New Products

It's always a treat to buzz over to No Starch and see the latest goodies for geeks. If you visit No Starch now, you'll find Peter Goodliffe's brand-new book Code Craft: The Practice of Writing Excellent Code. The book's purpose is to take the programmer to a new level, from writing correct code to writing great code that is easy to understand. Code Craft is language-agnostic and covers not only issues such as presentation style, variable naming, error handling and security, but also effective teamwork, development processes and documentation. A free sample chapter is available at No Starch Press' Web site.

www.nostarch.com

ADLINK Technology just brought forth a new full-sized, single-board computer, the NuPRO-851 Series. The NuPRO-851 Series is a PICMG 1.0 device that supports 800MHz FSB with a hyper-threading Intel Pentium 4 (LGA775) processor, dual-channel DDR2 memory at speeds of 400/533MHz and an Intel GMA900 graphics core architecture providing up to 2048x1536 resolution with 8.5GB/s peak memory bandwidth. The product also features the Intel 915GV and ICH6 chipsets, USB 2.0 connectivity and two on-board Marvell 88E8052 controllers that support dual-gigabit Ethernet ports via the PCIe bus. ADLINK says the product is “ideal for industrial controllers and equipment providers”, because it places heavy emphasis on longevity, reliability and strict revision control. This and all other ADLINK products comply with the European Union's RoHS directive on environmentally sound products.

www.adlinktech.com

Linux people simply rock, don't they? A case in point is Terra Soft, which has ported its Yellow Dog Linux (YDL) v5.0 to the PlayStation 3 (PS3) from Sony. Hopefully by the time you read this, you can finally get your hands on a PS3, because we can't! With Sony's blessing and support from the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, YDL is a full Linux OS for PS3, which is based on Fedora Core 5 and comes complete with more than 1,500 packages. In this project, Terra Soft also collaborated with Carsten Haitzler and the Enlightenment development team to integrate the E17 desktop, which the firm says will provide “an unprecedented level of function and interface aesthetic”. Install and source ISOs for YDL are available for download; DVDs are available for purchase from the Terra Soft's on-line store.

www.terrasoftsolutions.com

Just when you thought that the dizzying array of options for mail servers couldn't get more dazzling, AXIGEN releases version 2.0 of its Mail Server product. The package provides “all-in-one server functionalities, ranging from e-mail communication to anti-virus and anti-spam integration.” In the new edition, AXIGEN has added many features, including a backup and restore module, a full-security toolbox that integrates 16 anti-virus and anti-spam applications, localized and skinable Web mail, a reporting engine for more than 100 definable reports, a wizard for creating e-mail delivery rules and others. The Mail Server is currently available in both the English and German languages and runs on major Linux distributions. An evaluation edition is available at AXIGEN's Web site.

www.axigen.com