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OSNews is a computing news web site with a focus on operating systems and their related technologies that launched in 1997. The content is managed by a group of editors and the owner. The managing editor of OSNews is Thom Holwerda (joined in 2005). David Adams is the owner who also contributes regularly. Eugenia Loli-Queru, the former editor-in-chief of OSNews, resigned in June 2005. She took on a more passive role in recent years as senior editor. Adam Scheinberg is the webmaster of the site. He wrote version 3 of the site in 2005, which added user registration, and version 4, a complete and total rewrite of the codebase. Version 2 of OSNews was written by Eugenia in August 2001 when she resurrected the site after long periods of inactivity.

[edit] Function

Except its dedicated WAP site, the main OSNews site is written using the http://www.MoBits.com mobile-browser autodetection engine, which autodetects more than 150 mobile, embedded and text-mode browsers and serves them automatically lighter, ad-free C-HTML pages. OSNews was the first site on the net to achieve this in 2003 and it is the main reason why some mobile HTML-capable browser developer companies like Openwave and Opera are usually using OSNews.com to test or demonstrate their mobile browsers.^{[citation needed]}

The editors contribute news items and manage the submissions of news bits, articles, editorial comments and reviews that are submitted by readers, in addition to writing original articles. OSNews serves daily 275,000 page views on average (statistics from Oct 2005).

Like other technology news sites such as Slashdot, it has a free user/subscription model, and allows viewers to add commentary to articles. In 2005, OSNews published version 3 of the website, which includes an all-new commenting engine. Instead of reporting comments to moderators, this system now relies on votes. Readers can vote comments up or down, and readers can set a score threshold, which can eliminate the down-voted comments from view. Late 2007, version 4 was launched which completely overhauled the backend of the website, and was later followed by version 4.1 which added a brand new theme and look to the website.

Many readers have emailed OSNews editors to thank them for keeping the level of discourse higher than the average on internet message boards.^{[citation needed]} Whereas OSNews originally had a very strong following from BeOS users, under the new peer moderation system it has now become a place for hot debates between pro and anti-Microsoft advocates.^{[citation needed]}

On February 12th, 2007, OSNews' managing editor Thom Holwerda published the 1.0 version of the OSNews Style Guide ^[1]. This style guide is licensed under a Creative Commons license so that other websites and/or publications can use and adapt the guide to their liking. OSNews is one of the few of its kind with such a style guide.

In January 2008, OSNews' managing editor Thom Holwerda launched Focus Shift, a webcomic based upon the various news items OSNews carries. The Focus Shift webcomic was updated tri-weekly, until it was discontinued in mid-2008.

OSNews' Eugenia Loli-Queru also maintains the offshoot site GnomeFiles (a GNOME and GTK+ software repository).^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Notes

^ Holwerda, Thom. The OSNews Style Guide v1.0. Retrieved on 2007-02-13.

[edit] External links

[0] Holwerda, Thom. The OSNews Style Guide v1.0. Retrieved on 2007-02-13.

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