte have been doing a series of podcasts that could give you a good starting point for your networking education.

It's 2006. Apple is now using Intel hardware for some of its notebooks. Microsoft is using PowerPC chips for its gaming consoles. Google has found a way to be pro-privacy as well as pro-censorship all in the span of about a week. With so many changes in the last few months effecting the entire industry, I'm surprised to still scratching my head over the pitiful performance of consumer-grade networking hardware.

If you are a web designer, host, or developer and haven't seen Ping! Zine, it may be the magazine you've been waiting for! Every issue features news and opinions from leaders in the online industry. Until recently, Ping! was available through subscription only but due to popular demand they are now releasing new issues online.

If you didn't make the trip to Ontario for last weekend's Portable Media Expo & Podcasting Conference, you might have been disappointed to find none of the sessions available online. Before you get too upset with the strange lack of a podcast at a podcasting conference, it turns out that they are releasing audio from several of the keynote speakers and will be releasing more soon.

One of the few places where the FCC and geeks seem to find common ground is the proliferation of Internet-based phone services. Unfortunately, issues with 911 services on VOIP phones have continued to be a problem but the FCC has said it will not cut off users lacking "enhanced" 911 services.

In 2003, AOL founder Steve Case backed out of his role as chairman. Now he's putting even more distance between himself and the merger that once seemed like a good idea.

Rumors about Apple's future moves don't die easily. Just consider how long rumors of the headless Mac, the flash-based iPod, and the x86 edition of MacOS have been around. That said, two of those already ended up being true and Michael Dell wants to be first in line for the third.

Michael Dell would say little in the way of specific hopes but did mention that "if Apple decides to open the MacOS to others, we would be happy to offer it to our customers," in an email to David Kirkpatrick of Fortune.

Microsoft's latest attempt to reconcile with the European Commission's antitrust rulings against the company may result in another victim. It seems their offer, if accepted, will strike a considerable blow at a leading competitor in the realm of file and printer sharing.

The popular open source suite Samba stands to be the recipient of a backhanded slap from Redmond if the offer stands and the European branch of the Free Software Foundation is taking it personally. Though Microsoft is offering to make some information regarding interoperability available to competitors, it's only under the condition that implementations are not open source. According to FSFE president Georg Greve, "the proposal specifically precludes the information from being used in a free software implementation, such as the Samba workgroup server software."

Is Time Warner ready to ditch perennial loser AOL? The message is a mixed one thus far, which must have AOL apologists feeling a big shaky.

Four years ago, AOL was still a fairly hot commodity. So hot, in fact, that Time Warner was willing to shell out $124 billion for it. In the time since, the world's largest media company hasn't gotten around to paying dividends but announced on Friday that it will begin paying out regular quarterly dividends. Those dividends will total around $230 million per quarter.