From eVision – Visual Search Technology: eVision is excited to announce the release of the Linux version of the eVe Visual Search Java-based SDK v 2.1. The toolkit lets you create search applications that use images and visual similarity rather than keywords and text.

To celebrate the release eVision is providing a great opportunity for you to make a little cash and impress your friends, colleagues, and neighbors with your programming prowess. Using the new 100% Java-based eVe 2.1 beta SDK we’re inviting developers to create an innovative visual search application.

The top two best applications in each of three categories submitted before September 3rd, 2001, stand to win cash prizes: 1st prize: $1000 (US). 2nd prize: $250 (US).

More information about the contest and how to enter can be found at http://www.evisionglobal.com/developers/sdk/contes t.html

You can sign up to download a free 500 image limited version of the SDK for the contest at http://www.evisionglobal.com/developers/sdk/

About eVe
The eVe (eVision Visual Engine) toolkit lets Java developers create object-based visual search applications for intuitive, accurate and rapid access to content for digital asset management, categorization and e-commerce. The user selects a sample query image or partial image, then the search engine finds and ranks other images that are visually similar with respect to the objects in the image and attributes such as color, texture, shape and 3D shading. This technology can be applied to image content, video content, audio content and any other digital pattern.

The 100% Java-based SDK includes both a high level and low level API and supports both text and image based searches. A 500 image version of the toolkit is free to corporate and freelance developers to evaluate the API and experiment with building Visual Search applications.

DaemonNews.org has the chapter, which goes over the lockdown procedures of a FreeBSD machine.

From InternetWire: Artful and Tribeworks
announced today the arrival of a new application server called
Webkool. Webkool is written in Key, the versatile programming
and description language that was developed by Tribeworks
and used to construct Tribeworks’ application authoring
product, iShell. With it’s flexible architecture based on XHTML
and SQL, Webkool will allow multi-platform development of
high-performance applications on systems including Linux, OS
X, Solaris and Windows, on servers such as Apache, IIS and
Zeus, and on server databases such as MySQL, Oracle and
SQL Server.

The Register reports that three versions of the long-awaited Puma upgrade to Mac OS X appear to be in circulation, “and some fairly authoritative
reports confirm that the speed improvements demonstrated by Steve Jobs at
Macworld Expo New York are very real.”

From BusinessWire: In a bid to establish a cost-effective standard for massively multiplayer server solutions for the online gaming industry, two former
senior entertainment industry executives have formed a new company and enlisted a pair of industry leaders to help realize that vision.
Paul Villadolid, a former senior vice president at Walt Disney Television, and Larry Hess, a former software engineer at special
effects pioneer Digital Domain, have joined together to form Rebel Arts, a technology and software developer with a proprietary
server platform designed to handle simultaneous, complex interactions on a massive scale. Rebel Arts’ Versatile Accelerated Server
Technology (VAST) System will first be deployed in the online game industry.

Both AMD and Linux NetworX are also providing the resources necessary to deploy the VAST System in the online game industry.

It’s at Netcraft.com. The survey shows a slight upswing in Microsoft usage and a slight decrease in Apache. “Primarily this is a result of two
large US installations converting from Solaris.”

From 4Front Technologies: 4Front Technologies, a leading develope
of digital and analog audio solutions for the Linux and UNIX Operating System
platforms, announced today the release of its new OSS/3D plugin for X Multimedia
System (XMMS).

OSS/3D comprises of a set of proprietary 3D audio algorithms that provide audio
spatialization, depth perception, bass boost, fidelity enhancement and speaker
/headphone correction. OSS/3D works with standard 2-speaker based soundcards.

“OSS/3D has been a huge success on Winamp for Windows and now with support
for XMMS, 4Front Technologies once again demonstrates leadership in digital
audio on Linux.”, said Dev Mazumdar, President of 4Front Technologies.

Tim Joslin, a user of OSS/3D on Windows, had this to say: “I just thought
I’d write to thank you for this extraordinary dsp plugin. I was using Power
Technology’s DFX and thought it was super, until I tried your plugin. It
nearly blew me off my chair! Now I’m nearly in acoustic nirvana.”

OSS/3D technologies will be available to Linux PDA and audio appliance
manufacturers who wish to provide more feature rich audio products and provide
a product differentiation in a market that is mostly saturated with standard
stereo audio output.

More information on the OSS/3D is available at http://www.oss3d.com and the
Plugin for XMMS can be purchased online at an introductory price of $10.00.
A free trial demo version can be also downloaded from this site.

About 4Front Technologies

4Front Technologies is a privately held company with development facilities in
California, Finland and Sweden. 4Front’s main focus is on developing audio
solutions for the UNIX and embedded Systems marketplace. 4Front’s Open Sound
System has become the “de-facto” audio API for UNIX and is distributed with
Linux and FreeBSD kernel sources under the GNU Public License (GPL). Open Sound
System has been licensed by companies like SCO, Hewlett Packard, Wind River
Systems and endorsed by SUN Microsystems. The commercial version of Open Sound
System sold by 4Front Technologies is also bundled in Linux distributions from
Corel, Caldera, SuSE and MIZI, Holon Software and MandrakeSoft. Additional
Information on Open Sound System is available at http://www.opensound.com

The X Multimedia System (XMMS) project is developed under the GNU Public
License (GPL) by 4Front Technologies. XMMS is a cross platform multimedia
player that supports MP3, Wave, MPEG1 Video, VideoCD, Amiga MOD, MIDI, and
other digital audio and video formats. It also provides MP3 streaming playback
support over the Internet and provides visual graphics synchronized to sound
output. It also provides complete control over GUI layout and design. XMMS
has received many prestigious awards as the most popular media application
on Linux from Linux Journal, Linux Magazine and SlashDot.Org. More information
on XMMS is available at http://www.xmms.org

Notices:

OSS/3D is a trademark of 4Front Technologies.
All copyrights mentioned are the property of their respective owners.
Copyright © 2001, 4Front Technologies.

From DaemonNews.org: “We can see that a default FreeBSD installation, while optimized for safety and integrity, is not optimized for
maximum performance as a dedicated network server. Particularly in cases of serving many simultaneous connections,
reliably supporting large numbers of processes, and filesystem performance, one needs to take steps to improve the
performance of the system over the default configuration. The gains that can be realized from this are great, often at least
doubling the performance of the system.”

LWN.net reports. “In many ways, this year’s Ottawa Linux Symposium looks much like last year’s event.
It’s in the same place, with a similar schedule of seriously technical talks mostly
oriented around the kernel and GNOME. But the differences jump out after a short
time. Many companies who were here in force last year — Corel, Zero Knowledge, VA Linux — have much
reduced attendance (or zero attendance) this year. And a number of the more prominent speakers from last
year (David Miller, Alan Cox) are not around.”

From BusinessWire: Penguin Computing Inc., the first company that is “Simplifying the
Solution Process” by removing the complexity involved in developing and deploying fully customized, Linux-based solutions, and
Scyld Computing, the leading developer of second-generation Beowulf cluster operating systems, today announced a partnership to
deliver high-performance computing solutions.