As a photographer, with some high-end equipment, I used to look down on point-and-shoot digicams, putting them in the same category as camera phone, i.e. not capable of taking any picture worth keeping. I was wrong. My experience with a Kodak CX7220 (sells for about $70), graciously provided by Geeks.com, turned out to be unexpectedly positive.

Google's one-of-a-kind computer network gives it a chance to surpass Microsoft to become the most dominant company in tech, according to the author of a recently published book on the search giant.

Specialized programming languages and their supporting environments have always been tightly coupled: SQL and the database; business rules and the rules engine. It's tempting to wish for an überlanguage or one syntax to rule them all, but what really matters is a common environment. At its 2005 Professional Developers Conference, Microsoft showed that it's finally putting all of its eggs into the .Net basket.

The Python Enterprise Application Kit (PEAK) is a Python framework for rapidly developing and reusing application components. While Python itself is already a very high-level language, PEAK provides even higher abstractions. One fairly recent capability added to PEAK is the capability to create generic functions and specifically to dispatch them on predicates, not simply on type. Sounds mysterious?

The open source Firefox Web browser continues to grow in popularity. Discover new XML features for the fastest-growing Web browser, including XML parsing, XHTML, CSS, XSLT, SVG, and XForms. Additional third-party extensions provide even more XML support. Elsewhere, Firefox faces challenges as it matures, according to analysts.

KDE 3.5 Beta 1 can be downloaded over the Internet by visiting KDE's download page. Source code and vendor supplied binary packages are available. For additional information on package availability and to read further release notes, please visit the KDE 3.5 Beta 1 information page.

Solaris Express 9/2005 (derived from Nevada Build 21) was posted today, providing a new system for dynamic interrupt distribution, debugging enhancements, and several useful desktop-related improvements. You can obtain a free download. An overview of new features is also available.

Mozilla Firefox 1.0.7, a security and stability update to the flagship Mozilla browser, is now available for download. Fixes are included for the international domain name link buffer overflow vulnerability and the Linux command line URL parsing flaw. There are also other security and stability changes. Download here, release notes here.

Microsoft just released some more information and videos on VB 9.0 and C# 3.0.

"Zeta includes quite a lot of open source software. YellowTAB was able to include software like bash, GCC, VLC, to name just a few, with Zeta and thus profit from the work of many thousands of developers. However, programs do not always work straight away when compiled for Zeta and may require changes to do so. We make the necessary changes and fix bugs to make sure that these programs run smoothly on Zeta. Now it's time to give something back."

Chip firm Intel said it is developing an ultra low power version of the 65 nanometre process technology specifically for notebooks and other small devices. The firm said that with transistors on some chips over the billion mark, it has developed tech which it claims will cut down leakage by 10 000 times.

"Kam Vedbrat is a lead program manager on the Aero team which redesigned the User Interface of Windows Vista. We spend half an hour looking at the user interface." (stream | file, .wmv)

Earlier this month, much of the handheld world was stunned by the sudden announcement that PalmSource was being bought by Japan-based Access. It wasn't surprising that this company was being acquired, but most people had been expecting the buyer to be Palm.

"Plan B is an operating system designed to work in distributed environments where the set of available resources is different at different points in time. Plan B 3rd edition is a modified Plan 9 system. Therefore, any experience with Plan 9 will help you to install and use Plan B. Because Plan 9 inherits from UNIX, any experience with UNIX will help as well."