Microsoft Announces DirectX 10.1 Preview

Microsoft is making a tech-demo version of its upcoming DirectX 10.1 available via download, including a version of XAudio2, the company's cross-platform replacement for DirectSound.

Users can try out both via the 468-Mbyte version of the August 2007 DirectX SDK. There's a catch, though: the August 2007 Direct3D 10.1 Tech Preview requires the Windows Vista SP1 Beta which will be available to MSDN subscribers once it is publicly released, according to Microsoft.

According to Microsoft, "Direct3D 10.1 is an incremental, side-by-side update to Direct3D 10.0 that provides a series of new rendering features that will be available in an upcoming generation of graphics hardware." The XAudio2 technology is also used in the Xbox 360, and will eventually replace DirectSound as the PC's main audio driver, according to Microsoft.

Full @ ExtremeTech

Wikia Details Plans for Search Rival to Google

The ever expanding, and potentially lucrative, market of search engines may soon be welcoming another player into the fray. Last Friday, at OSCON in Portland, Oregon, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales announced that his commercial startup, Wikia, had just acquired the distributed-computing web crawler Grub from LookSmart Ltd, and that he is currently putting the building blocks in place to create a community-developed search engine rivaling those of Yahoo and Google. The new search engine, thus far unnamed, will reportedly combine computer-driven algorithms with human-assisted editing, allowing for better results; for example, in the case of the word "palm," humans would be able to distinguish whether or not the word referred to the tree, the handheld computer, or the human body part, much better than any current algorithm. After indexing sites with Grub, search results from the new engine would be generated by the open source project Lucerne.

Wikia Search Labs

New tool enables loading of unsigned drivers in Vista

A new software tool has been released by Linchpin Labs that allows the loading of unsigned and legacy drivers on Windows XP, 2003, and most importantly Vista.

One of the system management and control methods that Microsoft implemented with Windows Vista is requiring system drivers to be digitally signed before they will load properly within the system. If a user or administrator wishes to load an unsigned or legacy driver, they will either need to reboot into a limited functionality mode or just do without the functions that the driver would have provided.

As others have pointed out, this step will do nothing to prevent malware authors from being able to load their drivers into the system. Either they will exploit the lax jurisdiction and corporate oversight of various countries to establish a corporate shell and gain legitimate digitally signed driver certification, or they will just exploit weaknesses in already-signed drivers.

TheRegister

Most expensive DSL connection!

You think your broadband provider is expensive, try $3,355 per month for a 1.5Mbps DSL connection. Welcome to the internet in Kazakhstan. With DSL prices like these, it's no wonder Borat left Kazakhstan behind! A new report from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (PDF) paints a grim picture of Internet access in Kazakhstan and shows how difficult life can be for those in poor and authoritarian countries who want to join the worldwide community of Internet users.

Consider the prices for Internet access, for one. Most users (and only four percent of the country even has access) hook up through state-owned Kazakhtelecom, a company not concerned with competitive pricing for its services. An unlimited dial-up plan costs about €82 ($111) in a country where the average monthly wage is €292 ($399). As for DSL, an unlimited 1.5Mbps connection costs €2,458 ($3,355) a month, and doesn't even included the required ADSL modem. Want a 6Mbps cable connection? It'll cost you, to the tune of €16,144 ($22,032) a month. As the OSCE report drily notes, this is more than a thousand times the price of such a connection in Western Europe.

arstechnica.com

KompoZer 0.79

KompoZer is a WYSIWYG HTML Editor based on Nvu. KompoZer provides novice web authors without any HTML experience with a tool to create web sites. It is free, easy to use yet has many features found in FrontPage and even Dreamweaver. The project strives to fix bugs in the NVU project and added new features to it. KompoZer is a continuation of the Nvu project and has corrected many bugs, improved the user interface and updated the CSS editor when compared to the 1.0 baseline. KompoZer is more stable and mature than Nvu. In March 2007 it was featured on Download.com's round up on the best free alternatives to Adobe CS3, where it was favorably compared to Adobe Dreamweaver [source Wikipedia]

Home Page

CrossLoop 1.11

CrossLoop is a free secure screen sharing utility designed for people of all technical skill levels. CrossLoop extends the boundaries of VNC’s traditional screen sharing by enabling non-technical users to get connected from anywhere on the Internet in seconds without changing any firewall or router settings. It only takes a few minutes to setup and no signup is required. CrossLoop's underlying technology was created to simplify the process of securely working with others located in different physical locations across diverse network environments. Once installed in both computers, it enables you to see the screen and control the mouse and keyboard on a remote computer. It is as if you are working side by side at the same PC. CrossLoop is a powerful productivity tool that enables you to quickly collaborate in with anyone in the world. Security is built into all aspects of CrossLoop. Session data is encrypted at the end-points before being sent using a 128-bit encryption algorithm using a randomly generated 12-digit access code. Explicit permission is required before any screen images are sent to a remote computer. CrossLoop is a secure tool to remotely assist any PC on the planet.

What's new:

- File Transfer Capability
- Switch control to make collaboration easier
- View Only and Share Control modes

CrossLoop 1.11

Yahoo! Widgets 4.0.5 Build 184

Yahoo! Widgets are small, specific applications that you can run on your Windows or Mac OS desktop. A Widget can do almost anything from displaying a weather forecast to playing a game. Widgets generally sit on your desktop and don't look like applications as we're used to seeing them in a standard window. Instead, Widgets tend to look like small pictures or animations. Yahoo! Widgets help you save time and stay current by bringing an always-updated, at-a-glance view of your favorite Internet services right to your desktop. The Yahoo! Widget Gallery offers over 4,000 desktop Widgets - the most available anywhere online. Yahoo! Widgets is the only major desktop Widgets platform that works on both Windows and Mac OSes.

Changes in Version 4.0.5

* Fixed various issues with COM objects.
* Mac: Fixed a Japanese text input problem.
* Mac: Fixed a SQLite problem on Intel-based Macs.

Operating Systems Supported

* Windows XP SP2, 2000 SP4
* Windows Vista
* Mac OS X 10.3.9 and up


Yahoo! Widgets 4.0.5 Build 184