At first glance, the latest version of RSS Bandit looks just like pretty much every other desktop RSS reader for Windows. In other words, it looks like Outlook. But this week saw the released of RSS Bandit 1.7 Alpha with one killer new feature: support for synchronization with your Google Reader or NewsGator feeds.
Here's how it works. You download and install the open source application, and then click the File menu and select Synchronize Feeds. Pick your service and enter your login information and RSS Bandit will import your feed list in a matter of seconds. Any actions you take using the desktop reader should then be reflected at your online feed reader. You can mark items as reader, unread, or shared. And you can subscribe to feeds or remove feeds using RSS Bandit and the changes should apply to your online account.
At least that's the theory. In practice, we're still waiting for our changes to show up in Google Reader. We read a few items, unsubscribed from a feed, and over an hour later Google Reader is showing no sign that it's noticed. This is still Alpha software, so it's possible speedier updates could come at a later date.
RSS Bandit 1.7 Alpha also adds a new podcast download manager.
It's understandable, of course. Most new Linux users feel more comfortable with something a little heavier than a window manager like Fluxbox or WindowMaker. The interesting thing, of course, is that many new users are either consciously or unconsciously playing the field of not only distributions, but desktops.
Rest assured, KDE will not text you a hundred times a day to beg, plead or curse if you switch desktops. GNOME will not mail you a dead fish from the opposite side of the country, book rate. In this relationship, it is always okay to have a wandering eye, not only for what is out there, but for what's on the horizon.
We like Enlightenment as it stands now. It's one of our favorite window managers. It doesn't feel too foreign to the new user, but it is still extremely lightweight. If there was a spectrum with the heaviest desktop environments on the right, and the lightest window managers on the left, just right of the middle would be the venerable Xfce, and just to the left of the middle would be Enlightenment.
But as for what's on the horizon for Enlightenment? We have seen e17. Right now it's an alpha release, and we're waiting not too patiently for the coming out party. We are smitten.
We know how it is. You like to hack. You like to develop software -- or maybe you just like to watch developing software coming together (there are stranger hobbies). You've been known to play with alpha software. Yes, yes, you truly live on the edge.
But you're an adult (well, you know, mostly. Chronologically, anyway). You have responsibilities. You need a stable environment for your data. Your documents. Your pictures. Your.. ahem... multimedia collection.
You can have the best of both worlds. The openSUSE project has announced the arrival of the Factory LiveCDs. Whether you're a hacker or just curious about what's going to unfold with openSUSE 11.0 later this year, this is a great way to get a sneak peek without disturbing your desktop.
The liveCDs are, according to Stephan Kulow, xdelta files running in conjuction with the most recent liveCDs, and come in both GNOME and KDE varieties.
Still not quite ready to test? You haven't too long to wait. OpenSUSE 11.0 is scheduled for public release on June 19 of this year.
Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron is marching closer to its scheduled April launch. Canonical has released the 5th Alpha of the next generation of the popular Linux distribution. Among other things, Alpha 5 comes with a new installation option: Users can either run and install Ubuntu 8.04 Alpha 5 using a LiveCD, or they can use Wubi to install Ubuntu to a partition from within Windows. No reboot necessary.
Here are a few more updates in the latest Alpha release:
Brasero CD/DVD burning application, replaces the Serpentine CD burning utility
The World Clock applet can now display the time and weather in multiple locations
Ubuntu 8.04 Alpha 5 is available for download now. But since this is still pre-release software, we wouldn't recommend installing it on your primary machine. You know, unless you like using undercooked software on your primary machine and potentially losing data.
Amarok has just released a preview of its new version 2, codenamed "Kutie." In case you didn't know, Amarok is the free music player for Linux and Unix, with support for album art, lyrics, and Wikipedia and last.fm integration.
A word of warning: this is a very early release and a technical preview only (it's called a pre-alpha release; if you've ever wondered what came before alpha, this is your chance to find out). The developers admit that many things are broken or not feature complete, though it does play music; which is, upon deeper reflection, a nice thing to have in a music player.
