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I checked out Wesnoth website (http://www.wesnoth.org) today and downloaded the latest release. Wesnoth RC1. The link is for the BeOS/ZETA version is this one. So head over and check the game out.

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Cola Coder is at it again, he has updated his blog with some more juicy bits, this time: USB booting. This is great news in general, but especially for those who always tried installing ZETA onto a laptop without any optical drives, from now on (and as it will be demonstrated at BeGeistert) it'll be possible. Here's a small quote from the blog entry:
Ofcourse you'll have to customize the install a little, to fit on the limited space most memory sticks have, but it is actually possible to fit a working Zeta installation on a 128MB memory stick, without too many limitations. Ofcourse you'll need a little more if you want to include some more advanced apps
Nice. And with prices coming down on memory sticks with more and more space available, you'll be able to have a very nice, fully (or almost) featured ZETA installation. More good news from the Cola Coder (and yellowTAB). I wonder what would happen if he ran out of Cola...

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Fyysik asked me to write this piece about a new Seamonkey (that's the new name, Mozilla.org chose, really) build he's uploading as I'm writing this. If you've tested the latest Seamonkey and Firefox builds, you've might have noticed some strange behaviour when scrolling pages with iframes. In this new build, fyysik has made some changes which according to him improves this behaviour by some margin. So he (and I) would like for everyone to download this build and test it. If the results are positive, most likely this new code will find itself into Firefox as well, improving both browsers.

One thing, because of the name change, there's no more "mozilla" script nor "mozilla-bin", they're been replaced with, you guessed it, "seamonkey" script and "seamonkey-bin". So head over to Bebits and download the Seamonkey 1.1a build, it's already available. Don't forget, give feedback.

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Google is in the wind these days, and yesterday released a new beta version of their instant messenger Google Talk. Google Talk is a lightweight Jabber-based instant messaging client with voice capabilities, currently only available for Windows. But as it is based on the open Jabber (XMPP) protocol, you can chat with friends having Google Talk from other popular third party IM clients.

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Well, till now that has only been the case if you have been using Windows, OS X or Linux. The Italian developer Andrea Anzani (alias xeD) first implemented Jabber into the IM kit, and seems now to be finished implementing chatting with Google Talk for the IM kit users. From the first screenshot you can see Andrea establishing contact with me.

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yellowTAB has just announced today the release back to the world of the open source software they've included in ZETA. Applications like GCC and VLC among many others had changes made and bugs fixed in order to correctly work in ZETA, and now yT is giving back:
yellowTAB has, therefore, decided to put an archive of all such programs online. Developers can now access the source code directly to include the changes in their own work or learn how to program for ZETA. We hope that this step will bring us closer to developers and make it easier for us to extend our involvement in open source projects - yellowTAB already actively contributes to the Haiku project. It is only by participating in such projects that alternative operating systems such as ZETA stand a chance with new technologies. It also allows us to concentrate on making ZETA excel where it matters while providing developers with the infrastructure they need.
On a previous press release, yellowTAB has announced that they are extending the technical support hours, now open from 8am to 8pm Monday through Friday and Saturdays as well, 9am through 12pm (all these are Central European Time, +1GMT). They also opened a "Premium Support" line, working from 12pm to 8pm, for German customers only. Click the link above for the full press release and the telephone numbers for you to contact their Tech Support should you need to do so.

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The Russian developer Gerasim Troeglazov (alias 3deyes), behind NaviTracker and Paradigm, recently released DjVu Viewer 1.0.1 for BeOS / ZETA:

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DjVu is a great alternative file format to PDF and ideal for the Internet, as it allows high quality images to be stored in a minimum of space. The file format can also be a good alternative to TIFF, JPEG, and GIF. DjVu was originally developed at AT&T Labs-Research, and sold to LizardTech Inc. in March 2000. Later the same year, LizardTech released the reference implementation of DjVu under GNU GPL. LizardTech is now distributing clients, plugins for several browsers and commercial encoders.

The files that can be seen on the screenshot are in PDF and DjVu. The content in them is exactly the same, but the PDF file is 531 Kb and the DjVu is 77 Kb.

The DjVu Viewer has made used of the three themes Noia, Crystal and BeOS, themes that Gerasim also has used for both Paradigm and NaviTracker. Gerasim has published some more screenshots and made a pkg installation file available for download.

For more information about the DjVu, please visit http://www.djvuzone.org/. A good starting point for DjVu files is http://www.planetdjvu.com/gallery.htm.

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The voting for the BeBUG Wallpaper has begun, the polls are open and you can chose from 39 entries. The voting will end on September 30th and the winners will be revealed shortly after. As was mentioned before, each of the two will receive as prize a copy of ZETA R1 (with an activation key of course), valued at 100EUR.

So head over to the Wallpaper page and chose your favorite(s) and start voting. Good luck to all participants!

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Version 0.3.3 of the HaikuFox theme for Firefox is now available to support Firefox 1.5, 1.6 and the latest BeOS / Zeta bleeding edge builds. Users of some Firefox browser versions will receive the update automagically, because HaikuFox is now available from the official mozilla addon web site. To update immediately, install your copy from here.

Visit the HaikuFox homepage to read the change log. Big thanks from tigerdog for the continued support and encouragement.

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There's a new blog in town, a blog from Cola-Coder, someone that apparently consumes large quantities of coke while coding. I guess who the coder is...

Anyway, he works for yellowTAB and has just announced in his blog the first stable SATA driver for ZETA. He's been working on the VIA VT6420/6421 chipsets (two revisions of the 6420 were used, with and without RAID) and the driver's working fine with two disks, he wasn't able to test with four yet, lacking some hardware. Let me paste part of the post:
There's some cleanup still needed, hotplug support has to be implemented, and I'm waiting on feedback from VIA how to get the RAID functionality to work under Zeta, but the basic driver is fully working.

After this, most of the groundwork has been done, and I'll be looking into other Serial ATA chipsets, with the nVidia (nForce) chipsets as most probable targets.
Very good news for all SATA users out there, it's been a "Most Wanted" for them. And the question on their minds is: When will we get it? Well... I can't say, but I a certain cola-drinking-little bird told me it shouldn't be long... stay tuned!

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The Siberian part of Russian BUG is planning a BeOS conference at one of the most proeminent siberian universities, the Tomsk University, Department of Electronics and Control Systems. The conference will take on October 1st.

Estimated topics to discuss:

1) BeOS as home desktop OS, home software survey and testing - video, audio, internet.
2) Haiku and Zeta perspectives
2.1.Testing and demonstrating Haiku OS
2.2. Testing and demonstrating Zeta OS (depending on Zeta availability at conference time)
2.3. Comparison of Haiku and Zeta approaches and perspectives
3) Replacing BeOS components with Haiku components in working BeOS installations - problems, solutions, advances and issues.
4)Local and Network security in various BeOs distros
5) Latest software pieces survey and testing.
6)Latest driver testing
7)Presentation of Siberian BeOS community's own work.

Contact name: Vladimir Smagin
Phone: 0079069559568
E-mail: vladimir.smagin"RIMUVZISKRAP"gmail.com