LiMo Foundation www.limofoundation.org

The LiMo Foundation is a dedicated consortium of mobile industry leaders working together in an open and transparent governance model with shared leadership and shared decision making. The organization aims to provide the mobile industry with an open and globally consistent handset software platform based on Mobile Linux.

To support Linux platforms growing momentum in the worldwide mobile market, the Linux Phone Standards (LiPS) Forum announced that its activities and membership will be folded into the LiMo Foundation as of July 2008. This consolidation reflects the industry-wide trend toward unifying Linux-based mobile telephony platforms and helps accelerate the emergence of common Mobile Linux specifications and implementations. It is expected that this change will bolster the Mobile Linux developer community and support the creation of new applications, services, and end-user experiences.

NFC Forum www.nfc-forum.org

Near Field Communication (NFC) is a short-range wireless connectivity technology that evolved from a combination of existing contactless identification and interconnection technologies. Products with built-in NFC, which operates at 13.56 MHz and transfers data at up to 424 Kbps, dramatically simplify the way consumer devices interact with one another, helping people speed connections, receive and share information, and even make fast and secure payments.

The NFC Forum is a nonprofit industry association that advances NFC technology. Through the NFC Forum, members work together to create NFC specifications based on standards that serve as the foundation for NFC product and service interoperability.

The NFC Forum recently announced the release of two specifications that stipulate action requests and the activation of alternative data transfer technologies between NFC-enabled devices. The Generic Control Record Type Definition specification provides a simple way to request a specific action, such as starting an application or setting a mode on an NFC-enabled device (destination device) from another NFC device, tag, or card (source device) through NFC communication. The Connection Handover specification defines the structure and sequence of interactions that allow two NFC-enabled devices to establish a connection using other wireless communication technologies, such as Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.

Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium (EEMBC) www.eembc.org

EEMBC develops and certifies real-world benchmarks and benchmark scores to help designers select the right embedded processors for their systems. Every processor submitted for EEMBC benchmarking is tested for parameters representing different workloads and capabilities in communications, networking, consumer, office automation, automotive/industrial, embedded Java, and network storage-related applications. Members establish benchmark standards and provide certified benchmarking results through the EEMBC Technology Center.

In June, EEMBC announced that it has published the first certified benchmark scores obtained using OABench 2.0, the next-generation benchmark tests that approximate embedded microprocessors performance in printers, plotters, and other systems that handle text and image processing tasks.

The OABench 2.0 suite consists of five benchmarks, each with its own data sets, including new Bezier and Ghostscript tests. The Bezier benchmark interpolates a set of points defined by the four points of a Bezier curve and stresses embedded microprocessors ability to perform division, multiplication, and scalar processing tasks. The Ghostscript benchmark indicates an embedded processor's potential performance while running a PostScript printer engine.