It’s at LinuxPR: Shoppers in Eastern Massachusetts using
the Internet to find local bricks-and-mortar businesses, will soon have a new
resource to help them find the exact brands, products and services they are
looking to buy. PlaceLinks, Inc., a provider of local online advertising and
promotional systems, has developed a 160-town yellow pages and promotions
directory for TownOnline.com, the web site of Community Newspaper
Company (CNC). The PlaceLinks’ powered local shopping directory will be
available on TownOnline.com’s expanded Marketplace as part of the site’s set of
features beginning next month. Users can view the functionality of the
PlaceLinks’ XML and Linux-based technology at
http://pl1.townonline.placelinks.com.

At LinuxPR: Richard Stallman, philosopher and founder of free software, has accepted the
position of Chief Ethics Officer at FreeDevelopers. The position of Chief Ethics
Officer involves making sure that the general principles of the Free Software
Movement will be followed, including in particular license criteria. This is the
beginning of the judicial branch in the checks and balances, democratic structure
forming at FreeDevelopers.

eWeek reports that Sun Microsystems will soon release the newest draft specification of the XML file format for the StarOffice 6 release.

A column at ZD’s Interactive Week talks about “the ascendancy of the software developer into the driver’s seat” on the Internet and how Linux contributed to the fame of Open Source team leaders like Larry Wall and Brian Behlendorf.

From LinuxPR: The Kannel project has released version 1.0 of the world’s first open source SMS
and WAP gateway.

Kannel version 1.0 is now technically ready and tested for heavy production use.
The Kannel gateway is robust and scalable with the capability of successfully
handling hundreds of messages per second. Kannel supports the most commonly
used SMS center protocols, and is already in production use at Wapit Ltd. and in
many parts of the world, both as an SMS gateway and WAP gateway.

go to irc!

Our friends at Linux.com have this story: “So you think you’ve got what it takes to administrate a server farm or office network with
hundreds, if not thousands of users on it? The unfortunate reality of being a Systems
Administrator is that sometime during your career, you will most likely run into a user (or
lus3r if you prefer) whom has an IQ of a diced carrot and demands that you drop
everything to fix their system/email/whatever.”

An anonymous reader points us to this article: “The talk of Linux Australia at the moment is about Linux.conf.au. This four-day gathering of some of the world’s most influential Linux developers is being held at the University of New South Wales, Sydney from 17 to 20 January.” The story’s at Linuxworld.com.au.

ZDNet reports: “Microsoft Corp. on Monday announced the availability of a beta version of its en-terprise portal product, SharePoint Portal Server, previously code-named “Tahoe.””

From PR Newswire: “Apple(R) (Nasdaq: AAPL) today announced that Mac(R) OS X, the next generation
Macintosh(R) operating system, will ship on March 24, 2001 for a suggested
retail price of US$129. Mac OS X is the world’s most advanced operating
system, combining the power and openness of UNIX with the legendary ease of
use and broad applications base of Macintosh.”