Nokia and several partners are developing an ultra-low-power, short-range wireless technology aimed at extending personal-area networking (PANs) to really low-power devices, including watches, heart-rate monitors, and other “button cell battery” devices. (more…)

Infrant will soon ship a Linux-based storage device designed specially for serving up digital media files, including videos and music files. The Repertoire has no playback capabilities, but can store up to 3TB of media, and stream or transfer it using most common, standard, open protocols. (more…)

[Updated Oct. 2] — A project to create an ultra-lightweight web browser for use in embedded devices and other resource-constrained hardware has issued a plea for financial help. The Dillo Project says it needs to find a corporate sponsor in order to add anti-aliased text, CSS, Javascript, and… (more…)

Altia is shipping the first version of a user interface design toolkit aimed at helping graphic artists create interactive mockups of device interfaces, without help from programmers. PhotoProto 1.0 works as a PhotoShop plug-in, and targets concept demonstrations, usability testing, requirements capture, and… (more…)

Digi International has used embedded Linux in a family of “all-in-one” console servers that, in addition to serial console access, support a variety of secure, IP-based remote graphical user interface protocols, the company says. (more…)

Aewin Technologies has introduced a high performance network control board supporting dual Xeon processors and 10 gigabit-Ethernet (GbE) ports available with either copper or optical SFP (small form-factor pluggable) transceivers. (more…)

The Consumer Electronics Linux Forum (CELF) is seeking volunteers to help design and steer a vendor-neutral, community-oriented “wiki”-based website, to launch at an undisclosed time. The site will be open to the public, and will offer information aimed at making it easier to use Linux in embedded products. (more…)

Sun says its open source RISC processor design community is gaining momentum. The “OpenSparc” project's early milestones include the addition of an UltraSparc T1 port to the 2.6.17 Linux kernel, OpenSPARC-specific Gentoo and Ubuntu distributions, a new single-core UltraSparc design, and the formation of an OpenSPARC community advisory board (CAB). (more…)

A dual-licensed client-server suite said to provide push email, and over-the-air (OTA) address book/calendar sychronization on commodity Java-capable phones has reached general availability. Funambol says version 3 of its eponymous suite “puts open source on a collision course with proprietary mobile email vendors” such as Blackberry-maker RIM. (more…)

IBM has published the following new technical articles, tutorials, and downloads on its DeveloperWorks and AlphaWorks websites. They cover a range of interesting (though not necessarily embedded) technical topics, primarily related to Linux and open source system development. (more…)

A new embedded Linux book is out. Embedded Linux Primer: A Practical Real-World Approach, by Christopher Hallinan, aims to help solve specific technical issues product designers are likely to face when using Linux, says publisher Prentice Hall. (more…)

Embedded software stack provider EmbWise showcased its CE-ATA stack and driver running on a Linux-based Sharp Zaurus SL-C3000 PDA equipped with a Hitachi Microdrive and QuickLogic SDIO-to-CE-ATA adapter, at this week's IDF (Intel Developer Forum). (more…)

IBM's DeveloperWorks has published a detailed, technical survey of Hauppage's Linux-based MediaMVP, a minimalistic $99 media extender based on a PowerPC 405 processor and MPEG decoder. (more…)

Lithuanian WiFi stack vendor Wilibox has signed up North American VAR (value-added reseller) Deliberant to market and support its products in the U.S. and Canada. Wilibox products include a Linux distribution for access points (APs) and gateways, and add-ons for centralized AP management and “mesh” networking. (more…)

Hitachi introduced a “sophisticated” relational database management system (RDBMS) aimed at embedded applications, this week at ESC in Boston. Entier weighs in at under a megabyte and offers a high degree of RDBMS functionality for resource-constrained devices like mobile phones, GPS gadgets, televisions, and set-top boxes,… (more…)