alpha release

With more than 100 million active users a month and a market share of nearly 50 percent, uTorrent is without doubt the most-used BitTorrent client.

On the PHP.net site today there's an announcement about the release of the PHP 5.4 alpha1, the first version of the upcoming 5.4 release.

The PHP development team is proud to announce the first PHP 5.4 alpha release. PHP 5.4 includes new language features and removes several legacy (deprecated) behaviors.

Read the NEWS file for a complete list of changes. THIS IS A DEVELOPMENT PREVIEW - DO NOT USE IT IN PRODUCTION!

This alpha release exists to encourage users to identify bugs, and to ensure that all new features and backward compatibility breaks are evaluated and documented before PHP 5.4.0 is released.

Please report findings to the QA mailing list and/or the PHP bug tracker.

Tech Drive-in: "Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" alpha 2 was released a day ago. A lot has changed with Ubuntu since we reviewed the first alpha release of Ubuntu Natty some weeks ago.

Here is a quick review of the latest release of Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal."

Datamation: "The criticism began instantly, and, given new life by the alpha release of Ubuntu 11.04 and articles about what to expect in open source software in 2011, has hardly stopped since."

Linux Pro Magazine: "The Mozilla Project announced the alpha release of Fennec, the mobile version of their popular Firefox browser, for Android smartphones and the Nokia N900."

Earlier this year BitTorrent Inc. launched uTorrent Apps, a web-based extensions framework to add new functionality to the popular BitTorrent client without compromising the lightness most users have come to love.

uTorrent App files have a .btapp suffix and consist entirely of HTML and Javascript.

The Apps can be added to the client with a single click and are displayed using an embedded browser window.

If at first you don't succeed, try again. Opera hasn't cracked double digits in the desktop browser market, but that doesn't mean the company is giving up.

A few days ago, Opera released alpha builds of Opera 10.5 and made them available for download. If the alpha release is any indication, Opera is going to give Firefox and Chrome a run for their money, speedwise.

Phoronix: "For those interested in 3D modeling and graphics, you will want to check out the first alpha release of Blender 2.5.

Blender 2.5 is bringing major changes to this free software 3D graphics application."

Chris Jones has officially launched the latest OCI8 (Oracle) drivers for PHP - version 1.4.0 Alpha: