Tech News
This is the Web release of DirectX Media 6.0 SDK.
System Requirements
• Supported Operating Systems: Windows 2000; Windows 95; Windows 98; Windows ME; Windows NT; Windows XP
Download: DirectX Media 6.0 SDK
muCommander is a lightweight, cross-platform file manager
featuring a Norton Commander style interface and running on any operating system with Java support (Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, *BSD, Solaris…).
Here’s a non-exaustive list of what you’ll find:
• Virtual filesystem with local filesystems, FTP, SFTP, SMB, HTTP and Bonjour support
• Quickly copy, move, rename files, create directories, email files…
• Browse, create and uncompress ZIP, TAR, GZip, BZip2, ISO/NRG, AR/Deb and LST archives
• Universal bookmarks and credentials manager
• Multiple windows support
• Full keyboard access
• Highly configurable
• Available in 18 languages : American & British English, French, German, Spanish, Czech, Simplified & Traditional Chinese, Polish, Hungarian, Russian, Slovenian, Romanian, Italian, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch and Slovak
Download: muCommander 0.8.2
Red Hat has no plans to create a traditional desktop product for the consumer market, but will continue to place its bets on a desktop for commercial markets.
“We are focused on infrastructure software for the enterprise market, and to that market we are offering the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop,” said Michael Chen, vice-president of corporate marketing at Red Hat.
“You need a different support ecosystem and applications for the consumer desktop,” Chen added.
Read more: networkworld.com
Steve Ballmer has admitted that Vista is “a work in progress”, and admitted the company has to learn lessons from its release.
Speaking at the Most Valuable Professional Global Summit in Seattle, Ballmer resisted calls for a slimmed down Windows 7: “Vista is bigger than XP and it’s gonna stay bigger than XP. We have to make sure it doesn’t get bigger still.”
However, Ballmer went on to admit that it had taken too long to get Vista out the door and admitted it had caused problems: “Vista is a very important piece of work,
and I think we did a lot of things right, and I think we have a lot of things we need to learn from.
Full story: pcpro.co.uk
Racer is a free cross-platform car simulation project (for non-commercial use), using professional car physics papers to achieve a realistic feeling. Cars, tracks and such can be created relatively easy (compared to other, more closed, driving simulations). The 3D and other file formats are, or should be, documented. Editors and support programs are also available to get a very customizable and expandable simulator. OpenGL is used for rendering.
Requirements: Windows 2000/XP/2003, Mac OS X and Linux.
Download: Racer 0.5.7 Beta for Windows | Racer 0.5.4.3 Beta for Mac | Racer 0.5.4 Beta 1 for Linux
fennel DVDManager (aka fsDM) is the next-generation DVD manager for Mac OS X.
With its clean interface, DVDManager makes maintaining your DVD library as easy as Macintosh!
· Retrieve & Update your DVDs’ details through online sites
· or Add & Edit them manually, yet quickly (just the core details!)
· Manage their life when lent to friends thanks to your Address Book
· Create box sets+wish list easily, and manage them intuitively
· Export a complete list of your DVD library, etc.
Quick, Simple, Easy & Fun ! It’s time to manage the workflow of your DVDs with Style.
Requirements: Any Mac running Mac OS X v10.4 or later (Mac OS X v10.5.1 Leopard recommended)
Download: fennel DVDManager 1.7.5 for Mac OS X
Smultron is a free text editor for Mac OS X Leopard 10.5. It is designed to be easy and intuitive to start off with and to become more and more able as and when the user wants it. Some of its features are line numbers, support for syntax colouring for many different languages, functions list, support for text encodings, snippets, a toolbar, a status bar, HTML preview, split window, multi-document find and replace with regular expressions, possibility to show invisible characters, tabs, authenticated open and saves, command-line utility, .Mac synchronisation, full screen editing and running commands from within Smultron.
Created, designed and programmed by Peter Borg
Download: Smultron 3.5 for Mac OS X
A Florida-based firm advertising cheap, Mac-compatible systems running on standardised hardware has created a swirl of controversy this week — and drawn an angry response from one of the principal hackers involved in developing the software involved.
Aside from the legal ramifications of selling “white-box” systems running Apple’s Mac OS X, questions have arisen over the exact nature of Psystar, the firm advertising the systems; and even whether it exists.
As of Thursday afternoon, Psystar appears to be a small operation that has only recently established a web presence, and which is struggling to cope with the sudden interest aroused by its Mac clone. The product’s name has changed over the past week, from Open Mac to Open Computer. Moreover, the company’s postal address has changed several times over the past week.
Full story: ZDNet.co.uk
Satellite images and 3D buildings all in one place.
Google Earth lets you fly anywhere on Earth to view satellite imagery, maps, terrain, 3D buildings and even explore galaxies in the Sky. You can explore rich geographical content, save your toured places and share with others.
New! in Google Earth 4.3 (beta)
- Photo-realistic buildings from cities around the world
- Dawn to dusk views with the Sunlight feature
- Swoop navigation from outer space to street-level
Download: Google Earth 4.3 Beta for Linux
Satellite images and 3D buildings all in one place.
