News You Can Bruise for 2003 April 7

Hm, maybe I should split out the programming-related software into a "Software Software Roundup", since that's most of the interesting software I'm finding nowadays. On the other hand, why not jumble everything together?

• Xrmap lets you view and zoom in on a hugely detailed vector map of the world as you cackle maniacally like a B-movie villain. Changelog includes the phrase "Xrmap no longer complains if the CIA_WDB2.jpd vector data are not found." Sunclock, by the same author, gives an interface to various other maps of the world. Both very cool.
• Process Change Detection System watches for new processes on your machine.
• Draco is a web application framework. I think there was some talk of it at PyCon. [Hey, what about PyCon?-ed. I'm working on it.]
• Continuing the "useful thing ported to Python" trend, cracklib has been ported to Python.
• Albumshaper, one of the myriad of photo album software packages. I'm putting it here because I should at least *try* other photo album software packages before deciding that I don't understand them and writing my own.
• DPROG is a German industrial band, and also a language which generates C++ implementations of algorithms using dynamic programming (Dynamic Programming: The Coolest Thing Ever™).
• Autodia turns source code or other text into Dia diagrams. It can't be more aggravating than dragging boxes around in Dia! [0]
• SCons is a build system written in Python.
• CVSTrac is a bug tracker that lives on top of CVS.
• netrick is a colorful text-based Web browser that features partial ECMAScript support. They said it shouldn't be done!

[0] This is not really a problem with Dia. It's a problem with having to drag boxes aroud.