R?mi Grumeau of BeOSFrance fame, interviewed famous BeOS community member Dane Scott, of BeOSRadio and LeBuzz fame. The original, in French, can be found here. He asked me to publish the english version, so after proofreading it (with his consent), here it is.

Read on and enjoy. Great job R?mi!

Much has happened the last couple of weeks when it comes to Instant Messaging under BeOS / Zeta.

The development of BeOS IM kit has been picked up by Mikael Eiman (m_eiman). Today he released alpha 6 of the IM kit. He is looking for tester for the latest release, as he is finding it harder and harder to find the bugs on his own. Even though it is in an alpha stage, it is quite stable, but needs some more features before reaching beta stage. In the latest release the developer has fixed some more bugs and added a Deskbar replicant.

The latest version: imkit_alpha_6.zip (only works with Zeta and BeOS with Bone).

Today also a new IM client got it's first release on BeBits. Gadu is an instant messanger application, designed to work with IM protocols popular in Poland, but it could also be used by others.

The GNU Gadu, which BeGadu is based on, is a plugin based application, even GUI ( which uses GTK+) is a plugin. Currently we support: Gadu-Gadu, Tlen.pl, Jabber. GNU Gadu also has support for sending SMS messages.

Related link:
http://ggadu.sourceforge.net/
Here's the other OpenTracker story, promised for today. Axel D?rfler, OT's maintainer would like everyone's opinion on something, so I'll let you read about it in his own words.

Read on...

After a long hiatus, the OpenBeOS folks have come out with a brand new, fresh, sizzling newsletter.

In it they cover, among others, the Syslog (so helpful in so many cases) and the quite interesting "Virtualdrive driver". So what are you waiting for? Go read it!
At the OpenTracker site , they announced the start of their own Locale Kit project. Here's what they said about it:
The OpenTracker umbrella contains a new project: the creation of a full-fledged BeOS Locale Kit. The project aims to be compatible to existing translation efforts as much as possible but deliver an adequate solution for all (or almost all) localisation issues.

The Kit is currently in its planning and design stages, you can find a first draft of its headers in the CVS repository; the discussion is going on in the developer forum - we are very interested in input from native speakers of non "Western" languages (especially Asian languages).
This Kit is going to be used by the localized version of Tracker/Deskbar in the next release (which focusses on usability).
So what about it? Do you want to contribute? Or you have something else to say about it? You can discuss it over at our OpenTracker Forum. Tomorrow we'll bring you more news about OpenTracker, so stay tuned.

I'd like to thank Oscar Lesta, for the auxiliary heads up on this one.
Golem is writing about the latest service pack for Zeta. The newsupdate is in German, and can be read at http://www.golem.de.
The great Emulation software site BeEmulated has just put up for download a new version of BeMAME, bringing it up to version 0.77. Once again, we all have Caz to thank for his work on this.

Here are some bits of what they have to say about it:
The release is still classified as BETA, so don't be upset if not everthing works 100% ... but take the change and play/test BeMAME with your favorite games !! Give feedback ( turok2 [at] currantbun [dot] com ) to Caz to help him to improve the emulator!

Beta also means that BeMAME isn't finished yet. Caz asks for developers to contribute to the BeMAME source and help to improve/bugfix it. Please send your source changes/contributions to Caz!!
Also, this release has been tested both on R5 and Zeta RC1, so you know it'll work! So what are you waiting for? Go grab it.
BeClan just announced at their site that, following last week's appeal, they now have a copy of the BeBook available and are launching the BeClan BeBook project.

Click below to read more of their plans.

The Germany company YellowBites has updated their flagship product eXposer to version 1.9.0.

The new version contains lots of bug fixes and changes, and two new features. You can now switch between English and German on the fly.

The application can be downloaded in a demo version from BeBits, or bought at KagiStore.
yellowTab just announced the release of Service Pack 2, for their RC1. In it users can find more fixes to bugs, new versions of applications, improved USB support among many other item. One other that I'd like to mention is the inclusion of SANE.

Go here and get your fresh SP2. Don't forget to report back what good or bad you find in it.