VMware now supports eComStation 1.2R on VMware vSphere 4.0 Update 1; support does not include VMware Tools. It is also listed in the VMware Compatibility Guide. From VOICE News.

Warpstock Europe 2010 will be held May 14-16, in Trier, Germany, at the the ERA Congress Centre. Registration for the event is available through Mensys. Trier lies in the very west of Germany, close to the border to Luxembourg. The oldest German city is located at the Mosel river and has a strong Roman heritage. From VOICE News.

The OS2World Bounty System lists several projects that developers can get paid for; the total current value of all bounties exceeds $3700. Users can help by sponsoring money to encourage development on the projects that are of interest to them. Open bounties include an OS/2 native port of Java 6, improving the icon routines in OS/2, ports of VirtualBox, Skype, VLC, and Abiword, and many more. From VOICE News.

An unofficial version of Thunderbird 3.0.1 has been released (1/26/2010) on netlabs.org FTP; it includes the Lightning calendar extension. Thunderbird is a mail / news client, based on Mozilla code. See my Warpzilla tips page for more information.

The eComStation.tv site has various video clips and movies related to OS/2 and eComStation. From VOICE News.

eComStation.Ru is collecting information about motherboards that work with OS/2, particularly those that work with the new Core i3, i5, and i7 CPUs. From VOICE News.

netlabs.org has published biweekly newsletter #105 to update everyone on their latest developments. Recent updates include FM/2, QT4, Samba, SWT, UniAud, and more. You can sponsor netlabs.org, which helps fund development on various projects. From VOICE News.

An unofficial version of Firefox 3.5.7 has been released (1/12/2010) on netlabs.org FTP. Firefox is a stand-alone browser, based on Mozilla code. See my Warpzilla tips page for more information.

The QT4 project has reached 86% of its funding goal. This is a cross-platform application and UI framework. Applications that use QT include VirtualBox, SMPlayer, Psi, Scribus, and LyX. You can follow the progress on the roadmap and milestones for the project. If you would like to contribute to this port, you can buy sponsoring units from Mensys; all of the money goes toward funding development. From VOICE News.

Paul Curtis reports that Curtis Systems Software is selling Quad core computers with eComstation running in a VM under Linux. They also have dual head video cards which have been tested with the Scitech SNAP drivers.

OS News picked up on the story of the delayed eCS 2.0 release; there are many comments, and everyone wishes to see it released as soon as possible.

Warpstock 2010 will be held at the University of Waterloo, in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, August 5th through 8th. Event and registration info will be available soon. Thanks to Andy Willis for the info.

Jim Read has had to withdraw Unimaint, FileStar/2, and Flexedit from further sale on Mensys and BMT Micro, due to family obligations. He will continue to support current users to the extent that he can, and hopes to provide a free update for FS/2 that adds support for larger than 2 GB files. From VOICE News.

Despite earlier promises, eComStation 2.0 was not released in 2009. However, it will be made available as soon as possible, and meanwhile the RC7 "Silver Release" is available to Software Subscription Service subscribers. It includes: FAT32/NTFS partition resizing, GenMAC network drivers, installation on JFS, SNAP/ENT, ACPI, Samba client, and more. Note that even if your subscription has expired, you are not required to purchase a renewal to obtain the GA version of eComStation 2.0. For those who did not have a subscription, there will be upgrade pricing; there will also be discounts for purchases of multiple copies. You can follow the latest developments on the Twitter feed. Thanks to Joachim Benjamins for the info.

4OS2 version 3.05A RC4 has been released (2/7/2010) as a netlabs.org project. Also available (5/9/2007) is version 3.04h. This is a command shell, formerly developed by JPSoft and now open source.

A third beta of SMplayer version 0.6.8 has been ported (2/6/2010) to OS/2. This is a GUI frontend for MPlayer, based on the Qt4 graphics toolkit. The latest version can be found via ftp.

The Blubbels version 0.9 port has been updated (2/6/2010). This is a game that uses Qt4.

Guiffy version 9.1 has been released (2/6/2010). Guiffy is a file compare / merge (diff-like) tool with a GUI implemented in Java.

nveth version 0.0.6 has been released (2/4/2010). This is a NDIS driver for NVIDIA chipset network adapters.

EVFSGUI version 2.0.2 has been released (2/4/2010). This is a fully drag and drop enabled GUI to manage SMB/CIFS connections; it is a heavily extended successor to EVFSGUI 1.3.x, which comes with current eCS 2.0 RCs. It works with EVFS and/or Netdrive, and requires the Samba client utilities. The latest version can be found via ftp.

SmartGit version 1.0.3 has been released (2/4/2010). This is a Java GUI client for the Git version control system. It requires Java 1.4.1 or higher.

libssh2 version 1.2.3 has been ported (2/4/2010) to OS/2. This is a library implementing the SSH2 protocol.

lsof has been ported (2/4/2010) to OS/2. This is a tool to list open files, and the processes that are using them.

SmartSVN version 6.5.4 has been released (2/3/2010). This is a Java Subversion GUI client, with features like built-in File Compare/Merge, Change Report or Tag and Branch handling, and more. It requires Java 1.4.1 or higher.

Artistic Style has been ported (2/3/2010) to OS/2. This is a C, C++, C#, and Java source code formatter and beautifier.

plzip version 0.4 has been ported (2/2/2010) to OS/2. This is a parallel version of the lzip lossless file compressor.

lzlib version 0.9RC1 has been ported (2/2/2010) to OS/2. This is a data compression library providing in-memory LZMA compression and decompression functions, using the lzip format.

libkva version 1.1.1 has been released (2/2/2010). This is a library for displaying video streams, which supports SNAP video overlays, WarpOverlay!, and DIVE. It has been used in KMP and recent ports of MPlayer.

libkai version 1.1.0 has been released (2/2/2010). The K Audio Interface is a DART and UNIAUD implementation library.

Agena version 0.30.4 has been ported (1/31/2010) to OS/2. This is an interpreted language suited for sophisticated procedural programming, with syntax like simplified Algol 68, with elements taken from Lua and SQL.

The Java Image Browser Sorter version 2.6.1 has been released (1/31/2010). This program requires Java 1.4.

EmperoarTV version 2.04a has been released (1/27/2010). This software brings support for many DVB cards, as well as the Hauppauge PVR150/250/350/500 TV cards to the OS/2 platform, including high quality MPEG2 hard disk recording and playback. You can listen to FM radio programs in stereo, watch TV programs in excellent image quality, and more. Also available is DVDFront, a front end that simplifies the creation of video DVDs out of recordings made by EmperoarTV. It supports both WarpOverlay and SNAP overlays. There is an online forum for discussion as well.