Matt Berger

Worldwide shipments of handheld computers are expected to continue their slow growth in 2002 as the IT industry rebounds from financial woes and corporate users wait for more advanced wireless capabilities, a research firm said Wednesday.

Worldwide shipments of handheld computers are expected to continue their slow growth in 2002 as the IT industry rebounds from financial woes and corporate users wait for more advanced wireless capabilities, a research firm says.

Every technology conference has its call to action, and the JavaOne Developer Conference did not fall short as vendors rallied around the concept of building a new class of Java applications that can be delivered wirelessly to cell phones and handheld computing devices.

Sun Microsystems will cut developers loose from the wired world next week at the JavaOne Conference when it details the next version of its Forte for Java developer tools, specially designed for creating applications to run on wireless devices.

It could take weeks before the shareholder vote is final on Hewlett-Packard Co.'s US$21 billion bid to acquire Compaq Computer Corp., but it seems clear already that a six-month battle between company executives and opponents of the deal has threatened the company's culture, which many shareholders who voted in person Tuesday said is its greatest asset.

America Online Inc. (AOL) is undergoing a taste test of several open-source software products to run various parts of its Internet service, a move seen by some as the beginning of its shift away from Microsoft Corp.'s Web-browsing software and from Unix on its servers.

Employees in the San Francisco Bay Area technology industry are losing some of their economic pull, at least at Microsoft Corp., which Thursday confirmed it plans to cut back on the bonuses it uses to lure talent here.

Offering its partners a closer look at its software plans for non-PC devices, Microsoft Corp. Wednesday announced several enhancements it will make to versions of Windows used in embedded systems, as well as a timeline for the release of software updates and new development tools.