On November 17,2008 Sun has released the latest version of it’s office productivity suite that is StarOffice 9. StarOffice 9.0 comes with the native support for Mac OS X. Star Office 9.0 is developed on top of Open Office 3.0. StarOffice 9.0 uses Mozilla’s Thunderbird email client and Lightning extension for calendaring as part of its distribution. The suite includes many extensions that make it easier to perform common tasks such as editing PDF files, creating reports, blogging, and publishing wikis.

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On November 10, 2008 Microsoft Corp. announced that Sun Microsystems will offer MSN toolbar powered by Microsoft Live Search, to U.S.-based Internet Explorer users when they download the Java™ Runtime Environment (JRE™), effective as of today. This agreement will help Microsoft to distribute it MSN toolbar to users downloading downloading Sun’s JRE. MSN Toolbar give’s one-click access to Live Search features, as well as news, entertainment, sports and more from the MSN network and direct access to Windows Live Hotmail and Windows Live Messenger.

Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president of the Online Audience Business at Microsoft, Said

This agreement with Sun Microsystems is another important milestone in our strategy to secure broad-scale distribution for our search offering, enabling millions more people to experience the benefits of Live Search. With the vast array of Java software-based Web applications that are downloaded every month, this deal will expose Live Search to millions more Internet users and drive increased volume for our search advertisers.

Rich Green, executive vice president of Software at Sun Microsystems, Said

With over 800 million Java desktop users around the world, our goal is to provide Java users with compelling and immersive business and consumer solutions powered by Java technology and value-added solutions from world-class software partners, Our customers expect top-quality products when they choose to download technology from Sun, and we are confident that they will find great value in both Microsoft’s MSN toolbar and Live Search.

With more than 6.5 million Java software developers around the globe, Java is one of the most widely available and popular software platforms. It is already present on 91 percent of Internet-connected PCs worldwide. The Java Runtime Environment is one of the highest-volume consumer downloads on the Web, with tens of millions of downloads each month from http://java.com.

On Wednesday, September 10, 2008 Sun Microsystems has released source code of its xVM server virtualization software and commercial version of xVM will be available by next month. xVM Server can virtualizes Windows, Linux and Sun’s own Solaris operating system on x86 hardware from such vendors as Sun, HP, IBM and Dell. Before this release Sun Microsystems server virtualization focuses only to their server operating systems.

xVM server virtualization software comes with a embedded web server , allowing users to access management console through web browser. Sun is hoping that open source version of its xVM server virtualization software will attract more developers towards their virtualization software platform and at the same also enhance the xVM Server management layer.

xVM Server had been in a limited beta. A commercial offering including support, updates and patches is expected to be available in October for US$500 per physical server, per year

Download xVM hypervisor Source Code 

xVM hypervisor Source Code Press release

xVM server Website

Updating software with latest updates is good practice but some vendors using their updates to push some other software’s also. All these companies installation includes some additional downloads and users has to unselsect these default options. So are these additional software are working as "Malware" ?

Apple: Apple Quick time updates pushes Apple’s Safari web browser and iTunes towards your computer. Recently I think they also pushes the Mobileme as their software update.

Adobe : Adobe’s Acrobat Reader default installation includes Google reader.

JAVA: Java default updates are now pushing Puzzle Pirates. Sun has also included their Open office as Java software update. Java Update also includes Yahoo toolbar.

REALAUDIO: The media player’s default installation includes BOTH the Google Toolbar and Google Desktop Search.

Sun Microsystems developing a version JAVA virtual Machine for Apple iPhone, That will java developers for develop java applications for Apple iPhone. This JAVA Virtual Machine is expected to be released in June 2008. JAVA Virtual machine for Apple iPhone is based one JAVA Micro Edition. Apple does not showing any interest in the development of Java Virtual Machine for there iPhone’s.

JAVA Virtual machine allows JAVA developers’ to not only develop JAVA games but they can also develop enterprise application for Apple iPhone’s. Sun is trying to develop this Virtual Machine in such a way that the JAVA Applications get’s as much access to iPhone native functionality of the Apple iPhone.

You’ll remember when I was in India I announced a $1m programmer from Sun to recognize contributors to a selection of Free/open source communities (and gave a few more details afterwards). In the interim, each of those communities has formed a team to work out how they would like to direct the $175,000 Sun has allocated to them, and I’m delighted to announce that the six programmers are now live. Full details in the press release which links to each of the community sites. pointers to all these programs can be found here http://www.sun.com/opensource/awards.

Sun offers all its software for free: a leading-edge integrated development environment (IDE), the hottest in mobility, an open-source award-winning operating system, and much more. Don’t miss the opportunity to start developing with the latest technologies. Students can download these software’s and start building high quality productive software by using the java and J2EE technology.

Java technology: – The foundation of Java technologies, Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) lets you develop and deploy applications on desktops and servers, as well as on today’s demanding embedded and real-time environments.

un SPOT: – The Sun Small Programmable Object Technology (Sun SPOT) system from Sun Labs will help transform the potential of wireless sensors into real-world products. Let your imagination be your guide.

JavaFX technologies: – With JavaFX Script technology, a productive scripting language, you can speed development of rich Internet applications. JavaFX Mobile lets you streamline mobile ecosystems with a complete middleware and application stack, built around Java and Linux open-source technologies

NetBeans IDE: – This integrated development environment (IDE) runs on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and the Solaris Operating Environment. The free and open-source NetBeans IDE has lots of plug-ins and tutorials to get you started.

OpenSolaris: – Cutting-edge OpenSolaris source code needs the innovation and involvement of developers like you.

Sun Studio compiler and tools: – Sun Studio software delivers high-performance, optimizing C, C++, and FORTRAN compilers for the Solaris OS on SPARC, and both Solaris OS and Linux on x86/x64 platforms, including the latest multicore systems. Sun Studio provides command-line tools and a NetBeans-based IDE for application development, debugging, performance analysis, and optimization, compatible with gcc, Visual C++, C99, OpenMP, and FORTRAN 2003.

JRuby: – JRuby is a 100 percent pure-Java technology implementation of the Ruby programming language. With JRuby, you get all of the advantages of Ruby plus interoperability with Java platform applications and access to the full range of Java platform functionality

Gaming Darkstar: – Sun’s Project Darkstar radically simplifies online game development and enables games to scale to thousands of players without a glitch. Project Darkstar’s core technologies are freely available for download under open-source licensing.

OpenOffice.org software : – OpenOffice.org software is the most widely distributed open-source multiplatform and multilingual productivity suite: word processor, presentation program, spreadsheet, database, and vector drawing tools.

Source: Sun’s JAVA Website

Sun Microsystems announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire MySQL AB, the world’s most popular open source database. This announcement reaffirms Sun’s position as the leading provider of hardware and software platforms for the Web economy and its role as the largest commercial open source contributor.

with this announcement, Sun demonstrates its commitment to support customers and ISV’s who choose to implement open source solutions, complementing the strong history and continued partnership with commercial database ISV’s including Oracle, IBM DB2, Sybase and others.

MySQL has over 400 blue chip customers and is used by virtually every Web 2.0 and e-commerce company. This acquisition represents substantial new go to market potential for Sun and ISV partners seeking high growth opportunities.

At Sun, we understand your success, our success and that of our customers are tied together. We constantly look for ways to deliver more value to our partners and grow mutual business opportunities. The Sun Partner Advantage Program for ISV’s connects you to Sun technology, sales and marketing support–giving you the power to innovate, collaborate and accelerate growth.