Gabor Kovacs has just released TCPMP 0.66 (ex-BetaPlayer), the next generation media player for both PalmOS 5 and PocketPCs. BetaPlayer has been one of the most downloaded applications in the WindowsCE world and now PalmOS 5 & Smartphone users will also be able to enjoy DivX, mpeg1-4, ogg and more. We gave TCPMP a whirl and we found that it's much faster than before when playing WMV on PocketPC (where it used to be a framedrop on our Axim X5-A05, now it doesn't), however WMV playback is buggy on the Axim x50v (ROM A04) if the 2700G driver is used (had to soft-reset the PDA, GDI was more compatible). DivX plays great though, on all of our devices including PalmOS (very usable 320x240 DivX playback on our 126 Mhz Sony Clie TH-55). Screenshots here, here and here.

Today the Web Standards Project announced (Editor Note: Actual announcement date 5th July 2005) it has formed a task force with Microsoft Corp. to provide support as the company increases Web standards support in its products including Microsoft Visual Studio and ASP.NET. The group will work together to better understand and execute on Web standards as defined by standards bodies such as the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

Some key features that Sun was touting last year for the Solaris 10 platform are still missing in action. The two most important are the Project Janus Linux runtime environment and the ZFS file system. While there has been much speculation that Sun will withdraw support for Project Janus, this is not the case.

As seen on Slashdot: "At a very late stage Addison Wesley decided not to publish my book, 'The New C Standard: An economic and cultural commentary' I am making the pdf freely available. You can download the pdf (mirror). The organization is rather unusual in that the commentary covers each sentence of the C Standard (actually the latest draft of C0X, excluding library) one by one (all 2022 of them)."

At the 2005 OpenBSD hackathon, Fernando Gont proposed ways to fix a 20 year old flaw in the design of the ICMP protocol that could be used to make TCP attacks. Kerneltrap has the details.

Media reports that Microsoft Corp is working to integrate RFID programs into the Windows operating system were inaccurate, Microsoft said yesterday.

Mark Shuttleworth and Canonical Ltd, founders of the popular Ubuntu Linux-based operating system, have today announced the creation of The Ubuntu Foundation with an initial funding commitment of US$10m. The Ubuntu Foundation will employ core Ubuntu community members to ensure that Ubuntu will remain fully supported for an extended period of time.

Sources close to Mandriva, Progeny and Turbolinux say the trio of companies will be announcing a new enterprise Linux distribution based on Debian Linux at the LinuxWorld event in San Francisco in August.

More and more projects use the browser as a primary means of communicating with the program. The main drawback of this approach is that it requires the user to configure and maintain his own Web server, or else requires the program to come bundled with a Web server. Jetty is simple for both programmers and users, making it a good choice for bundled web server.

SuSE 9.3 is the most polished and easy to use release from SuSE. It goes a long way in dispelling the notion that Linux is not ready for the desktop. It is a comprehensive release with enhanced hardware detection and configuration and an exhaustive suite of available applications.

Recently in a post on my blog I argued that, despite many claims to the contrary, GNU/Linux is almost ready for the desktop. In particular, I argued that GNU/Linux is already a very good and easy desktop if people just take the time to learn its very basic differences with Windows before actually using it. Note: Don't forget to rate this article!

IBM has today presented various new versions of their G5 processor at the Power Everywhere Forum in Japan. Firstly, it introduced the much-anticipated PowerPC 970MP, the dual-core version of the G5. In addition, they also announced 3 low-power G5s, ranging from 1.2Ghz at 13W to 1.6Ghz at 16W. These processors will most likely find their way into Apple's Macs.

FUDCon 2, the second gathering of Fedora Users and Developers, was held at LinuxTag, on the 24th and 25th of June in Karlsruhe, Germany. FUDCon 2 featured presentations from prominent members of the Fedora Project, both from Red Hat and from the Fedora community.

Maybe you've read the announcements of the 90- and 65-nanometer platform, but what does it all mean? Is IBM opening its process technology to outside companies? Chartered's Walter Ng puts it into perspective -- including where Samsung and Infineon fit in.