Linux operating system specialist MontaVista Software, Inc., has teamed with Mobilinux Open Framework partners SKY MobileMedia, Bluefin Mobile and Digital Airways to develop an integrated mobile phone solution atop MontaVista's Linux OS.
MontaVista's Linux operating system forms the underlying platform, Bluefin Mobile's LinuxTel provides the hardware abstraction layer for communication with the wireless network, while SKY MobileMedia's SKY-MAP the mobile applications engine. Digital Airway's Kaleido MMI is used for the visual interface and managed end user interaction.
The software operates atop a Texas Instruments OMAP processor-based smartphone reference platform.
The companies used this week’s World Handset Forum in San Diego, California, to demonstrate the initial design which, they say, addresses many of the complexities associated with the integration and interaction of voice and data software components, making it easier for handset developers to design Linux-based mobile phones.
The partners worked on the project under the auspices of the MontaVista's Mobilinux Open Framework program, an initiative designed to assist handset vendors that are migrating from proprietary operating system platforms to Linux.

Companies team for Linux-based integrated phone

Submissions are being accepted through Dec. 8 for the annual Student Design Contest, jointly sponsored by the Design Automation Conference (DAC) and the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC).
The contest accepts designs for analog, digital or programmable circuits and systems. Submissions can be embodied as ICs, reconfigurable processors, system-on-chips (SoCs), platform-based or embedded systems designs.

Submissions are open to full-time graduate and undergraduate students in three categories: operational, which means that an IC design was built and tested; system design, which focuses on FPGA or other programmable architectures; and conceptual, where a project was designed and simulated. The design must be part of the students' course or research work at the university and must have been completed within 18 months prior to the Dec. 8 submission deadline.

The total prize money is expected to be close to $15,000, shared between first, second and third place winners in each category. Winners will be notified prior to the DAC in July and offered travel assistance to attend.

The contest is made possible through the contributions of corporate sponsors who are encouraged to provide financial support for this year's contest. An award ceremony will be held here during DAC. In 2005, the Student Design Contest had 48 submissions from 14 countries and 34 schools.

Submissions being accepted for Student Design Contest

Motorola Inc. and PIPS Technology are releasing an innovative license plate reader technology to public safety organizations nationwide.
Called Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR), the technology installed in police cars "reads" vehicle plates as they enter the view of a vehicle-mounted or roadside infrared camera, and checks them against a database for nearly instantaneous identification. The system runs continuously, automatically capturing images of license plates with a camera that works in nearly every lighting condition.
"This technology is completely automated and built into the car's operation, so it requires no action on the part of the police officer to capture the plate numbers and have them verified. It is not something the officer has to initiate," said Steve Most, multimedia business director, Motorola radio systems division, in a statement.
Previous technologies required officers to manually type in a plate number and request a database search for each number, which can be time consuming and prone to errors.
Before bringing the ALPR system into Motorola's product portfolio, Motorola (Schaumburg, Ill.) worked with PIPS (Hampshire, U.K.) to further ruggedize its license plate technology to meet Motorola specifications for mission critical public safety communications in the United States.

Motorola unveils license plate readers

Alert: Americans who honor the U.S. Constitution’s strict separation of church and state are now genuinely alarmed. Agnostics and atheists, as well as observant people of every faith, fear — sensibly — that the religious right is gaining historic political power, via an ultraconservative movement with highly placed friends.
But many of us feel helpless. We haven’t read the Founding Documents since school (if then). We lack arguing tools, “verbal karate” evidence we can cite in defending a secular United States.
For instance, such extremists claim — and, too often, we ourselves assume — that U.S. law has religious roots. Yet the Constitution contains no reference to a deity.
The Declaration

Fighting Words for a Secular America: Ashcroft & Friends vs. George Washington & the Framers

Proponents of an emerging video codec called H.264 are predicting the scheme will turn the video market on its head by enabling delivery of Internet Protocol-based broadcast-quality video at data rates of less than 1 Mbit/second. Although demand for H.264 may not hit volume before 2004, the broadcasting industry's interest in the codec has gone way past the talk stage — far enough that MPEG-4, long pitched as the logical interactive enhancement to MPEG-2, could be lost in the shuffle.

