Sprint pushes Java for Instinct

The Instinct smartphone will gain a wide range of new software as a result of a contest for Java programmers, despite a behind-the-scenes dispute about standards compliance, says Wireless Week.

Co-developed with Samsung, the Instinct is positioned as Sprint's answer to the Apple iPhone, exclusively sold by rival AT&T in the US. Unlike software for the iPhone, new programs for the Instinct do not require Sprint's certification.

To encourage new applications for the Instinct, Sprint will give $20 000 cash and a $5 000 membership in the Sprint Professional Developer Program to the maker of the best software, along with $5  000 cash prizes in two categories.

BEA Systems and Sun Microsystems have each advanced their Java application servers, says Computerworld.

BEA offered customers a path to utility computing through a partnership with Veritas Software, while Sun released a low-end version of its application server that supports the latest enterprise Java standard.

BEA inked a deal to make its WebLogic application server work better with three Veritas products: Veritas OpForce, for automatically provisioning servers; Veritas Indepth, for managing the performance of applications; and Veritas Cluster Server, for linking servers in a group.

Sun Microsystems has announced the new SPECjbb2005 world record score, which beats all other x86 systems on the market, reports Market Watch.

The Sun Fire X4600 M2 server, equipped with eight Quad-Core AMD Opteron model 8360SE processors and running the Solaris 10 operating system, posted an x86 World Record score of 683 542 SPECjbb2005 bops (85 443 SPECjbb2005 bops/JVM).

In the benchmark results, the Sun Fire X4600 M2 server demonstrated that it is 53% faster than the Dell PowerEdge R900 and is able to perform 75% more Java business operations than the Dell PowerEdge R905 in the same physical footprint.