New & Noteworthy: Mactella; 4D; MacFixIt offline on Sunday; more

Mactella 1.0.3 is the only Macintosh native client for the Gnutella file sharing system. This is what you may have to depend on for getting MP3 files from the Internet - if Napster goes belly up or becomes too costly. Unfortunately, review comments on VersionTracker suggest it has a ways to go before it matches Napster's quality. Note: An important addition to the Gnutella network has been the development and release of the Clip2 Reflector. This allows users with low bandwidth to just connect to a reflector and get most of the advantage of a full network connection (for searches). The new version also has the ability to continue file transfers that have been interrupted.

Alternative Gnutella client choices include: LimeWire (written in Java) and MP3 Rage.

Gnutella virus; Newtella immune Newtella, Inc. announced that its Newtella music-sharing network for independent artists is immune to the latest reported gnutella-virus. It claims: "So far, Newtella is the only gnutella client to avoid the security problems posed by the virus." Newtella does not have a Mac version. But then again, the virus does not appear to affect the Mac either.

4D 6.7.1 is the latest update to this professional relational database system The update includes many improvements and optimizations along with the addition of a few minor new web features.

More on Disc Burner We updated a couple of items in yesterday's Disc Burner article. Check it out.

ALERT! MacFixIt to be down on Sunday We expect to do a hardware upgrade of the MacFixIt server on Sunday (which, if it works as intended, will improve performance speed on MacFixIt). As a result, MacFixIt will likely be offline for several hours Sunday afternoon or evening.