Netfetch 5.50 lands safely and securely

I could’ve made a joke about safety nets, couldn’t I? Oh well. Now available from R-Comp is the latest version of the NetFetch internet suite, which contains a bundle of software including, amongst other things, Hermes for transporting emails and a version of Messenger so you can read and write those emails. The update to version 5.50 includes two headline features – support for the very latest SSL/TLS standards, and an easy ‘quick-fetch’ function for individual mailboxes.

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News nybble: RISC OS Open holds up a finger

No, not THAT finger – one to indicate counting to, er, one! The first of RISC OS Open’s bounties to overhaul the USB stack has now been completed, bringing a number of benefits to the operating system, including the ability to use power-on-keypresses to recover the system when things go a little awry at boot; something that was present on older hardware, but lost when we made the shift to USB for our input devices. The plans for updating the USB stack were broken down into two steps in order…

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Bounty boosting at ROOL

Show ’em the money! RISC OS Open Ltd, responsible for managing the RISC OS 5 source code, have announced another run of bounty matching for this month. The bounty scheme was launched in 2011 as a way to allow members of the RISC OS community to contribute funds towards the development of certain aspects of RISC OS. A number of different bounties are listed on the RISC OS Open website, and people can send money to go towards whichever one(s) they see fit.

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Snippets – 6th August 2011

Dorian Computing have made available from their website one updated and one new piece of software. Originally written by Philip Macfarlane in 1991 and “released into the public domain,” DragCom is an application designed to provide a desktop front-end for star commands, making it easier to specify arguments (often files) by allowing them to be dragged onto the main window. This not only reduces the potential for errors when typing the path and filename, but it also removes the need to repeatedly type it if a series of commands needs…

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Boosting the bounties: A pound for pound pledge

RISC OS Open Ltd, who only made a formal announcement about their bounty scheme earlier this week, have followed that news this evening with a pledge that they will, up to a £1,000 total limit, match every donation into the bounty scheme themselves, with the exception of donations to the administration bounty. This means that while this scheme is in place – i.e. until that £1,000 is used up – every £1 you donate to the bounty scheme will be worth £2 to whichever developer is able to fulfull the…

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Cash prize offered for USB audio functionality

Hot on the heels of the announcement from RISC OS Open Ltd about their bounty scheme, Jim Lesurf has announced a ‘cash prize’ of £300 for someone (or a group): To develop the USB stack/interface, user API, etc, to allow [modern high quality USB devices like the Halide Bridge, Arcam rDAC, etc] to be ‘plug and play’ with ‘native’ ARM hardware running RISC OS. Thus enabling RISC OS users to make use of modern USB devices for high quality audio playing (and recording). Jim goes on to detail on the…

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Announcing the RISC OS Open Bounty Scheme

RISC OS Open Ltd

Anyone reading the RISC OS Open Ltd forum, or who spoke to the team at the recent Wakefield Show or attended their theatre talk, will be aware that a bounty scheme has been brewing. The scheme provides a mechanism whereby developers could receive a cash reward for results in those areas that users have deemed worthy enough to contribute towards. Such a bounty scheme could be beneficial to both developers and users alike, and therefore to the operating system and our little community as a whole. It can benefit developers…

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