Here is a list of supported touchscreen technologies:

* ADS7846/TSC2046 and ADS7843 based touchscreens
* AD7877 based touchscreens
* AD7879 based touchscreens: AD7879-1 I2C Interface
* AD7879 based touchscreens: AD7879 SPI Interface
* Compaq iPAQ H3600 (Bitsy) touchscreen
* SharpSL (Corgi and Spitz series) touchscreen driver
* Touchscreen support for Dialog Semiconductor DA9034
* EETI touchscreen panel support
* Fujitsu serial touchscreen
* Gunze AHL-51S touchscreen
* Elo serial touchscreens
* Wacom W8001 penabled serial touchscreen
* MELFAS MCS-5000 touchscreen
* MicroTouch serial touchscreens
* iNexio serial touchscreens
* ICS MicroClock MK712 touchscreen
* HP Jornada 6xx touchscreen
* HP Jornada 7xx touchscreen
* HTC Shift X9500 touchscreen
* Penmount serial touchscreen
* Renesas MIGO-R touchscreen
* Touchright serial touchscreen
* Touchwin serial touchscreen
* Atmel Touchscreen Interface
* Philips UCB1400 touchscreen
* Support for WM97xx AC97 touchscreen controllers
* WM9705 Touchscreen interface support
* WM9712 Touchscreen interface support
* WM9713 Touchscreen interface support
* WM97xx Atmel accelerated touch
* WM97xx Mainstone/Palm accelerated touch
* Zylonite accelerated touch
* USB Touchscreen Driver
o eGalax Touchkit USB (also includes eTurboTouch CT-410/510/700)
o PanJit TouchSet USB
o 3M MicroTouch USB (EX II series)
o ITM
o Some other eTurboTouch
o Gunze AHL61
o DMC TSC-10/25
o IRTOUCHSYSTEMS/UNITOP
o IdealTEK URTC1000
o GoTop Super_Q2/GogoPen/PenPower tablets
o JASTEC USB Touch Controller/DigiTech DTR-02U
* Sahara TouchIT-213 touchscreen
* TSC2007 based touchscreens
* W90P910 touchscreen driver
* Motorola PCAP touchscreen

The next release, MeeGo v1.1 is planned for October and will include touch support. The MeeGo API has also been released that includes Qt 4.6. If you want to give MeeGo v1.0 a whirl on your netbook you can download it here.

Unity will be the desktop environment for Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook Edition that is expected to be released in October 2010. Unity is designed for netbooks and touch devices and will include a new panel and app launcher.

Via Mark Shuttleworth.

“We thought [smartbooks] would be launched by now, but they’re not. We’ve seen things like Adobe slip — we’d originally scheduled for something like 2009,” said Drew. “Our target is mostly internet machines — it becomes sort of a requirement that they run the internet. [The delay in optimising] Flash has stalled it”.

It seems that manufacturers are also cautious on smartbooks given the low-take-up of Linux-based netbooks and the current fever-pitch around tablet devices. Some manufacturers who were planning smartbook devices are now looking at tablets instead.

Arm chips cannot support x86 applications (like Windows), therefore some are concerned on how well smartbooks would be received. “Some of it is also related to there not being many Linux [netbooks] out there either. We’ve only got Linux. If you look at forecasts for Linux netbook sales last year, not as many were sold,” said Drew.

Drew remains optimistic on the smartbook category and believes that they are now in a stronger position than they were two years ago. “I am disappointed that you can’t go down to PC World and buy a smartbook at the moment, but I’m convinced something will happen,” Drew said.

Via ZDNet.

Netbook owners will be glad to hear that UNE benefits from faster SSD boot speeds as well as faster suspend/resume time that should help battery life. It is available to download right now here.

On the conference call yesterday, HP’s Todd Bradley said “between smartphones, slates, and potentially netbooks, there are a lot of opportunities here.” HP is obviously testing a number of different form-factors and OSes at the moment including the Compaq AirLife that sports Android and the HP Slate. Whilst there’s nothing definitive right now, we look forward to see exactly what could come of this deal.

Via Engadget.

Current Linux netbook owners will be disappointed to hear that a downloadable update is not available. The software is only available to OEM partners, so hopefully we’ll see some standalone Linux netbooks fully embracing this latest update in the future.

Via Electronista.

The netbook demo shows MeeGo looking to be remarkably similar to Moblin. There are different sections to the screen including integrated social networking as well as full compatibility with Intel’s AppUp store. Check out the demos after the jump.

Via Engadget.

Included in the list are netbook heavyweights Acer and Asus and highlights that we may see dedicated MeeGo netbooks at some point in the future. Acer’s Jim Wong, senior corporate vice president and president of IT Products Global Operations said: “Acer was an enthusiastic adopter of Moblin and we’re excited about Moblin’s evolution into the MeeGo software platform. We’re looking forward to ecosystem innovation that will be enabled by the open nature of MeeGo.”

Asus’ S.Y. Shian, vice president and general manager of Notebook Business Unit, said: “MeeGo is an exciting new software platform and gives customers mobile computing solutions based on Intel Atom processors which offer innovations for the user experience. As the netbook market grows, Asus is continually exploring offerings that optimize this computing experience and address the specific needs of today’s netbook customers.”

Asus ExpressGate is basically a rebranded version of Splashtop that took around 20 seconds to boot. For those wondering why it wasn’t faster, it is because there are two versions of Splashtop. The one normally found on notebooks and desktops uses 512MB of Flash memory and takes around 5 seconds to boot. The other uses the hard disk partition (as in the netbook) that means it’s slower. Check out the video after the jump.

Via Netbook Italia.

Thanks Marco!