Sun intensifies battle with Microsoft

The battle for the desktop continues with Sun Microsystems announcing it is building a StarOffice developers` kit that it hopes will boost the challenge it poses to Microsoft`s Office suite. TheRegister reports that Sun is also planning a set of tools that will convert existing Office macros written in Visual Basic into StarOffice-friendly Java APIs. Macros offer functionality for specific actions and are usually tailored to users` particular needs.

Sun is hoping, it seems, to increase the appeal of StarOffice by increasing the number of applications and macros available by developing a community of developers and independent software vendors around the suite. Equally important are migration tools, which can potentially cut costs and reduce development efforts associated with changing code for customers who take the decision to shift.

While Sun has offered StarOffice developers support in the past, this has mostly been in the form of documentation and plug-ins to the company`s Sun ONE Studio Java integrated development environment. [TheRegister]

Multimedia messaging services (MMS) moved a step closer to standardisation this week with a successful test of cross-hardware message transmissions. The interconnection test was completed between users on the Sonera and Radiolinja networks in Finland, using equipment from Nokia and Tecnomen.

The successful test suggests that soon cellular users will be able to send MMS messages to anyone else on any network. MMS, a new type of cellular messaging that is much more powerful than SMS, allows users to send and receive rich messages containing text, images, graphics, voice and audio clips.

This successful MMS test used an MMS-gateway for GSM networks. The idea is that with a similar gateway in place other operators will be able to implement MMS interworking quickly and easily. Currently MMS only works between users on the same networks, including on South African networks.

The MPEG Licensing Authority this week said it is ready to start offering general licences to companies wanting to use the MPEG-4 video format, after lengthy negotiations and concerns over the lack of royalty caps. CBROnline reports that the organisation, a coalition of about 20 companies that own patents essential to MPEG-4 technology, says it will make licences available to software, hardware and consumer electronics firms on "fair, reasonable, non-discriminatory" terms.

MPEG-4 encoder and decoder makers will be charged at $0.25 per unit with a $1 million cap, with the first 50 000 shipments being royalty-free. Companies that are making their patents available under the scheme include Canon, France Telecom, Fujitsu, GE Technology, General Instrument, Hitachi, Hyundai Curitel, KDDI, Matsushita, Microsoft, Mitsubishi, Oki, Phillips, Samsung, Sanyo, Sharp, Sony, Telenor, Toshiba and Victory. [CBROnline]

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