Samawi writes "Opera Software has issued this interview with cofounder and CEO Jon von Tetzchner. Highlights include screenshots, a new text only browser to compete with Lynx support for Free BSD and other variants of UNIX/X11 (using cross-platform features of Qt). I can't wait to retire good 'ol buggy and bloated Netscape:-) " Its a bit thin on the details, but its nice to know that its coming.

By Hollywood standards, the "The Blair Witch Project" is shockingly Lo-Tech, employing none of the expensive techno-tricks that increasingly overwhelm movie after movie. But the BWP, thumping expensive hi-tech competitors like "The Haunting" and "Deep Blue Sea," uses technology brilliantly, if minimally, in its making and marketing. Here's to a new Lo-Tech genre in cinema.

Steelehead wrote in to tell us that Opera Software's Project Magic page has a Linux Port. From their page: "The Linux port of Opera will be built on the new and redesigned Opera 4.0 code....the entire front and user interface in Qt...you, the Linux user, should have the latest version of our code along with the Windows user. "

Migrant Programmer writes "Opera Software has finally announced a prototype of Opera for Linux. It will be shown at the Expo this week.. a speedy, efficient browser for a speedy, efficient operating system. Check their news page and the Project Magic page for more information. "

Oliver Lineham writes "My friend and I have found a security flaw in the implementation of cookies in Navigator, Internet Explorer, and Opera. The full details of this bug are on the Cookie Monster advisory, including a working demonstration. The problem is to do with the way the browsers restrict the "domain" setting on domains outside the US. There are several implications arising from this bug. "

David Raufeisen writes "Opera Software has had an ongoing project to port its lightweight web browser to non-ms operating systems such as Linux,macos,BeOS and OS/2. In their latest status report they noted that the Linux and Macos teams have failed and they are shifting the project to another team, Delays suck.. I personally can't weight to try out their web browser in Linux.. I used it heavily in windows before and it is superb. "

Microsoft is not going to wait for the outcome of its trial with the DOJ before attacking Linux. The battle scene is France, where Microsoft's new (expendable?) regional director Marc Chardon has just issued an open letter to his clients. Click below to read the translation of the Linux-section (it's in French) and some commentary.

A new study came out today, containing it in the estimated market share of each of the major browsers. For the first time, it appears that Netscape's Communicator fell below the 50% mark. Internet Explorer is up to 27.5%, the AOL version of IE is at 16.1%, Netscape is at 41.5%, and "other browsers" rose to 14.7%. Well, looks like Opera is doing better at least. (/me looks for silver lining)

Brett A. Thomas writes "The Opera guys have hired contractors to do Linux, BeOS, Mac and Solaris versions (no release dates, yet)." Very cool. Opera is a speed demon- I dig fast.

This is fairly sizable. Michael McLagan, better known to most readers as the brave soul responsible for Linux.org has written a response to the criticism he has recieved lately about the web site. I feel Linux.org is an important resource and Michael is working hard to do a good job. I think it's important that we work together to make sure that Linux.org is all it should be. I guess the first step is to hit the link below and read what he has to say, and talk about it.

Just going to take a minute here to throw a few notes out to everyone so I can stop getting a few of these FAQs in my mailbox. hit the link below to read several notes, some of which are quite important and some of which, well, really don't matter much in the grand scheme of things. I cover fonts, NS2/Opera, Flat Comments, Mugs, CDs, Books, Southpark and MST.

Allright I have a whole slew of announcements worth making related to the site, so I'm just going to get them out in a bundle. First off, the variable width thing is now working pretty well. Hopefulyl everybody likes it. Next, we've been having server problems- I'm not sure if its Mysql, Mod_perl, or one of my scripts, it just seems that occasionally the database connections slip up. Quite wierd. Hit the link below to read a bunch more notes.

More good good press for Opera v3 today, with a good column about it's speed and ability to handle the necessary items. Who knows-could this be the dark horse of the web race?

Well the doomsayers are out preaching that Netscape may be dying. They apparently lost millions of dollars in Q4, and according to this article at inforworld they may be backing down out of the Browser market, and focus more on the commercial side. Thanks to Amos Shapira for that one. The issue may be with the death of Netscape, where do we turn? Opera? Mneomonic? Gzilla? It may get interesting.

Perhaps the solution to Netscape's problem is more obvious then they may realize. If they GPLd their code and gave it out to the world, we would have a slew of powerful browsers developed by the same programmers that have brought us all those other great GPL apps. That would jump start the free browser universe and maybe people would focus on a single browser instead of dividing their time amongst so many other free browser projects. And since it is free, people may choose it instead of MS. Just a thought...

Misha writes "AMD has demonstrated a new Linux-based handheld at LinuxWorld. The OpenPDA runs on low-power Alchemy chips, with support for USB, Ethernet, UARTS. Here is press release. Among the highlights are: A comprehensive Metrowerks suit as the basis of OpenPDA applications, Qt, Java, Opera browser."