So why release such an early version? Call it an inspiration, a call to arms. They need developers and artists to help finish Amarok 2.0. If you hear that siren song, you can join them in their IRC channel #amarok on freenode or let them know via email.
OpenOffice.org has had an interesting journey on Mac OS X. For roughly half a decade, anyone who wanted to use it has had to also download the not-quite-user-friendly X11 environment which OpenOffice had to run in. Long story short: this cumbersome and resource-intensive setup knocked OpenOffice off the lists of almost all but the most resilient and passionate Mac OS X users.
Today, this unfortunate open source tragedy is no more - as long as you don't mind running alpha software.
Slashdot is reporting that the OpenOffice.org project has unleashed an alpha build of a true, native version that will run on PowerPC and Intel Macs using Mac OS X, and only Mac OS X (X11-be-gone!). Users must chose the correct version for their processor (i.e. - it isn't a Universal Binary for some odd reason), and the downloads are being distributed via BitTorrent. Users are also warned, however - in bold red lettering on the OpenOffice.org download page, no less - that this is definitely an alpha. In fact, a full list of known issues with this version is linked from the announcement post, with a few of the big hitters stated to help wary users make the decision to wait for a more robust version at a later date. These issues include:
You cannot print
PDF export does not properly work as thetext won't show on the page right
Starting OpenOffice.org from a shared folder does not work
Copy and paste does not fully work
OpenOffice.org will crash after quitting
Some text is not drawn in places like Impress
Impress will not recognise multiple monitors
Still, this is a massive step forward to bringing a true version of OpenOffice.org to Mac OS X, and we tip our hats to the project for getting this far. Head over to the announcement post for more details on whether this early build is right for you.
Yahoo is fighting hard in these search engine wars, and seems to be quite frequently releasing new and interesting goodies for web users. This new entry into the market is a fresh looking search tool called Alpha.
Yahoo Alpha takes a clean approach to searching, and closely compares to Google's Searchmash. Searchmash provides users clean results, with associated image, blog, video, and wikipedia results. The new Yahoo Alpha gives users results for Flickr photos, YouTube videos, News search, Wikipedia entries, and also gives users the ability to see sponsored listings if they choose, all in a nice contrast to Yahoo's busy homepage.
The cleaner the search application the better. The more that clutters the space, the more users get distracted and frustrated with the whole searching experience. Yahoo is on the move with this; now let's see who wins the battle for the new search landscape. What do DLS readers prefer, the new Yahoo Alpha, or Google's Searchmash?
Hot on the heels of 2.0, the Firefox team have posted the first Alpha release of Firefox 3.0, "Gran Paradiso". Some of the new features include the use of Cairo as the graphics library, Cocoa Widgets on Mac OS X, and improved SVG specification compliance. Builds are available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Before reporting any bugs, make sure to check the Known Issues list, and happy testing!
Update: As Stuart Parmenter points out in the comments, this is not Firefox 3.0 Alpha 1, but a build of Gran Paradiso using Gecko 1.9 Alpha 1 - the rendering engine behind Firefox. My apologies!
Over at the Cerulean Studios blog they've put up a form you can fill out to get your name on the list for alpha-testing the new Trillian Astra. Those who have paid for Trillian Pro or have done so in the past will get preferential treatment, according to Cerulean's Scott Werndorfer's previous post, but will be preceded by people who "Emailed [him] long ago" and followed by those who write a "snazzy description" of themselves and why they should be a tester. Werndorfer also says that Trillian Astra will eventually be available to the general public, so if you don't get in on this round, don't dismay.
Minglenow says it's going to put the social back into social network. The whole idea behind Minglenow is that there are two basic worlds, your online world, and the actual world you live in. Minglenow is aiming at merging these two worlds together. This is done by combining the people and places we hang out with, into an online location where we can continue dialogue, and grow relationships based on things we like and do in the real world. Minglenow is currently in a beta phase, and is set to launch this summer. There is no word as to what is happening with the site, and the last post on the blog was on May 30th, but there are alpha testers lurking on it and playing in this new form of a social network. If you want to be informed as to the launch of this, or to try it out, there is a contact form on the site.
