Six years ago, Graham Nelson released version 6 of Inform, his language for writing interactive fiction. Today he released a public beta of version 7, and it's a doozy. Inform 7 uses a subset of English as its programming language, is based on rules rather than procedural code, and has a GUI front end that does so many nifty things that I can't even begin to cover them all in a short news blurb. Instead, I'll point you at the revamped Inform website and my modest overview of the language.
It's a big weekend for developments in interactive fiction. Andrew Hunter has updated Zoom, his z-code interpreter for OS X. Zoom 1.0.5 adds support for Blorb 2.0 and the Treaty of Babel.
Tor Andersson has added Blorb 2.0 support to Gargoyle, his Glk interpreter that can most notably play z-code, Glulx, TADS, Hugo, ADRIFT, and Alan games.
In a weekend already jam-packed with stuff, Issue 44 of SPAG, the interactive fiction newsletter, has hit the streets. This issue includes reviews of the Spring Thing entries, a detailed look at The Baron, and an interview about Inform 7 with Graham Nelson and Emily Short.
Authors and prize-donators, it's time to get ready for the 12th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition. The 2006 IF Competition is for short works of interactive fiction.