Microsoft / Windows - Free Microsoft Visual Basic 2005 Express

Visual Studio Express editions are free for 1 year.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/vb/

Misc - A really amazing voice synthesizer

Just enter some text, select a language, submit it and get the wave file back.
You can try it in portuguese (from Portugal) in a male or a female voice.
http://actor.loquendo.com/actordemo/default.asp

Microsoft / Windows - .Net Programming at Zero Cost

"[...] Unfortunately, VS.NET is not free and in fact is quite expensive. Fear not, though, because it is entirely possible to develop .NET applications without using VS.NET ? in fact we will be demonstrating this using completely free tools available from the Internet!"
http://www.tipidpc.com/cruizer_netprog.php

*ware - Skype 2.0 released (windows only)

New in this release :
- Skype video (webcam)
- contact grouping
- quickfilter in contact list and history (enable from Options->Advanced)
- new language - Portuguese (Portugal)
- new sound events for chat user join, leave and incoming message to existing chat
- chats and conference calls shown in history
- expandable "My Panel" (mood, events, services integrated)
- add contact directly from main window
- show file transfers in history
- quickfilter in history
- delete single or multiple history items
- compact chat participant list
- save user's last auth request
and more.
http://www.skype.com/products/skype/windows/

Microsoft / Windows - Vista features

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/features/default.aspx

*ware - Apache Tomcat 5.5.15-beta released

This is primarily a bug fix release: consult the change log for more details.
download

Misc - Best Blonde Joke Ever

read it here!

POJ - BEA - New Open Source Projects added to CodeShare

http://dev2dev.bea.com/blog/codeshare/archive/2006/01/new_open_source.html

Misc - What happens after death?

Have you ever wondered about what happens to bodies when they die? Find out now.
http://folk.uio.no/mostarke/forens_ent/forensic_entomology.html

Misc - Lisbon in 3D

Fly over Lisbon and see it in 3d, in a Google Earth fashion. You may even enter some of the monuments and see if from inside (don't forget to check the 'Igreja de S. Roque').
http://www.3dlisboadakar.com/index.htm?lang=pt

Misc - Lisboa Portugal Full Screen Panoramas

includes Lisboa New Year 2006 Celebrations at Parque das Nações
http://homepage.mac.com/wkaemena/FSPanos/Menu283.html

*ware - Subversion 1.3 released

* Path-based authorization for svnserve
* Improved logging and repository listing in mod_dav_svn
* Hugely improved python and ruby bindings
* A handful of new commandline switches
* Some client and server performance improvements
* Many improved APIs
* More than 30 new bugfixes
http://subversion.tigris.org/

POJ - FINA - Freedom of the reporting

FINA is the state-of-the-art information management system for Financial Supervision Authorities to collect data, store them in the data base and generate different reports using very flexible report designer tools.
Key Features:
FREE - open source under the Gnu/GPL license;
Customizable and localizable system;
Independent of any legal, regulatory and/or accounting framework;
Platform independent -Windows & UNIX (Linux, Solaris);
Data base independent -MSSQL, Oracle, DB2 and MySQL;
Scalable and extendable 3 tire java application;
Low requirements: P3/256 +, any OS with JVM, any IP network.

Web based Key Events:
o Bug Tracking
o Issue manager
o Test case manager
o News and mailing Lists
o Feature request system
o CVS server
o File release system, etc.
http://fina.sourceforge.net/

Misc - Blog software comparison chart

http://www.ojr.org/ojr/images/blog_software_comparison.cfm

Misc - How To Setup a Wi-Fi Hotspot

"Creating a Wi-Fi Internet hotspot service from scratch can seem like a daunting task. I had many sleepless nights trying to get to grips with FreeRadius, DD-WRT, Chillispot etc. I hope that this How To helps you to avoid some of the problems I encountered along the way."
http://www.howtoforge.com/wifi_hotspot_setup

AJAX / CSS - DWR 1.1 Beta 3 released

DWR 1.1 supports new Creators for JSF, Beehive, raw objects and updates to the Bean Converter, a new EnumConverter, support for synchronous calling and many bug fixes.
download

POJ - New features added to Servlet 2.5

"In this article, Jason Hunter reviews the changes included in the latest version of the Servlet specification. This maintenance release includes support for annotations, several web.xml conveniences, a handful of removed restrictions, and some edge case clarifications.".
Read