37252955
submission
supersloshy writes:
The launch of the GNOME 3 desktop environment sparked heated debate and criticism. GNOME developers have been listening to the concerns of its users and it is rolling out several significant changes in GNOME 3.6. The message tray, often called hard to use, was made much more visible in addition to being harder to accidentally trigger. The "lock" screen can now optionally control your music player, the system volume, and display notifications so you don't have to type in a password. GNOME will also support different input sources directly instead of requiring an add-on program. Nautilus, the GNOME file browser, is also getting a major face lift with a new, more compact UI, properly working search features, a "move to" and "copy to" option as an alternative to dragging and dropping, and a new "recent files" section. These changes, among many others including improvements to system settings, will be present in GNOME 3.6 when it is released later this month. Any other additions or changes not currently implemented by the GNOME team can be easily applied with only one click at the GNOME Extensions website.
31020629
submission
supersloshy writes:
The popular GNOME desktop environment has just announced the release of version 3.4. User-facing updates include, among others, a new look for many GNOME applications, smooth scrolling support in GTK, integrated document search in GNOME Shell, a new dynamic background, improved accessibility configuration options, new high-contrast icons, and more documentation. Developer-facing improvements include the release of GTK+ 3.4 and updates to standard GNOME libraries as part of the latest GNOME Developer Platform. For more information, you can read the full release notes at this webpage.
24280728
submission
supersloshy writes:
Today marks the release of the latest edition of the GNOME Desktop for Linux-based operating systems. There are numerous fixes and improvements in this release such as smaller title bars (for small screens), the integration of GNOME Contacts and GNOME Documents for easy data management, web application integration, many more configurable settings, and other updates such as a more unified appearance and better chat integration. You can read the release notes on GNOME.org.
21985134
submission
supersloshy writes:
Mozilla has released the latest version of Thunderbird, their popular email client, now in sync with their new rapid-release versioning system. Among the new features are the new add-ons manager from Firefox 4, revised account creation, faster response times, the ability to load plugins in RSS feeds and over 390 platform fixes. For more information, read the release notes
20910452
submission
supersloshy writes:
Netflix has just announced the release of a Netflix Android application for streaming movies to your Android-powered mobile device. As streaming movies requires certain features and specifications, only a select number of devices are supported as of now. They are working on approving as many devices as possible in the near future for the benefit of users. To see if your device is compatible, Netflix provides a list of currently approved devices.
20231344
submission
supersloshy writes:
The team behind last December's successful Humble Indie Bundle 2 (as well as the original Bundle of course) have launched yet another bundle, but this time it's comprised entirely of games by developer Frozenbyte including Trine, Shadowgrounds, Shadowgrounds: Survivor, a pre-order of Splot, and the prototype Jack Claw (with source code). All games (except Jack Claw) are, as always, available for Windows, Mac, and Linux-based operating systems and are DRM-free.
15011996
submission
supersloshy writes:
VideoLAN, makers of the well-known media player VLC, have just announced a new project called libaacs. The libaacs library's intention is to provide a free software library to implement the AACS specification, the copy-protection found on things such as Blu-ray discs. Note that this isn't meant to actually be a decoding library. It includes no AACS keys and is solely developed for research purposes.
14725098
submission
supersloshy writes:
The GNOME Census, a project to see who contributes to GNOME and how, has released its first set of results. The results group people by their reasons to contribute code, what they contributed code to, and what percentage of the total contributions they have. For example, 23.45% of code contributions were volunteer, 16.3% of code contributions came from Red Hat, 1% of contributions came from Canonical (which has caused a lot of controversy), and 0.24% came from Mozilla Corporation. The census results are also represented in diagrams (release activity, why contributions were made, and what was contributed to and by who). The report is also available here and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license.
12088220
submission
supersloshy writes:
Last year, 2D Boy, the developers of the popular independent game World of Goo, had a pay-what-you-want birthday sale with curious results. For the next seven days, Wolfire Games is attempting the same kind of sale, but with some new twists. Wolfire Games' Humble Indie Bundle contains five independent games (World of Goo, Aquaria, Gish, Lugaru HD, and Penumbra) with no DRM and they are all cross-platform. In addition to supporting the developers of these five games directly, part of the money also goes to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Child's Play Charity. No matter how much you spend, you also get to choose who your money goes to (charity only, developers only, custom or evenly).
9515806
submission
supersloshy writes:
Facebook Chat has so far only been meant to be used in a web browser, and instant messaging applications have had a hard time implementing it's undocumented protocol. Today, Facebook is making this job much easier by enabling support for XMPP to access it's chat service. Serkan Piantino from Facebook says, "Every day people send more than two billion chat messages to each other on Facebook. Today we're making it easier for people to extend those conversations with their Facebook friends to instant messaging clients beyond Facebook.com." Instructions on how to set it up in your favorite instant messenger, such as Pidgin or Adium, can be found here. AOL's AIM and the Empathy Instant Messenger are also including pre-set Facebook options, due to already supporting XMPP.
7643276
submission
supersloshy writes:
Even though Firefox gets more developer attention, that doesn't mean that Thunderbird is dead yet! Today, Mozilla released Thunderbird 3 to the world after quite a long time of development! Many new features are now available, including Tabs and enhanced search features, a "message archive" for emails you don't want to delete but still want to keep, Firefox 3's improved Add-ons Manager, Personas support, and many other improvements.
6992384
submission
supersloshy writes:
Contrary to popular opinion, GNOME 3 will not be released in March next year. It has been delayed until September 2010, six months later. According to the news message, this is because "our community wants GNOME 3.0 to be fully working for users and why we believe September is more appropriate." GNOME 3's main goal is to re-define the ways people interact with the desktop, mainly through a new UI design (currently called "GNOME Shell"), while GNOME 2.30, set for release in March, will have a focus on being stable.
