Software

For anyone unfamiliar with the product, Crossover Office is a highly polished, commercialized version of Wine. It's main claim to fame is support for running Microsoft Office applications under Linux, but it also supports many additional applications, a very nice front-end and configuration program, and great integration between Linux and Windows apps.

Version 2.0 is an important release because it fixes numerous issues with glibc-2.3, as well as Xfree 4.3. In addition it adds support for Office XP and Photoshop 7, as well as enhanced support for existing Office Apps, Viso, Quicken, and Lotus Notes.

While using FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) is always encouraged, it's an unfortunately fact that some Windows applications will still need to be used. If this is the case for you, then give Crossover Office 2.0 a try. Evaluation copies are available.

Here's a link to the main application page, as well as the change log for what's new in the version.

6 years ago, Microsoft agreed to invest $150 million in Apple, as well as continue to develop Microsoft Office for the Mac platform. That agreement ended last year, has not been renewed, and doesn't seem likely to be renewed at this point.

On top of this, Apple has been developing and recently announced its own web browser, Safari, and its own presentation software, Keynote, which, compete directly with Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Powerpoint.

A recent article on OSopinion discusses these events, what they might mean for Apple, and speculates where it may be heading. An interesting read.

Full story:
http://www.osopinion.com/perl/story/21256.html

"After months of discussion and further months of legal investigation, we're finally comfortable moving forward with new names. The new name for the Phoenix browser is 'Firebird'. The documentation and product strings will be updated soon. In addition to securing Firebird, we've also got the OK from those contributing legal resources to use the name 'Thunderbird' for a mail client. Hopefully this will be the end of naming legal issues for a while."

Phoenix/Firebird home page
Minotaur/Thunderbird home page

I can't really see what good this would do, but interesting and noteworthy nonetheless. Here's the full story:

http://news.com.com/2100-1042-996532.html

The really funny thing is that Apple's stock took an 8% dip after this was announced. Also, a later article on this subject (can't remember the source) reported that Microsoft was also showing more than a passive interest in purchasing Universal Music. Interesting times...

We already know that, despite a few remaining problems, Mozilla is the best web browser available (well, we enlightened folk anyway ;-) ), but here's another very cool feature - debugging web sites.

I've messed with this capability a couple times in the past, just to see what exactly it does, but I never did anything more than just skim over the surface of it. Well, I recently came accross this site, which gives a VERY thorough tutorial and using the debugging and development capabilities of Mozilla to their fullest extent. It's most definitely worth reading for anyone that develops web pages.

The tutorial can be found ere:
http://gemal.dk/mozilla/mozdev.html

According to this osnews article, gobeProductive is going to be released under the gpl. gobeProductive is an office suite that is multiplatform... so here is another option for Linux and Windows users.

Read the article here

OpenOffice 1.1 Beta is now available for download.

For those unfamiliar with it, OpenOffice is a free, open-source, cross-platform (Linux, Windows, Solaris, and Mac OSX) office suite. I've been using it pretty exclusively for a while now, and it's quite capable. It does have a few rough spots (as of 1.0.2 - I haven't tried this new beta yet), but it can definitely replace other well-known expensive and proprietary office suites. Check it out.

Both of these have been posted to Slashdot already, but it's worth mentioning here as well.

First of all, Mozilla 1.4a has been released. See the Release Notes for more information.

Second, it seems the Mozilla organization is making a radical change of direction with their latest development roadmap update. The two major highlights:

• Mozilla is dropping the integrated Mozilla suite after 1.4, and instead releasing a componentized Mozilla based on the Phoenix web browser and the Minotaur mail client
• More focused development and refinement of the Gecko rendering engine

Most fans of the Mozilla web browser suite are probably aware of Phoenix, the lightweight, cross-platform browser heavily based on Mozilla's code. Phoenix supports the same web standards as Mozilla, but it has a much smaller memory footprint due to it's stripped-down codebase, lack of integrated mail client, etc.

Well, here's more good news for speed-happy or low-end hardware users - Minotaur. Designed with the same goals as Phoenix, this will be a lightweight, cross-platform mail client based heavily on the Mozilla Mail code. You can read additional details in this usenet post, or on the project homepage.

I just want to also say that, although I personally prefer the standard Mozilla suite, this is a good thing. Older machines especially will benefit from this, as well as anyone that's put-off by Mozilla's sometimes long startup times (due to the fact that, unlike another web browser, it's not loaded as part of the OS).

This is a late announcement here, but phpMap 0.1 was released a couple weeks ago. Why am I announcing it here? Becuase it's my project! What does it do? It's an online, php-based map program. Right now it's still in very basic form (it only allows image zooming and navigation), but in the future it will also include location recognition, database tie-ins to retreive additional information, location pinpointing, a menu-based navigation system, etc.

For more information, see the phpMap web page. To see it in action, check out the Ole Miss Campus Map. Remember, though, that most of the features in the Campus Map are not currently present in phpMap.