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OpenOffice.org is the open source project through which Sun Microsystems is releasing the technology for the popular StarOffice productivity suite. It is an international office suite that will run on all major platforms and provide access to all functionality and data through open-component based APIs and an XML-based file format. It establishes the necessary facilities to make this open source technology available to the developer community.

The latest version of the Firefox 3.5x branch is currently being distributed to all official Mozilla mirror servers around the world. Some are already hosting the latest version Firefox 3.5.2 for all supported languages and operating systems while others are only showing the directory structure but no files yet. It is likely going to take at least a few hours, maybe even more than a day before all servers are populated with the latest version and the release can be officially announced on the Mozilla website. It usually takes between 24-48 hours before the automatic update checker in Firefox picks up on the new release and offers it for download as well.

Ghacks readers can – as always – download the US-English version of Firefox early from a free file host. The new version of Firefox is hosted at Mediafire. Downloads for Microsoft Windows, Apple Macintosh and Linux are provided as a courtesy to my readers.

The beta release notes of Firefox 3.5.2 mention several security and stability issues that have been fixed in the new version. This makes it a recommend update for all Firefox 3.5x users. A issue with images with ICC profiles has been fixed as well which now render properly on all computer monitors. The full list of bug fixes and issues can be accessed at Bugzilla.

Please be advised that there might be last minute changes to a release which would then not be covered in this current version of Firefox. While it is usually safe to download and install these releases it is advised to stay away from them if you are a cautious user. Wait for the official release announcement then.

The Wordpress developers have released version 2.8.3 of the popular blogging script. The update is a security update and it is therefor recommended to update the Wordpress installation immediately to protect the data and web server. Upgrades are as usually available directly from within the Wordpress admin interface or by downloading the new version of Wordpress from the website and installing it manually on the server.

The upgrade fixes a few security issues that have been overlooked in the Wordpress 2.8.1 release but discovered by security researchers in the Wordpress community.

Unfortunately, I missed some places when fixing the privilege escalation issues for 2.8.1. Luckily, the entire WordPress community has our backs. Several folks in the community dug deeper and discovered areas that were overlooked. With their help, the remaining issues are fixed in 2.8.3. Since this is a security release, upgrading is highly recommended.

Point your web browser to the official Wordpress download page to download the release if you want to perform a manual upgrade.

Google introduced a new feature to Google Search in last month that would allow users to quickly change several important factors of the search without having to configure them in advanced options or using a plugin or add-on to do so. The new features are available by clicking on the options link in the Google search results. They are displayed on the same page in a sidebar like interface and provide quick access to options that allow a user to change the time period of the search results, the type of results, view related searches or display more text in the description of each search result than usual.

This new type of comfortably accessing search options has now been brought to Google Images as well. Users who conduct a search in the Google Image search engine will now be able to click on the same Options link to access and change several important search parameters.

The options allow a search engine user to specify a certain size for the images that are displayed in the search results, change the type of image (face, photo, clip art or line drawing) or specify a dominant color. All of these options are also available in the advanced image search parameters. The benefit for the search engine user is that these options are now directly accessible.

I’ve finally decided recently to dedicate some time to re-thinking the way I’ve used Opera’s M2 e-mail client for some years now. And I’m glad I made that decision because it completely changed the way I interacted with my e-mails, for the better, to be noted. If you are an Operator (Opera user) and never really got the hang of how M2’s e-mail filtering works, you might consider this article a useful spotlight directed at it.

To grow accustomed to the way M2 sorts e-mails, one has to first get rid of prejudice created by most other e-mail clients about how this kind of application is meant to work. Once you get to know it, you either love or hate the way it works. In most clients, we were used to sorting messages into virtual folders where they can be moved and stored for later referenfce. By default, M2 seems to be a bit clumsy at this since it throws all your mails into one “Received” folder and as your mail database grows larger, it becomes a total mess that is seemingly hard to put in any reasonable order. This first impression is probably the main cause of people rather switching to their ol’ reliable Outlook Express or similar external application. However, a good way exists to sort messages in a convenient way, in M2 called filters.

These virtual boundaries are not much different from typical folders as we know them. They too can be used as a storage place for your e-mails with one little difference – filters are by its very substance always affected by rules that you set. These can be affected by pretty much everything that the e-mail container holds, ranging from the sender’s address to the entire message body contents. And besides that, they can be extended by the use of regular expressions. Messages then only appear in the filters they were assigned to. By default, they also still appear in the root “Received” folder but this can be easily changed by enabling the “Mark messages as filtered” option, which basically ensures that they don’t appear anywhere else but the places they are set to, which cleans up the root folder significantly.

