The first in a series of articles about Mono. This article explains how to install Mono and shows how to compile your first Cross Platform application.

Microsoft made available build 1289-RC1 of Windows XP Pro for AMD x86-64 computers. The download page notes a date of September 2004, but in reality this new version was released just a few days ago.

Aqua Data Studio 4.0, the popular multi-platform DB front-end, is released and it's adding many new features. Aqua Data Studio is free for personal usage. In other interesting multi-platform commercial releases, Lost Marble recently released Moho 5.0.7 (screenshot, running under my Novell Linux).

Today we feature a mini-interview with Alexander Grechishkin, CEO of Lismore Software Systems, Ltd. The company came to spotlight recently after their release of their x86 emulator for Mac OS X, Guest PC. We also include three screenshots of the application.

Microsoft is on track to release the first full test version of the next major Windows release by the end of June, a Microsoft executive told CNET News.com on Monday. Also, Microsoft this week will reaffirm its promise to have Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 finished by the end of the quarter and its intent to have "Avalon" and "Indigo" subsystems available for Windows XP and Server 2003 in the near future.

One of the main reasons for the Firefox browser's successful seizure of market share from Microsoft's Internet Explorer is the desire to escape the inundation of PC-slowing spyware. However, spyware experts indicate that with its increased popularity, Firefox itself will become a target for spyware creators, who are already poking at the open source browser alternative. Elsewhere, a new security hole found affecting most browsers except IE.

Samba 3.0.10 has been ported to SkyOS today. All configuration is done through a plugin in the System Manager, making configuration very simple, with just a few mouse clicks.

In the Linux environment, Rational Purify provides a comprehensive solution for finding errors and memory leaks. This article features a simple C program and a more complex C++ program that gives you a good idea of how you can successfully integrate Purify into your Linux development environment with very little effort.

The famous Java IDE, Intellij IDEA, will provide free licenses for active open source projects.

The Dot reports: "Trolltech, maker of the Qt toolkit which forms the basis for KDE, announced today that the Qt version for Microsoft Windows will be available under the GPL in addition to its current commercial license offerings for that platform. This change will take place with the release of Qt 4. The Qt version for Linux has been available under a similar dual licensing scheme for several years already. The availability of a GPL'ed Qt for Microsoft Windows will make it much easier to distribute KDE applications that run on the Microsoft Windows platform."

BargainPDA has published an informative review of the Asus A730W Pocket PC PDA. The Asus device seems to add points with its integrated camera and USB host capabilities compared to the Dell x50v competition (arguably the most advanced PDA today), but lose many points with its bad battery life, limited graphics capabilities, price ($600 over $425) and questionable built quality (and also not enough built-in storage, older Bluetooth protocol support, slower CPU than Dell's). No matter what though, these two PDAs along the HP iPaq hx4700 are the best of breed today in the PDA world.

Have you ever had to work on a piece of code and found that it was hard to understand? Maybe the logic was convoluted, the identifiers meaningless, or worse, misleading. You say there was documentation? Was it readable? Did it make sense? Was it up to date with the code? Are you sure? How do you know? This chapter discusses programming by intention, a central idea in XP. It means making your intent clear when you write code.

One of the easiest ways to spin your wheels and waste your time on a project is to lose sight of just what it is that the project is supposed to address. This chapter will help you see what situations can lead to this, how you can prevent it, and what to do if you're already off track.

In this C++ Challenge, Herb Sutter throws down the gauntlet. Can you get around the C++ rule of using constructed objects as members of unions? Find out the answer in this sample chapter.