XplanaZine

Updates on: Cisco, Carnegie Mellon University, Yahoo!’s M45, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, OracleWorld, MySpace, Facebook, and Samsung Electronics

Cisco announced a venture capital initiative targeting the technology industry in Central and Eastern Europe. Cisco will pursue investment opportunities in technology-related start-ups in the region, both directly as well as indirectly through a regional venture fund. — CNN

Carnegie Mellon University will become the first higher education institution to work with Yahoo!’s M45, a new project announced yesterday by the Internet firm designed to advance distributed computing research and software development. — Campus Technology

Open source solution vendor Red Hat is collaborating with Sun Microsystems with the aim of creating a “fully compatible, open source Java Development Kit (JDK) for Red Hat Enterprise Linux,” according to an announcement issued by Red Hat. — Campus Technology

Cisco Systems Inc. did its part for Oracle Corp. users as the OpenWorld conference opened Monday, announcing a protocol it developed with the software company for running Oracle databases over larger server clusters. –  Computer World

Two consumer advocacy groups have asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether new advertising initiatives announced last week by social networking sites MySpace and Facebook adequately protect consumer privacy. — Computer World

Samsung Electronics has unveiled four new data networking terminals for use on the commercial WiMax network operating in Seoul, South Korea. While the devices are specific to the South Korean market, they provide a glimpse of the kind of things consumers overseas might be able to get their hands on in the near future as WiMax is launched in other countries. — Computer World