d-log

Thunderbird has gotten some more visible momentum now that Thunderbird 3 has seen the light. Project lead David Asher has some more details on organisational topics for the year 2010:

• field-testing new functionalities in plugins
• New upgrade options for users coming from TB2
• making the organisation financially sustainable on its own

Just like Matt, I would love to see an official Gravatar plugin this year.

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Recently, jQuery 1.4 was released, with a maintenance release 1.4.2 a few days ago. In a move comparable to what we are doing with ImpressCMS release 1.3, the jQuery developers chose the jQuery 1.4 release to be a release focused on speed and cleanup of the codebase. Mostly, just cleaning up the codebase results in quite some speed advancements, so those two efforts are frequently combined.

The changelog for this latest release of the Javascript library mentions performance improvements in many areas : CSS methods, Attributes and many of the most-used functions. However, the changelog also details some backward incompatible changes with previous versions. These incompatibilities can be countered by installing this specific plugin. read more »

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Some time ago, I found this cool plugin for Thunderbird (2.x at the time) : MessageFaces (or on Mozilla Addons). It made email conversations much less impersonal by showing images of the persons that I was having an email conversation with. The beauty of the system was that I didn’t have to do anything: images were gathered from gravatar.com, X-faces, or embedded PNG images.

Then Thunderbird 3 came along, and busted quite a bit of plugins. Sadly for me, both MessageFaces and Lightning, the calendar plugin, ceased to work. read more »

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A month or two ago, I came to the conclusion that I was sinning against one of the basic rules of modern communication by having a multitude of blogs, without a very clear distinction between them. I posted family-related news on this blog, along with news about my upcoming 3Mension.com site.

Of course, that’s wrong.

If your goal is to build a brand, you need distinct and clear communication. You can be certain different people will want different types of information when coming to your site. People going to karekiet39 will do so because of family- or home related stuff. People going to the 3mension blog will want to know the latest facts about 3mension, but couldn’t care less if we redecorated the garden last weekend.

read more »

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After the merger/takeover between Daz 3d and Gizmoz, many expressed their reservations that the combined companies would continue in the direction the Daz3d community was used to, and was expecting.

Some had doubts about the reason for the merger, specifically because it was indicated that the founder of daz3d would step down after the merger. That, according to them could be seen as a move that Gizmoz was calling the shots, and that Gizmoz only wanted to take over the Daz3d webshop. read more »

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Unity Technologies has hired Brett Seyler, who oversaw Torque engine development for InstantAction and GarageGames, to serve as its VP of strategy. After Brett Seyler announced that he was leaving TorquePowered (former GarageGames), nobody thought he was leaving for a direct competitor.

In the torrent of comments following his blog, Brett indicated indirectly that he already had a next challenge in mind, but he didn’t specify. It was assumed throughout the Torque community that he would follow in the footsteps of his former GarageGames colleagues now at Pushbutton Labs. That company was founded by the former GarageGames owners, after the sale to Interactive corp. In fact, it was at that time that Brett took over daily operations at GarageGames.

The move to Unity3d is both a surprise and a read more »

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Het huidige nummer van Linux magazine (#111) bevat een artikel over hoe onderzoekers Blender 3D gebruiken om te berekenen en te simuleren wat er gebeurt met het zand wanneer je over een strand loopt. Dit toont de extreme flexibiliteit aan van Blender, en geeft ook aan dat die mogelijkheden meer en meer worden geapprecieerd door de academische wereld.

Dit academisch gebruik wordt ook elke keer duidelijk in de verf gezet op de Blender conferences, waar elk jaar meer en meer indrukwekkende en interessante onderzoeken worden voorgesteld.

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It simply had to happen, with more than 6000 plugins on the official Extend site: the WordPress main developers are considering a way to lead the users of the popular blogging platform to the best-in-class plugins.

The plugins would be developed by the community, but there will be a specific category indicating that they are considered best-in-class, and that the compatibility with a new release is guaranteed.

The risk with this type of presentation is that the users will limit themselves to those best-in-class plugins, and that many developers read more »

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Op de Box UK site staat een check lijst die de belangrijkste aandachtspunten zou moeten bevatten voor het lanceren van een nieuwe website. Dit is ook vermeld op Web Resources Depot.

Ik geef toe dat je een goede checklist nodig hebt, mar ik vind deze nogal fel georienteerd naar layout, design en inhoud. Pre-launch marketing is niet vermeld, en dat is toch een wezenlijk onderdeel van een succesvolle lanceringscampagne.

Het document is wel goed om van te starten en er je eigen strategie op verder te bouwen. Het origineel staat op de Box UK site.

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Quite a while after the 1.0 was released, GarageGames’ flagship 3D engine Torque3D now has added a binary-only ‘Artist’ version at $250 to its lineup. And to continue the party, all Torque3D Artist version bought before the end of the year are at the astonishing low price of $100 – just like the original TGE at the very beginning. read more »

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