Tuxtops

The latest beta of AvantGo 2005 adds support for hi-res displays on Palm OS and even allows the users of wireless devices to take advantage of online browsing in addition to the traditional offline viewing capabilities.

TextMaker, the premier word processor from German software manufacturer SoftMaker, has been ported to a new platform: TextMaker for Zaurus is the latest release from SoftMaker, after versions of TextMaker for Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Pocket PCs, Handheld PCs, and Windows CE.NET.

Not as classy or powerful as some of its siblings, yet still a solid mobile phone: Sindre Lia reviews the Sony Ericsson K500i, finding little to complain about.

Opera Software is beta testing a version of its desktop browser featuring a new rendering technology said to eliminate horizontal scrolling, regardless of screen size. Extensible Rendering Architecture (ERA) technology, expected to appear in Opera 7.60, incorporates small-, medium-, and TV-screen rendering technologies into a single dynamic framework.

This study compares the real-time capabilities of various Linux kernels. It was part of a project to upgrade the control software in water-wave generators at research institutions around the world. The results of the study were used by Akamina for the selection of a new RTOS for the control system upgrade of Canada's largest hydraulics and coastal engineering laboratory, the National Research Council Canadian Hydraulics Centre in Ottawa.

Cambridge Consultants has released a portable, hardware-independent Bluetooth software package aimed at embedded devices. The profiles and protocol stack -- Interface Express and BlueStack -- have been ported to multiple processor architectures including ARM and MIPS, and run on a range of embedded operating systems including Linux.

NEC and Panasonic have developed three Linux-powered 3G mobile phones to be introduced in Japan in the coming months -- NEC's N900iL, NEC's N901iC, and Panasonic's P901i. Of the three, only NEC's N900iL is currently shipping. The N900iL is a dual-network 3G/VoIP handset that works as a 3G mobile phone (using DoCoMo's W-CDMA/FOMA technologies), VoIP terminal, or both simultaneously. All three phones are based on the Linux 3G mobile phone software platform announced by NEC and Panasonic earlier this week.

Larry Garfield tries to sort out the facts of the current market, and comes to the conclusion that palmOne needs to refocus on key long-term buyers.

Japanese electronics giants NEC and Panasonic have jointly developed a Linux-based software platform which offers third-generation mobile phone users more services on their handsets.

Down under, the Z400 from Zensonic brings photo, audio and video streaming over Wi-Fi 802.11g and Ethernet with support for a slew of different formats.