A major update to the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), widely regarded as the leading free software raster image editing program, is scheduled for this month. The 2.4 release is expected to include a number of new features and enhancements to existing features.

At the core of Mobility Email is Mozilla Thunderbird, the wildly popular open source email client. The best thing about Mobility Email is that it's totally mobile. You can take it anywhere with you on an iPod Shuffle (or any other USB device). Simply plug your USB key into any Windows computer in the world and boom. There's all your email and all your contacts.

BSDForums interviews FreeBSD Release Engineering Team's Scott Long relating to various aspects of FreeBSD. Topics discussed include FreeBSD general issues, its academic roots, how FreeBSD compares to other BSDs - OpenBSD, NetBSD, and the ongoing debate on FreeBSD vs. Linux. Scott gives us his perspective on the corporate adoption and popularity of FreeBSD. He brings us up to speed on FreeBSD 6.0, its new features and enhancements, including Apple G4 PowerMac, AMD64 and wireless compatibility. Scott also discusses FreeBSD 6.0's upgrade path and release timetable.

The Free Agent is back in shape and working with the latest Ubuntu Linux. Also, Canonical launches the Ubuntu Partnership Programme.

Embeddable Ch is a C/C++ interpreter for cross-platform scripting, 2D/3D plotting, numerical computing, shell programming and embedded scripting. It was announced the availability of Ch 5.1 and Embedded Ch 5.1. Ch which enhance embedded ch scripting with thread handling. They allow you to abort a run time embedded ch thread. It supports MingW for SDK and Embedded Ch. This release also fixes many bugs. More here.

San Francisco's plan to blanket the city with wireless Internet access at little or no cost to users might bring a smile to the face of residents who would like to save money. But an array of entrenched telecommunications interests, including Internet service providers and telephone and cable television companies, are far from beaming.

Arno Klenke has completed his work on a new rendering architecture for Syllable which promises a faster and smoother user interface. Also, there is now XGI Volari & Intel 9xx support on Syllable.

Quartz is an open source job-scheduling framework written entirely in Java and designed for use in both J2SE and J2EE applications. It offers great flexibility without sacrificing simplicity. You can create simple or complex schedules for executing any job. It includes features such as database support, clustering, plugins, prebuilt jobs for EJB, JavaMail and others, support for cron-like expressions, and many more.

Senior Microsoft executives on Thursday plan to provide an update on the software maker's security strategy and products plans, including its upcoming enterprise anti-spyware offering, sources said.

Apple's hugely popular iPod digital music device could be in for another makeover — this time as a highly anti-cipated unit that plays both audio and video. In the meantime, Archos announced yesterday -- available in 30, 60 and 100 GB versions -- the new AV500 which sports a 4-inch colour widescreen display and not only plays back media - it records it as well.

Stardock has unveiled its first beta of WindowBlinds 5 and with it, glass effects for Windows XP users. Stardock claims that beta 1 of WindowBlinds 5 achieves performance on the same level as the current beta of Windows Vista in terms of delivering glass effects. WindowBlinds 5 also is able to do deliver glass effects on relatively low-end hardware (though it still requires a video card with at least 32MB of video memory).

Addison-Wesley sent us in the hardcover second edition of the popular book title "Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment" and we had a quick look at this classic.

After having a look at a very low-end camera two weeks ago, I've stepped a bit up in the range to have a look at a 5 megapixel model, a Kodak CX7530, which can currently be bought a Geeks.com for $175. Just like I found that the CX7220 was able to produce good 4x6 prints, I was surprised to see that CX7530 is capable of very good letter-size prints.

A small article introducing the a techniques involved in making C code extensible with the addition of the LUA scripting language.