Linux-Based VoIP Partnership Announced

Chipmaker Broadcom and software developer Trolltech this week formed a partnership to create a multimedia voice over IP development platform based on Linux.

The development platform is intended for original equipment manufacturers that want to build what the companies call "next-generation" IP phones. It combines Broadcom's VoIP technology and Trolltech's Qtopia Linux platform and user interface for mobile devices.

The Qtopia software is considered next-generation because it supports advanced technologies like unified communications, which links business processes with presence information, e-mail, voice mail, instant messaging, and videoconferencing, to facilitate efficient communications. It also provides Web integration, allowing mobile users to access Web sites and multimedia on IP phones.

"Our Qtopia software is the foundation for 10 million-plus consumer electronic devices worldwide so this partnership with Broadcom will enable their customers to build customized next-generation IP and mobile devices with robust voice, video, web, and multimedia features," said Haavard Nord, Trolltech's CEO, in a statement.

Qtopia has been optimized for Broadcom's BCM1103 VoIP processors and BCM1180 multimedia co-processor intended for improved voice quality and rich graphical content on devices, according to Trolltech. The processors use low power and can enable applications such as two-way video calling.

The companies announced their plans at this week's Consumer Electronics Show taking place in Las Vegas, where Broadcom also partnered with Microsoft to develop technologies that will let consumers hook their TVs to the Internet for interactive digital television offerings. Microsoft said its Mediaroom Internet television client software will be used on set-top boxes with Broadcom's system-on-a-chip technology.

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Red Hat's New Business Software

Red Hat on Tuesday unveiled software that combines messaging, real-time and grid capabilities for enterprises that need an OS that can process messages and transactions at lightning speed, such as those in the financial services industry.

Red Hat Enterprise MRG (Messaging, Realtime and Grid), which is expected to be generally available early next year on a subscription basis, is another piece of the company's so-called "automation" strategy for simplifying how applications are deployed and managed in distributed computing environments. The idea behind automation is to make it as easy as possible for an IT administrator to deploy an application anywhere, whether it's hosted or running on a physical server or a virtual environment.

MRG will be available in a public beta by the end of the week. Interested users can register for the beta online.

In a nutshell, MRG is meant to not only do the job of messaging middleware such as IBM's MQSeries or Tibco Software's Tibco, but also extend that with real-time capabilities and task-allocation and power-allocation features. In addition to providing a layer of software on top of the OS for low-latency messaging, MRG also can schedule tasks and provision power for resources running in heterogenous environments, said Bryan Che, a Red Hat product manager.

For example, when Windows desktop computers in an enterprise are idle because people aren't using them, MRG can bring them back into the infrastructure computing pool and use that spare capacity for other tasks. However, this functionality is based on integration of MRG with Intel's vPro desktop-management technology.

Red Hat MRG uses technology from two key projects to deliver an open-source infrastructure. One is a project to develop the Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP) standard for describing what messages between disparate systems look like and what should be done with them, which is backed by companies such as Cisco, Credit Suisse and JP Morgan Chase.

The other is the Condor high-throughput computing open-source project out of the University of Wisconsin, which provides a way to efficiently allocate and use the computing capacity of an IT system. Red Hat also has teamed with the university to make the Condor source code available under an Open Source Initiative-approved license, and has agreed to jointly fund ongoing development on the project.

William Fellows, a principal analyst at The 451 Group, said it's naive to think people will begin ripping and replacing current messaging infrastructure with Red Hat's new software once it's available. However, MRG does combine several technologies in a unique way for IT environments that need OSs to process transactions in microseconds, he said.

This is especially important to the financial services industry, "where the element of [message] latency provides an opportunity for arbitrage -- that is, people make money because they get to the bit of cheese first," he said. Fellows added that these features can be useful in other enterprise environments as well.

Red Hat probably wanted to introduce its new messaging software ahead of an update to MQSeries, which is imminent, Fellows added.

Source

Red Hat's New Business Software

Red Hat on Tuesday unveiled software that combines messaging, real-time and grid capabilities for enterprises that need an OS that can process messages and transactions at lightning speed, such as those in the financial services industry.

