Some software companies might find a new OS a daunting thing to develop for. Not Alias |Wavefront. This leading developer of 3D animation software, recently released the new OSX version of their flagship product, Maya. For a company that wasn't a player in the MacOS world, this is pretty significant vote of confidence in Apple's new OS. OSAlert spoke with Andrew Pearce, the Director of Maya Technologies at Alias|Wavefront and with TheOrphanage's Kevin Baille (Visual Effects Artist).

"WebSideStory, Inc., the world's leading provider of outsourced e-business intelligence services, today reported that despite much hype and expectation in recent years, Linux has failed to gain market share from Microsoft and Apple operating systems. As of December 17, 2001, Linux held a global usage share of only 0.24 percent, according to WebSideStory's StatMarket. This compares with Microsoft's Windows and Apple's Macintosh operating systems, which hold a combined global usage share of more than 98 percent. For almost three years, Linux usage share has fluctuated between .2 and .3 percent, with no substantial growth. Usage share is the percentage of Internet surfers that are using a particular operating system." Read the rest of the press release.

"Novell reinvents the network operating system with a secure, Internet-centric design. The folks who invented the NOS are back with a bunch of fresh ideas that give you platform independence, browser access, and much more. Frankly, it blows away anything offered by Microsoft or the *nix community." Highly interesting article over at ExtremeTech regarding the new version of Novell's network operating system.

OSX is the beneficiary of more than NeXTStep core technology. Apple's new OS also inherited considerable expertise and terrific developers like the OmniGroup. These longtime developers for NeXTStep have been swept into the Apple world along with their preferred OS. In this significantly larger market, the Omnigroup has the advantage of exceptional depth of experience with OSX. OSAlert spoke to Manny from the Omnigroup about their experiences so far.

Red Hat announced the general availability of Red Hat Linux for S/390, the latest version of its operating system for the enterprise IBM mainframe. This new version enables Red Hat to fulfill its commitment to extend the scalability of its Linux operating system to run on the smallest of handheld devices to the largest of enterprise mainframes. Previously, Red Hat had announced its delivery of open source software solutions, services and support for IBM's entire eServer product line. In the meantime, in an effort to increase the number of programs available for its relatively unknown iSeries line of special-purpose servers, IBM is courting Linux programmers by letting them tap into an iSeries server over the Internet.

The story of how a BeOS refugee (and not just everyone, but the author of the 'BeOS Bible' book) lost faith in the future of computing, resigned himself to Windows but found himself bored silly, tore out half his hair at the helm of a Linux box, then rediscovered the joy of computing in MacOSX. Scot Hacker will describe his personal adventures with today's operating systems after he was set out to find an alternative to his beloved (but with no apparent future) BeOS. Update: Make sure you read the second part of the article, a rebutal, found here.

The New Order web site, recently published two interesting articles. One is a nicely written BASH programming tutorial, and the other one is an introduction article to ActiveX and its surrounding technologies. Wether you are a Unix geek or a Microsoft newbie developer, a visit to New Order's web site would be time well spent.

Saw that linked over from GeekNews: "Yes, that computer you see in the christmas tree is the actual one serving this web page and music! It is a Pentium 100 with 64MB RAM, running Red Hat Linux 7.2." Another interesting mini-report at Geeknews was about the ex-3Dfx employees, their loyalty and support (by releasing new drivers, working on them on their spare time!) to the history of 3Dfx and the never-released Voodoo5-6000 model, which had 128 MB of SDRAM on it.

"Cocktail parties and relating to the opposite sex are two very human activities that preoccupy many during the holiday season. Computers are notoriously poor at both: artificial intelligence researchers have long envied the human abilities to assign gender to faces and pick voices out of a noisy babble. Now San Diego company HNC Software has taught personal computers equivalent feats of recognition, and claims that the technique is a significant advance for AI, both theoretically and for building practical applications." Get the rest of the story at ZDNews. Our Take: Last February I wrote an editorial on Artificial Intelligence and how this can change the way we are using computers or the way operating system's... actually operate.

"Sharp's new Zaurus SL5500 is the first PDA device from a major manufacturer in a long time that uses a new operating system and a new user interface. See what it looks like! Most PDA users by now knows what the operating systems from Microsoft, Palm and maybe even Symbian looks like. That however doesn't mean there's no room for innovation, and Sharp is just nowadays taking the leap towards a major device launch with its new Sharp Zaurus SL-5500. The SL-5500 uses Linux as its core operating system, with a GUI developed specifically by Norwegian Trolltech for the SL-5500 called Qtopia." Check the screenshots of the sweet-looking PDA at InfoSync.no.

"It wasn’t so long ago: 1999 and 2000 saw a great deal of innovation and interest, not to mention hype, about the Linux open-source operating system, and by extension, open-source software in general. This year the focus has been more on other technologies, such as application servers, portals, distributed component models and Web services. Does anyone still care about Linux? And if so, why the seemingly deafening silence? It seems that the open-source system moves past hype to serious implementation." Read the rest of the interesting editorial at SDTimes.

The Office XP Update Service Pack 1 released yesterday. Service Pack 1 (SP-1) provides the latest updates to Microsoft Office XP. SP-1 contains significant security enhancements and stability and performance improvements. Some of the fixes included with SP-1 have been previously released as separate updates. This service pack combines them into one integrated package, and it includes a number of other changes designed to improve the reliability and performance of your Office XP programs. You can read an overview of the service pack on the Microsoft website.

In this very interesting interview at MSDN, Miguel deIcaza, the founder of GNOME, Bonobo, Gnumeric and CTO at Ximian, talks about UNIX components, Bonobo, Mono, and Microsoft .NET.

"Microsoft on Thursday said a technology standards body has endorsed programming tools key to expanding the appeal of the company's .Net Web services plan. Microsoft said the European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA), an international technology standards organization, has ratified Microsoft's C# (pronounced "see sharp"), a Java-like programming language, along with a component of its .Net Web services framework called the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI). That means that C# and the CLI are now officially standards administered by ECMA. But Microsoft will retain control over who gets to license the technology and how it will be distributed, a company spokesman said." Get the rest of the story at CNet|News.