You go MeeGo today?

The headline is not an April Fool's joke.

It's all true. MeeGo, the Nokia-Intel effort to turn Nokia's cellphone code into a real smartphone by merging it with Intel's Moblin project, is now out with code.

Go ahead. Download it.

Then you can put it on a USB stick, boot that stick on your current development PC, and go to town.

For those with really short memories, the kind that can't even remember the second President Bush (let alone the first) Nokia was a dominant player in mobile technology before the iPhone came out or the Android was a gleam in Google's eye.

The hope is it can be again, and there is reason for optimism. (No, I haven't gotten into the pickled herring again.)

The MeeGo infrastructure starts with a Linux kernel and offers a common core for netbooks, for handheld devices like phones, for systems that go inside cars, even for Internet-connected TV. One architecture to run them all.

The new system combines the open source street cred of Moblin with Intel's Atom-based architecture, but it also supports ARM and a an Atom-based handset model dubbed Moorestown.

That's what the illustration at the top of this piece is saying, in a sort of Pokemon-ish way. The heart on the left runs all those things on the right.

You may well ask whether, with all the excitement concerning Android and sales of the iPhone, there remains much developer oxygen with which to power that heart. Had Nokia moved on this front earlier, perhaps the Android would not have even emerged, but that's water under the bridge.

Some really big companies, and a really cool foundation, are betting there is enough oxygen. They're as serious as a heart attack about this. They're placing a big bet here.

Care to join them?