No Java for iPhone

Acknowledging that conditions of Apple's iPhone SDK agreement may impede Sun's plan to put a Java Virtual Machine on the iPhone, a Sun official held out an olive branch this week to Apple, says InfoWorld.

The JVM would enable Java applications to run on the iPhone. But blog and forum posts have been written that questioned whether Sun could follow through on the plan, Sun said.

Sun's Eric Klein, VP of Java marketing, said in a statement released this week that Sun wants to talk to Apple if there are conditions blocking Sun's intentions.

Red Hat has purchased Amentra, an IT consulting firm with open source expertise, to sell its JBoss Java infrastructure to enterprises as the basis for SOAs (service-oriented architectures), says InfoWorld.

Amentra, a privately held systems integrator that specialises in SOA and business process management, will continue business as usual as an independent company owned by Red Hat.

The specific financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Amentra's 140 employees will continue to work out of their current offices.

Sun Microsystems' stock is declining with the rest of the tech sector as economic indicators today have investors worried once again that the economy is headed for a recession, says BloggingStocks.

The commerce department reported that retail sales dipped by 0.6% in February, below economists' predictions of a 0.2% gain.

California research firm RealtyTrac also reported that home foreclosures in February rose 59.8% over the year-ago period.