Red Hat Enterprise MRG (Messaging, Realtime and Grid), which is expected to be generally available early next year on a subscription basis, is another piece of the company's so-called "automation" strategy for simplifying how applications are deployed and managed in distributed computing environments. The idea behind automation is to make it as easy as possible for an IT administrator to deploy an application anywhere, whether it's hosted or running on a physical server or a virtual environment.

MRG will be available in a public beta by the end of the week. Interested users can register for the beta online.

In a nutshell, MRG is meant to not only do the job of messaging middleware such as IBM's MQSeries or Tibco Software's Tibco, but also extend that with real-time capabilities and task-allocation and power-allocation features. In addition to providing a layer of software on top of the OS for low-latency messaging, MRG also can schedule tasks and provision power for resources running in heterogenous environments, said Bryan Che, a Red Hat product manager.

For example, when Windows desktop computers in an enterprise are idle because people aren't using them, MRG can bring them back into the infrastructure computing pool and use that spare capacity for other tasks. However, this functionality is based on integration of MRG with Intel's vPro desktop-management technology.

Red Hat MRG uses technology from two key projects to deliver an open-source infrastructure. One is a project to develop the Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP) standard for describing what messages between disparate systems look like and what should be done with them, which is backed by companies such as Cisco, Credit Suisse and JP Morgan Chase.

The other is the Condor high-throughput computing open-source project out of the University of Wisconsin, which provides a way to efficiently allocate and use the computing capacity of an IT system. Red Hat also has teamed with the university to make the Condor source code available under an Open Source Initiative-approved license, and has agreed to jointly fund ongoing development on the project.

William Fellows, a principal analyst at The 451 Group, said it's naive to think people will begin ripping and replacing current messaging infrastructure with Red Hat's new software once it's available. However, MRG does combine several technologies in a unique way for IT environments that need OSs to process transactions in microseconds, he said.

This is especially important to the financial services industry, "where the element of [message] latency provides an opportunity for arbitrage -- that is, people make money because they get to the bit of cheese first," he said. Fellows added that these features can be useful in other enterprise environments as well.

Red Hat probably wanted to introduce its new messaging software ahead of an update to MQSeries, which is imminent, Fellows added.

Source

Making Menu Transparent using Compiz

Compiz brings a lot of bling to the Linux desktop, but with such an
extensive selection of configurable features, it can sometimes be
difficult to figure out how to take advantage of specific
functionality. Several readers have asked me how to use Compiz to make
menus and tooltips transparent, so I figured I'd share this trick with
the Open Ended audience.

In order to set up menu transparency, users will need the Compiz
Config Settings Manager, which can be acquired on Ubuntu by installing
the compizconfig-settings-manager package. Users can launch the utility
from the command line or from the GNOME Preferences menu. The settings
manager contains a number of tiles that provide access to various
plugins and features included in Commpiz. To set menu transparency,
select the General Options tile and navigate to the Opacity Settings
tab. Expand the Window Opacities section and click the Add button. A
small dialog window will open and prompt for window specification and
the desired opacity.

In the Opacity Windows text field, you have to input a
pipe-separated list of window types to which you want to apply the
transparency. I use the following string:

Tooltip | Menu | PopupMenu | DropdownMenu

Then I set the Opacity Window Values field to 90 to indicate that
windows of the previously specified types should be 90 percent opaque
and 10 percent transparent.

You can also use more elaborate window matching strings that use
window class, role, and title. For instance, I like to make all of my
Pidgin conversation windows slightly transparent, but not the buddy
list. In order to do that, I assign 95 percent opacity to all windows
that use the Pidgin class and use the buddy list window title to
exclude it from the match list. This is the string I use in the Opacity
Windows text box for my Pidgin transparency:

class=Pidgin & !title=Buddy List

You can also use these window matching strings with the Compiz
Window Rules plugin to automatically make certain windows adhere to
certain behaviors when they are created. For more information about
Compiz window matching rules, check out the documentation at the Compiz wiki.

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