Opera 9 Technology Preview Released
October 21, 2005
… The company on Thursday released a Technology Preview of Opera 9.0, which introduces a new storage format for e-mail and a multitude of page rendering tweaks. Most notable on a long list of changes are an enhanced pop-up blocker and initial support for CSS3 selectors and attributes. … Developers note the preview release should not be loaded on a primary system or over previous Opera installations …[BetaNews]
I am very excited to see the new features and improvements of Opera 9, but since I use Opera 8.5 as my main internet browser and RSS reader, I opt to wait for the public release. 
I like Mozilla Firefox too, but I prefer Opera’s built-in RSS reader and it’s ability to startup with the last viewed pages.
OpenOffice.org 2.0 is Here
OpenOffice.org 2.0 is the productivity suite that individuals, governments, and corporations around the world have been expecting for the last two years. Easy to use and fluidly interoperable with every major office suite, OpenOffice.org 2.0 realises the potential of open source. [openoffice.org]
New Features:
* New Interface: provides a number of productivity enhancements and is designed to assist in the transition from proprietary office suites while letting new and existing users take advantage from a brand new, appealing, functional and easy to use interface;
* Database Module (OpenOffice.org Base): debut of OpenOffice.org Base, a database module capable of creating self-contained, portable and cross-platform database applications;
* OpenDocument Format: an XML file format specification suitable for office applications including text, spreadsheets, charts, and graphical documents;
* Enhanced PDF Export: now gives greater control over the quality and size of PDFs generated as well as providing support for links, indexes, forms, thumbnails and presentation transition effects;
* And more!
Sony Ericsson W900 Cell Phone
October 20, 2005
… a full-featured music phone succeeding the hugely popular W800. The W900 allows OTA music downloads from the operator, so you can easily download songs on the move, as well as transfer songs from your PC. [MobileWhack]
Some Features:
- Dual mode UMTS (2100MHz) - GPRS 900/1800/1900
- 470MB of internal memory
- 2.0 MegaPixel camera (Autofocus, 8x digital zoom)
- 240 x 320 pixel QVGA TFT display
- Walkman� player (MP3/AAC/AAC+)
- Java J2MET and hardware Accelerator
- FM Radio
- HTML browser
- Bluetooth and Infrared
- USB mass storage
- Memory StickT PRO Duo slot
Connect to Multiple Wi-Fi Networks Simultaneously
October 19, 2005
[Microsoft Research] VirtualWiFi is a virtualization architecture for wireless LAN (WLAN) cards. It abstracts a single WLAN card to appear as multiple virtual WLAN cards to the user. The user can then configure each virtual card to connect to a different wireless network. Therefore, VirtualWiFi allows a user to simultaneously connect his machine to multiple wireless networks using just one WLAN card. This new functionality introduced by VirtualWiFi enables many new applications, which were not possible earlier using a single WLAN card.
Windows Fix Brings Problems For Some
[BetaNews] Computer users who install security updates from Microsoft as soon as they are released may have been greeted with a nasty surprise from a patch released last week - portions of Windows become unusable, or even worse, they could be locked out of their systems altogether.
Instructions to deal with the vulnerability have been posted in a Knowledge Base article on the Microsoft Support Web site.
One of the rare times when procrastination can prove advantageous.
