GNOME 2.20 Released !

GNOME 2.20 is the latest version of the GNOME Desktop: a popular, multi-platform desktop environment. GNOME's focus is ease of use, stability, and first class internationalization and accessibility support. Based on Free and Open Source Software, GNOME provides all of the common tools computer users expect of a modern computing environment, as well as a flexible and powerful platform for software developers.

The improvements in GNOME 2.20 include: Improved support for right-to-left languages; desktop search integrated into the file chooser dialog; convenient new features in the Evolution email and calendar client; enhanced browsing of image collections; simplified system preferences; efficient power management and incredibly accurate laptop battery monitoring. Developers receive more help with application development thanks to a new version of the GTK+ toolkit, improved tools, and a great new documentation web site.

USB 3.0 coming, will increase transfer speeds tenfold

Right when you think you've got a cable standard down that works with most of your devices, some committee or commission of some sort goes and releases a new, better standard to upgrade to. It's pretty annoying, but it's one of the things you've got to deal with in technology. It moves pretty fast, after all. So first there was USB, then there was USB 2.0, and now, wouldn't you know it, we're about to get USB 3.0.
USB 3.0 improves upon its successors by adding fiber-optic cable alongside the copper wiring, greatly increasing the speeds. The upgrade should allow for high-def devices, such as HD DVD or Blu-ray players, to use the standard to send data. As of now, today's USB cables aren't fast enough for such heavy transfers, sending data at 480 megabits per second. USB 3.0, on the other hand, will increase that tenfold to a whopping 4.8 gigabits per second. The fancy new cables should start hitting shelves and being used in devices around 2009 or 2010.

Apple's fight against iPhone unlocks may result in expensive bricks

Apple will actively work against any SIM unlocks of the iPhone, says Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Jobs made the comments during a Q&A session that took place after yesterday's press event in London announcing availability details of the iPhone in the UK. When asked by a journalist whether unlocking was a concern for the company, Jobs said, "It's a constant cat and mouse game," according to ComputerWorld's account of the discussion. "We try to stay ahead. People will try to break in, and it's our job to stop them breaking in."

The break-ins that Jobs spoke of have been flying fast and furious in the last month or so. One of the first full SIM unlocks involved using a Turbo SIM card, a somewhat complex process for the average consumer. Then teenager George Holtz published a way to hardware unlock his iPhone with some soldering iron-fu and released instructions for other adventurous unlockers. But none of this was "big" news to the world until the first (commercial) software unlock of the iPhone was announced by iPhoneSIMfree. This sent waves through the iPhone community to push for a free unlock from the iPhone Dev Team, which was achieved just this week with the release of iUnlock, followed by the GUI app to go along with it, anySIM. This app began to appear in the third-party iPhone software update app, Installer, which enabled many iPhone users to install the unlock and experiment with ease.