Elliotte Rusty Harold prognosticates what he thinks is in store for XML.
The wheels of progress turn slowly, but turn they do. The crystal ball might be a little hazy, but the outline of XML’s future is becoming clear. The exact time line is a tad uncertain, but where XML is going isn’t. XML’s future lies with the Web, and more specifically with Web publishing.

It seems a little funny to have to say that. After all, isn’t publishing what the Web is about? The Web was designed first and foremost as a mechanism to publish information. What else can it do? Quite a lot. The last three years have seen an explosion of interest in Web applications that go far beyond traditional Web sites. Word processors, spreadsheets, games, diagramming tools, and more are all migrating into the browser. This trend will only accelerate in the coming year as local storage in Web browsers makes it increasingly possible to work offline. But XML is still firmly grounded in Web 1.0 publishing, and that’s still very important.

Read the full article:

• The future of XML

I did however recieve a Pre-Order link, so perhaps it will arrive before the summer is over…

Dear LEGO fan,

Thank you very much for your interest in participating in the LEGO® MINDSTORMS™ Developer Program. We are very sorry but unfortunately you have not been selected to take part in the Program. Over 9000 fans sent in their applications and it was extremely difficult selecting 100 people only.

NetBeans IDE 5.0 introduces comprehensive support for developing IDE modules and rich client applications based on the NetBeans platform, the new intuitive GUI builder Matisse, new and redesigned CVS support, Sun Application Server 8.2, Weblogic9 and JBoss 4 support, and a lot of editor enhancements.

Here are some of the cool features in this release:

• Developing NetBeans Modules
• Matisse GUI Builder
• Servers
• Web Frameworks
• Web Services
• Editor Enhancements
• Code Completion
• Refactoring
• Version Control
• Debugging
• Other Usability Improvements
• New NetBeans Add-on Packs

• NetBeans 5.0 Release Info

This article, the first in a two-part series, describes the Mobile 3D Graphics API (JSR 184). The author introduces you to 3D programming for Javaâ„¢ mobile devices and shows how you can work with lights, cameras, and materials.

Playing games on mobile devices is a fun pastime. Up until now, hardware performance has favored classic game concepts that use addictive game play, but simple graphics. Today, Tetris and Pac-Man are increasingly complemented by two-dimensional action games with extensive graphics. Consequently, the next step is to move toward 3D graphics. Sony’s PlayStation Portable shows the graphics power you can put into a mobile device. Although the average mobile phone is technologically behind this specialized game machine, you can see where the market is heading. The Mobile 3D Graphics API (M3G for short), defined in Java Specification Request (JSR) 184, is an industry effort to create a standard 3D API for mobile devices that support Java programming.

M3G’s API can be divided roughly into two parts: immediate and retained mode. In immediate mode, you render individual 3D objects. In retained mode, you define and display an entire world of 3D objects, including information on their appearance. You can imagine immediate mode as the low-level access to 3D functions, and retained mode as a more abstract, but also more comfortable, way of displaying 3D graphics. In this article, I’ll explain the immediate mode APIs. The second part of this series shows how to use retained mode.

Article: 3D graphics for Java mobile devices, Part 1: M3G’s immediate mode

Mozilla Firefox 1.5 beta adds preliminary support for these properties, so that developer can begin playing with it, not however that the reason the properties begin with “-moz-” is that the CSS3 Multi-column specification is still a draft, so therefore they should not be used for real web design yet, unless it can make a clean fallback when meeting non-mozilla 1.5+ clients.

I have created CSS3: Multi-column module demo for Firefox 1.5 beta – which shows some of the wonders of the new multi-column features, as well a some other CSS properties to create a nice flowing page with highly dynamic columns, and pretty stable compared to many of the older methods, but you need to use Mozilla Firefox 1.5 beta – which I would only recommend to Web Developers.

You can also check some screenshots of the demo, showing it’s ability to create as many columns as it can, while maintaining nice readability thru limited line-width.

Don’t believe the rumours, check the demo yourself here:

CSS3: Multi-column module demo for Firefox 1.5 beta

See more code samples at Mozilla Developer: CSS3 Columns.

A List Apart: Articles: Introducing the CSS3 Multi-Column Module

“IT services provider Atos Origin has predicted a forthcoming change in the software landscape based on the results of a survey it has carried out in conjunction with the UK’s National Computing Centre. The survey, which was compiled through over 140 web-based questionnaires completed by senior UK IT professionals in May and June, indicated that over 60% believe open source will either increase its presence in certain business areas
or be a fundamental component in core IT systems, while
73% expect open source to develop within their organizations’ IT strategy over the next five years.”

Slashdot | Atos Origin Predicts Open Source Landscape

victorialever writes “Since one could have noticed an increasing number of websites that are employing CSS and an increasing number of resources talking about how great CSS is, it seems to become impossible not to jump on the CSS bandwagon as well. The 10 Best Resources for CSS provides an impressive list of the CSS resources which have recently become essential for web-developers. Among them – CSSZenGarden, The Web Developer’s Handbook, Stylegala, PositionIsEverything etc.

Slashdot | 10 Best Resources for CSS

WordPress Development Blog – WordPress 1.5.2

In order to lock out both copied games as well as homebrew software, including the GNU/Linux operating system, Microsoft built a chain of trust on the Xbox reaching from the hardware to the execution of game code, in order to avoid the infiltration of code that has not been authorized by Microsoft. The link between hardware and software in this chain of trust is the hidden “MCPX” boot ROM. The principles, the implementations and the security vulnerabilities of this 512 bytes ROM will be discussed in this article.

The Hidden Boot Code of the Xbox – Xbox-Linux

Scene Rep – About The Demo Scene

Scene Zine Monthly