Japanese consumer electronics giants Sony and Panasonic announced that they will be co-developing a Linux distribution for "digital home electronic devices." As consumer electronics devices increasingly take on the capabilities of computers, makers need a sophisticated operating system to run them, and many have already turned to Linux. (like Tivo). See the Press Release.

FOSDEM, the Free and Open Source Software Developers' Meeting is coming soon, and in preparation, the organizers have published interviews with some of the participants: David Faure for KDE and Michael Meeks for GNOME.

KPN Mobile today revealed that the popularity of its new online i-mode service is sky-rocketing, gaining over 77,000 new Dutch mobile phone subscribers since mid-August. This month KPN is expected to introduce a third i-mode handset, the NEC n22i, in the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium. Meanwhile KPN's main partner, NTT DoCoMo, has over 36 million i-mode subscribers in Japan.

Dr. Jiang Li joined Microsoft Research, Asia as Researcher in January 1999. His research interests include video compression, image processing, video broadcast and communication, peer-to-peer networking, realistic image synthesis and image based rendering. Read the interview at ActiveWin.

Another OS/2 article, this time from John C. Dvorak: "Born April, 1987. Died Dec. 10, 2002. Cause of death: neglect. Place of death: Armonk, New York. Next of kin: none. Attending funeral: nobody. Official announcement appeared on IBM Website."

In the server OS market, Microsoft is dominant, and it wants to stay that way. With the coming release of Microsoft Windows .NET Server 2003, an upgrade from Windows 2000 Server, the company feels it can keep the competition comfortably behind. Read the article at PCMagazine.

Nicholas writes: "More signs that open source software has big appeal in Europe as a small town in Germany has opted to move its entire IT base over to SuSE Linux. Read the full story at InfoWorld.com."

Stephen Beckwith writes: "Over at MacSlash, the "Last" interview with Jordan Hubbard, Mr. FreeBSD. Catch it while you can!" Read the full interview at MacSlash.

NeTraverse Inc. and Xandros today announced a strategic partnership to expand the range of solutions to individual users and corporate clients. By combining Win4Lin with the Xandros Desktop, users can now operate the full range (editor's note: Win4Lin 4 had a limitation on DDraw/3D apps like Media Players and games) of Windows applications, and organizations can leverage the powerful advantages of Linux while preserving their current investments in Windows-based systems and applications.

Microsoft will release a Plus expansion pack for Windows XP to enhance the digital media features in its desktop operating system. At the same time it will make available the final release of its Windows Media 9 software early next year.

A creative team has posted some concept art and mockups about the creation of an alternative to Kicker, the KDE desktop and taskbar, named Slicker. In the meantime, KDE 3.0.5a was released, incorporating the latest security fixes.

Last week, when research firm Meta Group of Stamford, Conn., predicted that Microsoft would begin to support Linux by late 2004 with some of its key server products -- Exchange, IIS, SQL server, and the like -- reactions ranged from outrage to befuddlement. A source inside Microsoft called the report "wacky." Analysts of all stripes debated the veracity of the findings. Even Dale Kutnick, Meta's chief research officer, admitted that Microsoft "is pissed." Read the article at Business 2.0.

Tinyminds features an interview with Linux kernel hacker Robert M. Love, best known for the preemptive kernel patch.

Lycoris, makers of the popular Desktop/LX Linux package, released their ProductivityPak Friday featuring a highly customized and integrated Openoffice.org and PDA Sync tool. With the ProductivityPak, Lycoris has introduced features not found in typical OpenOffice.org installations, such as a spell checker, and has advertised compatibility with, among other formats, Office XP documents.