In the News Archive

"WebSideStory, Inc., the world's leading provider of outsourced e-business intelligence services, today reported that despite much hype and expectation in recent years, Linux has failed to gain market share from Microsoft and Apple operating systems. As of December 17, 2001, Linux held a global usage share of only 0.24 percent, according to WebSideStory's StatMarket. This compares with Microsoft's Windows and Apple's Macintosh operating systems, which hold a combined global usage share of more than 98 percent. For almost three years, Linux usage share has fluctuated between .2 and .3 percent, with no substantial growth. Usage share is the percentage of Internet surfers that are using a particular operating system." Read the rest of the press release.

Gobe Software, Inc. is now shipping gobeProductive for Microsoft Windows, "the "all-in-one" productivity package that brings increased productivity to "all-in-one" computer users - people who "wear many hats" in their computer use - including office workers, educators and small office/home office computer users." Read the rest of the press release ahead of everyone else on the Net, sent to OSAlert directly from Gobe.

After earlier announcing plans to create a subsidiary for its operating system, Palm on Thursday said it is looking to divide itself into separate, publicly traded companies. "We are looking to move into external separation next year," acting CEO Eric Benhamou told CNET News.com on Thursday, shortly after the company announced that Carl Yankowski was resigning as Palm's chief executive. The company is also looking into asking David Nagel to become the Palm CEO, while he was originally hired to be the CEO of the new Palm subsidiary -- the OS division -- where the Be engineers and Be's COO Steve Sakoman would be employeed, after the buyout of Be's IP would complete. There is a fair amount of uncertainty in the Palm land, as revenue fell a lot recently and the new PocketPC is a rival that the aged PalmOS can't compete with anymore.

The December's issue of the popular printed magazine 'Doctor Dobbs Journal' features a special series of articles regarding alternative operating systems. Among the OSes mentioned or have extended presentations is NewOS and MenuetOS.

Danger Research (which employs 9 ex-Be, Inc. engineers out of about 20 engineers total) is a company that does not talk too much about their product, but it is already known that they are developing a PDA that is able to send and receive email and access the Net among other goodies. Danger hoped to be the first company to have a PDA product that will feature the full range of Internet connectivity, but it seems that the market is getting "dangerously" crowded. RIM already is talking about an updated version of BlackBerry that does more, Motorola have already announced a device oh-so-similar to Danger's, and now even Sharp with a Linux-oriented device is doing the same. Handspring, which this week announced a deal with Aether Systems, is partnering with other companies to bring corporate data to its handhelds while Good Technology, which was founded in March 2000, prepares a similar product too. Also Motient, a wireless data network company plans to unveil a device that effectively allows a Palm handheld to act more like a BlackBerry pager. The plan in most of these devices is to have the device always connected to the net, as there is a special contract with some major mobile phone networks when you purchase such a device in order to activate it. Our take: Amazingly, Palm still haven't announced something exciting as this (where most of the software running in a remoted server, and not included and running in the actual machine), and please don't start posting comments that they will use BeIA for it, because they just won't. Palm has even postponed any wireless plans.

The new up and coming HancomOffice 2.0 according to LinuxWorld.com could be a serious contender for StarOffice and Microsoft Office. The most interesting point is that the same boxed product can be installed on Windows, GNU/Linux and Solaris. This could be great for people switching operating systems as they could continue to use the same office package on their new OS, without even having to purchase new software. A Preview version is already available for download.

While high technology has had a major effect on the U.S. military arsenal, strategists warn that high tech weapons may not be enough to achieve importatnt aims in the U.S. war on terrorism. Capturing Osama bin Laden, for example, will likely be achieved only through local help and the old fasioned art of making friends with locals in the know. An Associated Press story outlines some of the major high tech tools to be used by the U.S. military in its search for bin Laden, and their recent track record.

The Register writes: "Compaq's iPaq PocketPC development team seems to be so unhappy with the upcoming merger with Hewlett-Packard, they have en masse offered their services to the highest bidder on the online job search site The Vault. Under the headline "iPaq PPC Engineering Team for Hire", the "core iPaq engineering team" says it is "seeking new opportunities and want to design the next winning PPC for your company. This team is responsible for the original iPaq and other designs that are yet to be released. Our team will vault your company ahead of its competitors." Our Take: I wonder if Palm will cancel the deal of the $11 million they would pay to Be, Inc. to just get the Be engineers and send offer letters and Palm Pilots as gifts (but this time, recent models with working batteries) to the iPaq engineers. ;-)