The first rumblings of the promised upheaval were felt here last week at the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC). Chips, evaluation boards and software tools targeting the H.264 codec (formerly H.26L) trickled into private demonstrations and a few public venues at IBC. Presenters of H.264 previews included Canadian company VideoLocus Inc. and Germany's Heinrich-Hertz-Institut f¼r Nachrichtentechnik Berlin GmbH (HHI). Texas Instruments Inc., in launching its 600-MHz digital media processor, joined with such third-party partners as UB Video Inc. and Ingenient Technologies to show an H.264 video algorithm running on its C64x DSP family. And Equator Technologies similarly claimed its media processor's architecture will be capable of real-time H.264 encoding and decoding.

The yet-to-be-ratified international codec is now officially known as H.264 in the telecommunications world. Some in the MPEG community, however, are calling it MPEG-4 Part 10, and yet a third faction refers to it as "the proposed JVT/AVC standard."

H.264 codec jeopardizes MPEG-4's ascendancy

DRIVING under the influence of cannabis can double the odds of causing a fatal car crash and the risk increases if the drug is combined with alcohol, French scientists say.

Researchers from the French National Institute for Transport and Safety Research (INRETS) who studied 10,748 drivers involved in fatal car crashes from 2001-03, said about 7 per cent tested positive for cannabis and 21.4 per cent for alcohol. Nearly 3 per cent were under the influence of both.
"Driving under the influence of cannabis doubles, on average, the risk of being responsible for a fatal accident," Jean-Louis Martin, a co-author of the study, said.
In the British Medical Journal online, the researchers said men were more often involved in crashes then women.
They also tested positive more frequently for both cannabis and alcohol, along with younger drivers and people who used motorcycles and mopeds.

Although the prevalence of cannabis and alcohol among drivers was similar at about 2.8 per cent, the use of alcohol was associated with many more deadly car crashes.
The researchers also found that the more cannabis smoked or alcohol consumed, the higher the chance of being involved in a fatal accident

This is so stupid... I had to post. This is almost a fake news...

DUH!!! Cannabis 'doubles' fatal crash risk

The BellSouth Foundation, the charitable arm of the Atlanta-based communications company, announced plans Monday for a $20 million effort to improve access to online learning.
The campaign will cover the nine Southern states that BellSouth Corp. serves and will help fund state-led virtual learning programs while seeking to expand computer access to children in poor areas.
"We wanted to be sure all kids, not just the privileged, could be part of the virtual learning movement," said foundation President Mary Boehm.
BellSouth currently offers service in Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, Florida and Tennessee.
The BellSouth Foundation was created in 1986 and designed to focus on improving education.
In addition to helping bankroll and coordinate state virtual schools - like the one created in Georgia this year - the foundation will target specific low-income neighborhoods.

BellSouth foundation to give $20 million to boost online learning

BLACKBERRY maker Research In Motion Ltd has moved a step forward in challenging one of the patents at issue in a key infringement case against the company.

The US Patent and Trademark Office has issued a "non-final action" rejecting all the claims supporting one of five key patents in the BlackBerry dispute, according to a document posted on the patent office's website.
The patents being challenged by RIM are at the centre of a long-running legal battle with patent holding company NTP Inc. that could force RIM to settle the case or face a court-ordered shutdown of most US BlackBerry sales and service.
In the November30 document, an examiner said NTP's arguments in defence of one of the patents had been deemed "non-persuasive". The examiner stopped short of a final rejection pending review of a European report.
However, patent attorneys caution that at this stage the patent office findings are only the beginning of a long appeal process that will likely stretch out months or even years.

Move in Blackberry patent challenge

The government is aware of the issue and is working to fix it, a representative of the Department of Labor said Wednesday. The department manages the GovBenefits.gov Web site. The site is a collaborative effort of 16 federal agencies to increase access to government information and is part of the president's e-government initiative.

Phishers use IRS tax refund as bait...

Michael Robertson, who challenged the music industry as the founder of MP3.com, unveiled yesterday a new online digital music storage service that enables users to play their songs on any computer or digital music player.

Oboe is similar in concept to MP3.com's online music locker: Users duplicate and store personal music files on a Web site.
The service, called Oboe, essentially offers music lovers a way to save a backup copy of their personal music library for $39.95 a year.

MP3.com founder's backup plan