The Alpha 2 release of Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) was released yesterday. Alpha 2 comes available as a Live CD, allowing you to use 9.04 without having to install it. Jaunty includes new versions of X.org Server (1.6) and a new linux kernel (2.6.28). If you plan on installing Alpha 2, please keep in mind that this is not intended for use on a production system. Please check out this list of Known Issues and if you find any bugs please report them to the Bug Tracker.

Yesterday marked the release of the next version of WordPress. WordPress 2.7, codenamed “Coltrane” has a completely redesigned admin interface, and is notably faster than WordPress 2.6.
The admin dashboard can be rearranged by dragging and dropping the widgets to the location that you like. You can also shrink the widgets with the click of a button to clear more space on the main page. The admin menu on the left side of the dashboard can be changed from icons and text links, down to just icons to free up additional …

Have you had trouble setting a static IP address on Ubuntu 8.10? If so this is due to a bug with the Gnome Network Manager. The easiest way to fix this is to uninstall the network manager, and edit your configuration files yourself. To remove the network manager type the following into your terminal:
sudo apt-get remove –purge network-manager

Mozilla has released Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 for testing. Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 includes the following new features:

Available in 54 languages
Private Browsing Mode
Easier clearing of recent history
Support for web worker threads
New TraceMonkey JavaScript engine
Improvements to the Gecko layout engine
Removed the new tab-switching behavior due to user feedback
Supports and elements, W3C Geolocation API, JavaScript query selectors, CSS 2.1 and 3 properties, SVG transforms and offline applications.