A vendor of Linux set-top box designs has hired a former Microsoft employee as CTO. Nathaniel S. Brown will join CAC Media after ten years at Microsoft, where he helped the company evolve its application message-passing architecture and get its gaming strategy off the ground. (more…)

A Chinese Linux smartphone company has won a prestigious industry award in Hong Kong. E28 received a Technological Achievement Award in the 2004 Hong Kong Awards for Industry, for a Linux-based smartphone reference design expected in January. (more…)

O'Reilly has published a book about the National Security Agency's (NSA's) security-enhanced Linux. “SELinux: NSA's Open Source Security Enhanced Linux,” by Bill McCarty, targets typical sysadmins wanting to understand and maintain SELinux-based distributions such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, expected Q1, 2005. (more…)

Performance Technologies (PT) is shipping a Linux environment and development kit for its intelligent shelf management (ISM) cards for high-availability systems. NexusWare ISM includes a 2.4.x-based kernel designed specifically for PT's CPC7301 intelligent shelf management (ISM) card, along with a software stack and tools. (more…)

Microcross has updated its commercially supported GNU toolchains for embedded Linux development. GNU X-Tools 3.40 includes tested, modified, commercially supported toolchains based on stable releases of GNU compilers, linkers, and other tools. It is available for 15 architectures — optionally with a visual development environment. (more…)

McObject's in-memory, high-availability (HA) database has been certified for a MontaVista Linux distribution aimed at telecommunications equipment. eXtremeDB High Availability (HA) for Carrier Grade Edition (CGE) comes with a versatile master/slave communications framework said to be unique among embedded databases. It targets fault-tolerant telecom and networking equipment. (more…)

One of Japan's largest IT providers will resell and support Trolltech's application stack and development platform for Linux phones and PDAs. Toshiba Information Systems, the IT branch of Toshiba, will market and support Qtopia, the companies announced today. (more…)

IBM has published the following technical articles, tutorials, and downloads on its developerWorks Website. They cover a range of interesting (though not necessarily embedded) technical topics. Some require free registration. Enjoy . . . (more…)

WIN Enterprises is shipping a Pentium M SBC (single board computer) aimed at Internet and network appliance applications. The IP-06049 sports 10 gigabit- and four 10/100-Ethernet ports, up to 8GB of DDR RAM, and a network security coprocessor that offloads packet processing and public key computations. (more…)

According to an article at DeviceForge.com, the VMEbus International Trade Association (VITA) has released a comprehensive new roadmap that details key VMEbus technologies being developed or in planning. VITA claims the 25-year-old standard represents the embedded computing industry's most successful bus standard, and that VMEbus “shows no signs of slowing (more…)

Equator is shipping a hardware/software reference design based on an SoC (system-on-chip) with both RISC-like and DSP-like instructions. The “Babelfish” platform runs Linux 2.6 on a BSP-15 SoC, and targets IP-STBs (set-top-boxes), PVRs (personal video recorders), and digital media adapters. (more…)

Sleepycat has updated its venerable open source database, adding high availability (HA) and performance features such as in-memory replication. Berkeley DB 4.3 targets software for telecommunication and enterprise datacenter infrastructure demanding 99.999% carrier-grade availability. It runs on Linux and most every other OS. (more…)

Via has released a free utility to help Linux developers using 2.6 or higher kernels create VPN gateways and client-server software that exploits cryptographic acceleration in newer Via processors. The PadLock VPN utility works with the PadLock ACE (advanced crytography engine) embedded in the Nehemiah architecture core. (more…)

Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) has accepted venture capital (VC) firm Voyager Capital as its first VC member. The firm appears interested in investing in open source companies in Oregon. The OSDL has long associated closely with VC firms, especially those developing businesses in the Pacific Northwest. (more…)

The world's tenth-largest company, and second-largest oil company, chose a Linux-based PIN-pad entry device (PED) for its UK and Ireland gas stations. Shell selected Trintech's Smart 5000 PED because the hybrid card reader supports both magnetic swipe/signature authentication and the new generation of chip-and-PIN smart cards. (more…)