Two of the biggest launches in Rich Internet Application history took place in 2007/2008 when Adobe launched AIR 1.0 in February '08 and Microsoft launched Silverlight (September '07). At the 6th International AJAXWorld RIA Conference & Expo in October SYS-CON Events is delighted to be presenting major industry keynotes from the two industry executives with overall responsibility for both of those massive richer-web initiatives: Adobe's CTO Kevin Lynch and Scott Guthrie, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft's .NET Developer Platform.

ARC Wireless Solutions' Wireless Communications Solutions Division announces that the Freedom Blade and supporting Freedom Clip Pack have been fully launched and are now available to ship domestically and internationally via their retail and distributor partners. The Freedom Blade is the natural progression from the Freedom Antenna. It is the sleeker, more compact wireless signal booster that uses the same patented technology as the Freedom Antenna.

Android, due in the second half, could reportedly be delayed until Q4 or maybe even next year, according to the tale the Wall Street Journal tells, a situation that opens up a can of worms for Google. Google has to prove that it's more than a one-trick pony and that it can deliver something other than beta software. The paper says Google is so absorbed with getting a T-Mobile Android phone out in Q4 that Sprint Nextel and China Mobile have fallen by the wayside.

Nokia wants to buy the 52% of the Symbian operating system that it doesn't already own to open source it and set it free. It's a defense against advances into the fragmented mobile space that Nokia and Symbian dominate - particularly - from the looks of case - against Google's nascent open source Android initiative and the freebie Linux-based LiMo Foundation - but then there's also Apple's proprietary iPhone, Microsoft's equally proprietary, royalty-charging Windows Mobile and the ever-present Blackberry and Palm.

Carlson Wireless Technologies announced a trade-in program for Optaphone telephone line extenders. Carlson is offering a $500 trade-in credit that can be applied to an upgrade toward any of Carlson's Trailblazer point-to-point or point to multipoint digital radio systems. While Carlson Wireless was not the manufacturer or distributor of the Optaphone, Carlson's position in the fixed wireless phone market provides them with an opportunity to assist Optaphone owners as their equipment come to the end of its life.

Nokia announced it has launched a cash offer to acquire all of the shares of Symbian Limited that Nokia does not already own, at a price of EUR 3.647 per share. The net cash outlay from Nokia to purchase the approximately 52% of Symbian Limited shares it does not already own will be approximately EUR 264 million.

HP may lose the head of its Personal Systems Group (PSG), Todd Bradley, to Motorola. He's on Moto's list of two candidates to run its cell phone operation, according to the Wall Street Journal. Everybody's still in denial because negotiations are at the sensitive stage, the paper said. However, after the story ran Bradley sent an e-mail to his staff saying he was happy where he was.

Lifeboat Distribution announced the availability of Sybase's iAnywhere Mobile Office to its worldwide network of solution providers, value-added resellers (VARs), systems integrators, corporate resellers and consultants. iAnywhere Mobile Office, a component of the Information Anywhere Suite, is a flexible and powerful solution that lets enterprises securely extend Lotus Domino and Microsoft Exchange email and PIM data, as well as business processes, to mobile workers.

Sybase iAnywhere announced that it has expanded its mobile security portfolio to include handheld antivirus and firewall capabilities. Sybase Information Anywhere Suite's Afaria management and security solution will be enhanced with antivirus and firewall technology, addressing growing concern over an increase in malware, viruses, hackers and spam targeting handheld devices. These new security components, combined with Afaria's mobile device authentication and encryption technology, provide complete protection for Windows Mobile, Symbian and Blackberry mobile devices from viruses, data compromise, hackers and the effects of mobile device loss or theft.

Recursion Software released a private beta version of their Voyager mobile platform, with powerful interoperability for Android, Microsoft .NET and Compact Framework (CF), all Java editions (JME CDC, JSE and JEE), and more than 15 embedded operating systems. The Voyager platform is a powerful cross-platform development environment that allows developers to write one code-set natively in either Java or .NET and publish the code to mobile or desktop nodes that can execute transactions at runtime regardless of the virtual machine they employ. This beta version is an important step towards write once, run everywhere for application messaging and communications.

Novell was foiled in its attempt this week to persuade the bankruptcy judge in Delaware, who's holding SCO life in his hands, to deny SCO another extension in filing a formal plan of reorganization. If the judge had agreed with Novell - which he didn't - that would have ended what they call in bankruptcy circles the 'exclusivity period' when only the debtor - in this case SCO - can file a reorganization plan.

Having peered into various crystal balls, Cisco figures global Internet traffic will grow 46% a year between now and 2012, nearly doubling every two years. The projection translates into an annual bandwidth demand of more than a half a zettabyte, the equivalent of at least 125 billion DVDs, largely because of online video and social networking.

