Details
Though this is a couple of days old, I just had to write about this most unfortunate incident. It appears that, since 1990 (coinciding with the collapse of the Soviet Union), the first (and I guess only) African astronaut, nigerian Abacha Tunde is stranded in the secret space station Salyut 8T. Despite the 14 years alone, he seems he's in "good humor, but wants to come home" (duh).

You can read more about it, including how to help bring him back home at The Register. In the name of humanity, let's help bring Tunde back home.

Details
Czeslaw Czapla wrote me an e-mail about the ongoing Opera Signature Campaign taking place at the Norwegian BeOS User Group site. A little reminder for those who have actually purchased Opera 3, in the email you have received from BMT Micro Orders after purchasing, it reads: Thank you for your willingness to register Opera. The registration fee covers your Opera registration key in documentation which you can access offline and free upgrades to Opera 5.x versions. In other words , now it is time to remind them of that coverage.

Click below to read Czeslaw's words...

Details
To our German speaking readers, the Swiss online magazine Tele has just published a review of Zeta:

Zeta sticht Windows aus
Es ist der Porsche unter den Betriebssystemen. Das neue Powerpaket Zeta l?sst alle anderen ziemlich langsam aussehen. ?mehr

The magazine is only available for subscribers, and the prices start at Fr. 5,- for a week.

Details
Schrijvers Luc (aka Begasus) has been so kind to notify ICO that he has published some pictures from BeGeistert 12.

Related link:
More BeGeistert 12 pictures

Details
MadScientist Entertainment has just published some pictures from BeGeistert 12.

Related link:
Pictures from BeGeistert 12

Details
IsComputerOn recently discovered Petter Holt Juliussen's blog over at BeClan's aggregator.

The leader of the Nordic BUG is developing a Deskbar replicant called BePortable. The development started as a WiFi utility, WiFi Pulse, but has later been turned in to a laptop utility. BePortable contains WiFi Pulse, but will also contain some more laptop specific stuff. A battery checker (the APM driver from BeBits - http://www.bebits.com/app/597) that checks the laptop battery status. has already been implemented and more features will be added as development continues. In the time of writing, BePortable only supports the hfa384x driver (also available from BeBits - http://www.bebits.com/app/3639) for the Prism 2/2.5/3.

Details
As some of you may be aware, GoBE, in the person of its sole member Mr. Kevin Gilbertson, has sent an e-mail to a number of yellowTab customers. In this mail, he claims that yT has no rights to bundle Gobe Productive with Zeta. Today, yT issued a reply on their site.

Click below...

Details
I've done lots of improvements to the BeFree code base.
It now uses a user-space Kernel Kit, so it doesn't need a custom Linux kernel and the app_server renders using Cairo a vector graphics library with cross-device output.

Here are some screenshots.

The next release 0.1.9 is scheduled within one month.

Details
Over at OSNews, Henrik Petersson (known in the BeOS world as "rain") wrote an article explaining his new project, Casper.

Casper is a media manager app for BeOS/Zeta, that can be used to organize an image and/or music collection. It also makes extensive use of a BFS strong point, the attributes. It's an interesting read and definitely an interesting (and useful) application. So click the link above and read more about it.

Details
Over at the BeOSMAX, they report that work is ongoing for the upcoming 3.1 version.

Click below for some points on the progress...