YAVM (Yet Another Virtual Machine) - VirtualBox goes open-source. Looks like it runs Vista and is cross-platform (Windows & Linux with an OS X alpha).

Ex Java developer doesn't regret moving to Cocoa - In Which I Think About Java Again, But Only For A Moment.

Humour - Get a Firstlife. Piss-take of Secondlife (popular Virtual Reality environment).

For the luddite in you - P-Mail. Like email only slower. I'm tempted to send these through the internal mail system instead of email.

Fascinating - The making of an Al Qaeda Operative. The insight into groups of young, smart disenfranchised men congregating to find some meaning to life is a little frightening (shades of 'Fight Club').

Looks like theres now a Asterisk (Open Source VoIP/PABX) ISO - Asterisk. It looks like a few small companies are starting to offer Asterisk as an out of the box solution to businesses too.

Another X10 like solution for your home - Indigo. Looks like a nice solution if you have a spare Mac Mini. I'm surprised this technology hasn't been 'consumerised' by now.

Fantastic - anti-consumerist ATM splash screens.

Open source - Docvert - convert Word documents to open formats.

If you're after a simple DIY appliance for web/email try out this CentOS (based on RedHat) / BlueQuartz (based on the old Cobalt appliance) ISO. I installed it via VMWare and was impressed by how straightforward it was - one thing I did miss was SAMBA for basic workgroup file-sharing but it seemed to cover everything else and you can always install SAMBA from an RPM.

Genius - Self-charging smoke alarms. Great idea.

Also over at Make - How to photograph smoke.