Bob Tripp wrote in today to let us know that the What’s Where in the Apple eBook has been released:

The job was much more difficult that anticipated due to OCR difficulties with the old-style pseudo line-printer fonts; the work required to convert the Atlas/Gazetteer from the original “messy” format to a simplified, easier to read tabular format; and the need to completely redo all of the figures and tables that were virtually unreadable in the original printed version and more.  Anyway, it is all done and we are quite happy with the result.

“eWWA” is now available for $15 USD (a 25% discount off the regular price) until August 24, 2012.  After that, the price will increase to $19.95.  Visit the eWWA web page now to purchase your copy.

Shrink-Fit X, Kelvin Sherlock’s utility for opening and extracting NuFX (ShrinkIt) files on OS X, has been updated to version 1.1.  This new release adds support for AppleSingle and Binary II archives.  Get it now in the Mac App Store.

Jeff Atwood, who blogs at ‘Coding Horror’ recalls his teenage hacker years (which many of us can identify with) hacking, phreaking and pirating software with his Apple II and the subsequent tangle with the law and how it changed his life.

In response to some user queries about the status of the Age of Reason BBS, sysop Gene Buckle yesterday posted to the comp.sys.apple2 newsgroup that he had finally pulled the plug on the long-running board. Here’s the text of Gene’s post:

Sorry folks, I finally pulled the plug on it and turned the hardware over to a friend of mine. I didn’t have the time that the board really needed.

I’ll get something online to replace it eventually, but it won’t be on an Apple II.

g.

Earlier this year, a power spike during heavy winter storms damaged the Apple II that played host to the BBS, but Gene was able to get it back online. Sad news indeed for Apple II users looking for their BBS fix. The Age of Reason ran on a real Apple II computer and was accessible over the internet via telnet.

Hot on the heels of last week’s update, Brendan Robert has released another Java Apple Computer Emulator (JACE) build.  This release contains a number of new and exciting features, as well as a few bug fixes:

(2012-08-02) This is a HUGE feature release and also fixes a few old bugs. All in all, this is a very stable and heavily-tested release.

Re-architected underlying memory event handler model to include CPU opcode/operand memory accesses. This makes it much easier for anyone to extend the emulation by registering events to be triggered by CPU executes to specific addresses.

New memory heatmap view added to MetaCheat (press END to activate). This lets you visually inspect ram as it is changing.

Fixed graphics glitches in hires mode. This caused annoying artifacts on the boundary between alternating hi/lo bit bytes in hires modes.

Improved RGB Mode 7 support to auto-detect RGB mode. This implements the spec as laid out in the Video 7 patent as well as the Apple RGB manual, with the exception that 160-column mode is not implemented and will be treated as a regular 140-column mode.

Reset also causes the RGB mode to flip back to plain 140-column mode again.

Fixed Disk ][ bug that caused hangups in programs like Apple Desktop ][.

Ancient debugger panel (F10) now fixed so that breakpoints happen as the instruction is executed, not afterwards.

As always, the latest binaries, source and documentation are available at the JACE Sourceforge page.