A public pre-release version of GCC 3.3.3 is now available on the RISC OS website. The project considers this release to be "stable enough for general use but may contain a few rough interface edges that need polishing". It's also described as the biggest, official update to RISC OS GCC in two years.

Two new videos showing some of the new features and programs on SkyOS are now availiable on SkyOSnet. The new beta4 video shows off the crystal icons, OpenGL, SkyKruzer, the fileselector, popup dialogs, and the terminal. Keep in mind its a beta, and it was recorded in Vitual PC, so the speed does not accurately reflect the real running speed.

Longhorn introduces significant new graphics technology, currently known by its codename, "Avalon." Avalon renders an application's visual elements onto the screen using a much more sophisticated approach than Windows has previously used. In this article, Ian Griffiths shows how this new graphical composition model solves various limitations of Win32, what new user interface design techniques this enables, and what it means to developers.

Indigo is the "Longhorn" general-purpose messaging framework that you can use to build a wide variety of rich communication-based applications. You can build stateless, Web service applications and clients for such applications. You can build RemoteObject services and their clients. You can establish reliable and durable communications sessions. Indigo is a communications framework that you can use to build interesting and powerful collaboration applications. Read the article at MSDN.

Tom Rizzo launches his new colum with an overview of why the new "Longhorn" storage subsystem (code-named "WinFS") is needed, what WinFS promises to do to help solve our data-overload problems, and what his column promises to deliver in the coming months.

Microsoft software designed for, of all things, cash registers and slot machines played a persuasive role in the European Union's landmark antitrust case labeling it an abusive monopolist.

Since PalmSource's DevCon last month, there's been a lot of bickering about PalmOS Cobalt's ability to multitask compared to Windows Mobile. It's not really an issue, and here's why. Get more at NMC.

At ITU Telecom World, WaveReport got a sample of another view by NEC. It is based on the pen and called P-ISM. This concept is so radical that WaveReport went to Tokyo to learn more.

Distrowatch reports on the first Beta release of Mandrakelinux 10.0 for AMD64 (Athlon & Opteron). In addition to Mandrakelinux 10.0 common features, it provides improved support for Serial ATA support, and an experimental support for 32-bit GL acceleration.

"Epic Programmer Ryan Gordon burst onto the Mac scene last year with the successful port of Unreal Tournament 2003 to the Mac. A man with many talents, Gordon then went on to port America's Army to the Mac and has just completed work on the Mac version of Unreal Tournament 2004. IMG recently spoke with Gordon to get his thoughts on UT 2004, the Mac, Mac OS X, and more.

SkyDeveloperStudio is available. This IDE makes it possible to create C, C++, Perl and Java projects with syntax highlighting, intergrated source level debugger and an intergrated profiler. Also, SkyOS 5.0 beta4 will be released today to the beta testing team including: SkyDeveloperStudio, GTK, Abiword, and The Gimp. On other hobby OS news, the AROS team gets nVidia support.

Network software maker Novell has announced software for handling e-mail, calendars and contacts on Linux systems, as well as an automated patch management tool for Microsoft's Windows.

Apple has released Xserve RAID Admin Tools 1.3, an update to its Java-based remote management software for setting up and monitoring storage volumes on the Xserve. Read the report at MacMinute.

Release 5 of Mobius (an open-source operating system for the IA-32 platform) is now available.