Sources uncover new eye candy, smart font collections, a security certificate assistant, and more in some of the latest development builds of Apple next-generation operating system.

Gtk+ WebCore -project releases pre-alpha version of Linux/Gtk port of WebCore/KHTML rendering engine and a reference browser implementation. Released components include KJS javascript interpreter, KHTML rendering engine, Qt porting layer, WebKit API for embedding and a reference browser for demonstrating the functionality of the other components. As the first GNOME Browser Atlantis was updated to use GTK-WebCore as standard rendering engine.

Former Microsoft employee and software-development pundit Joel Spolsky shares his two cents on what's going on with Microsoft.

Intel is backing the 128-bit AES encryption protocol for securing Wireless USB connections, which it hopes will replace cables for connections over very short distances . . . Intel wants Wireless USB networks to interface with the Ultra Wideband (UWB) standard to make networks that cover whole households.

The Game Cube Linux project recently released a short tutorial to show how to patch and recompile a vanilla kernel to let it run on your Game Cube. This story at PPC Nerds mentions that fact and a few other tidbits about Linux on gaming consoles. With the gamecube and the future xBox running on PowerPC hardware, all that time spent tinkering with Linux on old Macs may do you some good.

This is a new development release of Mandrakelinux 10.1 for PowerPCs: "Three 700MB images this time, so a few more packages included. New in RC1: mostly in sync with 10.1/x86; airport support enabled; ghostscript and libpng problems should be fixed; several other packages like apache and php modules updated; OpenOffice.org 1.1.3 final.

Perl is an incredibly flexible language, but its ease of use can lead to some sloppy and lazy programming habits. We're all guilty of them, but there are some quick steps you can take to improve the performance of your Perl applications. This article looks at the key areas of optimization, which solutions work and which don't, and how to continue to build and extend your applications with optimization and speed in mind.

The NetBeans open source project is proud to announce the early access release of the NetBeans IDE 4.1 as the project delivers significant new development capabilities for the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition 1.4 (J2EE) including Enterprise Java Bean (EJB) components and Web Services.

Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit launched Virtual PC for Mac Version 7. Then, a Hawaiian company specializing in streaming video introduced CherryOS, a virtual PC that mimics the hardware of a G4 Mac. CherryOS inventor Arben Kryeziu, a software developer who got tired of carrying both a Mac and a PC all over Hawai, is confident the computing world will find value in his innovation. However, questions remain if his CherryOS is simply a modified PearPC. Update: An interesting conspiracy theory has been posted here.

The Grid Portal Toolkit (GridPort) is a toolkit for developing Web-based portals and applications on top of an underlying distributed and grid computing infrastructure. GridPort aggregates grid services from grid software packages and provides additional grid capabilities while presenting a simple, consistent API for portal and application developers. This article presents an introduction to Grid Portal Toolkit 3, including the design philosophy, architecture, and capabilities of each component.

Chris, over at osdir.com, has put together a few new slideshows, this time of Mandrake Move, Mandrake's Live CD, and Kurumin Linux 3.3, a new Brazilian distribution.

I came across it around mid September and after reading up on it, decided to install their September 15 pre-release on my IBM Thinkpad T22. As a follow up to my first review covering the Warty pre-release of Ubuntu Linux, I want to cover some good and bad things I have come across in my day to day use of Ubuntu. Read more.

Jef Raskin was one of the creators of the Mac and invented the click-and-drag interface. Click for his interview.

Xandros today announced its beta test program for the forthcoming version 3.0 of the award-winning Xandros Desktop Operating System (OS). Novice to expert users interested in beta testing the latest enhancements to Xandros desktop technology are invited to apply at the Xandros web site.