The XOOPS Development Team is pleased to announce that a new version, XOOPS 2.5.2 RC, is available for download.

This release is focused on fixing bugs from previous versions and on security. As a result, over 60 bugs have been fixed, as well as several new enhancements have been added, among them:

• improved Captcha system
• improved Protector module with links to stopforumspam 
• improved PM (private messaging) module

For more info and download please click here

Dana Blakenhorn is one of the keynote speakers here at Liferay West Coast Symposium. He's probably one of the most non-Liferay speakers at this symposium giving him the perfect opportunity to express new ideas to this community of Liferay developers, partners, and users. I love these "strength of weak-ties" guests in conferences as it allows for some people in this crowd to "get it" and run with it.

The description for his talk:

Here at the Liferay West Coast Symposium, Bryan Cheung (CEO) and Paul Hinz (CMO) just announced the newest and upcoming version of the company’s Liferay Portal 6.1, as well as the developer community release of the new Liferay Marketplace. Liferay, Inc. hopes these moves represents a showing of strong new convergence of portal, web content management and modular applications for Liferay products.

As I mentioned last month, this week the 2011 Liferay West Coast Symposium takes place. I'm excited to attend this conference as when it comes to Liferay, I'm definitely a newbie and this is a great opportunity for CMS Report to focus and learn more about Liferay. During this conference, Liferay is scheduled to announce the details for Liferay Portal 6.1 as well as their new Marketplace.

Yesterday, Packt Publishing announced the finalists for their 2011 Open Source Award. This announcement signals the start of the next stage where the finalists are now open to public vote, which lasts until October 31.

Not all the categories in the award are content management related, but if you have an interest in open source I think you'll find each one of the finalists have a great story to tell. The finalists, listed in alphabetical order across all the categories, are as follows:

Open Source CMS Award

Using Facebook and Twitter, Steve Burge has compiled a list of social media responses to the question, "Why does Joomla rock?". It's an interesting list of 40 tweets and FB status messages and he's conveniently categorized the responses into short answers to the question.

Why does Joomla Rock?

Onxshop, a CMS and e-commerce package created for web developers, is now available for free download following its open source launch.

The newly released Onxshop CMS provides one of the simplest options currently available on the web for combining traditional content management and an eCommerce store.

It was made available for free download last month after almost a decade of use on the web projects of its creator Norbert Laposa, of Belfast-based Laposa Web Solutions.

The platform has been operating since 2002. In that time it has processed more than 50,000 e-commerce transactions worth £1.5 million.

Altrincham –UK  Interact, a leading supplier in intelligent intranet software, announces the release of Interact Intranet version 4.9 – a significant update to Interact Intranet, which includes Interact Teams, Improved Microsoft Outlook Integration, Collaborative Image Galleries and Real-Time Twitter Integration amongst its new technologies and tools.