Intel, Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Clearwire, Samsung and Sprint have formed the Open Patent Alliance (OPA) in hopes of ensuring the future of WiMAX with a patent pool that helps participating companies get access to WiMAX patent licenses at a predictable cost, charged only for the features needed to develop WiMAX products.

Maximizer Software announced its partnership with McObject to enhance mobile productivity on Maximizer's mobile CRM offering for BlackBerry smartphone devices. 'Accessing up-to-date information on customers is critical to sales executives and other professionals in the field. Increasingly, they require this capability from their BlackBerry smartphones rather than laptops,' said Will Anderson, executive vice president of technology, Maximizer Software.

Aperto Networks announced the complete line of PacketMAX base stations and subscriber units supporting the IEEE 802.16e-2005 standard. This line includes the new Wave-2 compliant PacketMAX 4000, the company's 1-4 sector modular Mobile WiMAX base station.

Aperto Networks announced that its line of PacketMAX base stations has been chosen by NextPhase Wireless, a service provider based in Southern California, for a nationwide WiMAX network in the 3.65 GHz band.

I am one of the very first BlackBerry users - I've been one since 1997 when it was first introduced at the annual JavaOne Conference in San Francisco. Since then I went through more BlackBerries probably than even JetBlue founder David Neeleman. With all the love and around-the-clock use, comes basic maintenance as well, I guess. Recently, the trackball in my Pearl jammed. We called AT&T support, they rushed me a replacement unit, overnight. (After all my monthly BlackBerry charges as a world traveler/CEO run to around $1,500 each and every month.)

Citrix has bought sepago GmbH's sepagoProfile software so user profiles in XenDesktop, XenApp and Provisioning Server are integrated. Terms were not disclosed but as part of the deal the Cologne-based sepago will continue developing the product for virtualizing application provisioning for the next year and a half. Sepago specializes in application provisioning on large computer networks.

Why is the 'collaborative source' development approach uniquely suited and required to drive innovation in the mobile-communications software stack? What are the early fruits of its impact? Out of the principles of open source and the particular market and legal constraints of the telecom world, a best-of-two-worlds approach is being forged: the collaborative source development model that is spawning overdue innovation in mobile.

The demand for and widespread usage of popular video sharing sites, communities of interest, social networking and personalization has increased exponentially in the past year. While multimedia services and usage are at all time highs in terms of minutes of use, service providers and content owners are still adjusting their revenue and go-to-market models toward consumers and enterprises.

So how does this relate to MobileMe? MobileMe is, according to Phil Schiller's keynote, 'Exchange for the rest of us'. What this means is that using MobileMe, you will receive push contacts, push e-mail, and push calendar notifications. This will work with any MobileMe-aware application, including Outlook on the PC and iCal, Mail, and Address Book on the Mac and iPhone. This also includes the old iDisk functionality which allows you to share files among all of your devices using file synchronization technologies. iDisk works, but don't ever try to code directly on an iDisk folder with Xcode unless you have a back-up. Hopefully this peculiarity has been fixed in MobileMe.

Over recent years the web has seen the growth of so-called 'Web 2.0' services based around the concept of a two-way information flow, and the empowering of individuals to create and publish their own content and information through blogs, wikis, video sharing, and social networking services. Video content is often central to these services, allowing the uploading and sharing of content generated by customers, along with the emergence of video advertising on the web.

Up to this point, the iPhone has been a device for gadget fanatics and big spenders, while shortcomings like the price and lack of 3G have limited the addressable market considerably. By adding 3G, GPS and enterprise support and lowering the starting price, Apple has just dramatically expanded the addressable market for the iPhone, such that it now has at least some claim to be a mainstream device. The big increase in available countries will further add to the potential market size, and Apple should now have no problems reaching its near-term goals for iPhone sales. The bigger question now is whether it will be able to keep up with demand.

From Application Virtualization to Xen, a round-up of the virtualization themes & topics being discussed in NYC June 23-24, 2008 by the world-class speaker faculty at the 3rd International Virtualization Conference & Expo being held by SYS-CON Events in The Roosevelt Hotel, in midtown Manhattan.

Broadcom's six-foot six-inch co-founder and ex-CEO Henry Nicholas, 48, whose last reported whereabouts was in rehab for alcoholism, was busted Thursday after two grand jury indictments were unsealed. One accuses him of a raft of titillating drug charges; the other of backdating-related securities and wire fraud, false certification of financial reports, filing false statements with the SEC and conspiracy.

In a unanimous decision Monday the Supreme Court restricted patent holders' from collecting multiple royalties by charging the supply chain for IP that's already been sold upstream. Their Honors found for Quanta and against LG Electronics in a case in which LG licensed some chip technology rights to Intel on condition that Intel's customers not mix the resulting Intel-made chips with anybody else's widgetry without getting a separate license of their own from LG, basically making the Intel chips unusable.

