Trolltech has announced the availability of the first Qt 4 Technical Preview. Qt 4, the next major release of the popular cross-platform C++ application framework.

The KOffice team is brings you the second bugfix package that builds upon the successful 1.3 version.

What does Microsoft's top exec have up his sleeve? CEO Steve Ballmer gave a hint in his company-wide memo: many hosted services for SMBs are now waiting in the wings.

In this article (re:PDF - 127k) the author attacks the difference between today's file structure representations and our mental model of the same, and suggests mind mapping as a method of closing the gap. Here's a screen shot of what it might look like.

If you're part of the current blogging craze, then you've likely heard of Blog-City, a blogging site owned and operated by Blog-City Ltd. When some unexpected performance issues cropped up, Java performance experts Jack Shirazi and Kirk Pepperdine(from JavaPerformanceTuning.com) were asked to assist in a technical tuning of Blog-City. Here's what they found out and did to fix the problems.

Fernando has previewed Visual Studio 2005 Codename "Whidbey" Enterprise Developer Edition Alpha. Below is an excerpt: " Visual SourceSafe is a viable solution that lets you effectively manage project files. It tracks and stores changes to a file so that developers can review a file's history, return to earlier versions of the file and develop programs concurrently."

An interview with Hideya Kawahara, the lead developer of Project Looking Glass, about one of Sun's hottest projects, recently open sourced.

This is the first installment of ThinkSecret's "Inside Tiger" series, covering Mac OS X Version 10.4. Today, they begin looking at one of Tiger's most touted features, Spotlight, a new suite of systemwide search tools. Elsewhere, SMH in Australia has a Tiger article. Update: Appleinsider has more Tiger articles with screenshots: 1, 2, 3, 4.

Opera Software released today the version 7.52 of Opera browser with added security (Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, Mac OS X and MS-Windows):

One glaring issue I've had since my transition to Linux is video games. Being a Nintendo (consoles) and Sierra (PC) kid, I've gravitated to consoles more lately, but the occasional PC game has kept my interest solidly enough to keep Windows around on a spare drive. I tried WineX (CVS) in the past, and had great success with Diablo II, but didn't bother to try any 'new' games with it.

This article surveys a number of benchmarks and finds that Java performance on numerical code is comparable to that of C++, with hints that Java's relative performance is continuing to improve. Then they describe clear theoretical reasons why these benchmark results should be expected.

Marcel Moolenaar has been very busy with GDB code as of late, having imported gdb version 6.1.1 in late June and now supplying a patch to freebsd-arch@ that adds kernel debugging and helpful features to FreeBSD's gdb and ddb code, including thread awareness. Other interesting additions include optimizations for the 64-bit platforms, compression for remote gdb, and improved symbol handling.

Softly spoken, shy and retiring Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer sent an email to staff yesterday to complain that the company is not as wealthy as everyone thinks. According to Mr Ballmer, stories have been getting out that he is sitting on a fathomless cash ocean of billions of dollars and does nothing more than swim in the mountains of loot. He wanted to tell staff that it is not true because Microsoft needed a lot of cash.

While corporate users are worried about security holes, they often rely on internal apps and Web sites that only work within Microsoft's dominant browser.