Microsoft Email Pushes Blackberry?

In a strategic development, Microsoft has tied-up with major cellular operators for a new breed of mobile phones that will allow users receive email when it hits servers instead of getting it when they synchronise with their servers.

Unlike the Blackberry and its peers who are way ahead in this game, phones running Microsoft's latest Windows Mobile operating system will receive emails "pushed" directly from the company server, sans the need for a separate mobile server or additional license payments.

Microsoft says that Direct Push technology added to Windows Mobile 5.0 gives customers faster access to all of its Office Outlook information. The new version communicates directly with Microsoft Exchange Server and Windows Small Business Server without the need for servers and other middleware.

Speculation is rife that Microsoft will most probably overtake RIM as the leading mobile email provider while RIM which has approximately 4.3 million Blackberry customers, has been sued for allegedly infringing patents belonging to NTP, a US technology company.

New Linux-based Palm OS Unveiled

Access and its wholly owned subsidiary, PalmSource, have announced the Access Linux Platform (ALP), the latest evolution of Palm OS for Linux.

The ALP is designed to be an integrated, open and flexible Linux-based platform tailored for smartphones and mobile devices and to provide a complete, consistent and customizable solution for handset and mobile device manufacturers and mobile operators.

Access and PalmSource expect to make the ALP Software Developer Kit (SDK) available to its licensees by the end of this year (2006).

ACCESS Linux Platform An open and flexible software platform - Major components of ALP include:

* Standard, commercial-grade Linux kernel - version 2.6.12 and above
* Optimized implementation of GIMP ToolKit (GTK+) - popular open source libraries for the creation of graphical user interfaces
* GStreamer - an open source, modular and multi-threaded streaming media framework
* SQLite - a high-performance database engine commonly used in embedded devices

A number of ACCESS and PalmSource technologies have been incorporated into ALP, including:

* ACCESS NetFront™ browser - a proven success with over 200 million deployments in 721 commercial products for more than 30 handset and 90 Internet device manufacturers worldwide
* PalmSource messaging and telephony middleware - a highly modular and scalable implementation
* PalmSource mobile applications including PIMs, multimedia, messaging, PalmSource HotSync® and Palm Desktop -includes the recognized ease-of-use that users expect