Responding deftly to customer complaints, Apple has agreed to replaced broken iPod Nano units, explaining that a vendor issue caused the cracked screen problem widely documented by sites like flawedmusicplayer.com. The Nano has been lavishly praised internet-wide for its form, fashion, and functionality.

Vista Beta 1 and Longhorn Server Beta 1 include a new implementation of the TCP/IP protocol suite known as the Next Generation TCP/IP stack. The Next Generation TCP/IP stack in Windows Vista and Windows Server Longhorn is a complete redesign of TCP/IP functionality for both IPv4 and IPv6 that meets the connectivity and performance needs of today's varied networking environments and technologies. Elsewhere, will Office 12 be named... Office Mondo?

Apple has updated its line of Mac Mini computers. The new models have slightly faster processors, with the cheapest Mini now featuring a 1.33Ghz G4 (previously a 1.24Ghz) and the expensive models receiving a speed bump from a 1.42Ghz G4 to a 1.5Ghz G4. The higher-end models also recieve dual-layer DVD burning and improved Bluetooh and Airport Extreme. Graphics-wise, the Mini sees a doubling of RAM. And the harddrives are (finally) upgraded to normal 5400rpm models, instead of the rather sloppy 4200rpm models.

"The pkgsrc developers are very proud to announce the new pkgsrc-2005Q3 branch, which has support for more packages than previous branches (5551 packages supported on 13 platforms). As well as updated versions of many packages, the infrastructure of pkgsrc has been improved for better platform and compiler support, and also for enhanced security. At the same time, the pkgsrc-2005Q2 branch has been deprecated, and continuing engineering starts on the pkgsrc-2005Q3 branch."

"Thinking of migrating to the Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition 5.0, code-named Tiger? You're not alone. Thousands of companies all over the world are giving J2SE 5.0 a try, and they like what they see. New language features, enhanced class libraries, better tool support, and desktop enhancements are just some of the reasons why many companies are making the switch. In this article, we talk with Li Moore, software engineer at Google, about his company's switch from J2SE version 1.4 to 5.0."

Red Hat, with help from IBM and Trusted Computing Solutions, plans to put its operating system through the paces of the National Information Assurance Partnership's Common Criteria evaluation program to create the first "trusted" Linux operating system.

"This follow-up to the previously published article 'Ubuntu: Derivative or Fork?' takes into account most of everything that has been posted as a reaction to the first article to present a general opinion and compare them with facts derived from various resouces. You'll see that peace can be achieved between these two, and ultimately any GNU/Linux group out there."

Strong error handling translates into more reliable applications. When you load an XML document, it is best to catch errors early, before they have a chance to damage other data. I have noticed that many companies and developers make the same mistakes when they adopt XML technology. Learn how to avoid common XML coding errors when you design and implement error handling in XML applications.

Billed as the smallest personal computer available, OQO launched the second version of its pocketable pen-based computer system on Tuesday. Measuring in at 4.9" (12.4cm) long and 3.4" (8.6cm) high by just under an inch (2.5cm) thick and weighing 14 ounces (397g), the OQO Model 01+ is the tiniest commercially available system to be running a full version of Windows XP.

Microsft has released service packs for a number of its productivity applications: OneNote 2003 Service Pack 2, Visio 2003 Service Pack 2, Project 2003 Service Pack 2, Project Server 2003 Service Pack 2, and Office 2003 Service Pack 2. That's a whole lot of Service Pack 2s, and here's for hoping all the links are correct.

Developers continue to debate the question of memory management solutions. Which is best? Although Objective-C's retain/release runs smoother and faster than Java's garbage collection, it places a much larger burden on the developer and introduces a much larger risk of memory leaks.

"As the dust settles from aKademy 2005, the annual KDE conference, it's a good time to take a look at what the KDE developers are working on. Though KDE 3.5 isn't even out yet, developers are already working on KDE 4. Plenty of work has already gone into porting existing code to Qt4, the GUI toolkit upon which KDE is based, and KDE developers are working on projects that could radically change how works."

Two interesting newsbits from the PPC world. Firstly, Genesi has announced that it will develop a dual 970MP (dual-core G5) server, named Open Server Workstation, following their Open Desktop Workstation. Secondly, Freescale has said that their dual-core G4 processors have been delayed until the second half of 2006. Update: "Libfreevec is a free (LGPL) library with hand-optimized replacement routines for GLIBC, such as memcpy(), strlen(), etc. These routines have been written specifically to take advantage of the AltiVec, and will only work on processors that include this unit."

Today, I had the opportunity to speak with Iyer Venkatesan, Product line manager for StarOffice at Sun Microsystems. He spoke to me at length about StarOffice 8, which will be released tomorrow. Read on for a summary of the interview, and be sure to check out the review at Newsforge as well.