I just installed Helix GNOME. Very slick and easiest GNOME installation I've ever experienced.
Of course I had to immediatedly try some coding too... see this applet. Coding that little applet was pure joy. I've done some plain gtk+ coding before, but this was actually my first attempt at GNOME spesific code.
Helix GNOME has very polished look with good programming APIs and infrastructure (CORBA, bonobo etc.). No wonder that Sun and other companies chose GNOME to replace CDE.
FOAF updates: Trust rankings are now exported, making the data available to other users and websites. An external FOAF URI has been added, allowing users to link to an additional FOAF file.
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If you're a C programmer with some spare time, take a look at the mod_virgule project page and help us with one of the tasks on the ToDo list!