The mobile phone operating system world was rocked recently by the announcement that Nokia had acquired all of the shares of Symbian that it didn’t already own, and that it planned to transition the OS to an open-source licensing model. How significant is this move?
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Today was Bill Gates’s last full-time day at Microsoft. To commemorate the event, Microsoft released a pair of photos showing 11 of the company’s first dozen employees — the so-called “Albuquerque Group” — back in 1978, and now.
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Having recently been bit by the Netflix STB bug, I couldn’t resist checking out Roku’s latest SoundBridge “network music player.” In less than 10 minutes of fooling around with the device after its arrival, I was ensnared!
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Market researcher Gartner Inc. has come out with its prognostication of the top ten disruptive technologies for the next five years. Included on the list are multicore processors, social networking, web mashups, cloud computing, augmented reality, and more.
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Microsoft is offering a Windows CE certification “Preparation Kit” as a free download on its developer website. The kit, implemented as a 335-page book, provides valuable technical information for developers wanting to know more about Windows CE, regardless of whether they plan to take Microsoft’s certification exam.
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Last time I wrote about the “Black Tower,” I had just installed Vista and Kubuntu 7.10 in a dual-boot setup. When version 8.04 of Kubuntu (”Hardy Heron”) hit the Web last week, I wasted no time upgrading to it.
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Eight “revolutionary” embedded technologies have been selected to be showcased in the “Disruption Zone” at the Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) April 14-18 in San Jose, Calif.
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Developers thinking of using Linux as an embedded operating system won’t want to miss the annual Embedded Linux Conference in Silicon Valley next month. The event features keynotes and technical sessions on topics such as Maemo, real-time performance, power management, embedded graphics and multimedia, mobile phone technologies, fast boot, and much more.
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Five key trends are converging to make unified communications (UC) the “next significant frontier for technology growth,” according to IBM. The company expects the global UC market to be worth $17 billion by 2011, it said in a statement this week.
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MIT’s Technology Review magazine has just published its annual list of the top ten emerging technologies. Dubbed the TR10, these “revolutionary innovations” are “poised to have a dramatic impact” on computing, medicine, nanotechnology, our energy infrastructure, and more, say the magazine’s editors.
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Trolltech, the originator of Qt, which forms the basis of the Linux KDE desktop environment, is being acquired by Nokia, the world’s number-one mobile phone vendor. Nokia expects its acquisition of Trolltech to accelerate its cross-platform software strategy for mobile devices and desktop applications, and to enhance its Internet services business.
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Flash filesystem (FFS) specialist Datalight Inc. will soon release a commercial Linux FFS claimed to provide 400 percent faster write performance and 500 percent faster mount speed compared to JFFS2. The new FFS will target Linux-based mobile phones, set-top boxes, and other embedded devices.
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DeviceVM demonstrated a Linux-powered PC preboot application environment that lets users instantly run several Internet-based applications — including Web browsing and Skype messaging — at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week.
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An industry tradeshow focused on multicore microprocessors and related technologies will take place April 1-3 in Santa Clara, Calif. The Multicore Expo will feature keynote talks, panel discussions, in-depth technical sessions, case studies, and a vendor expo.
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Startup Bug Labs, which aims to turn the task of constructing smart devices into a non-technical, lego-like affair, will begin accepting orders for its Linux-powered electronic building blocks later this month for shipment starting Mar. 17.
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Over 4 billion embedded systems and devices shipped worldwide in 2006 and the market is expected to grow significantly through 2009, Venture Development Corp. (VDC) reports. These devices increasingly contain out-sourced commercial and open-source embedded operating systems, the market analyst firm adds.
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A newly formed consortium known as “Embedded Systems Australia” (ESA) aims to increase the presence of New South Wales (NSW) companies in the embedded market.
“Embedded systems are the ‘brains’ behind our technologies, and as technology continues to evolve so will the role of embedded systems to drive technology in more complex and specialised ways,” said Ian Macdonald, minister for state development of the National ICT Australia Limited (NICTA).
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Two newly published books in Elsevier’s “Newnes Know It All” series explore key topics in the art of embedded hardware and software development.
