The first update release is now available for Mozilla Firefox 1.5 web browser. In version 1.5.0.1 you will get improved stability, improved support for Mac OS X, international domain name (IDN) support for Iceland, fixes for several memory leaks and several security enhancements. For details you can check out the incomplete list of bug fixes.

To update use the Check for updates command which you can find in the Help menu. If this doesn’t work yet (or if you still use some old and insecure browser like Internet Explorer) you can download Firefox from the following page:
Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.1

Tags: mozilla, firefox, free software, open source, security

All of you probably know and many of you also use the excellent web browser Firefox and its companion e-mail client Thunderbird. Some of you also use Nvu to create web pages or even write blog posts. All of these started their life as part of an integrated internet application package called Mozilla Suite. After the development of the package was canceled by Mozilla the community took over the development and renamed the project to SeaMonkey.

Version 1.0 of SeaMonkey was just released a few hours ago and it brings many improvements and new features we already have in Firefox and Thunderbird. Some of them are drag&drop tab reordering, support for SVG vector graphics, support for <canvas>, one inbox for multiple e-mail accounts and anti-phishing protection.

If you love(d) Mozilla Suite or if you have never tried it, be sure to check SeaMonkey out. The free download is available here:
SeaMonkey 1.0

Update: If you would like to download SeaMonkey using eMule, aMule, eDonkey2000 or any similar client you can find ED2K links on eMule Content Database.

Tags: mozilla, seamonkey, browsers, e-mail

When Google introduced their instant messaging client, Google Talk, it was great to know that they chose an open and free standard called Jabber (or XMPP) as the basis of their service. What was not so great about it was that users who were connected to Google’s server were not able to talk to users on other Jabber servers (and vice versa). This has finally changed a couple of days ago. Google enabled federation with other Jabber servers and now all Jabber and Google Talk users are able to talk with each other. I just tried it with Psi on jabber.org on one side and Kopete on Google Talk server on the other side and so far it works great. Let’s Jabber on!

Tags: google talk, jabber, xmpp, im, instant messaging

Firefox is an amazing web browser on its own. But there are also a lot of cool extensions that make it even better. Daniel Glazman (you should know him as the author of the excellent and free website authoring application Nvu) is just about to release another awesome Firefox extension. It will bring VoIP internet telephony service OpenWengo right into your favourite web browser. For a visual preview check out this screenshot. To actually start using it you will have to wait for a little bit more. So be sure to regularly check Glazblog (or this article/my blog). Oh and I’m glad to report that I have already translated it into Slovenian language.

What is OpenWengo?
OpenWengo is an open source project, initiated by the French company Wengo, itself backed by neuf telecom. Their goal is to provide a standards-based VoIP platform - they are committed to providing unlimited free telephony and enhanced features to their users, while promoting innovative usage-driven services.

Tags: mozilla, firefox, voip, internet telephony, openwengo

A few days ago version 1.5 of Mozilla Thunderbird e-mail client and RSS/Atom feed reader was released. The new version brings a lot of new features and improvements. I especially like the new phishing detection which makes Thunderbird even safer than it was, this time fighting scams. An option to delete attachments has also found its way into Thunderbird. With message ageing you are now able to automatically delete mails older than specified amount of days. In short: The best email client just got better.

This is also the first version of Thunderbird that is available in Slovenian language. I know that some existing users will be very happy to hear about this. And it will also help a lot of other users of old and insecure Outlook Express to finally make a switch to safe, modern and full-featured Thunderbird.

Don’t wait! Start downloading Thunderbird! Links for aMule, eMule, eDonkey and similar file sharing clients are available at eMule Content Database.

Tags: mozilla, thunderbird, email, e-mail, software

When Google released their own instant messaging and internet telephony client, Google Talk, they promised that it will be open for all to connect with. The first step in this direction was using an open and free protocol for instant messaging, that is Jabber, or XMPP as the standard is called.

Now they finally released other parts of Google Talk, most importantly the telephony part of it. All components are collected in a library called libjingle and the code is released under a BSD-like licence. This means that open source and commercial software can use it freely.

What can I say. I can’t wait until the telephony part gets its way into clients like Kopete and GAIM. It will also be interesting to see how Skype reacts on this. Oh, and thanks to TechCrunch for the news.

Tags: google, instant messaging, im, jabber, xmpp internet telephony

As you may have noticed, I haven’t posted anything to my blog ever since August. This is over 3 months without any post! Some of regular readers of my blog have sent me an e-mail asking what is going on. A lot of people also wanted to know where is the next, third, part of my KDE 3.5 Previews. So I hope this entry will answer all your questions. I’ll also try to tell you about important things that happened in my life during the long absence.

KDE 3.5 Previews: After publishing the second part I was ill for a couple of weeks and I was unable to work on the third part. After getting well again I had to study for my final maths exams a lot and I also wasn’t in the mood for writing anything. In addition, KDE 3.5 release was approaching very fast and I had (and still have) a lot of translation work to do. Even more then for version of 3.4 as other Slovenian translators didn’t have time and I was basically left alone to do the work. So I have to apologise to everyone waiting for more KDE 3.5 previews. If there is enough interest I can still try my best to write the third part. But no promises.

