Brand: MacNews

MacMinute’s TARGET=”_top”>Executive Briefing for January 19 — a recap of all the news we have posted over the past week — is now available. If you think you may have missed something, here is your chance to catch up…

AOL Time Warner is reportedly in negotiations to acquire Red Hat, one of the leading distributors of the Linux operating system, according to The Washington Post. The possible acquisition further bolsters AOL Time Warner’s intentions to directly square off against rival Microsoft, with whom it competes on a variety of fronts, including online services and Web browsers.

Mandolux has posted a collection 25 new desktop pictures this week of the F-15 Eagle Fighter Jet. All images are available at resolutions up to 1600×1200; Mandolux also offers hundreds of other desktop pictures.

Apple has posted an article profiling Michael Chabon, a fiction writer that captured a Pulitzer Prize for his novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Klay: A Novel. Chabon uses a PowerBook G4 running Mac OS X 10.1 for most of his writing, and uses applications such as Microsoft Word, Final Draft, PageSpinner and Fetch on a regular basis.

Omni Graffle 2.0b is a new public beta version of The Omni Group’s Mac OS X application for creating diagrams, flow charts, family trees and more, as noted by Version Tracker. Version 2.0 adds AppleScript support, support for URL links on graphics, layers, shape enhancements, line endings enhancements, export panel additions, auto-layout improvements, bug fixes and more. OmniGraffle sells for US$59.95.