News Roundup - HTML to be Rolling Release, GDAL 1.8, More Kinect Fun

It’s been a slow month for GIS news, so I’m going to bullet point this one:

• Just when people were starting to get used to the idea of HTML5, the W3C announced they're dropping the 5. That's right - the HTML spec is becoming a rolling release. There was a lot more controversy about this decision than I thought there would be. It more accurately reflects how browsers actually implement the specs, and it should help things advance at a faster pace.
• Microsoft has released WebMatrix, a free web development tool designed for the novice. It comes with SQL Server Compact and "integrates" with a lot of open source projects, like Wordpress and Drupal. It also uses ASP.NET Razor, which I haven't tried but is supposed to be a lot better than the horror that is standard ASP.NET templating. I haven't tried WebMatrix - I'm very happy with Komodo Edit at the moment - but early reviews aren't bad (I haven't seen anybody call it Frontpage 2010). You can download it here.
• As reported by slashgeo, GDAL/OGR 1.8 has been released. The big new stuff includes drivers for ArcObjects based databases (think SDE and personal/file geodatabases), SQL Server Spatial, and WFS.
• The TIOBE Programming Index has awarded Python the Programming Language Award of 2010, indicating that it gained the most market share in 2010. The ratings are calculated via search engine results.
• And finally, via Slashdot, somebody took a Kinect, a laptop, and a Nexus One and used them to create 3D point clouds while driving. The code is out on GitHub. Every time I start to regard myself as rather clever, a trip to my RSS reader for stories like this quickly dissuade me of the notion.