The Best J2ME Applications for your Phone

Our mobile-oriented sister site, Mobits, put together the third free service for you (first, second), a mobile web page that let's you access the 23 best J2ME phone applications created so far. Visit the mobile-optimized page with any browser at http://mobits.com/jad. There is space for two more J2ME apps in the page, so leave a comment if we forgot a deserving application out of the list (no games please). We hope that this page will prove helpful to users who just got a new cellphone or reseted their existing one and are in need of re-installing their Java apps as quickly as possible.

A New Driver Guide for the Syllable OS

Kristian Vander Vliet, aka Vanders, has been working on a document that explains how to port drivers to Syllable. This document first starts off as a primer on how to write drivers for Syllable. Then the document shows how to port a driver from Linux to Syllable. Kristian chooses to focus on network drivers and ported the broadcom tg3 driver from Linux while writing this document.

Gartner: OS X More Appealing Than Desktop Linux

OS X is more appealing to enterprises as a desktop operating system than ever before and although it is unlikely to take market share away from Windows, the Mac could reduce the number of Linux-based desktops, according to research group Gartner. In a report published by Gartner this week titled Enterprise Mac Clients Remain Limited, but Apple's Appeal is Growing, analysts Michael Silver, Neil MacDonald, Ray Wagner and Brian Prentice, said that administrators will most likely have to prepare for more Mac systems in their environment even though OS X is "not a suitable enterprise wide platform". Ars weighs in on the issue as well.

‘Vista Minimum Requirements Unrealistic’

A white paper published this morning by hardware analysis firm iSuppli, based on its studies of Microsoft Windows Vista running on multiple grades of computer hardware, has concluded that the software publisher's stated minimum requirements for the system - which include an 800 MHz processor, 512 MB of RAM, and a 35 GB hard drive - may not be nearly enough. "Despite Microsoft's claims that Vista can run on such trailing-edge systems," writes Matthew Wilkins, principal analyst for compute platforms research, "iSuppli believes the reality is quite different."

Microsoft Hits Back at Its OpenXML Critics

Microsoft has hit back at critics, including IBM, which voted against approving the company's Office OpenXML format as an Ecma standard, claiming it is nothing more than a vendor-dictated specification that documents proprietary products via XML. Ecma International announced the approval of the new standard Dec. 6 following a meeting of its general assembly and said it will begin the fast track process for adoption of the Office OpenXML formats as an ISO international standard in January 2007.

Unheralded Larrabee Plots AMD, Nvidia Takedown

A shadowy organization called Larrabee Development Group has set a most ambitious goal: unseating AMD/ATI and Nvidia as the largest producers of high-end graphics chips. And it might just succeed. It may seem unfathomable for an unknown such as Larrabee to knock off two of the most powerful processor companies. That is until you realize that Larrabee is little more than a weak disguise for Intel. The chip giant has, in fact, ramped up its graphics efforts in recent weeks to create a product code-named Larrabee theoretically capable of besting AMD and Nvidia's best kit.

Performance Comparison of Most Current CPUs

Most current Intel and AMD CPUs, as well as almost every Macintosh model from the last few years, geekbenched and compared. Interesting results if you just want to have an overall generic idea of how fast is what. Interesting to see that my 12" 867 Mhz Powerbook G4 is at least 6 times slower than a new MacBook Pro or that new Core2Duo CPUs at 2 GHz are way faster than my pretty recent 3 GHz P4 (which came with hyperthreading and 64bit support nonetheless). Technology flies fast past you!

First Impressions: Efika

Pegasos.org has (one of) the (only) first reviews of the Efika, the system on a chip thing from Genesi (or bPlan? I lost track). "What can I say? It's a great piece of hardware. bPlan lives up to our expectations yet again. They even exceeded them about its media capabilities. For thin client or tiny desktop usage it will work just fine as long as you choose a low footprint window manager. As a network workgroup server I can't see any difficulties with this hardware. Configure it and you're set."