Ok.. here are some of the recent smaller stories all rolled up into one big one. We’ve got news on the new PalmOS company, various website disappearances, non-ports, and continuing projects. Oh, and a magazine and some forum news. Read on…

[Update]: Just had someone point out that OpenBeOS is not dead. The obedn site is still dead, but the group has moved to a new site that I was unaware of. After some searching (as no one gave me a url), I located it at http://open-beos.sourceforge.net/. Pretty obvious I suppose.. But in any case, its good to see that things are progressing nicely.
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Stuff You Gotta Have - A Press Release from, well, Stuff You Gotta Have. It’s a press release for the application Book Mobile. You can read the press release by clicking the “Read More” link.

Stuff You Wish You Had - Ryan (NorseLord) Christiansen has put up a bunch of pictures of the original BeBox. Go Check It Out and drool.

Stuff You’ll Never Have - Karm wanted us to remind everyone about something that appeared originally on BeNews - Karm wanted everyone to sign the petition to open source BeOS. We all know Be’s feelings on this, but Karm believes that Be shouldn’t close their doors with BeOS still inside. Yeah, I know… no flames. Stuff you’ll never have.
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Well, we’ve seen sites die, go up for sale, and disappear. BeDope and yaBel are up for sale, and many others have been long since abandoned (some of mine included - but not due to dispair, but available time). BeScreens even closed a couple of months ago and I didn’t realize it.

Companies - We lost Wildcard Design, Beatware, ThunderMunchkin, and countless others. Recently, we’ve lost ObjectSynth (as posted recently on BeNews), and Echo has dropped thier BeOS driver plans. Now, today, Hailstone Software has officially dropped out of the picture. And Gobe has to be hurting, they haven’t seen a new release of BeOS or Productive in what, a year?!

It’s not lookin’ too peachy folks… But then, we knew this decline would come. How many of us are actually still hangin’ on? Which of the three big news sites will be the last one to post some BeOS news? The longstanding, up and down BeOS Central, the omnipresent BeNews, or us? I think the safe bet would be leBuzz, they’ve got the most happening professionally right now. I honestly hope and pray we won’t know the answer to that question for a couple of years yet. Here’s to blind faith and hoping. Sorry to bring you all down.

Well, I for one, am not ashamed to beg… Be, we are starving out here… feed us something… anything. I know you are in a very touchy situation right now, but we need something - NOW - to stay alive as a community. I’m begging you. We’re all begging you. A simple press release or even just an open letter from JLG or Steve S., or even let the engineers speak up and out, just a little bit. Something, anything… [scratchy voice] water… I need water…

So I’m way behind news in my mailbox… here goes:

First off, this interesting editorial at Wireless News. Short, nothing new, a bit old (May), but interesting nonetheless.

Sander van Dragt, a newbie to BeOS, writes in with an open letter about his experience. Should act as sort of a motivator, considering these are the first impressions of a new user to BeOS even in these “late” days. Click Read More to read the letter.

Ryan Christiansen, long time BeOS advocate, did a Rebol Script to scrape the email addresses of developers that have apps on BeBits, and while many of these devs are probably long gone, the number is 1,013. Just a bit of trivia for ya.

And Scar wrote in with this from Lionhead found on Voodoo Extreme - nothing we didn’t know already, but a final word, nonetheless:

“The Linux and BeOS never managed to get anywhere. We haven’t necessarily given up hope but the publishers we have been speaking to about this are not too optimistic about the marketplace for selling Linux or BeOS titles. Black & White is a VERY big project to convert and I guess for some people the cost of converting it, is just too restrictive.”

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A couple of items submitted over the past few days that I wanted to clear out…

Tentacula was watching the video clip of a french music group called Air, and the clip was “radio number one”. He noticed what appeared to be BeOS in the video clip where you see them using a computer to sample their sounds. If anyone can verify this, or better yet, grab a screenshot, let us know!

A couple people wrote in about this, and Scott Brawner submitted the link to this article on electic.com about former 3dfx employees forming a new company. Hopefully they keep the same attitude of openness towards BeOS as 3dfx did.

Technix also wrote in to alert everyone to the fact that Pavel Cisler has left the OpenTracker team and handed control over to Dianne Hackborn. Click on More to read his email.

And a final note, PayPal seems to work very well for the BeForever TipJar. Daniel’s recieved over $150 in tips thus far. BeForever notes that on the 16th of the month, David Reid, porter of many important apps such as Apache and Gimp/GTK, will get his chance again, this time with PayPal. You can PayPal me tips for Daniel until the 15th (Friday), after which, until the end of the month, it will be a second chance to tip David. Remember, even a dollar or two adds up!
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Couple of quickies sitting in my mailbox…

DJMaytag wrote in with an observation that BONE Beta 7 might be making it’s way around the NDA circles, as shown at the Be Bugs site here and here. Still got something in the works for us, I’d say.

And here’s a bit about an app called called VideoPro. From the Press Release, Magnus Hellman has released a video playback and conversion utility for BeOS. Some features are: Slow and fast motion playback, Reverse playback, and Freezeframe. A screen-shot of VideoPro is available here. VideoPro can be downloaded here from BeBits, and is shareware that costs $9.95USD.

Thies also noticed that BeGames is still alive, only that instead of reporting BeOS game news, they are now planning to port/develop games for BeOS.

And speaking of games… it seems that the role playing game “Pirates Ho!” that was being developed for BeOS is dead. BeGroovy reader zegenie wrote the developer who wrote back that he has had no time. Sorry to those that may have been looking forward to the game. And sorry I have no links, post them in the comments if you got ‘em!

And that should about clear out my mailbox… have a good weekend! Cheers.
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Wow. I post news yesterday, and when I check my email today, there are tons of news submissions. Keep this up, and I will post new news all the time. Anyway, we have a bunch of be sites making changes… Read On..
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Just a quick update on the BeOS Media applications front covering various happenings that have been brought to our attention. Some Moho doubts, some Soundplay updates, and a nice new video app are all just one “Read More” link away…
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Well, after a few non-pc days of travelling, I just checked my email and found I had recieved several updates regarding different applications in different states of Beta.. including Jabber and Inferno. Read on for the details..
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Lots of little things to point out for you, and a few updates on things we already mentioned…. Basically, i am too busy to write lots of articles, and i want some of the recent stuff to stay on the frontpage. Thus a massive news drop all at once. Read on and let the comments be plentiful…
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Recently there has been a flurry of brief updates about various interesting apps being developed for BeOS. This news has involved a beos Jabber client, a new text editor from the creator of Pe, and an interesting internet telephony app. Read on for details.
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