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Its rare to have an open sourced email application on the mobile devices, much less a push email. Yet the company, Funambol, went ahead and announced its beta email available to the public. The email application supports SyncML, present in a lot of phones and smartphones, like the Nokias, Sony Ericssons and some Motorola products.

We’re starting to suspect that all USB storage design is just handed over to the local kindergarten – every key we get now is either bright pink, shaped like a pigeon or looks like sushi. Thankfully, besuited Sony has just walked in, opened its suitcase and restored some sanity with this new microdrive.

Motorola's use of Linux in mobile phones complies with the letter but not the spirit of the GPL, suggests a Newsforge editorial by Nathan Willis. Willis believes Motorola should help the open source community add value to its Linux-based phones.

User Level: Beginner I've always assumed that ifup and ifdown were conditional commands that performed their assigned duties only if the interface device in question was up or down, as the command might be. I was dead wrong. I blame my mistake on being a programmer, rather than being stupid, but it's simply too close to call.

Novell will ship SUSE Linux with a pre-configured kernel for use with Virtual Iron virtualization software to let users rapidly deploy and configure enterprise-class computing workloads.

New real-time Linux enhancements open a whole new world of possibilities for Linux, ranging across the latest 3G technologies and as near as the mobile handset in your pocket. The purpose of modifying the Linux kernel with real-time functionality: to dramatically reduce interrupt and task preemption latency, thus enabling the 2.6 kernel for use in high-performance multimedia applications and those requiring extremely fast, task level reliable control functions. Real-time Linux has come a long way — where is it now and where is it heading?

A patent lasting 20 years makes sense for some inventions, but for those in the fields of software and technology, a four-year term is often more appropriate. This is part of a new 'limited patent' proposal set out by a computing professor this month.

An article by Lee Hollaar, a Professor with the School of Computing at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, appeared in this month’s IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Spectrum magazine and complements an 11-page paper he wrote on patent reform last October

Three virtualization software companies take diffrents tacks to leap ahead of the competition. Which approach will work?

During the American Revolution, Patrick Henry said, "Give me liberty or give me death." In midst of its own revolution, the open-source software community might say something along the lines of, "Give me innovation or give me death."

The software developers and users who make up the open-source software community have waged a war of words against software patents. Their main argument is that software shouldn't be patented because it stifles innovation.

Novell Inc. will begin shipping the server version of its SUSE Linux operating system with the option to install virtualization technology from Virtual Iron Software Inc., the two companies announced today.

My days of trying and writing reviews for every Linux distribution have slowed. I'm currently using Ubuntu 5.10 and I'm fairly happy with it. Spending most of my days as editor-in-chief of a popular news site, writing a system administrative book under contract and keeping up with a free lance writing career doesn't give me much time to play these days.

I kept waiting for the upgrades to two packages I use the most as a writer and they haven't made it into the repositories. So, I went looking. I discovered that neither Ubuntu or Debian have what I needed. So, I did what Linux guys do, I found people who did it themselves.

On Digg.com

[Editor: This is a great article and one that should smoke. Except for the gentler tone, Greenmeier and McDougall muckracked the analysts at Gartner, Forrester, IDC and the Yankee Group. Finally, you say.

I particularly liked this quote:

Money changes hands, and the vendor that commissions a report often reviews it before general distribution. Microsoft's "Get The Facts" marketing campaign has made liberal use of sponsored research to tout the benefits of Windows over Linux. Such reports aren't always clearly marked as having a vendor's backing. A 47-page white paper by Security Innovation, published in November, mentions that it was funded by Microsoft at the bottom of page 6.

- Tom Adelstein]

You go guys!

More than 30 international and regional speakers will be addressing a wide array of e-government issues at the inaugural Government Technology Middle East Conference & Exhibition (Govtec), being held in Bahrain from February 13 to 15.

Convened under the official patronage of Industry and Commerce Minister Dr Hassan Abdulla Fakhro, and supported by the Central Informatics Organisation, Govtec features international case studies from Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia, Ireland, Scotland, Dubai, Egypt and Bahrain and will debate key issues facing public sector administrators such as open source architecture, IT governance, citizen-centric government, public private partnership and m-government.

Survey: Not since the heady days of the dot-com boom will IT freelancers have had it so good

IT contractors could earn more money this year than since the peak of the dot-com boom, research suggests.

A survey carried out by contract service provider Giant group indicates that contractor unemployment is at a record low as work in the telecoms sector is picking up.

Ladies and gents, welcome to the 2005 Vaporware Awards -- the prize that celebrates the tech products that were promised last year but never delivered.

4. Microsoft's Vista and Internet Explorer 7
The ever-delayed debut of Microsoft's next version of Windows, Vista, is a long-running vaporware joke. It's been put off so many times, it's been called "Hasta la Vista."

A look at how the OOo project balances being similar to MS Office with maintaining its unique, better features.

I'm sitting in the overflow room for the Bill Gates Keynote at Supercomputing '05 (SC05). Odd, his talk is being given in a medium sized room, I am told they have bigger rooms in the convention center. Ah, but why risk empty seats. First, let me say how bazaar this is. Bill Gates at SC, like the CEO of Pepsi addressing the Coke shareholders meeting, no it is worse, it is like Terrel Owens explaining the word humble to the Dali Lama. The term non sequitur comes to mind.

According to maddog, Linux is becoming a more attractive alternative for the desktop and the key driver is the need for Microsoft to keep pumping its new products into the market.

“People will be going through a big change with the (Microsoft) Vista project. There’s a lot of people who are still on Windows 95 and 98 and moving from that to Vista is going to be a big move. It will require new hardware but some of their hardware is still viable in the Linux space so instead of going to Vista they’ll go to Linux.

Can open-source upstarts compete with Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft? It's an uphill battle, but customers are starting to look at the alternatives

The makers of an open-source implementation of push email are hoping to leap-frog the patent-embroiled likes of RIM, Good Technology and Microsoft with this latest version of its product.