Beagle is Shaping Up on Novell’s Desktop

Nat Friedman posted recently some new screenshots from within his Novell Desktop showing Beagle, the Dashboard evolution. Beagle indexes the file system for intelligent searches similar to Apple's Spotlight solution. It is also capable on searching the internet while integrates well with many Gnome apps like Evolution and Gaim, including file selectors. Notice how the spatial Nautilus opens a new window for each search, containing only the search results.

Why Games Matter

Nowadays most kids are introduced to computers at quite a young age and understand that their future careers and lives are going to involve using them substantially. For many of them, computer games are an important part of their learning computer skills and can lead to an interest in finding out more about computers, operating systems, software and so on.

Absoft Announces Pro Fortran Compiler Suite 9.0 for Macintosh OS X

Absoft Corporation has announced immediate availability of its new high performance Pro Fortran tool kit version 9.0 for Macintosh OS X. Absoft’s Pro Fortran Compiler Suite is the most complete Macintosh Fortran tool kit available from any vendor and includes: Fortran 95 and C/C++ compilers, a powerful Integrated Development Environment, the market-leading Fx2™ Debugger, and free graphics libraries.

Mac OS X Tiger to add OpenGL enhancements, PDF Kit, SQLite

Some of the less publicized features of Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" are beginning to emerge as developer sources compile notes from Apple's recent World Wide Developer Conference and preliminary tests of the next-generation operating system. Although the majority of the features are based on additions to less apparent and underlying technologies, the advances will aid developers in producing more feature rich and streamlined applications in shorter periods of time, sources said.

Building The Next Generation, Part 4: Usability

Computers are complex systems but it's a mistake to assume they need to be complex to use. However, usability is not as easy as it may first seem. It is a different discipline from software development lacking the strict logic or having a "right way". There are only differing requirements and differing collections of guidelines. Making things easy is difficult.