Data Circle

A few weeks ago I reported on the K3b fundraiser, which asked for donations to help pay for new hardware to support the project which provides one of the best and most useful pieces of software for Linux desktops. According to KDE.News, the fundraiser has been more successful than could be imagined, with the required amount being raised in two days and in the end nearly five times as much money was donated as was asked for. Some of this was raised by Linux distributors such as Mandriva and Linspire (I’m actually surprised that none of the major distributors didn’t pay for the entire fundraising event and then class it as some form of sponsorship – I feel there was a PR opportunity missed there), other funds came from the general public.

Anyway, Sebastian now has the hardware he needs, so hopefully we’ll see his excellent efforts to improve K3b continue well into the future.

Triple Boot on MacBooks Working at Slashdot

The OnMac.net chaps, who shot to fame recently by getting Windows XP to boot on the new Intel Macs, have managed to get triple booting working via BootCamp. In other words, you can now install OS X, Windows XP and Gentoo Linux (other distributions may work, but Gentoo is the one used in the wiki article) on your MacBook and switch between them. At the moment you have to use the NT bootloader to actually boot Linux, but it’s an interesting achievement nevertheless.

The Summer of Code 2006 at Google Code Blog

Following the success of last year’s Summer of Code competition, in which Google and other organisations sponsor students around the world to complete programming projects. Stipends of $4500 were available last year to students who successfully completed their assignments, and whilst that doesn’t sound like a lot it’s a good way to earn a living over the summer vacation whilst working on something that you’re interested in,, plus who knows where the experience may lead – a completed project could impress a mentoring organisation enough for them to offer you a job after graduation. The code is usually released under some form of open source license as well, so everyone benefits.

More details can be found on the Summer of Code web site.

Further coverage

• Summer of Code 2006 is On at Slashdot

The Mozilla team have released another update to the popular Firefox browser, promising “improvements to product stability”, though personally I take that promise with a pinch of salt – improvements to stability have been in the release notes of almost every version I can remember and yet Firefox still crashes regularly for me and leaks memory like a sieve. There’s also native support for the new Macs with Intel processors and fixes for several security bugs. Be warned however, that if you’re using a new Mac you’ll still get updated to the PPC-only build if you use the ‘check for updates’ option, and Talkback (the bug reporting tool) also apparently doesn’t work natively or under Rosetta.

If you’re interested in the details, check out the official release notes and the unofficial changelog. The latter document is more detailed and I’d recommend reading it over the official version if you want to know the specific bugs fixed by the update.

Further coverage

• Firefox update kills security bugs, adds Mac support at ZDNet

Rumours of a Google calendar service have been doing the rounds for some time, but as of today the service has been properly launched under the unassuming name of Google Calendar. The calendar service is apparently tied into Gmail, although I’ve not managed to figure out quite how this works yet.

To be honest though, I’m surprised that it’s taken Google so long to launch this service. Yahoo! have offered a calendar service since 1998, and given how many boffins Google employs I would have thought they could have got some form of calendar service up and running before now. There is some interesting stuff involving natural language processing though – apparently you can specify “lunch on Sunday at 1pm” and the service will interpret that correctly. Since natural language processing is a real pain to get right (I’ve only covered a tiny amount of it in my degree course, and believe me it’s not easy) I’m prepared to cut them a bit of slack. I’m also somewhat surprised that support for syncronising calendars with external programs such as Outlook hasn’t been implemented as I suspect this would be an extremely useful feature for many people.

Further coverage

• Google acts to organise your life at BBC News – Technology
• Google Calendar Almost There at GigaOM
• Google unveils Web-based calendar app at News.com
• Google Opens Calendar Beta at Beta News
• Google unveils Web-based calendar app at ZDNet
• Google Calendar at Slashdot
• It’s about time at Official Google Blog

phpBB 2.0.20 released via phpBB.com

A new version of the popular phpBB forum system has been released, fixing a number of issues including several security problems. As always, I’d strongly recommend that you upgrade your forums if you haven’t already, as boards running older versions of phpBB often get exploited quite quickly by people Googling for “phpBB (old version number)” (although this isn’t as easy as it used to be because phpBB doesn’t display the version number by default).

European net domain opens to all at BBC News – Technology

After a four month reserve period to allow trademark holders to register their names, the .eu top level domain is finally available to ordinary people and businesses. Registrations are still restricted to EU residents and businesses with offices in the European Community however, in a similar way to other country/region-specific domains such as .ca.

I think Markus Eggensperger, Lycos legal and PR director for domains and quoted on the BBC web site, is being a bit optimistic though. At one point he talks about .eu eventually challenging .com in importance, which I don’t think is likely to happen, certainly not in the next few years. I also expect that most of the interest in the .eu top level domain is split between existing companies wanting to ensure that they have their name in every possible TLD (and to stop anyone else from registering it) and lots of speculative applications for domains such as sex.eu.

Side note: The BBC article also refers to domains such as www.polo.eu being registered, which is incorrect as the actual registration would be for polo.eu. Hopefully they’ll fix this error, although I am somewhat disappointed that it managed to make its way past whoever was proof-reading the story.

Further coverage

• Mad Rush to Purchase .eu Domains at Beta News
• UK politicians shun EU net names at BBC News – Technology

Apple have released version 10.4.6 of the OS X operating system for both Intel and PowerPC models. There’s a lot of issues addressed in the update, although none that I’ve noticed affecting my system. The main change appears to be the inclusion of iSync 2.2, and there’s an important document that you should read before, during and after updating.

PowerPC users should also be aware that your machine will restart twice after installing the update, instead of the one time you might expect. I’m not sure why this is the case, but don’t panic if it happens to you.

Further coverage

• Apple Releases Mac OS X 10.4.6 at Beta News
• Mac OS X 10.4.6 Released at Forever Geek