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Mambo 4.6.3 Released

Mambo 4.6.3 was released earlier today in recent weeks. Besides the usual security improvements and bug fixes, this version of Mambo came with some new enhancements. Some of the more notable enhancements in Mambo 4.6.3 include:

  • Mostlyce upgraded to 2.4
  • Mostlydbadmin upgraded to 1.5
  • Geshi upgraded to 1.0.7.20
  • Enhanced editor initializing
  • Enhanced weblinks component, so the target param is not confusing anymore

Official release of Joomla 1.5

Joomla LogoI briefly wanted to mention that the stable release of Joomla! 1.5 has finally arrived! Needless to say, there are some very happy people in the open source community to see this version of the content management system go gold.

I haven't taken a serious look at Joomla! 1.5 since Beta 1 and Beta 2 were out the door. Needless to say, I'm looking forward to taking a look at the finished product over the course of the next few weeks. Until then, below is a brief glimpse from the announcement at Joomla.org of what you can expect from version 1.5.

Laura Scott on Email Etiquette

Laura Scott posted her 9 best practices and things to avoid when it comes to e-mail. We followed some of these rules a decade ago, but a good reminder is always appreciated. Laura doesn't mention anything about not using all CAPS in an e-mail and I assume that's because if you don't know that rule by now...nine rules is beyond your grasp.

My favorite rule to follow is number 3:

Write your response above the quoted text.

WordPress.com goes after TypePad and Blogger

Matt Mullenweg announced this morning that WordPress.com users will now have 3 GB of free drive space for their blogs. Previously, WordPress.com only offered 50 MB of free space to those that signed up for the free service. Why are they doing this? Looks like Wordpress.com has no longer decided to play nice guy against their biggest competitors, TypePad and Blogger.

The following is an excerpt from Mullenweg's announcement at WordPress.com:

Walt Mossberg on the Asus Eee PC

In Thursday morning's Wall Street Journal, Walt Mossberg did a review of the Asus Eee PC. The article, Asus Offers Travelers Small, Mobile Eee PC, but It’s Too Cramped, can be found in his column archive (a Wordpress site). I had been waiting for someone of his stature do a review on this product, but I was a little disappointed to see yet another review of a non-Apple device (this one is Linux based) be so negative.

The Mac and Windows Alternative: My Linux Laptop

A few weeks ago, I seriously thought about buying either Apple's latest MacBook or a Windows laptop where I could dual boot between the laptops native operating systems and Linux. In the end, I chose to install Linux on a three year old laptop. This old laptop isn't just any laptop but one of the first sub-$1000 laptops that hit the United States market. The laptop is the Averatec 3220 and over time I've found it just too sluggish for running Windows XP.

This old Averatec 3220 had a lot of negatives going its way for installing Linux. The laptop is from a company that almost no one knows so support was limited. Even Google had a tough time helping me find "best practices" for installing Linux on this particular laptop model. This particular laptop includes an AMD Athlon XP-M 2000+ processor, 512 MB RAM (upgraded from the original 256 MB), a 12.1 inch screen, and both Ethernet and wireless networking capabilities. The laptop could barely be considered "up to date" with regards to hardware, although its exterior is designed well and doesn't look dated like other laptops of the same age.

Before I discuss my troubles with installing Linux on this laptop, let me first talk about the positives. During the past two weeks, using Linux on this laptop has been pure joy.

The iTouch Alternative: Nokia's N800

Rich Hoeg, eContent, purchased himself the Nokia N800. The N800 is a linux based handheld Internet tablet with functions similar to those of Apple's iTouch. I'm not sure either device is for me, but I've been in a little bit of an anti-Apple and anti-Windows funk lately...that I felt it worth mentioning here. Rich Hoeg has this to say about the N800:

I've created a short screencast
which demonstrates many of the features found upon the Nokia N800. However, here are a few of the reasons I chose the Nokia over the iPod Touch:

Photoshop and Web 2.0

Confession: I never knew how much there was to Photoshop until my wife, the photographer, decided to move over to the digital age. During the course of our marriage, while she has excelled in the art of digital photography, as well as Photoshop, I have remained the amateur.

Luckily, Corrie Haffly at Sitepoint has started a series of articles for geeks like us who still think all we need on our Websites is any of the eight colors we learned when we were five. (By the way, I got a star on my paper in kindergarten...red, blue, yellow, green, orange, purple, brown, and black!)

The visual style that has come to be associated with the term Web 2.0 has exploded in popularity; everywhere you look, corporate sites, web service sites, ecommerce sites, and even personal blogs are making use of clean, minimalist design coupled with fancy graphic effects. If you'd like to jump on the bandwagon, this is the article for you!