The Computer History Museum is inviting LinuxWorld attendees to bring Linux-related memorabilia, for display in a booth celebrating the 15-year anniversary of the kernel. Suitable items include historical prototypes, early business plans for Linux and open source companies, and early photographs of key figures… (more…)

Microsoft's Windows Embedded team will host a “free app” giveaway during LinuxWorld. The “apps” — in this case appetizers — include embedded turkey clubs (“it's the bacon that's embedded”) and boneless “penguin” wings (“hot and tasty, but with no support infrastructure”), plus free beer and wine. (more…)

By 2010, mobile phone carriers could generate more than $15 billion annually by providing IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) services to enterprises, according to In-Stat. IMS services could be integrated with a variety of enterprise applications that require remote access, security, and high availability, In-Stat believes. (more…)

MobileRobots (formerly ActivMedia) is shipping an all-weather, indoor/outdoor Linux-ready mobile robot that targets “intelligent navigation” applications, such as laser mapping. The nimble, “holonomic” Seekur offers space, power, and networking for up to five EBX form-factor embedded PCs, and is available with a variety… (more…)

A new Linux-based phone is shipping to subscribers of China Mobile's “Go-Tone” GSM/GPRS service. The Samsung SGH-i858 features a large, 2.4-inch QVGA (240 x 320) color touchscreen, along with a slide-out hardware keypad. (more…)

Imagination Technologies is shipping a new version of its SDK (software development kit) for content developers targeting mobile phones and handheld devices equipped with “PowerVR” graphics cores. (more…)

A project maintaining a lightweight, embeddable database is on the cusp of a major version release. Firebird 2.0 will feature a new MIPS architecture port, as well as new features such as derived tables, support for “execute block,” increased table sizes, and better index code. (more…)

[Updated Aug. 1, 2006] — A spokesperson for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program revealed July 31 that the countries of Nigeria, Brazil, Argentina, and Thailand have each committed to buy 1 million Linux laptops through the U.S.-based program. (more…)

Acrosser has released a mini-ITX motherboard based on Pentium M and Celeron M processors up to 2.26 GHz. The AR-B1890 single-board computer (SBC) features high bandwidth gigabit Ethernet and PCI-Express X1 interfaces, which enable it to target high performance multimedia and gaming, among other applications, according to… (more…)

Wind River has shifted its tools strategy toward closer integration with its OS products. Additionally, it has brought out a new version of its Eclipse-based Workbench toolsuite, and made a “strategic” 300,000-line code donation to Eclipse, much of it aimed at making the framework more extensible for commercial add-on providers. (more…)

Smartphones may replace PDAs and even laptops for some consumers, but not until significant improvements are made, an In-Stat survey report suggests. Needed improvements include familiar application look-and-feel, better screens and keyboards, and more automated synchronization. (more…)

Mercury Computer is sampling a PCI-Express add-in card powered by a Cell processor running Yellow Dog Linux. The Cell Accelerator Board (CAB) targets rendering, ray tracing, video/image processing, and signal processing applications, and is said to deliver 180 GFLOPS (billion floating-point… (more…)

The mobile phone joint venture formed by NEC and Matsushita/Panasonic reportedly will include Texas Instruments (TI), and will be known as “Adcore-Tech Co. Ltd.” TI will have a 12 percent share, and the venture will be capitalized at $103.8M, about 17 percent more than reported earlier, EE Times-Asia is reporting. (more…)

Wind River has updated its commercial embedded Linux distribution, along with three vertical-market “Platforms” based on it. Many of the new features in Wind River Linux 1.3 target telecommunications, traditionally an area of Wind River strength. The company additionally updated its Eclipse-based development tools, and contributed some 300,000 lines of code to the open-source Eclipse project. (more…)

Two flash memory pioneers and technology innovators will soon merge, with the acquisition of M-Systems of Kfar Saba, Israel, by SanDisk of Milpitas, Calif. (more…)