Mobile Linux specs unveiled
The Linux Phone Standards Forum introduced its first mobile phone specifications early this week, in hopes of encouraging more applications for Linux phones, reports Tech News World.
The first instalment of LiPS Release 1.0 includes a reference model, address book and voice call enabler, as well as user interface services such as widget sets, navigation and text input method application programming interfaces (APIs).
Specs for telephony, messaging, calendar and instant messaging are among the remaining components of Release 1.0, and are due by the year's end. The application framework, services APIs, device management APIs and additional enabler APIs, such as for multimedia, are planned for release in 2008.
Apple launches Windows browser
Apple has released a version of its Safari Web browser for Windows, competing head-to-head with Microsoft's Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox, says BBC News.
CEO Steve Jobs said Apple "dreams big" and wants to expand the 4.9% market share Safari enjoys.
He says Safari is "the fastest browser on Windows" and that it is twice as fast as Internet Explorer.
1bn PC users next year
A new report by Forrester Research predicts there will be more than one billion PCs in use worldwide by the end of 2008, growing to more than two billion PCs by 2015, reports The Register.
PC adoption in emerging markets is growing fast, and the Brazil, Russia, India and China market will account for more than 775 million new PCs by 2015, the report says.
"There is nothing more important to the long-term health of the technology industry, and personal technology in particular, than the ability to deliver relevant, accessible and affordable technology to the billions of people worldwide who have not been exposed to it," says Forrester Research VP and research director Simon Yates.
HP debuts new blade PCs
HP has announced its third generation of blade PCs, which it says solves the "Achilles heel" of most thin-client infrastructures' performance, says PC World.
Like blade servers, blade PCs are physically stored on racks, typically in data centres or server rooms.
Users equipped with thin-client devices, keyboards and monitors can access their blade PCs through a network or over the Internet. The users (and the blade facilities) can be located anywhere in the world.