Alex Graveley introduced the Gimmie user interface and panel for GNOME a few days ago. In it, Alex is grouping the most used parts of a modern UI, e.g. Documents, Applications, People, and Computer (network connections go under it too). For info, videos, and shots check here.

CNN made a top 10 list of people who do not matter anymore in the tech industry. Among them, Steve Ballmer, Linus Torvalds, Jonathan Schwartz, Rob Malda from Slashdot, and Ken Kutaragi (responsible for the Playstation). This list is actually a by-product from their top 50 list of people who do matter; which containts, among others, Steve Jobs.

"Nathan Myhrvold, formerly Microsoft's chief technology officer, retired six years ago from the software giant with a fortune that, it's safe to say, runs well into nine figures. But instead of taking early retirement as a chance to relax, travel, and maybe dash off a unified field theory or two, Myhrvold has founded a firm that has produced almost as much rage, terror, and ominous speculation as Microsoft once did."

IBM Rational Team API is a unified, client-side Java API for ClearCase, ClearQuest, and Requisite Pro. In order to use this Eclipse based API, customers must have installed Version 7.0.0 of Rational ClearQuest client, ClearCase Web server, or RequistePro client.

Microsoft .NET Compact Framework version 2.0 SP1 release has been completed and is in the process of being released. This service pack was driven customer feedback including improvements in stability, adds new debugging features, extended platform support, and new developer functionality.

Paul Thurrot, Microsoft Apple Microsoft supporter, reviews the new Vista build: "Little more than a month after issuing a bug-laden Windows Vista Beta 2, Microsoft has shipped its first post-Beta 2 interim build of the next Windows and it makes up a lot of lost ground. Indeed, it's hard not to view this build and not believe that Microsoft is absolutely back on track." Another reviewer also states that performance has increased since the previous build.

Server makers are lining up a host of new and enhanced systems armed with Intel's new 'Woodcrest' Xeon processor, a chip built on a new architecture that promises better performance coupled with greater energy efficiency. Intel initially said the Xeon 5100 family - based on Intel's new Core microarchitecture - would be released in the third quarter. However, earlier this month the giant chip maker pushed up the date to June 26 in an attempt to take back momentum from rival AMD. Ars' Hannibal gives his view on the new processors.

Sun today released Solaris 10 6/06, which provides a host of improvements; most notably, this is the first release to support ZFS. Download it from Sun's Solaris website. A short summary of the new features is also available. Other new features besides ZFS: UDP and TCP/IP improvements, PCI Express support on x86 (including hotplugging), predictive self healing for x64 systems, and much more.

30 student development teams from seven countries converged on Microsoft's campus June 23-25, to compete in the third annual Windows Embedded Student ChallengE based on the theme, "Preserving, protecting, and enhancing the environment." Five winning teams collectively were awarded $24000 in cash. The entries included some clever ideas (listed in the article).

"Ruby on Rails is an open source Web framework causing a lot of excitement among Web developers. By supporting agile development techniques and a philosophy of "convention over configuration," it has enabled many developers to radically reduce the time and pain involved in creating Web applications. Because Rails emerged from the open source world, until recently you had to use MySQL or PostgreSQL to work with it. Now that IBM has released a DB2 adapter for Rails, it's possible to write efficient Web applications on top of your existing DB2 database investment. This article highlights some of the things that makes Rails exceptional, explains how to get going with Rails and DB2, and leads you through your first Web application in Rails."

In an effort to save Palm OS, work has been started on an open source clone of the operating system. The author aims to make the clone OS binary and source compatible with Palm OS 5 wherever possible while still moving the OS forward with features like memory protection and multi-tasking. The project is at its infancy (it does not have a website yet), but the person behind it is asking for help.

"If you are a Cocoa developer, you already know that the dynamic nature of Objective-C and Cocoa is what makes them so flexible and powerful. In terms of development tools, the power of a dynamic object-oriented environment like Cocoa translates into original tools like Interface Builder or F-Script, an open source project that is presented in this article. F-Script is an integrated set of tools that makes it possible to interactively explore and manipulate Cocoa objects as well as script them using new high-level programming techniques. This article shows you how to use some of its most impressive features and demonstrates how it can be a useful addition to your developer toolkit."

Many open source software users, consultants and other IT pros believe that Oracle's recent moves in the OSS market - including its purchases of open source stalwarts Sleepycat Software and Innobase - were undertaken as part of an effort to destabilize Microsoft.

Slowly, I step out of the Intercity train to Amsterdam, en route to university; I'm tired, I need some coffee. I check my watch and realise my metro leaves in 3 minutes, so I need to hurry in order to and buy me a coffee-to-go, and make it on time to the metro platform. I pick up my pace to run, as Mike Skinner would say.