vienna
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Never mind Vista, here's Fiji and Vienna
Face it, Windows Vista is just so played these days. With that preliminary biz release under its belt, we're ready for bigger and better things, and luckily a certain "jameskyton" drive-by-blogger has the low-down for us on Vista's successors, Fiji and Vienna. James calls Fiji a sort of "Vista R2," which should include most of those fancy features Microsoft had to cut out of Vista to get it released this century. Highlights include the reappearance of WinFS, which will sit on top of the NTFS file system; a more full-featured sidebar app; tight Windows Live integration, especially when it comes to media; built-in playback of HD DVD; Next-Generation Secure Computing Base; and possibly even a Garage Band clone called Monaco. There will also be the usual interface and other minor enhancements you can expect from such an update, but Fiji has nothing on Vienna, which is purported to feature a complete overhaul of the OS, including a break in compatibility with "all applications," though hopefully Microsoft will have some Apple-esque transition schemes in place before that time comes. The fresh beginning will give Microsoft more OS-building freedom than it has had in a long time, but right now it sounds like they're a bit too excited about this: Vienna will supposedly do away with the Start Menu, toolbars and menus in favor of some sort of pie-menu interface, WinFS-t-the-core and search, potentially leaving long time users stranded with a brand new interface to learn from the ground up. The OS will also feature beefy speech support, along with a sandbox mode for running non-managed code without risking your security. Much of this is hearsay so far, and we're really hoping Microsoft doesn't go off the deep end with Vienna, but we're still curious to see what they have up their sleeves after being cooped up so long ironing out Vista bugs.[Via Slashdot]
Vienna 2.1 preview
Some people have given us flack for focusing too much on one particular RSS reader, so I thought I would help the Vienna 2.1 preview. Vienna is a full featured open source RSS reader for OS X (and you know what means, it is free). 2.1 brings with it a host of new features including: A new 'Unified' layout Filter articles by various criteria Manual folder reordering And many more bug fixes. Vienna 2.1 also features my favorite blog in its screenshots. Head on over and try Vienna 2.1 out (it was able to import all of my subscriptions without a problem, all 700 of 'em).Thanks, Dave Jeffery.
8bit musicians announce world tour
Former cellmates Nullsleep and Bitshifter have announced plans to embark on a world tour, blasting their blend of bleeps, bloops, and blizzasts from Boston to Brussels and back again. If you're not an 8-bit believer yet, nothing will win you over except trying it out for yourself. To that end, here are links (1, 2, 3, 4) to some MP3s these torturers of Gameboys, Famicoms and other old-school video game consoles have kindly provided for downloading. If you like what you hear, check the tour page and maybe even drop a few dollars in the donation bucket to help make it happen.
