Wow, does the latest release of Inform 7, the IF programming language, have a lot of cool features. It now has Python-like indenting for if/then/while, as well as a switch statement based on that indenting. The Standard Rules have been refactored and spruced up, and I7 no longer uses the old I6 library, but rather a series of I6-based template layers that can be modified if needed. Path-finding has been updated and optimized. There's a Table of Contents in the Mac IDE that lets you view small sections of your code while providing an overview of the entire project, something that will be appearing in the Windows version sometime later. Bugs have been fixed. If you use I7, go get the update now.
For personal reasons, Doe has delayed the 2008 IF Art Show. Look for it in October or November of this year.
Christopher Armstrong has put together Planet IF, a site that aggregates blog entries and news from many IF websites, including this one.
Textfyre, the nascent commercial interactive fiction company, has released the source to FyreVM, their implementation of Glulx written in C#.
Included in the source is a sample WinForms implementation of the virtual machine. This code is public domain and contains no license whatsoever.
FyreVM uses a channel based IO system that is consumed by the client as opposed to Glk.
The license is a slight reworking of the Microsoft Shared Source license. The intent is to restrict commercial use of the source, binaries, or any dirivative works. There are few, if any restrictions on non-commercial uses. Textfyre retains all rights and we will maintain the codebase as needed. Suggestions are welcome in narrative form (we don't want code) since all code in the base source will always be copyrighted by Textfyre.
Textfyre will also develop and maintain sample implementations of user interfaces and tools and these will always be offered as public domain works.
You can pull the source from the Textfyre SVN server at svn://textfyre.com:8989/FyreSharedSource. Use "public" and "guest" as the login name and password.