Longtime Eclipse members Innoopract, Instantiations, and Genuitec have allied to create Eclipse Plugin Central, a portal offering software publishers a distribution channel, and developers a place to find, evaluate, and buy plugins that work with the Eclipse framework for cross-vendor tools integration. (more…)

DeviceForge.com has published an article by a staff engineer in Intel's Enterprise Platforms Group (EPG) that introduces an alternative to BIOS technology that could result in faster booting, better manageability, and additional features. The Intel Platform Innovation Framework for the Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) offers a modern replacement for the BIOS, according to the author, who… (more…)

The Mono project has released Mono 0.3.0, a bug fix release that closed some 1,397 bugs. Mono is an open source implementation of Microsoft's .NET Framework for Linux, Unix, and Windows systems. (more…)

WindowsForDevices is hosting a survey and contest to encourage device developers to provide inputs to the Microsoft Windows CE development team on desired future Windows CE features, technologies, and tools. (more…)

DeviceForge.com has published key findings from IDC's Worldwide Mobile Phone QView research service. According to the findings, handset sales for the year 2003 exceeded half a billion units for the first time in the market's history. “Converged mobile devices” (smartphones) in particular showed “significant growth and future promise” in 2003, according to IDC, growing over 180% year-over-year. (more…)

The world's largest telecommunications conglomerate, with 430 companies and 200,000 employees, has joined the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) and will participate in the Lab's Data Center Linux and Carrier Grade Linux working groups. (more…)

Network and storage products vendor Team ASA has announced its first “Single Board Networking Computer” (SBNC) with dual processors. The NPWR-DP comes standard with Linux, although Wasabi NetBSD also available. (more…)

Aleph One is shipping a one-ounce, one-watt, 206MHz StrongARM-based single-board computer (SBC) that comes pre-installed with embedded Linux and features an “open source” hardware design. (more…)

MontaVista Software today announced that CEO Jim Ready will serve on the board of directors of the newly formed not-for-profit Eclipse corporation, of which MontaVista will be a founding “Strategic” member. Additionally, MontaVista is sponsoring and presenting a session at this week's “Eclipse.con” trade show in Anaheim, Calif. (more…)

Java originator and owner Sun Microsystems last week sent an “open letter” to members of Eclipse.org congratulating the organization on its “transition to independence” from founder IBM (see related story), and challenging it to work with Sun toward the common, “big picture” goal of promoting the Java platform. (more…)

The Eclipse Board of Stewards announced that Eclipse has re-organized, changing from an industry consortium to a not-for-profit corporation with a full-time management organization. A board of directors will be formed to oversee and staff the management organization. The board expects to announce an Executive Director in the coming weeks. (more…)

In an acknowledgement of the growing popularity of Linux among developers, QNX Software Systems has added support for Linux development hosts to its Eclipse-based Momentics embedded development suite. The Momentics development suite supports development targets running QNX Neutrino, a popular, proprietary POSIX-compatible hard real-time OS. (more…)