Let’s have a simple example. Say you would like to set a filter (folder) for all newsletters. What you do is add a filter and either have it learn what messages it should draw into itself by initially moving the e-mails in it by yourself. Or, you can choose another approach. For example, you create the filter, set it to retract all messages from address news@letter.com and check the “Filter existing messages” option so that all existing mails in the root folder are re-labeled (virtually re-positioned). Assuming you also checked the option to Mark messages as filtered, all items from this address now only appear in this filter, nowhere else. And should a new one arrive from this address within a second, it’ll be automaticly assigned to this filter. Adding new addresses to filters is very easy, all you need to do is right-click the concerned item and select Show in > Filter name > This filter and add a rule. Opera asks you if you’d like to add current sender address and you can also choose to again refilter all existing mails.

My setup using this threaded technology now works like this: All incoming messages that have not a filter assigned appear in the “Unread” folder placed at the very top of the tree. From here, I can either “Read (K)” them, thus moving to the “Received” folder, delete them right away, assign them an existing filter or create a completely new category based on the unique content of that particular item. Other messages falling into one or more categories are automatically moved into their respective categories and I can read them after switching into those particular views.

This is a rather basic setup using little of M2’s strong sorting skills but it’s worked for me so far and can be further extended by applying advanced rules. Along with the quick search capability based on indexing, that is built into M2, this powerful system provides you with good options to label and very quickly locate e-mails you need to refer to at any one time. The final important thing to mention is that these filters with their rules and contents can be exported into the standard *.mbs file for backup purposed.

Windows 7E is the version of the Windows 7 operating system that will be sold – as of now – in all countries of the European Union. It is basically a version of the Windows 7 operating system without Internet Explorer. This has caused quite some concern by users in the European Union as they face several problems that users of regular Windows 7 editions do not face including the impossibility to perform an upgrade of Windows Vista to Windows 7 or the problem that arises from not having an Internet browser.

Microsoft’s new proposal could ultimately remove Windows 7E from the operating system landscape. They suggest to provide a ballot screen after installation giving users the choice to install a web browser of their choice from a selection of possible alternatives including Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera and Safari.

A mockup screen was posted that visualizes how the ballot screen could look like (please note that the browserballot.eu website is currently not working)

Additional blank spots are reserved on the right side of the screen that could be filled with additional web browsers if requested or needed. It should be noted that this new proposal would mean that Internet Explorer would be installed as the default web browser during installation of the operating system and that the ballot screen would be displayed afterwards to give the user the option to install another web browser and make it the default browser on the computer system.

The Yahoo homepage is one of the most popular start pages on the Internet. To keep it that way Yahoo decided to add new features to the start page which can already be accessed by users from all over the world. The standard start page remains untouched as of now but it is possible to point the web browser to yahoo.com/trynew to experience and test the new start page. Opening the url will redirect to another Yahoo url (http://m.www.yahoo.com/) that cannot be accessed directly as it is probably checking a cookie or referrer to decide whether to display the new or old start page.

You will notice quite a few changes if you open the old and new Yahoo homepage side by side.

The header area has been redone and is now much smaller than the standard Yahoo header. That makes it possible to display more items above the fold which is the most precious area of every website.

Probably the biggest change is the possibility to add custom websites and services to the Yahoo homepage. It is for example possible to add a blog like Ghacks to the left menu on the Yahoo homepage. Hovering the mouse over the link will display a description, link, search form and latest feed entries.

Popular services like Facebook or MySpace have been added to the page with the option to add additional services such as AOL Mail, eBay, Flickr, Gmail or the New York Times to the menu as well. It is also possible to remove most of the default links that are displayed in the menu.

This gives Yahoo users a comfortable way of checking out other web services without leaving the Yahoo page.

Several changes have been made to the elements on the page. Some have been moved up (today’s top searches for example are now displayed prominently in the top right corner while others have been moved down into a new footer area. All in all a pretty decent redesign of the homepage to provide users with more functionality (and them with even more pageviews).

Gmail’s previous stance on images in emails was to hide them from the user initially because of two reasons. The first was that images in emails could be used by spammers to track if a user read an email or not if the email was embedded in the mail and not attached to it. The second reason was to prevent that inappropriate emails would be automatically displayed to the user. The user would be presented with a choice to display the images.

