Opera Mini 4 has been released. "Opera, today released Opera Mini 4, the newest version of Opera's worldwide mobile browsing sensation. Opera Mini 4 inspires the senses with its stunning desktop overview mode, so users see the page exactly as it appears on their computers. People can then use the intuitive Opera Zoom to fly into the page and access the content you want. Or they can select Opera's Small Screen Rendering to eliminate horizontal scrolling."

"The United States patent and legal system has turned into a battlefield where companies and technology developers can be attacked. Open source and free software developers have historically ignored this secondary battlefield, focusing instead on the primary battlefield of development and proliferation of their project. This omission leaves open source projects and individual developers vulnerable to patent infringement lawsuits. By creating its own defensive patent portfolio as commercial companies do, the open source community can arm itself for this battle."

As part of its three-pronged quest for worldwide Internet domination - via MSN, Live Search, and Windows Live - Microsoft has unleashed a bundled download of its installed desktop Live software: Mail, Photo Gallery, Writer, and OneCare Family Safety. Also included is a slightly redesigned version 8.5 of Messenger, which intimately ties in with the rest of the suite; for example, starting up when you run Mail.

The LLVM Compiler System is being used for all sorts of interesting things these days. It basically provides an extremely modular and easy to use set of open source (BSD-licensed) compiler libraries that can be used to build various applications from. Despite this, many people don't really understand it, and are scared away by the breadth of the project or by compilers in general. The Kaleidoscope tutorial starts out from scratch and slowly builds up a simple language to show how LLVM can help out with this. We end up with a JIT compiler for a fairly interesting little language with less than 700 lines of code. Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg, once you start with LLVM, there are all sorts of things you can do.

Microsoft announced two significant licensing changes around Visual Studio that will be a boon for partners. First, the company said it will soon initiate a shared-source licensing program for Visual Studio and make the IDE's source code available to ISV partners for debugging purposes. Microsoft also removed a licensing restriction that previously limited use of the Visual Studio software development kit to development only around Microsoft's platforms: partners will now be free to create Visual Studio-based applications and extensions on Linux and other non-Windows platforms.

Rasterman, the lead developer of the Enlightenment project, speaks about the future of Enlightenment, including the project's focus on the embedded world (Rasterman works at OpenMoko now), the relationship with commercial vendors, reorganized leadership, and even some hints at an upcoming release. "The primary thing of importance is getting E17 out the door. It's actually looking petty good. Only 2 really big TODO items left. I'm doing a theme revamp. The Default theme has very much aged. The gold bling isn't incredibly popular. I'm working on something I think people will love - and it still shows off E. It will replace the current default - and will also knock off some of the comment the default theme so its better documented for people to build new themes from and learn Edje."

A few days ago we published a review of the Linux-based Neuros OSD recorder and player. Now, you can win one of these devices! All you have to do is research on the product to find out its current capabilities, and then comment below with suggestions on how to make it better and with ideas for new applications and hacks. The Neuros Technology guys will pick the best idea in 3 days time and we will provide them with the winner's email address so they can send him/her a free Neuros OSD device (that info won't be used for other purposes). If you wish to comment but not to participate in the competition, please clearly state so on your comments. Update: The winner is FunkyELF for this post. Congrats!

"The latest version of Apple's operating system, Mac OS X, is here and it's arguably the most significant revamp since X replaced 9. Leopard brings a new look to Mac OS X GUI, and a wealth of new features, some innovations other merely tweaks to old apps. In the first of a series looking at Leopard in depth, we go straight for Leopard's soul: the Finder."

Nintendo has reportedly decided to stop all repairs of the original Nintendo after 24 years of support, Agence France Presse reported on Friday. A spokesperson said that the company has decided to end support due to increasingly short supplies of replacement parts. The iconic game system was sold as the Nintendo Entertainment System in the US and Europe, and as the Famicom in Japan. Nintendo's Ken Toyoda said that while the company is sad to turn its back on the NES, the company wanted its legions of loyal fans to focus on the Wii, currently the best selling next-generation console worldwide.

There's absolutely no reason you should be waiting the three-plus minutes it takes your computer to boot up Windows, says Woody Hobbs, CEO of Phoenix Technologies. And indeed, if Hobbs has his way, you may not have to endure those waits much longer. Phoenix says its new technology, HyperSpace, will offer mobile PC users the ability to instantly fire up their most used apps - things like e-mail, web browsers and various media players - without using Windows, simply by pressing the F4 button.

EyeOS 1.2, a web-based operating system, has been released. "We are proud to announce that eyeOS 1.2 has just been released! It's not just a necessary update on eyeOS 1.x, but also a bunch of new features and applications needed by eyeOS to be really useful for the every day use. Need to send a mail? Well, just open eyeMail. Did your friend send a Microsoft Word file? No problem, eyeOS will open it and allow you to modify it. Want to have multiple groups for family and friends to share information between them? eyeControl 1.2 will let you do that and much more, visually."

Google and 33 other companies have announced an ambitious industry alliance that will maintain a completely open source mobile phone stack. The Open Handset Alliance says phones based on its Linux-based 'Android' stack will reach market in as soon as eight months. The Android stack is based on 'open Linux kernel', the group says. It also includes a full set of mobile phone application software, in order to "significantly lower the cost of developing and distributing mobile devices and services", OHA said.

This is the third article in a series on common usability and graphical user interface related terms . On the internet, and especially in forum discussions like we all have here on OSNews, it is almost certain that in any given discussion, someone will most likely bring up usability and GUI related terms - things like spatial memory, widgets, consistency, Fitts' Law, and more. The aim of this series is to explain these terms, learn something about their origins, and finally rate their importance in the field of usability and (graphical) user interface design. In part III today, we focus on the desk accessory, popularly known as the widget, applet, mini-app, gadget, or whatever the fashionable term is these days.

"Bill Buzbee offered the first public demonstration of the Minix OS - a cousin of Linux - running on his homebrew minicomputer, today at the Vintage Computer Festival in Mountain View, Calif. Magic-1, built with 74-series TTL ICs using wire-wrap construction, implements a homebrew, 8086-like ISA."