Reuters - Red Hat Inc. Chief Executive Matthew Szulik said his company last year held talks with Microsoft Corp over a patent agreement that broke down before the software giant signed a deal with Red Hat rival Novell Inc .

Filed under: Productivity, Mozilla

• Refined user interface
• Automatic migration of data from Sunbird 0.2, iCal, and Evolution
• Improved printing function
• Lightning works better with Thunderbird (when it comes to things like copying and pasting or printing)
• Support for Google Calendar (via the Google Calendar Provider extension)

Filed under: Business, Design, Developer, Internet, Web services, Social Software

Continue reading Kevin Rose launches his Instant Messaging network, Pownce

(InfoWorld) - Zend Technologies will offer the 1.0 version of its framework for PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) Web application development, which in pre-release forms has attracted more than 1 million downloads, on Monday.

 Zend Framework 1.0 will not be the only PHP development framework around as it will share the scene with frameworks like Cake and Prado. But Zend's is the first framework with support from a corporate entity and relevant contributions from companies like IBM and Google, Zend said.

"It's an application framework for building high-quality Web applications and Web services with PHP," said Andi Gutmans, CTO and co-founder of Zend.

Featured are architectural guidelines, best practices, and reusable components for such functions as authentication, access control, filtering, and session management. Zend is offering its open-source framework for free but sells ancillary support services.

Also featured is support for Web services protocols like RSS, Atom, and REST (Representational State Transfer). Google has contributed its Google Data APIs, enabling Zend users to access Google applications, such as its calendar and spreadsheet. These applications could be included in a mashup, for example, Gutmans said.

IBM contributions to the framework cover such technologies as AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) and search. IBM has used the framework as the basis for QEDwiki project for assembling Web 2.0 applications, Zend said.

Some StrikeIron Web services are exposed in the framework as well.

A port of the Lucene Java search index is included, enabling fine-grained searching on a Web application. PDF documents can be modified and saved in the framework as well. Version 1.0 offers a model-view controller architecture for separating business logic from the presentation layer and boosting application testing capabilities.

Zend's framework represents a good start, said analyst Mark Driver, research vice president at Gartner.

"The only piece that's significantly missing today is the component model to do visualized controls," Driver said. This will be needed to attract programmers familiar with rapid application development techniques and fourth-generation languages, he said.

"The positive aspect [of the framework] is it this is exactly the kind of thing mainstream IT developers are asking for," Driver said. But traditional PHP developers already have been satisfied with what has been available, he said.

Zend Framework presents a broader framework than some of the point solutions for PHP, Driver said. But Zend is a"little late to the market," with its framework, Driver said.

An upcoming version of Zend Framework will add support for Microsoft's CardSpace identity management technology. Microsoft, a Zend partner, is enabling SQL Server to work with the framework.

Zend Framework 1.0 will be accessible here.

(InfoWorld) - Intel plans to lay off 800 workers from a chip-making plant in Colorado by August, after Marvell Semiconductor began ordering those parts from another supplier, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC).

Intel and Marvell have done business since June 2006, when Marvell bought Intel's XScale communications chip division and its 1,300 workers for $600 million. The sale was one component of Intel's sweeping corporate reorganization that also included the layoff of 10,500 employees.

Marvell now sells those Monahans chips to vendors of mobile phones, smartphones, and other consumer electronics handsets that use the processors to handle multimedia and mobile Web browsing, telephony, and GPS navigation.

Intel learned of Marvell's decision to find a new supplier around January and warned its workers that month that it planned to sell the Colorado Springs plant, said Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy. He declined to say how much revenue Intel will lose when the contract ends.

Intel plans to offer severance packages to its workers beginning in early August. The company also applied for a federal grant to help those workers learn new skills and find jobs, but the U.S. Department of Labor denied the request, he said.

Now Intel is appealing the government's action and asking the department to reconsider its decision to withhold a grant from its Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program. Under the TAA, the U.S. government gives aid to workers who lose their jobs through increased imports, providing them training, job search, and relocation allowances.

Intel will continue to supply some components to Marvell from different plants, such as a facility in Santa Clara, Calif. Mulloy declined to say how many of its workers were employed making Marvell parts at that plant.

Marvell confirmed it was shifting the business to TSMC, saying its agreement with Intel had been created to last only through the transition of acquiring the cellular and handheld group.

"TSMC is definitely the primary fab for us. It was never a long-term plan for Intel to keep manufacturing those chips," said Marvell spokeswoman Diane Vanasse.

Marvell is struggling with its own problems, including a delisting threat by the Nasdaq stock exchange for failing to file quarterly reports for the last two terms of 2006, or its 2006 annual report. The company is also restating past results, after finding in May that CEO Sehat Sutardja and other top executives had illegally backdated stock options to increase their value.