Laptop: Thanks to the people at Linux Users Group of Slovenia (LUGOS) I now have a new (and my first) notebook. It’s a very nice HP Compaq nx6125 with AMD Turion 64 processor, 512 MiB of memory, 60 GiB hard drive and 15 inch 1024×768 LCD panel. It is already running Gentoo Linux and I have dedicated one partition for testing purposes. Currently this partition is occupied by a beta version of Pingo Linux 4.2 (a Slovenian Linux distribution). It’s great to have a laptop like this. Now I will be able to translate more and it also proves extremely useful for university work and learning C++/Qt/KDE programming. I plan to write an article about running Linux on this laptop. When I have more time off course.

Blog comments: Some time ago I had to disable comments on this blog because of blog spam. It looks like that people here at Blogger.com have finally come to their senses and added an image test verification before anyone can post a comment. So I have enabled this test and re-enabled the comments. Now you can start commenting again and let’s hope that spam doesn’t come back any more.

Apartment: If you remember I was looking for a new apartment in Ljubljana back in July. I was lucky to find a very cheap place that is only about 5 minutes away from my faculty (if you walk). So I can sleep longer in the morning and I can go back to the apartment when we have free hours during lectures. Another bonus is that I don’t have to buy monthly tickets for the city bus. The only thing I really miss here is the internet connection.

Health: During the time since my last post to the blog I also got one of my wisdom teeth pulled out. The operation itself was quite long but painless. But after anaesthetics stopped working it was very painful for a couple of days.

That’s about it. I hope I don’t die on you again like this and that I will be able to post to the blog at least once a week. In the meantime be sure to get Firefox 1.5 and KDE 3.5 that were released about a week ago. Take care and thanks to all of you for reading my blog.

Tags: personal, blog, blogging, notebook, laptop

I’ve been with my current cable internet service provider UPC Telemach for a long time and it has had its share of ups and downs. As of late the upload speed (256 kb/s) was getting too slow for me and I was seriously considering switching to ADSL which, in addition to faster packages, also had quite a bit lower prices.

But yesterday evening my friend Davorin told me a really great news. Starting with 1st September Telemach is going to lower their prices and speed up their new packages considerably. For example, we were paying about 37,56 € per month for 1024 kb/s download and 256 kb/s upload speed. The new, much faster, 5120/768 package costs only a bit more, about 41,96 €, and you also get 20 MiB of free web hosting space. This space doesn’t matter so much to me as I have my own Linux powered server here. But much higher transfer rates, especiallyly upload, will sure come in handy. I only hope they properly set up reverse DNS lookup. They don’t have it now and this prevents me to connect to some servers.

What can I say. We’re staying with Telemach and upgrading our package to the fastest one. I wonder how ADSL competition will answer as now they have lower speeds and higher prices. But in any case this can be only good for development of broadband internet in Slovenia and good for the people.

Tags: personal, internet, cable, adsl, broadband, connection, slovenia

There were speculations for a long time that Google will release free instant messaging (IM) client of their own. It appears that rumors have become reality. They have just released a beta version of Google Talk. And what I find the best about it is that they smartly decided to use a free and open IM standard called XMPP, which is known to most of you as Jabber. This means that you will be free to use any Jabber client you like the most (for example Kopete, GAIM, Psi, Miranda IM and many more) with their service. And if you have GMail (or some other Google account) you can already do so. Check out these instructions. Moreover, you are also free to use any existing public Jabber server with Google Talk or even set up one yourself. The new client is also conveniently integrated with your GMail e-mail account. You can also actually talk with your buddies like you can do using the popular Skype. Google also promised to provide fully documented support for video conferencing in the future.

Tags: google, instant messaging, im, jabber, xmpp

A few hours ago a news entry linking to my KDE 3.5 Previews article was published on Slashdot.org. And immediately my blog started to receive A LOT of visitors form all over the world. If I had my blog hosted on my own server on a poor cable link the Slashdot effect would bring it down in no time. I’ve never imagined that one of my articles would cause this.

But with good there also come some bad and irritating things. Some stupid spammer started to fill comments here, and some of the text was even racist. If he has something intelligent to say (which I highly doubt) he should set up his own blog. I think this coward is very sick and should get himself some professional help. Thanks to this ill person I had to disable all the commenting on this blog. Sorry for this! And after this incident I finally see how poorly Blogger.com service is prepared to fight against spam. I hope they improve this very soon or else they will loose their users to competition.

Tags: blog, blogging, spam, slashdot

Visitors, who come to my blog from results of web search engines (like Google), are most frequently searching for the phrase emule free download. If you’ve come here this way, them be sure to check out eMule Content Database, where people post links to many free and open source downloads. In case you know about some cool application, music or other free file, that is not listed, be sure to add it. I’m also one of the moderators of the page, so if you have any question or you find some illegal content be sure to contact me.

Another thing I noticed in the blog statistics is that almost all people, who are searching for free eMule downloads, are still using old and insecure browser Internet Explorer. If you belong to this group of visitors, the first thing you should download with eMule is some modern and secure browser like Mozilla Firefox ([SLO] tudi v slovenščini)

In January 2005 Firefox, together with Mozilla, became the most frequently used web browser on one of the most popular Slovenian computer related web pages, Slo-Comp.net. You can see the usage history of Internet Explorer and Gecko based browsers in this recently produced graph. They also monitor the browser type of each post in their forum and they say that Firefox usage in this area is even five times greater then that of IE. And Firefox keeps increasing its share…