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Microsoft

Microsoft's HD Photo to Become JPEG Standard? 369

Mortimer.CA writes "Ars Technica is reporting that Microsoft has submitted their HD Photo to the JPEG committee: 'Microsoft's ongoing attempt to establish its own photo format as a JPEG alternative (and potential successor) took another step forward today when the JPEG standards group agreed to consider HD Photo (originally named Windows Media Photo) as a standard. If successful, the new file standard will be known as JPEG XR.' Microsoft has made a 'commitment to make its patents that are required to implement the specification available without charge.' While JPEG 2000 exists, HD Photo has several advantages (not the least of which is a lot less CPU power is needed). Is this a big of an issue as ODF/OOXML?"
KDE

Submission + - KDE 4.0 Beta 1 Released 1

mernil writes: "The KDE Community is happy to announce the immediate availability of the first Beta release for KDE 4.0. This release marks the beginning of the integration process which will bring the powerful new technologies included in the now frozen KDE 4 libraries to the applications."
X

Submission + - E17 -- Desktop Enlightenment

michuk writes: "The performance of desktop computers increases year by year. This gives the programmers great opportunities to further improve the desktop experience of the users. However, what should you do when you have an old computer that is not capable of running the latest and hottest software? How can you benefit from the great software that is X.org when you can't run a desktop that takes advantage of its best features? No need for upgrading your PC, when you can have a usable alternative with the current one. Let me introduce you Enlightenment E17 — the window manager with minimal hardware requirements that may amaze you."
The Internet

Walmart Rejects Firefox and Safari 555

babooo404 writes "Last week, Walmart launched their online video download service. Immediately there were posts that the service did not work with the Firefox or Safari browsers. There was a collective, "WTF" when this happened as this is 2007, not 1997. Now it appears that reports are out that Walmart has completely turned off the ability to get into the application at all by Firefox, Safari or any other browser it does not like."
OS X

Journal Journal: Spotlight Upgrades in Leopard 356

Mac OS 10.5 Leopard is set to feature several new enhancements to Spotlight, Apple's desktop search, according to ComputerWorld. These include searching across multiple networked Macs, parental search snooping, server spotlight indexing, boolean search, (sorely needed) better application launching, and quick look previews.
It's funny.  Laugh.

Journal Journal: The Onion on Vista

Highlights from the article:

  • Microsoft Word's helpful paper-clip icon now blinks at rate of normal humans
  • Five new card-back designs for Solitaire
  • Something that Apple would never, ever dream up in a billion years
Software

Submission + - Pegasus Mail development ends after 17 years

daveewart writes: According to the Pegasus Mail web site, David Harris has ceased development and distribution of Pegasus Mail, citing funding difficulties. He says "Effective January 2007, development and distribution of Pegasus Mail and Mercury has ceased. We regret this decision, but ongoing difficulties with funding have forced it upon us." Pegasus Mail used to be one of the primary free email clients for Windows and, although it has clearly had its day, will be missed. It has had a long history: the first version of Pegasus Mail was released for DOS in 1990.

Review - Apple's MacBook Pro 108

Provataki writes "OSNews posted a 2-editor review of Apple's MacBook Pro laptop. The whole review feels like a long conversation between the two editors with agreements and disagreements on several issues and topics. They both agree that the laptop is too hot, but there is disagreement on the screen quality for example."

Ajax Back, Forward, Reload and PHP 52

IdaAshley writes "A major challenge of Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (Ajax)-driven Web sites is the lack of a Back button. Mike Brittain discusses ways to get around this obstacle in part 1 of the 'Developing PHP the Ajax way' series." From the article: "The Web is a page-by-page medium. The backward and forward buttons on your browser's toolbar direct the browser from page to page. When Macromedia's Flash became all of the rage, developers and users started to see how Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) break this metaphor. You might click around a few sites, land on a Flash-based Web site, then click around in it for a few minutes. One click of the Back button and the ride is over. Rather than going one step backward within the Flash site, you completely lose your place."

Firefox to Drop Pre-Windows 2000 Support 491

cyclomedia writes "While more and more platforms are getting (or aiming for) Firefox ports, the trunk itself seems to be going the other way. In an effort to clean up the API calls used and reduce the codesize a patch was posted at Bugzilla removing support from pre-W2k versions of Windows. There's a fiery discussion going on over at the Mozillazine forums about this after a counter bug was filed. The official position appears to be that Firefox 3.0 will maintain this un-compatibility, but developers are, obviously, free to work on a separate Win 98 compatible 'port.'"

An Interview with StarOffice's Erwin Tenhumberg 16

Andy Updegrove writes "In this third interview in a continuing series, I interview Sun's Erwin Tenhumberg, in order to compare StarOffice 2.0 with the other leading software productivity suites that support ODF (previous interviews have focused on KOffice and OpenOffice). As in the previous interviews, Tenhumberg answers questions intended to showcase the strong (and the weak) points of his product in comparison to its competitors, and in order to showcase the rich and varied ecosystem of products that is growing up to support ODF. He also answers a second set of questions tailored to bring out what's unique about Sun's development efforts, and how StarOffice relates to OpenOffice. This interview is particularly informative on accessibility issues."

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