Thanks to a heads-up from my friend Leo, TechCrunch has some details regarding a new operating system in the works called Jolicloud.  The OS looks very polished and could easily blow away the competition in terms of visual appeal and usability.

From their website:

We love netbooks: they are cheap, compact, light and always connected via 3G.  What we didn’t like so much was the user experience so we decided to build our own.  We used Linux and made it boot faster and we optimized it for surf and cloud computing. We redesigned the interface and integrated some cool stuff.  This is how the jolicloud project started. The next step is to let you try it out and have your opinion so together we can build the best netbook experience.

Despite their name containing the word “cloud” it does not appear as if it is Cloud based.  They have only released one screenshot, however they have a Flickr page where they will release more as they get closer to their official release.  At this point it does not appear as if they have any deals in progress to get it pre-installed on Netbooks and will just be releasing it for download.

If you are interested in signing up to beta test Jolicloud you can go to their site and select the “Keep me informed” button and they will let you know when the beta is open.

Check It Out> TechCrunch, Jolicloud, Jolicloud Flickr