Opera has released the first public beta of Opera 11 desktop browser. The Opera 11 adds some nifty features like the new Tab Stacking that allows users to stack multiple tabs, grouping them into one. Opera has also added Visual Mouse Gestures that gives you a visual feedback of a particular mouse gesture and extension support.

Users can download the beta for Windows, Linux or Mac from the link below.

Download Page

[Via My Opera]

Skype today issued a new beta for Skype Mac users. The Skype 5.0 beta comes with a new look that emphasizes on simplified navigation and adds the most important 5.0 feature – group video calling. The new beta allows users to make video calls to more than two people using Skype 5.0 for Mac or Windows.

Additionally, the Skype for Mac has a new call control bar, chat search, offline IM, floating contacts monitor and more.

Give Skype a Mac a spin from the link below.

Download Page

[Via Skype Blog]

Microsoft has released the first ever beta of its Internet Explorer 9 browser and after giving it a spin for some time, I must say, it’s worth the attention. Microsoft has not only worked under the hood but also on the outside. The result is a cleaner look, which is somewhat reminiscent to Chrome but very pleasing.

Other new features include the ability to drag the website and pin them to the taskbar just like you’d access a pinned app in Windows 7; HTML5 support; hardware acceleration and the overall performance is really snappy.

You can give it a try by downloading from the link below.

Beauty of the Web

Maintaining a fortnightly release schedule, Apple has seeded beta 4 of its iPhone OS 4 to developers. Complete changelog is missing but devs are reporting about a new option to change wallpapers. Other than that, a new configuration setting has been found for AT&T users, allowing them to tether their internet connection with other devices.

Although Internet Tethering is supported by many international carriers since iPhone OS 3.0, AT&T iPhone users will be able to do it after the new update hits summer this year.

[Via Macrumors]

MobileMe Mail web app has been revamped by Apple and is currently available in beta for existing MobileMe users. Users can request for an invitation and with the new beta, they’ll get access to a better layout suited to the target device, faster receiving and sending of emails, improved SSL security and better filtering of email messages.

However, the service is not free and a user needs to pay $99 a year to avail Apple’s push service.

MobileMe Mail

[Via Slashgear]

Following its fortnightly schedule, Apple released a new beta of its iPhone OS 4 and SDK to developers. The devs were quick enough to unravel new features and some managed to successfully uncover couple of noteworthy features. First is the screen orientation lock in iPhone and iPod touch and the other is quick access to the iPod controls via the multitask interface.

iPad has a dedicated switch to lock the screen orientation but iPhone and iPod touch users will be able to take advantage of the feature from the software, after accessing it by swiping left from the multitask manager . The iPod controls can be used basically the same way and features simple music controls like rewind, play/pause and forward.

[Via Macrumors]

Norway-based Opera has released a native version of its most used Opera Mini browser. Native version means the new Opera Mini won’t require Java, which was a prerequisite for the browser to function properly.

Opera Mini 5 is compatible with WinMo 5 and 6-based handsets and brings the same advantages of the Java version like tabbed browsing, Opera Link Synchronization, Speed Dial and Opera Turbo for faster browsing and data compression.

WinMo 5 & 6 users can give it a try by pointing their phone’s browser to http://m.opera.com/mini/next or from PC here.

Press Release

Office 2010 Technical Preview was limited to bunch of people but Microsoft today has opened the gates for all who want to try the next version of its popular Office suite. At the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) 2009, Microsoft announced the beta version of Office 2010, allowing everyone to use and try the software for free. In addition to squashing bugs from the Technical Preview, Office 2010 brings in the Outlook Social Connector feature that integrates everything including social network feeds in the Outlook. LinkedIn will be the first one to provide a connector early next year.

Download the beta from here.

Adobe has released the beta versions of Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2, which were revealed at the Adobe Max conference last month. Both the applications are available for x86 systems running Windows, Mac and Linux OSes and support multi-touch commands and gestures.

The new AIR 2 now not only allows to create feature-rich applications, it also brings improved support for mass storage devices and improved P2P and UDB networking.

Flash Player 10.1 is currently available for x86 PCs and has lot to offer than security fixes. In addition to the multi-touch support, it also supports hardware decoding of H.264 videos to show HD content.

Flash Player is expected to hit broad range of devices in 2010.

Press Release

Opera 10 has just moved to beta from alpha bringing in a lot of improvements. The UI has been given a makeover, resizeable visual tabs that shows full snapshots of the opened tabs, a up to 5×5 Speed Dial with changeable background image and Turbo.

The new Opera 10 is 40 percent faster than v9.6, has Web Fonts, SVG support and quadruples as an e-mail, RSS and a BitTorrent client.

Download Opera Beta