Worldwide PDA shipments dropped for the fifth consecutive year in Q1, 2005, according to an IDC report. Meanwhile, the market for mobile phones with PDA-like features continues to surge, with a growing number of PDA vendors shifting resources toward the mobile phone market as a result, IDC says. (more…)

Ten webcasts of presentations from the 2005 Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) are now available. The webcasts cover embedded (though not necessarily Linux-related) topics including IOP storage processors from Intel, Zigbee, FPGAs, DSPs (digital signal processors), SIP-based applications (session initiation protocol), and more. (more…)

TimeSys has relaunched its website and added two service offerings to its suite of secure, hosted network services for embedded Linux developers. New TimeSys Network services include a continuously updated component repository called LinuxDepot, and an online kernel and filesystem image builder called LinuxEngine. (more…)

[Updated 6:00pm PDT] — An embedded Linux service provider in California has acquired a similar provider in New Hampshire founded by LinuxPPC guru Dan Malek. Embedded Alley Solutions will retain Malek as “permanent CTO,” and will market its personalized development services in the US and select European cities, it says. (more…)

A division of NEC in Holland is shipping a POS (point-of-sales/service) terminal that can run embedded Linux. NEC Infrontia BV says the Twinpos Acton's ability to run Linux allows companies with custom applications to run them on a normal POS terminal, rather than on PC hardware. (more…)

VDC (Venture Development Corporation) has announced the 2005 winners of its annual “Platinum” and “Gold” embedded board vendor awards. The awards are based upon a proprietary rating method that “measures customer experiences,” VDC says. Ten platinum and twenty gold awards were bestowed on the top-ranking companies from the 400 analyzed. (more…)

M-Systems has announced embedded Linux support for its series of flash drives with capacities of 512MB and 1GB. The H1 DiskOnChips target memory-intensive embedded applications, such as automotive audio and navigation, high-end printers, and portable devices with multimedia requirements for handheld gaming, GPS, and MP3 playback. (more…)

A start-up marketing open source license management services has joined a non-profit entity devoted to governmental use of open source software. Black Duck Software says it hopes to help the Open Source Software Institute (OSSI) and its members deal with increasing governmental and academic license requirements. (more…)

LynuxWorks has promoted its VP of engineering to COO, and hired a new VP of sales. Gurjot Singh will take over day-to-day operations after fourteen years with the embedded software vendor, while embedded veteran Mark Baker joins LynuxWorks to lead its sales team. (more…)

A vendor of multi-room stereo components based on embedded Linux will open a European sales office in Hilversum, Netherlands, and expects to enlist 500 retailers worldwide by year's end. Sonos says its Sonos Digital Music System is already available at 145 North American retailers. (more…)

Coraid is shipping a new SATA (serial ATA) compatible version of its inexpensive SAN (storage attached network) device for Linux and BSD servers. The EtherDrive uses ATA-over-Ethernet (AoE), an open protocol developed by Coraid and merged into the Linux kernel in January. (more…)

[Updated May 11, 2005] — Markus Klotzbücher has released a GPL kernel module for Linux 2.4 or 2.6 that makes read-only filesystems writable by virtualizing them. The “Mini Fanout Overlay” module (mini_fo) can be used to save changes to live CDs, for sandboxing, or for testing embedded systems, Klotzbücher says. (more…)

[Updated 4:15PM] — Number two mobile chipset vendor Qualcomm is now supporting embedded Linux on a chipset for CDMA (code division multiple access) mobile phones. Additionally, the company says it will support Linux across its entire line of “Enhanced Mobile Multimedia” chipsets for 3G UMTS, HSDPA, and CDMA2000 1x (more…)

In this technical whitepaper, Viosoft CEO Hieu Tran uses his company's debugging tools to explore QuickLogic's FPGA-based PCI bridge for Intel's PXA-27x, and an Atheros Wi-Fi card. He turns up an interesting attempt by Atheros to balance GPL compliance while protecting confidential third-party information. (more…)

Db4objects has added object-oriented replication to its embeddable OOP/ODBMS (object-oriented object database) for mobile devices and real-time embedded systems. Db40 4.5 stores Java/.NET objects without requiring conversion to SQL or another format, and is available under commercial and free licenses, for Java, .NET, and Mono. (more…)