What was planned for many months, finally became reality this weekend; a new Swixml distribution was uploaded and is now available at Swixml.org. And while this is mainly a maintenance release, there are many long planned features in the queue that will be integrated in the next couple of weeks. The API and TAG documentation has been updated on the site and miscellaneous content has been added, e.g. check the developer/user opinions, to read some newly added quotes from your peers.

Version control

With the help of the java.net admin team, the old source code repository was replaced and we moved from CVS to SubVersion, and is available again here: https://swixml.dev.java.net/source/browse/swixml/
E.g., to check out source code now, you'd use:
svn checkout https://swixml.dev.java.net/svn/swixml/trunk swixml --username guest

LunarPages, one of the best there is

LunarPages is a web hosting service, located in La Habra, California. It may not be the cheapest but it's simply one of the best and most reliable hosting services out there. Even their most affordable plan already provides 35 GB Storage and 800 GB Data Transfer.
Thanks to the great people at LunarPages' customer support, for the first time ever, I have all domains (swixml.org, tiffanyscreens.com, carlsbadcubes.com, and wolfpaulus.com) easily manageable in a single account.
Moving all domains into a single account also meant moving the Swixml user and developer forums, which are based on Simple Machines Forum, to the new server. Luckily, Simple Machines released SMF 1.1.1 on December 16 and we were able to use there latest release together with TreetopClimber's cool looking BlueLine theme.
Something I was looking forward to for quite a while now: the forums are now also available in an RSS feed:

• feed://swixml.org/forum/
or
• http://swixml.org/forum/?type=rss;action=.xml

Desktop Matters

Ben Galbraith, Dion Almaer, and the No Fluff Just Stuff Java Symposium (NFJS) team have announced the Desktop Matters Conference, a one-day conference focusing exclusively on the needs of Java Desktop development.
SwiXml, among many other related topics will be discussed at the Desktop Matters Conference, March 9 in San Jose, CA.
"This will be a fantastic opportunity for the Java Desktop community to come together to learn about the latest in Java 6 and the various community and third-party frameworks supporting Swing development and discuss the future of the platform. If you're doing anything with Java Swing, or your considering Swing for an upcoming project, don't miss this unique opportunity to learn from the experts in the field."