It usually does not make much sense to hide the images for some contacts of the user like family members, business partners or friends. That’s why Google decided to change the way images are handled in Gmail slightly.

Gmail will now display images automatically if the account owner has send an email to the sender at least twice in the past. It should also be noted that the images will only be displayed if the email is send from an authenticated server such as Google Mail, Yahoo Mail or Windows Live Mail.

Every other email with images will be handled just like before. This new behavior can be changed in the Gmail settings so that images in emails are handled for all contacts like before. To do that click on the Settings link in the top right corner and locate the External content option in the General tab.
The default option should be “Always display external content (such as images) sent by trusted senders”. To revert to the old way simply select “Ask before displaying external content” instead and click on the Save Changes button to save the new setting.

A new version of the popular blogging platform Wordpress was released just a few minutes ago. It is an unexpected upgrade considering that the last Wordpress update was less than two weeks ago. The new update fixes a security vulnerability that affects all but the latest version of Wordpress.

The XSS vulnerability could be used to create comment author urls that would redirect the system administrator away from the blog’s website to another site to exploit the situation. Wordpress webmasters are encouraged to update their blogs as soon as possible to patch the security vulnerability.

Updates are available directly from within the Wordpress interface if the correct server login information are supplied or by updating the traditional way which would mean to download the Wordpress release from the Wordpress website, upload it to the web server and run the upgrade command manually. The release information should also be displayed prominently in the Wordpress admin interface with a link to the automatic update script of Wordpress.

Its not everyday that you have a phone that lives up to its hype, a few that have in recent years has been the iPhone, Razr, Omnia, Touch HD and more recently the Palm Pre. But the big difference between all these phones is their OS. iPhone runs Apples mobile OSX, Omnia and Touch HD are both WinMo and Palm’s Pre is doing the webOS thing.

That said, there has been much talk about when the Mojo SDK would be released. Well earlier this week, Palm decided to finally bring it to the table. Mind you the Mojo SDK is still in beta but from what I have heard, read and tested myself, it will be offering some major features so come this September when Palm begins accepting applications for the App Catalog, those who have taken the early plunge will be able to make a buck or two.

Being a Pre owner myself I have to say that it has its goods and bads. Same thing applies to the SDK. One of the major things that will make the SDK so great is the fact that it uses common programming language that most programmers have some familiarity with (unlike that of the iPhone which uses Project C).

HTML and JavaScript are pretty basic stuff and with a little practice and help from the API it shouldn’t be too hard for web programmers to get used to the Palm Pre programming enviorment. But as I said it has its drawbacks. My major contention with the SDK to date is the fact that it lacks direct access to the core CPU. Basically this means that we won’t be seeing NFS Most Wanted on the Pre for anytime soon. I’m not saying that it should be an open fair, but this is reminding me just like Apple when they infamously said that “web apps would do just fine.” Needless to say they soon changed their mind and since then they have crossed the 1.5 billion download mark.

It seems like the same thing is gearing up to happen with Palm. The Pre is a powerful device and carries equal processing power as the iPhone 3GS. As I’ve said to many people, the only thing that is holding the Pre back is webOS 1.0.4. Don’t get me wrong, I’m in love with webOS, but its only in its first generation and still needs time to mature. Hopefully when ver1.1 comes out we will see many of these performance issues fixed.

One thing that people should take note is that even with the few apps available for the App Catalog, has crossed the 1 million download mark. That is for only 30 apps. My only fair is that Palm is shooting itself in the foot and will ultimately have to rethink its decision about not allowing access to the CPU of the Pre.

Last thoughts: for those who are interested in jumping into the mobile phone app business, there is lots of space. What platform should you develop for? Well as it stands it all depends on what you are aiming for. iFart apps, vibration apps and the multitude of nonsensical games are the iPhone’s strength (don’t get me wrong, developers make money off these), lifestyle apps are the Android’s strength. Blackberry can take a little of everything but you will be greatly limited with graphically intense apps. As for WinMo, it all depends. You do have WinMo phone that beat the Pre and iPhone in specs and speed, but those are far and free, so productivity and lifestyle apps are the main strengths of this platform. As for the Palm Pre that is yet to be decided, but I can safely say that most games (except for the Sudoku and Connect 4) are a no, no.

If you want to focus on a specific programming language, Project C will be the hardest to learn but Apple has a big developer community for their iPhone. Palm has the easiest platform to develop for and in close second is Android. Blackberry and WinMo come in third.

So what are your thoughts? Drop a comment below.