Microsoft announces Skype Qik group video messaging app
Microsoft is making a play for mobile video messaging with Skype Qik, its new group messaging app available for Android, iOS and Windows Phone.

Kik, the original streaming app acquired by Microsoft several years ago, has been rolled into the new Skype Qik app to compete with the likes of Snapchat, Instagram, FaceTime and even Skype. The app has no chat or pictures, just video messages. Users can send video messages of up to 42 seconds to one or more recipients, or send a pre-recorded 5-second Qik Flik response message to a video. Each video disappears after two weeks, and each sent video has individual privacy settings.

More information about Skype Qik is available in the Skype blog post.

AngularJS 1.3 ‘superluminal-nudge’ released
The AngularJS open-source JavaScript framework has released version 1.3, adding new features, bug fixes and performance improvements in the release codenamed ‘superliminal-nudge.’

The biggest features added in AngularJS 1.3 include:

    • One-time bindings : By prefixing an expression with “::”, it will only be interpolated once, and then no longer watched.
    • ngAria : A new module that helps make custom components in Angular more accessible by default
    • ngMessages : A new directive simplifying writing and coordinating feedback on form validity
    • ngModelOptions : A directive to customize the behavior of bound models. For instance: debouncing, getter-setter-style models, update-on-blur, and more.
    • Strict DI: An option for finding places in your application that will not minify due to use of short-hand DI syntax

AngularJS 1.3 also has improved APIs for clearer custom form controls and animations as well as more than 400 bug fixes and close to a thousand documentation improvements. The popular JavaScript framework now officially has published packages in the npm package manager as well. More information can be found in the AngularJS blog post.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.6 now generally available
Red Hat has released the final version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.6, its enterprise infrastructure platform for the open-source Linux operating system.

The RHEL 6.6 release improves performance, system administration and virtualization, adding higher processor counts and memory limits, kernel optimization for more efficient NUMA system CPU usage and enhanced single-server workload capabilities. Other improvements include additional network adapter support, network latency and jitter reductions, full HAProxy support and new Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP) functionality for compliance testing.

 Cumulus Networks releases Cumulus Linux 2.5
Open-source cloud software provider Cumulus Networks has released the latest version of Cumulus Linux 2.5, its operating system for open datacenter networking.

The 2.5 release adds Layer 2 network architecture support, active-active Multi-Chassis Link Aggregation and an active-active first hop redundancy protocol. More significant though is the expanded ecosystem and partnerships accompanying Cumulus Linux 2.5. Partnerships with VMWare to add VSphere support, Apache Hadoop to add Big Data support and with OpenStack for cloud integration open up wider deployment opportunities for customers.

Cumulus Linux 2.5 will be globally available by the end of the year.