Here goes the first release candidate of the 2.6.12 release, this release includes a fair number of changes and improvements so much testing is needed to ensure everything is working correctly. Among the changes are massive updates and revisions to the Italian translation. Addition of support for non-ascii (htmlencoded) characters in login/alias names. Support for mass topic deletion/moving for administrators and moderators. Several performance improvements and various bug fixes. The full scope of the changes can be found here. The new release is available for download at: http://fudforum.org/download.php

GoDaddy has announced that they will be giving away 1 year Turbo SSL certificates to qualifying Open Source projects. To find if you are applicable visit their request form at: https://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/ssl/ssl_opensource.asp Seems like a neat idea that should give all OSS developers an opportunity to test their web applications with genuine SSL certificates and ensure that their applications work properly over https.

A new stable release of FUDforum, 2.6.10 has been released today and is now available download. This release primarily is a a bug fix release with a number of low/medium priority fixes. All existing users of the forum are encouraged to upgrade to this release whenever possible. Full details of the changes can be found in the RC1 - RC3 release announcements on the support forum.

I am happy to announce that I will be speaking at the annual PHP Quebec Conference on March 31st and April 1st. I will be giving a talk on Web services and a workshop on the same topic. The conference includes talks by many great speakers on variety of topics and should be of interest to all PHP users.

I've been fortunate to be invited to speak at two conference so far this year. The first of those two conferences, PHP West will be happening in about a week in Vancouver on January, 14th 2005. I will, be giving a talk on XML support in PHP 5. While the conference lasts only a single day it costs merely $40 to attend and given an impressive list of speakers Rasmus, John, Terry, etc... it is certainly worth attending. The second conference, PHP|Tropics, is still a few month away will be happening at the all-inclusive (alcoholic drinks are included, WOOHOO!) Moon Palace Resort near Cancun, Mexico between May 11th and 15th, 2005. Which should give you plenty of time to convince your boss and/or spouse to let you attend. I will be giving a talk on making PHP run a whole lot faster as well as an introductory tutorial on PHP 5. Marco has been working hard at giving reason for people to stay away from the beach by inviting many other great speakers such as Wez, Derick, Marcus and many others. So aside...