Thunderbird has gone alpha, boys and girls, with quite a few major new features and updates, including:
Message Tags
Folder Views including favorite folders
Improved New Mail Notification Alerts
New Windows installer based on Nullsoft Scriptable Install System
Find As You Type in the message pane
New combined and improved Add-ons manager for extensions and themes
Updates to the extension system to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localization of extensions
If you're familiar with the term 'alpha' then you probably know your way around playing around with this latest build. However, Mozilla does have one specific warning for Mac OS X users (they even wrote it in bold in the release notes!): do not run it from the disk image. Apparently doing so will lock Thunderbird into an infinite restart loop which you'll need a Terminal command to stop.
With that out of the way, go get your hands on the first major update to Mozilla's flagship email client.
The latest experimental release of the next version of Mozilla Firefox is now available for download. Firefox 2.0 (a.k.a. Bon Echo) Alpha 3 includes a new SQLite-based storage system for bookmarks and history, an improved search plugin system, enhances security and localization for extensions, and perhaps most notably, new anti-phishing features. The anti-phishing features are based on code from the Safe Browsing extension, donated to the Mozilla Corporation by Google. As usual, install alpha software at your own risk. To quote the Bon Echo web site: "We do not recommend that anyone other than developers and testers download the Bon Echo Alpha 3 milestone release. It is intended for testing purposes only."
It's one thing to clone a video game in Flash; it's something else entirely to write an entire emulator for an entire game console, and I don't think it's done until now: Darron Schall and Claus Wahlers have released FC64, a Commodore 64 emulator implemented in Flash. For now FC64 is alpha-quality and very much a work in progress, but if you have Flash Player 9 beta installed you can play a live demo of Matrix, a homebrew C64 game by Llamasoft. Darron Schall has some more information about the project on his blog, and the full source code for you ActionScript jockeys is available at the FC64 web site.
Mozilla has released a 2nd alpha version of Firefox 2.0. As usual, this release is not recommended for any kind of serious use, but if you're salivating at some of the new version's features, check out what has been incorporated in this 2nd development milestone:
Links default to opening in new tabs, not new windows
Close buttons now appear on every tab, and the close behavior is slightly different
Inline spell checking in text boxes (Works well, though apparently not on all sites yet)
Automatic restoration of your browsing session if there is a crash
Search suggestions now appear in the search box auto-complete for Google and Yahoo!
New search plugin manager for removing and re-ordering search engines
Improved support for previewing and subscribing to web feeds
New microsummaries feature for bookmarks (Really interesting new feature)
New Add-Ons manager improves the user interface for managing extensions and themes
Updates to the extension system to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localization of extensions
New search service that supports Sherlock and OpenSearch engines
Support for SVG text using svg:textPath
A mouthful, I know. I typed this post using this development version (Bon Echo, as they call it) on Mac OS X and I have to say, it's nice so far. Of course, none of my extensions were compatible, and I highly recommend backing up your Firefox app support folder before testing this, no matter what OS you're using. When I tried the last Bon Echo development version, it rendered my support folder incompatible with the latest stable release of Firefox. Just another one of those hazards of playing with dev editions.
While a maybe-it's-official alpha version of Firefox 2.0 showed up late last week, today we
finally have a definitely-official version. Mozilla has put up a download site for the official release of Firefox
2.0 Alpha 1, codename "Bon Echo." On the list of changes are new tabbed browsing features, a new storage
system for bookmarks and history, and improvements to the extension and search plugin systems. One hopes it goes
without saying, but this is alpha software, so read the release notes and use at your own risk.
Do you remember our youth? The good times we had, the games we played, and that great discussion we had about 
OpenOffice.org has had an interesting journey on Mac OS X. For roughly half a decade, anyone who wanted to use it has had to also download the not-quite-user-friendly X11 environment which OpenOffice had to run in. Long story short: this cumbersome and resource-intensive setup knocked OpenOffice off the lists of almost all but the most resilient and passionate Mac OS X users.
Minglenow
Thunderbird has gone alpha, boys and girls, with quite a few major 
