If you can’t wait for the official release of OpenOffice 3.0, you can download the beta which is now available for download. This via DownloadSquad:

So what’s new under the hood? Here are some of the highlights:

• OpenOffice.org 3.0 is the first version to run on Mac OS X (there are also Linux and Windows versions)
• OpenOffice.org Start Center gives you a one stop shop for creating documents, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, databases, or templates
• Support for collaborative spreadsheet editing
• Improved Writer notes features
• View multiple Writer pages while editing a document
• Improved crop features in Draw and Impress
• Support for ODF and MS Office 2007 formats

Sounds worth trying out … now if I could just find some time to test it out!! If you get to play with it, feel free to let us know how it works.

Not Your Average Geeks has a post reviewing 9 open source e-commerce applications.

• OsCommerce
• Zencart
• VirtueMart
• Magento
• Cubecart
• X-Cart
• LiteCommerce
• Shopify

Read all about them.

I just received an announcement about a neat new open source project.

PaperWorld3D is a mix of two open source project which is PaperVision3D on the frontend and Red 5 on the backend. It is released by the guys behind Influxis and Red5Server who is Trevor Burton and John Grden. The whole idea is to create quickly a 3D Massively Multiplayer Online Game for the Adobe Flash 9 player. The project works with modules and xml for configuration. It also have a platform for tracking and managing players and their avatars. The whole thing works on UDP protocol so the server is always right on the pace for all the players who’s logged on the server session.

From the website:

PaperWorld is many things - it lets you create multi-user applications, yes, but it also gives you the tools to create large games, quickly, localise them to a particular language or region, and manage everything in your workflow - so your designers don’t need to code, and your coders don’t need to design, and anyone with a basic knowledge of xml can edit a config file and setup or edit a game quickly without having to recompile and deploy.

Sounds pretty nifty! Learn more.