Nicholas Negroponte and his OLPC project was features on 60 minutes last night. 60 Minutes is a large US sunday news show. Portions of the profile include remarks by Negroponte that Intel should be ashamed of themselves for trying to undercut the OLPC.
MontaVista Software has sent out a press release stating it is the leader in embedded Linux for mobile devices, according to a recent report from analyst firm Venture Development Corporation (VDC). The VDC report also states that MontaVista Software is the fourth-largest mobile application operating system provider in terms of revenue, with the company’s Mobilinux product taking market share away from industry giants Microsoft, Symbian, and ACCESS/PalmSource.
MontaVista’s flagship mobile solution, Mobilinux, is an optimized Linux operating system and development environment for mobile devices with requirements for power management, hard real-time performance, rapid start-up times, and small footprints.
Mozilla developers are experimenting with a service that lets users store online content on a remote server and access that information on cell phones.
Using the Firefox browser on a computer, users select portions of Web sites, including images, text, and videos, and save them onto their personal Joey page. Later, the user can access that Joey page and all the stored items from a cell phone.
Motorola has today announced the successor to one of the most iconic mobiles ever made, the RAZR 2. Available in 3.6Mbps HSDPA, EV-DO, and GSM / EDGE variants as the V9, V9m, and V8 respectively, the GSM and CDMA versions of the device comes in 2 millimeters slimmer than its predecessor and — on some versions, anyway — will be the second to use Motorola’s new Linux-based platform (the first being the Z6). GSM versions start shipping in early July, with CDMA following up later in the summer.
Funambol is offering a new version of its open-source software for delivering push e-mail, address book, and calendar functions similar to those available on BlackBerry devices. Users can download Version 6 of the Java-based server application, which runs on Linux and Windows servers.
Funambol allows wireless operators, Internet companies, and businesses to push e-mail to mobile devices from Exchange, Domino, and IMAP/POP servers. It also is designed to synchronize contacts and calendar data between servers and devices that support the open-source SyncML (Synchronization Markup Language) standard.
In a recent mail to developers, Ubuntu’s Matt Zimmerman writes: “After gathering at last week’s developer summit in Sevilla, we now have a few more things in place for UME which I wanted to share with the Ubuntu developer community.”
“We now have a mailing list, the beginnings of some technical specifications, some source code, and even a few preliminary packages uploaded to the archive.”
It’s a headline that many corporations have feared would make ink: Microsoft has identified open-source code that infringes on its patents. Redmond claims that there are more than 200 infringements in the world of open-source software.
At JavaOne yesterday, Sun’s executive vice president of software Rich Green demonstrated JavaFX Mobile, a new mobile and embedded operating system built with open-source Linux and Java technologies. JavaFX Mobile, which includes a complete stack of Java-based multimedia and communications software development frameworks and applications, is designed to accommodate rapid development of rich interactive applications for mobile environments. JavaFX Mobile will be released under the open-source General Public License, and Sun hopes to sell OEM licenses to mobile network operators and handset makers.
Hand-held design specialist iWave Systems, has unveiled a “military-grade” PDA called “iW-Rugged-PDA” based on Intel’s PXA270 processor and designed to serve rugged environment applications. The reference platform, originally developed as part of a design engagement with defence, utilizes the latest technology to enable wireless and GPS capabilities.
iW-Rugged-PDA is powered by Intel / Marvell 520MHz XScale PXA270 processor which provide excellent multimedia performance and power management features that help extend battery life and includes 128MB SDRAM, 32 MB Flash and 512 MB Nand Flash for storage, With user’s preference to choose between two operating systems WinCE 5.0 or Linux 2.6.18.
One feature that distinguishes the “iW-Rugged PDA” from the normal rugged PDA is the combination of built-in 802.11b SDIO WiFi and GPS. It also features 3.5-inch LCD with touch screen, USB 1.1 host, USB 1.1 device, two serial ports, built-in microphone, keypad, audio out and a battery interface.
Contrary to widespread rumors, Ubuntu Mobile will not target mobile phones. Instead, the “mobile and embedded” version of the popular desktop Linux distribution will be developed in partnership with Intel, and will target “mobile Internet devices” (MIDs), along the lines of Nokia’s N800 web tablet.