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It was already announced several days ago, but now it's here, the new Refraction beta. It's the last one in the Early Bird Licensing Program, which means that the next version to appear will cost you 80 Euros, and won't provide you of a free update to Refraction 1.5.

The new beta incorporates a number of significant changes and fixes. For those who already have a license: do not forget to check for your new serial and product key [Ed. Note: Aw, there goes my "Eddyspeeder1" license]. Refraction is now also available in several languages.

You can now also try Refraction yourself as it is now available from BeBits. The demo version does not allow you to print and save, and its image is watermarked. Playing with Refraction will prove to you that this application is closing in on Adobe PhotoShop and Jasc Paint Shop Pro.

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It's that (un-calenderized) time again. OpenBeOS releases to the masses its issue #51 of their newsletter.

In this one, you can learn some things about the app_server and also how to write a R5 printer driver. Also, Michael Phipps asks us to rethink directories in ways that might help the end-user's experience. This article was a very interesting read. So what are you waiting for? Head over and start reading it.

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After a long sign-up period (also influenced by my move) we finally pulled the plug from the TuneTracker2 giveaway. What does this mean? It means that soon I will get the lucky winner's name from TuneTracker's Dane Scott. After I will contact the winner via e-mail to get his reaction and after the result of the giveaway will be posted here in our frontpage.

So keep an eye on your mailbox, who knows, it might be you the one to receive that e-mail!

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TuneTracker Systems announced two new members of its family:

- DayTracker is a "logger that keeps an audio record of the entire day's broadcast, as is required in some countries such as Canada". [Ed. Note: So now I can run TT if I ever want my own radio station, cool]. This add-on for TT costs $79.95 and is a valuable help for all TT users.

- TuneBacker(tm) is another very useful addition to the TT family. It's a "double-redundant backup system". It does a daily backup to a removable harddrive while keeping a second removable HDD stored away. The user can then swap drives when he wants and store that HDD into a safe place for that "rainy day". TuneBacker(tm) costs $299.95 and is definitely worth every penny of it. Who wants to lose all their station data?

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The developers behind Masquerade have started localizing their full featured IDE. You can take part in this work by downloading a template translation file from their web site.

The translation should be quite easy, as there is not much to translate. The translation file is for the upcoming Masquerade version 0.2. The first version to be released to the public. No release date is set yet.

Related link:
Template language file for Masquerade V0.2

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Today we can read that Microsoft yesterday announced that people who use its operating system software must patch their computers yet again, or their PC's will be vulnerable to attacks that could cede control to hackers.

The company called the software flaw a "critical" vulnerability, which is their highest rating. It is the second major security flaw announced this month, and write on their security pages that "We urge all of our customers to apply this update,".

So far so good, then I read the following in The New York Times:

"A security company, eEye Digital Security, reported the problem to Microsoft last July. Because the flaw is common to so many operating systems and applications, "this is one of the biggest ones ever," said Marc Maiffret, an executive at eEye whose title is chief hacking officer. Mr. Maiffret said that he was surprised that it took Microsoft so long to issue a patch. "All the reason Microsoft gave us was 'extra testing,' but it doesn't take that long to test something this simple," he said."

Wired has the headline "Microsoft: Oops! We Did It Again".

They needed about 200 days for this patch!

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Jenne has written a review of Zeta RC2 over at Opera Journal and added several screenshots. The article cover various aspects of the OS and the applications included.

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Ok, I have some questions and doubts about something, and I would appreciate if someone could help me out.

Earlier this week I bought a new speaker set from Logitech. A nice 5.1 setup, the model is Z-5300. I have an Audigy soundcard in my PC. It works beautifully with it, no problems whatsoever and the sound quality is great (neighbours upstairs complaint about their furniture jumping around when the Bass is too high... rocks). The question is, how can I connect it to the DVD player (or TV) and PS2? It comes with a PS2 adapter, but not even on the phone with Logitech's tech support (not much help) were we able to get it to work.

So, any suggestions or thoughts? The ideal would be to have it connected to all 3 and just have to select the sound source. Leave comments in the article or drop me an e-mail. Be seeing you!

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IsComputerOn would like to welcome BeAttitude, a new news site for the French community.

The Dano look is just awesome!

We wish you the best of luck, and we are sure that the future will bring us all plenty of news to write about.

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Tacking Jr. or II onto a boy's name is too common, a new father decided, so the self-described engineering geek took a software approach to naming his newborn son.

Jon Blake Cusack talked his wife, Jamie, into naming their son Jon Blake Cusack 2.0.

ICO says: Most software will sooner or later come in an improved version. We are looking forward to write about v2.5!

Read the full story here!