Hi-tech Homeless Talk online

Homeless Talk, long known as the published mouthpiece of SA`s homeless community, is going online. I-Net Bridge, a Johnnic Communications company, is taking the newspaper online through its Content Solutions offering. Homeless Talk content will be marketed to corporate intranets for a small fee, to support initiatives to help the homeless.

Dr Philip Coetzer, secretary of the Homeless Talk Board of Trustees, says the initiative could help to promote corporate awareness and understanding of the plight of the homeless.

MacCentral reports that REAL Software has released REALbasic 5.5, the latest version of its cross-platform development environment.

Company president and CEO Geoff Perlman says REALbasic 5.5, released almost a year to the day after REALbasic 5.0, includes more than 100 new features. With the addition of a Linux compiler, REALbasic developers working on Mac or Windows platforms can build applications that run on Red Hat Enterprise and SuSE Linux distributions, as well as other Linux distributions that have the GTK+ 2.0 and CUPS libraries.

BenQ has released its latest high-performance home theatre projector, the BenQ PE6800. Manoj Tripathi, SA country manager for BenQ, says the PE6800 features advanced Digital Light Processing technology, to offer high-quality, theatre-like projection in the home.

Backed by a 16:9 wide-screen (1 024 x 576) and HDTV compatibility, the 31dB PE6800 offers high contrast and fine images, with little degradation of quality over time. It is suitable for large displays and benefits from a lengthy 100 000-hour DMD projector panel.

Reuters quotes Microsoft as saying cellphone software maker Openwave Systems will begin offering a feature allowing mobile phone users to access Hotmail and MSN Messenger while on the go.

The world`s largest software maker said it had joined with Openwave to jointly develop software to be featured on the smaller company`s latest version of specialised software for cellphones. Both companies declined to say how soon Hotmail and messaging would be available to users. They said the decision to offer such features was in the hands of wireless network operators.

The new software platform, called Openwave Phone Suite V7 Platform, will be offered from March.