Gizmodo published their first impressions of the Windows 7 operating system currently being developed by Microsoft.  Microsoft allowed developers and reviewers get a sneak peek of this Vista replacement during this week's Professional Developers Conference.  Gizmodo and other tech blogs have indicated Windows 7, although still incomplete, looks to be a better version of Windows than Vista.  Improvements in boot-up time, work-flow, performance, and user interface all take center stage with this new version of Windows.

Packt Publishing announced the winner of their 2008 Best Open Source Other CMS Award and it is Plone.

Packt is delighted to exclusively reveal the first category winner of the 2008 Open Source CMS Award as Plone. Run[ning] on the Zope application server, Plone wins the Best Other Open Source CMS Award and receives $2,000. Also recognized by the judges were dotCMS and DotNetNuke who finished second and third respectively, both picking up $500.

Earlier today, Packt Publishing announced the winners of their 2008 Open Source CMS Most Valued People Award.  The MVP is a new category for Packt's annual Open Source CMS Awards.  In this category, "names were put forward by members of the Content Management System's development team and community and represent the exceptional support, guidance, and sheer amount of time that the MVPs have given up to support the development and growth of the respective CMS". 

Instead of just copying the winners list from Packt's site, I had hoped to do something different here. I started with a goal to look for each of the MVP's personal blog or project site,  I had hoped to find acknowledgments of the award was given by the MVP themselves or by someone else on their behalf.  Evidently I started searching a little too early and I only came across mentions of the awards from three four of the projects: Drupal (Earl Miles), Joomla! (Johan Janssens), and XOOPS (Onakazu). Plus... Plone.

Below are some excerpts from or about these open source MVPs.  If you are aware of more of the award winners recognizing or being recognized for their contributions...I would appreciate a link to the post.  Open source contributors like these MVPs deserve all the recognition we can give them.

There is so much that I want to do here at CMS Report, but my time has been limited these past couple weeks.  Some things that have been going on in my world:

1. As a judge for Packt Publishing's Open Source CMS Awards, I gave the publishing company my vote on the "Most Promising" CMS.  I dedicated a couple weekends to get the job done and I plan to post my reviews after Packt announces the winners (October 28).
2. I made the decision to drop my reseller account for Dakota Hosting.  The number of clients I host are few and over the past two years I've only been breaking even.
3. My post on Dell's Inspiron Mini 12 netbook brought in quite a bit of traffic to the site.  It looks like I may be a couple weeks off in my prediction for when this new netbook will finally hit the market.
   

Gallery 2.3, an open source "photo album organizer", has been released. Lot of new features in this version of the Gallery 2.x branch.  Some of the new features and enchancements include:

Mark Van Pattern has written a piece on PBS's MediaShift titled, "How the Focus on Print Hurts Our Newspaper Site".  His story is a common story I hear time after time from those in the newspaper business.

Last year, I started looking for a linux laptop and ended up just migrating my old Windows laptop over to Ubuntu Linux.  Since my personal preference is for smaller sized laptops, I have also been keeping an eye on the new low-cost netbooks.  Currently, I'm leaning toward the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 with Ubuntu already installed.  However, my personal sweet spot for a laptop seems to be in the 10 to 12 inch range.

Today, at Dell.com I came across reference to a yet to be released Inspiron Mini 12 (1210)!  While there have been rumors circulating on the Web that Dell will be introducing a 12.1 inch Mini netbook or (and) E Slim, I don't think anyone has reported seeing actual references of the Inspiron Mini 12 at Dell.com.  Until now!  Perhaps we'll be seeing the Inspiron Mini 12 released this week or possibly next week?  If the price is reasonable and Ubuntu is available, this Mini 12 will be my next notebook.

There is a new version of mojoPortal that has been released, version 2.2.7.6.  Besides bug fixes, there are some new features contained in this release, including:

• a new Content Rating system
• Feed Manager improvements
• a new option in Site Statistics to show a graph of new site member registrations

To download mojoPortal, check out their download page.