Wind River says it's collaborating with Intel and will develop an open, extensible Moblin-based Linux platform for Atom-bearing MIDs. Both open source and commercial versions should be available next year. The commercial Wind River Linux Platform for Mobile Internet Devices is supposed to be a full-featured, commercial-grade Linux platform that includes a Linux distribution, middleware and mobile applications that deliver rich Internet and media experiences.

Zmanda, the open source backup and recovery folks, says it's integrated NetApp's Snapshot technology with its own Recovery Manager for MySQL. It's supposed to translate into continuous data protection for mission-critical MySQL databases. With Snapshot, administrators can create point-in-time copies of file systems for granular recovery.

For a 22% interest, Intel, Google, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks are putting $3.2 billion into a new company that Craig McCaw's Clearwire and Sprint Nextel, two of the walking wounded, are forming that combines their WiMax wireless broadband businesses. Trilogy Equity Partners is investing directly.

Red Hat announced that Cybercity has chosen to use the JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform for system integration and middleware. The JBoss solution is expected to reduce Cybercity's total cost of ownership (TCO). In selecting an SOA solution, Cybercity initially evaluated Oracle Fusion, BEA WebLogic and JBoss solutions. The organization ultimately selected the JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform over an existing BEA WebLogic platform and its pre-installed COTS closed source system for the provisioning of Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) customers. In the future the JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform will serve as a link between systems such as the CRM/Customer support client, backend BSS/Billing system, external partners, ISP platforms and the actual network itself.

Steve Jobs may not think much of Flash but Qualcomm apparently feels differently and has been collaborating with Adobe on a mobile platform that integrates Flash with its Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless (BREW) client software and, voilà, the BREW Mobile Platform, which the pair says will create a 'new standard for mass-market handset platforms.'

Asurion Mobile Applications has released CellBackup on its next generation Mobile Solutions Platform (MSP 2.0), providing subscribers with the power to easily share the user-generated content stored on their mobile phones wherever and with whomever they want.

Red Hat is a trusted open source provider. Red Hat offers enterprise customers a long-term plan for building infrastructures on the quality and innovation of open source. Combining open source operating system platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, together with applications, management, and Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) solutions, including the JBoss Enterprise Middleware Suite.

comScore announced the acquisition of M:Metrics. The acquisition places comScore in high standing within measuring the emerging and strategically important mobile Internet market and adds to comScore's standing in measuring PC-based Internet usage. The transaction involves a cash payment of $44.3 million and the issuance of approximately 50,000 options to purchase shares of comScore common stock to certain M:Metrics unvested option holders.

Adoption of federated identity technology has been slower than the hype might indicate, despite the maturity of standards such as SAML 2.0 and Web Services Security. This presentation examines the distinct business and technical identity management issues in both the commercial and user-centric spheres, and important catalysts to drive successful deployment.

This session will investigate what is happening out there in the world of Mobility that uses Services, some are calling this MOA (Mobile Oriented Architecture). We will also discuss architectures, application design & considerations for mobility

Funambol introduced a new version of its open source BlackBerry push email and personal information management (PIM) sync software. Funambol's BlackBerry software consists of two components. The push email component enables BlackBerries to work with consumer email services such as Yahoo Mail, AOL Mail, Hotmail and Gmail, as well as any POP or IMAP server. The PIM sync component enables BlackBerry users to wirelessly sync PIM data with a Funambol server, which in turn can sync with a wide range of backend email and PIM systems as well as email clients such as Outlook. The free open source Funambol BlackBerry software performs push email and over-the-air (OTA) sync of contacts, calendars, tasks and notes with consumer email systems as well as groupware systems beyond Exchange, Domino and GroupWise that are supported by BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

Friday morning the local Fox television station in New York City broke the news - Apple was suing New York City. Six out of 100 of their viewers thought Apple had the right to sue the City, but 94 out of 100 viewers are now calling for New Yorkers to drop Apple and its products, including the iPhone and Macs. New Yorkers are pissed off! New York City, universally known as The Big Apple, is facing a lawsuit from Steve Jobs' Apple Computer Inc. for, of all things, copyright infringement.

Celio announced its REDFLY Mobile Companion has joined the Citrix Ready Program, and compatibility with Citrix Application Delivery Infrastructure. Using a REDFLY-tested and Citrix ICA enabled smartphone and Citrix XenApp, a user can connect to a back-end server and then access Windows applications on the REDFLY Mobile Companion, allowing the user to fully use the power of a smartphone with an 8-inch screen and full QWERTY keyboard.

Velocent Systems announced that Si.mobil will be launching its solution. As the second largest mobile operator in Slovenia, part of the mobilkom austria group and a partner of Vodafone Group, Si.mobil has integrated the Velocent Session Engine (VSE) 2000 into its existing network. This will give Si.mobil the tools to monitor the quality and performance of its wireless data network so that they can resolve problems before customers experience any issues.