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And I mean literally. A new BeOS was born in Argentina, a healthy baby boy, son of a member of the Argentinean BUG, l3mur, and was named Beos Santiago Becerra Espitia. Talk about devotion and love for this OS. I don't have many more details, but when photos are available, I'll try to post them here, with the father's authorization of course. Congratulations to the parents and welcome BeOS!

Update: With the proud father's authorization, below you'll find a picture of BeOS.

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Raycone is celebrating 7 years of web-design application development for BeOS/Zeta. And to comemorate this occasion Raycone is holding a special discount action for all web-design products.

The first 10 users to buy InSite Constructor or InSite Designer, before May 31st, will get a 20% off from the regular price of 49EUR, thus paying only 39EUR. And, for an even bigger save, the first 10 users to purchase the InSite Bundle (includes both InSite Constructor and InSite Designer), get a 25% discount, lowering the price from 98EUR to 73EUR.

More information may be found on their site: http://www.raycone.com/DiscountAction

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Adi, over at DarkWyrm's page, has posted a progress status of Haiku's window manager, and the good news is that it's almost complete. They have, for example, support for normal, floating app/subset/all and modal app/subset/all windows, as well as workspace support. Left are smaller things like not allowing windows to be moved or resized and focus follow mouse (among a few others) remain to be implemented still.

But along with the status report, Adi was kind enough to post a plethora of screenshots, showing many examples of how the window manager is working. For the full report and the screenshots, why don't you click here?

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Over at IlTuoSistema, they took some pictures of the new ZetaBox being sold at €298. Though a full review will only come after R1 is released, they're pleased with the machine, which represents a good way for users to enter the Zeta world (and the gfx card can be used with Rudolf's 3D add-on). The only aspect they didn't enjoy was the CPU cooler, which was too loud.

So be sure to check out the pictures right here. Also, they have a ZetaBox vs. MacMini article available (you might want to translate it).

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A new version of BeDiGiCam, an app that enables you to preview and download the pictures you took from your PTP compatible camera, has just been announced.

This new version isn't available at the moment, it will probably be bundled with the upcoming Zeta R1 (it works only in that version), and now takes advantage of Zeta's locale kit, so far 10 translations are already available. Also soon, a roadmap will be made available. So, for the voyeur in all of us, head over to BeBug and check the screenshot.

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Coder extraordinaire Rudolf Cornelissen has finally (after a small delay) released the first public version of his 3D add-on for his Nvidia driver, which I'm sure pleases everyone out there with cards included in the support list (from TNT1 up to GF4 MX). For the add-on to work you need the latest Nvidia driver, version 0.43, which you can get here.

Supported apps so far include Quake 2 (though with some rendering problems caused by MESA) and some 3D demos like GLTeapot and 3DLife. GLQuake needs some more work still. Of course, if you test applications which are not listed, don't forget to give Rudolf your feedback. As always great work from Rudolf, what else was to be expected. Oh, and you can get the driver (which works in R5, Dano and Zeta) and the add-on from this page.

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Development of Abiword for BeOS seems to have been resumed! I found a link to QuBe, a Russian BeOS site, and there found a forum entry called Abiword 1.0.1, I know absolutely no Russian, but I found a download link, and it was indeed Abiword 1.0.1! 3 subsequent builds have been released, called gluckalo-alpha 0, 1, and 2, and I proceeded to download the latest build (alpha 2) and it has these improvements over the former version:
  • The 'preferences' dialog box now works (this includes spelling preferences, etc)
  • In this latest release, you can choose the colour of your text!
  • And the program FINALLY has an icon!
  • Fullscreen mode also works.
You can find the forum post here and an online translation right here

To download the latest release click here. (Note: the zip file only contains the Abiword executable, so you will need an existing Abiword installation, which you can get from BeZip. Here you can see a screenshot showing the text colour change:

I myself have no involvement in the development of Abiword for BeOS/Zeta, but I thought that the users would want to know. Here's hoping for more releases of Abiword for BeOS and Zeta!

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For those who didn't know, Bernd Korz is at the moment over in the US on a business trip, and he took the opportunity to pay Eugenia Loli-Queru a visit, which resulted in this article.

In it, Eugenia talks about what's in Zeta 1.0, what's out, and she's impressed with how far Zeta has come since she last saw it. The article even includes a snazzy picture of Bernd himself. So head over and read, you'll enjoy it.

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My buddy Dane Scott, has just announced over at LeBuzz that the beta testing period has begun for TT3. The beta will be sent to the selected testers in the next few days.

Let me quote Dane just a bit about this new version:
The TuneTracker interface is completely new, with a slick, professional look, powerful control interface, and lots of customizability. Not much can be said publically yet about what's in it, but as someone intimately involved in the whole thing, I can say it's going to blow a few socks off when it's officially released.
I'm pretty sure (and just darn pretty too) he's right. He showed me the new interface and it looks (and from the looks, works) just great. So one of the (if not the) most successfull commercial applications for BeOS/Zeta just keeps evolving and getting better and better. Great work guys!

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The long time BeOS user GoodOldGames is back again and has written a very appreciated news update on BeEmulated.net.

He has finally gotten more time for BeEmulated again, but is unfortunately still only on a dial-up connection. Bigger news updates still have to wait for some more weeks, and there will also be many emulator updates released there (like ScummVM). So stay tuned...