The Linux Foundation announced speakers for the Linux Foundation End User Summit, scheduled for Oct. 12-13, 2010 at the Hyatt Regency Jersey City, in New Jersey. The invitation-only event, which features keynotes from the Linux Foundation's Jim Zemlin and British Telecom Chief Scientist JP Rangaswami, brings together enterprise users and top Linux maintainers and developers....

Amazon.com opened pre-order sales for a $370, seven-inch, Android 2.2 tablet from Stream TV Network. The eLocity A7 tablet is equipped with a 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2, 512MB RAM, 4GB of flash memory, and offers a seven-inch capacitive display, an HDMI port for 1080p output, plus Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1, and a 1.3-megapixel webcam, says Amazon....

Via announced a Mini-ITX board teaming 1.2GHz or 1.3+GHz versions of its embedded-oriented Nano E-Series 3000 processor with the HD video-ready VX900 core logic chip. The Via Epia-M850 offers support for HDMI, VGA, and LVDS displays, up to 8GB of DDR3 memory, and a PCI Express x4 expansion slot, the company says....

Axiomtek announced a Mini-ITX motherboard employing Intel's Q57 PCH chipset, offering support for Intel Core i3/i5/i7 processors. Designed for DVR and other video-enabled applications, the Mano800 supports up to 8GB of DDR3 memory, and offers four RAID-enabled SATA ports, PCIe expansion, dual-display with DVI-D, plus USB, COM, and gigabit Ethernet I/O, says the company....

Wind River announced a series of Wind River Linux-ready development kits developed in partnership with eight different embedded board vendors. Embedded Development Kits are now available from Emerson Network Power, Eurotech, and Kontron, with more kits due in the fourth quarter from Advantech, Adlink, Curtiss-Wright, GE Intelligent Platforms, and RadiSys, says Wind River....

Navigation device manufacturer Rydeen Mobile Electronics announced a seven-inch, Android-based tablet called the & gPad GCOM701& at last weekend's IFA show in Berlin. Also at the show, Foryoudigital demonstrated its five-inch, Android-powered MX10, and Enspert announced that it built the & Identity Tab& Android tablet recently released by Korean carrier KT....

Google's music service plans are crystallizing in talks with music labels on plans for a download store and a digital song locker to challenge Apple iTunes in the digital music market. Google is moving forward with plans to release an Android-based Google Music site by the end of the year to compete with iTunes, say reports....

Sweden-based People of Lava has begun taking pre-orders for its & Scandinavia Window to the World& line of Android-based HDTVs, and the platform apparently impressed observers at the IFA show. Meanwhile, Samsung is considering making Android-based TVs too, says an industry report....

While industry analysts have recently lowered their estimates for PC sales, the smartphone market is apparently growing even faster than expected. The worldwide market for & converged mobile devices& will grow 55.4 percent this year compared to 2009, and in the coming years Android will enjoy the fastest growth (51,2 percent), rising to almost 25 percent of the market by 2014, says the study....

Samsung Electronics announced a dual-core ARM Cortex A9-based system-on-chip (SoC) for tablets, netbooks, and smartphones to compete with Nvidia's Tegra 2. Code-named & Orion,& the 45-nanometer (nm) fabricated SoC offers dual 1GHz cores, and features a 1MB L2 cache, a 1080p HD video accelerator, improved 3D graphics performance, dual-display support, and even a GPS receiver, says the company....

Axiomtek announced a fanless, industrial & shoebox& PC with four expansion slots and support for processors as fast as 2.53GHz. The IPC914-211-FL supports Intel Core 2 Duo and Celeron M CPUs, with up to 8GB of DDR3 memory, dual gigabit Ethernet ports, and a 2.5-inch drive bay, says the company....

IDC analysts say consumer purchases of PCs will slow in the second half of the year, but that strong commercial sales will help offset some of the weakness. PC shipments will be up by 17 percent year-over-year, the research firm added, lowering its previous prediction of a 19.8 percent gain over 2009....

Direct Insight announced a SODIMM-sized COM (computer on module) based on TI's Sitara AM3703 or DM3730, with ARM Cortex-A8 cores clocked at up to 1GHz. The SwiftModule-DM offers up to 256MB of RAM and 256MB of flash storage, and a touchscreen interface supporting up to 2048 x 2048 pixels, and is compatible with both Linux and Android....

Philips and Samsung have both announced Android 2.1-based, 3.2-inch portable media players (PMPs), primed to compete with Apple's newly upgraded iPod Touch. Philips' GoGear Connect reportedly includes Wi-Fi, GPS, and Android Market access, while Samsung's Galaxy Player 50 offers both a videocam and two-megapixel camera in addition to its multimedia capabilities....

The Canonical-backed Ubuntu project announced the beta release of Ubuntu 10.10 (& Maverick Meerkat& ). This latest version of the popular Linux distribution features Linux kernel 2.6.35, GNOME 2.31, and Evolution 2.30.2, among other updates, and also offers an enhanced Software Centre, a new sound app, and a Netbook Edition revamped with Canonical's & Unity& UI stack....

The PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group (PICMG) has announced formal adoption of the COM Express Revision 2.0 spec, ratifying the 3.75 by 3.75-inch COM Express Compact module size and adding Digital Display Interfaces. Concurrently, Kontron announced a revised version of its ETXexpress-AI COM (computer on module), adopting the new COM Express Type 6 pinout....

Beijing-based international online reseller LightInTheBox.com announced it has had two months of surprisingly strong sales of a seven-inch, $140 Android tablet. The aPad Android Tablet runs Android 1.6 -- with Android Market support -- on Samsung's ARM11-based 667MHz S3C6410, and offers 1GB of flash, an SD slot, Wi-Fi, and an 800 x 480-pixel screen, says the company....

Toshiba Europe announced a 10.1-inch Android 2.2 media tablet, due for a fourth quarter release in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The Folio 100 runs Android 2.2 on an Nvidia Tegra 2 processor and offers a 10.1-inch, WSVGA display, but it lacks both GPS and Android Market access....

Globalfoundries says it has reached a & significant milestone& in its production of 28-nanometer ARM Cortex-A9 processors, with silicon expected in late 2010. While initial clock speeds could reach an Intel Atom-beating 2.5GHz, the company said further performance boosts for 28nm are in the works, and also provided its first timeline for the introduction of 22nm and 20nm manufacturing....

Samsung Electronics announced its much-anticipated Android consumer tablet, due to ship in Europe in mid-September. The Samsung Galaxy Tab runs Android 2.2 on a 1GHz Cortex-A8 processor, and offers a seven-inch, 1024 x 600 capacitive touchscreen, a three-megapixel camera, a front-facing videocam, 802.11n, GPS, Bluetooth 3.0, and 3G with voice telephony, says the company....