Google Earth lets you fly anywhere on Earth to view satellite imagery, maps, terrain, 3D buildings and even explore galaxies in the Sky. You can explore rich geographical content, save your toured places and share with others.
New! in Google Earth 4.3 (beta)
- Photo-realistic buildings from cities around the world
- Dawn to dusk views with the Sunlight feature
- Swoop navigation from outer space to street-level
Download: Google Earth for Mac 4.3.7191 Beta for Mac OS X (10.3.9 +)
SIDPLAY is a Commodore 64 music player. It emulates the sound chip and other internals of the Commodore 64 home computer to play back music that was originally written on it. The sound chip of the C64 is called the “Sound Interface Device” or SID, and therefore this music is known as SID music. The SID chip is basically a three voice synthesizer on a chip. The unusual combination of digital and analogue circuitry is the reason for its distinctive sound.
SIDPLAY strives to offer the best possible SID music experience on any platform. It has been designed with the High Voltage SID Collection (HVSC) in mind. This collection is the biggest and most complete collection of SID music on the Internet. It can be obtained for free from hvsc.c64.org.
Download: SIDPLAY 4.0 for Mac OS X
Dell Inc. unveiled a redesigned laptop line this week as part of a corporate plan to increase its laptop portfolio by 50% this year.
The PC manufacturer announced this week that it made over its Vostro laptop line for small businesses with two new models, the 13.3 inch Vostro 1310 and the 15.4-inch Vostro 1510. A redesigned 17-inch Vostro 1710 laptop was also introduced.
The new and redesigned laptops are available now in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and are expected to be available in the United States by May 1.
Read more: pcworld.com
IceChat is an IRC ( Internet Relay Chat) program. It is used to connect to IRC Servers and chat in channels with other IRC Users. You can connect IceChat to an unlimited number of servers, all in one session (No need to start multiple copies of IceChat)
IceChat was first being developed in 2000, and has gone through many changes in its Interface, Design, and of course its many features.
IceChat is FreeWare, meaning anyone can use it, at no cost.
Download: IceChat 7.63
Movie Library ++ is a Java program designed to keep your videos organized or your PC. You can import almost any type of video (using drag and drop) and fill in information about the videos yourself or let the program guess the movie/series from the file name and link to our database, to get the information.
You can also convert the videos to many different video types using the preset profiles provided.
Download: Movie Library ++ 5.1.1
Swedish BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay is demanding compensation from the IFPI for a court decision that found the site blocked from customers of the Denmark’s Tele2 ISP.
The block, initiated last February by the IFPI, ordered Tele2 to shut off access to The Pirate Bay after a Danish court found the ISP to be unlawfully assisting in the distribution of copyrighted works, by allowing customers to access The Pirate Bay’s BitTorrent tracker and search engine. Critics feared the ruling would soon spread to a number of other countries, and IFPI executives in nearby Norway and Finland announced they were looking into similar court action.
Writing in his blog, Pirate Bay co-founder Peter “Brokep” Sunde said the site will file a legal complaint, asking to be compensated for the time the site spent blocked in Denmark, with proceeds to be spent funding Danish artists interested in sharing their music online, for free. Sunde said the money would be handled by the Danish Piratgruppen, and that unlike the IFPI, The Pirate Bay will only ask for “a reasonable amount of money.”
Full story: dailytech.com
XChat is an IRC chat program for both Linux and Windows. It allows you to join multiple IRC channels (chat rooms) at the same time, talk publicly, private one-on-one conversations etc. Even file transfers are possible.
Operating System: Windows 2000, XP or Vista, Fedora Linux.
Download: XChat 2.8.7a
Smart NTFS Recovery is a data recovery tool for Windows operating system that supports the NTFS file system. The software easily recovers data from hard disks and any type of storage media - flash drives, USB drives, memory stick, PC card, multimedia card, secure digital card with NTFS file system.
Smart NTFS Recovery can recover any deleted files, including MS Office files, photos, mp3 and zip files, even if the partition table is lost!
Smart NTFS Recovery is Freeware.
Compatible Platforms: Windows NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista
Download. Smart NTFS Recovery 3.9
Wall Street Journal reports that the preliminary testing of the Yahoo-switching-to-AdSense deal has gone well. The question is whether this deal is a real possibility (in a normal situation, without Microsoft bidding for Yahoo, it wouldn’t be: it’s probably an antitrust violation and it’s bad for Yahoo in the long run), or is it Yahoo trying desperately to pull out of the Microsoft deal by making them less attractive (because they gave their ad search business away to Google) and more expensive (because they will be earning more money, at least in the short term, with Google AdSense) at the same time.
Read more: mashable.com
IE PassView is a small utility that reveals the passwords stored by Internet Explorer browser. It supports the new Beta version of Internet Explorer 7.0, as well as older versions of Internet explorer, v4.0 - v6.0
IE PassView doesn’t require any installation process or additional DLLs. In order to start using it, just copy the executable file (iepv.exe) to any folder like, and run it. After running iepv.exe, IE PassView scans all Internet Explorer passwords in your system, and display them on the main window.
This utility is released as freeware.
Download: IE PassView 1.09
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