Alerts went out Tuesday from several security companies warning users of an in-the-wild Trojan horse able to infect nearly any cell phone. The Trojan, named Redbrowser.a by McAfee, F-Secure, and the discovering vendor Kaspersky Labs, can attack any device - smart phone, PDA, or cell phone - that runs Java 2 Micro Edition, Sun Microsystem's version for consumer electronics devices.

"UNIX and Windows data-center market share remain neck-and-neck, according to most analysts, but many in IT perceive UNIX and Linux innovation as slowing to a crawl. We interviewed representatives from Apple, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Novell, Red Hat, and Sun Microsystems who were eager to challenge that perception by highlighting areas in which their UNIX OSs are breaking new ground."

Origami cought some attention this week and now you would expect to see the real thing. Wrong. If you haven't seen the video on Digital Kitchen , you're out of the picture here. The new flash on the Origami Project site further hints on the mobility of this thing, but that's it. We'll have to wait until the 9th of March for the third flash, and maybe, just maybe, some real Microsoft data on the device.

The JNode team has released version 0.2.3 of the JNode operating system. JNode is an open source operating system written completely in Java (with a very small assembler nano-kernel). New features and improvements in this release are many classpath patches, improvements in AWT, Swing and desktop support, various bugfixes in the JIT compiler, ISO9660 support, better support for testing JNode with Mauve (mauve plugins, invoker commands), and more. Screenshots are available.

"On January 26th, 2005, the Itanium Solutions Alliance (Intel, Hewlett-Packard, SGI, NEC, Hitachi, Bull SA, Fujitsu, and Unisys) proudly announced that its members had banded together to invest $10 billion over the next four years to improve Itanium's features and functions and strengthen its market position. This huge investment in this architecture at this time forces us to ask a lot of tough questions about the wisdom of this action... "

The first release candidate for GNOME 2.14 is out. This is the last GNOME unstable release before the big .0 release. Lots of new features and bug fixes have been added during this cycle; Davyd's 'Look at GNOME 2.14' tells you which. Download the platform, desktop, admin and bindings sources.

Microsoft doesn't believe hands are the only vehicle for driving computers. Feet are equally valid for scrolling and cataloging e-mail and photos, among other tasks, according to researchers working in Microsoft's main Redmond research lab. In fact, for those for whom hands are less of an option, as a result of disabilities or injuries, feet might be the optimal solution. Microsoft Research's StepUI, or Step User Interface, is custom-made for these individuals.

"As a Linux user, there are times when you have to play nicely with users of Windows or Mac OS - such as when they send you Microsoft Word files. When you receive a Word file, you can either follow Richard Stallman's advice and refuse it, or bite the bullet and work with it. Modern Linux word processors - such as OpenOffice.org Writer, AbiWord, KWord, and TextMaker - can deal with most Word files. But if you don't want to fire up a word processor in order to read or print the document, you can turn to the command line. A handful of small but powerful Linux command line utilities make viewing, printing, and even converting Word files to another format, a breeze."

Mandriva subsidiary Edge-IT has been selected to participate in an EU-backed project that aims to create a next-generation computing approach known as the 'Social Semantic Desktop'. The goal is to transform the PC into a collaborative environment that supports both personal computing and information sharing via social and organizational channels.

Ultimate++ 602 has been released. Ultimate++ is a C++ platform. U++ competes with popular scripting languages while preserving C/C++ runtime characteristics. New features of the 602 release include a new report package, otimization of C++ refactoring and assistance (Assist++), and improvements in project organization and building.

While testers have been all over the newest Windows Vista CTP build, the new Longhorn Server test build, which Microsoft also delivered at the end of February, has gotten far less attention. Testers confirmed that Microsoft has posted on the Connect beta-download site the Longhorn Server Build 5308 bits for download.

A free application environment for Linux-based handheld and mobile devices may support lots more devices in the future, including Linux mobile phones. The GPE (GPE palmtop environment) project is planning a "device abstraction" layer aimed at simplying new device ports, according to maintainer Florian Boor.

At a special press event today, Apple introduced various new products. Besides the usual iPod/iTunes chit-chatter, they introduced a new Mac Mini with either a dual-core or single-core Intel processor. The new Mini sports the same form factor as the old one, and comes with an improved Front Row (support for playing streamed content using Bonjour), TV-out, and more. Note: Thanks go out to iLounge, MacCentral, and Engadget for providing live feeds.

"There's a lot of confusion about Windows Vista these days. Many online discussion forums have a great number of users who express no desire to upgrade to Vista. Sure, we've all seen the screenshots and maybe a video or two of Vista in action, but for many it only seems like new tricks for an old dog. Yeah, it's got some fancy 3D effects in the interface, but OS X has been doing that for years now, and it's still Windows underneath, right? The sentiment seems to be that Vista is another Windows ME. Perhaps part of the problem is that people just don't know what Vista has in store for them."