As ZDNet is reporting, the open source Ogg Theora video codec has completed its beta phase and is available in an official version 1.0. On2 Technologies is the commercial player behind this, and the Xiph Foundation drives the open source effort. "Theora is a video codec with a small CPU footprint that offers easy portability and requires no patent royalties," says a statement from Xiph (you'll find the download links there too). Here's why this matters.

A while back, we posted a collection of the many tutorials, reviews and pointers to web-based resources that we've been compiling on OStatic since it was launched. We've been steadily adding to that collection, and readers have pointed out a few omissions from the original collection. In this post, you'll find an update with even more resources. Whether you're looking for useful Firefox extensions, want to improve your AJAX skills, or you're launching a web-based open source project, check out some of the tips and tutorials found here.

Since its inception, we've tried to make collections of tips, pointers to free tutorials, and advice on the best applications a regular part of the editorial content here at OStatic. These have included screenshot-driven guided tours to how to use top tier OSS applications, pointers to free tutorials on everything from AJAX to OpenOffice, and guidance on finding free open source webinars on topics such as MySQL and Ubuntu. We're in the process of putting up a dedicated repository for all of these, but in the meantime, here are 12 of our most popular educational roundup posts.