The news beat: An update to the GNOME Linux desktop brings with it user-friendly features, such as VoIP and smoother window stacking. Microsoft catches more heat from rivals for not disclosing interoperability information for Office, and Michael Lehman is once again Sun’s CFO. Best of the blogs: Bob Lewis shares advice on what to do when the CEO departs and in SMB IT, Oliver Rist looks at SonicWall’s CDP for SMB. Quoteworthy: The RIM v. NTP patent case has been hanging fire for so long that it’s easy to lose sight of what it means in the big picture. Quite simply, a company that invented a truly innovative device and its customers are being held hostage by some invalid patents and a few legal sharks who know how to exploit our intellectual property system. And what that means obviously is that something is very, very wrong with this picture. — Ed Foster, in The patently absurd BlackBerry case. Special report: In untangling business process management, we look at the ABC’s of BPM, how one company built a workflow for insurance reps, and a case study in which an employee screening company taps the power of BPM for sourcing and distributing information. Technology Industry