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Adobe confirms: no Flash for Chrome on Android

2012-02-08T11:47:00.000+05:00

By Ryan Paul | Published about 2 hours ago

Google issued a beta release of Chrome for Android earlier today. The browser provides support for modern Web standards and includes a number of compelling features that aren't available in the Android's default browser. One noteworthy Chrome desktop feature that isn't included in the mobile port, however, is the integrated Flash runtime.

Adobe has issued a statement confirming that Chrome for Android does not support Flash content. The company also indicated that it does not plan to work with Google to add Flash support to the new mobile browser. Adobe will, however, continue supporting Flash in the current default Android browser.

"Today Google introduced Chrome for Android Beta. As we announced last November, Adobe is no longer developing Flash Player for mobile browsers, and thus Chrome for Android Beta does not support Flash content," wrote Adobe's Flash Platform product manager Bill Howard.

Adobe struggled for years to make the Flash player plugin viable on mobile devices. Though it was able to make Flash work reasonably well on Android phones, results were mixed on other systems. Due to Apple's unwillingness to allow the Flash plugin on iOS and the difficulty that Adobe faced bringing the Flash player to new devices, the plugin never achieved the same ubiquity on phones that it has historically enjoyed on the desktop.

These setbacks caused Adobe to abandon its mobile Flash player strategy last year. The company announced that it would phase out development of its mobile Flash player plugin and not support it on new platforms. Adobe instead focused its mobile Flash efforts on developing tools for deploying Flash content as native mobile applications. It also strengthened its commitment to native Web standards and acknowledged HTML5 as the way forward for building rich mobile Web experiences.

When Google eventually moves to replace the default Android browser with Chrome in future versions of the Android platform, devices that run the operating system will likely no longer be able to play Flash content in the browser.

Google (finally) brings Chrome to Android

2012-02-08T11:46:00.000+05:00

By Ryan Paul | Published about 12 hours ago

Google is finally bringing Chrome to the Android platform. A beta release of the increasingly popular Web browser was published this morning in the Android Market and is available to users who are running Android 4. The port includes Chrome's advanced HTML rendering engine and many of the browser's popular features.

The Chrome beta is designed to run on both phones and tablets. The tablet version of the user interface is nearly a perfect match of Chrome on the desktop, including the distinctive slanted tab design. The phone version has a more compressed interface, suitable for smaller screens, and includes the standard Chrome features such as the Omnibar and application shortcut pane.

The gap between Chrome and the native Android Web browser has long been a source of confusion for users and pundits. Although both browsers are based on WebKit and use some of the same underlying components, such as the Skia vector graphics framework, they are separate implementations and originally had little else in common.

In fact, the Android Web browser didn't even use Google's unique V8 JavaScript runtime until the release of Android 2.2 in 2010. Prior to that, it used Apple's SquirrelFish engine, presumably because V8's ARM JIT (just in time) backend wasn't good enough yet. The Android Web browser also has relatively poor support for the latest Web standards compared to Chrome.

As we have pointed out in our reviews of the Android operating system, the platform's default browser tends to have difficulty handling the most intensive application-like Web experiences. Google announced last year that it would try to close the gap between the Android browser and Chrome, with the aim of eventually converging them around a shared code base. The release of Chrome on Android appears to be the fruit of that labor.

In a video posted this morning on the official Chromium blog, Google's engineers offered some technical insight into the port and what it has to offer on Android. They said that the new software has the same multiprocess architecture that Chrome uses on the desktop. It also offers support for modern Web features such as WebSockets, IndexedDB, and Web Workers.

Chrome scores 343 at HTML5Test.com. The default browser only scores 256.

Other features that will appeal to Web developers include hardware-accelerated rendering for the HTML5 Canvas element and a built-in remote debugging tool that works over USB. The latter will allow developers to attach the WebKit Inspector in a desktop version of Chrome to an instance of Chrome running on a device.

The Chrome port, which can be downloaded from the Android Market on Android 4 devices, currently installs side-by-side with the default Android browser. Users can make it the default handler for URLs, but it doesn't replace the standard browser.

That also means that the advanced features in the HTML rendering engine won't be available to third-party applications that integrate an embedded WebView control. (It's possible that Chrome will be fully integrated in future versions of the Android operating system.)

The availability of Chrome for Android is a big step forward for Web browsing on mobile devices powered by Google's operating system. It should deliver a significantly better user experience on the Web and make Android a better environment for running next-generation mobile Web applications.

Image courtesy of Google

Microsoft to remove Start button from Windows 8

2012-02-06T10:20:00.000+05:00

A screenshot from the upcoming build of Windows 8 has been leaked and although it seems similar to the developer preview available right now, conspicuous by its absence is our long time friend, the Windows Start button.

The Windows Start button, which took the form of an orb since Vista, has been around since the days of Windows 95, so it would feel a bit strange for any long time Windows user to not find it in its usual place in the corner of your display when he or she upgrades to Windows 8. However, even if Microsoft may have done away with the actual button, some of its functionality will still be available to the user.

According to The Verge, instead of pressing the Start button, the user will now have to hover over the corner to bring forth a new menu. It’s not entirely clear what sorts of functions you will be able to access from this new menu but it’s safe to assume it won’t be exactly like the current Start menu. Meanwhile, the taskbar or the Superbar as Microsoft likes to call it, will continue to behave the way it does in Windows 7.

While we’re still talking about the consumer preview that is going to be released soon, chances are the new changes will be carried over to the final build.

Source

iOS apps crash more often than Android apps, study shows

2012-02-05T02:19:00.000+05:00

iOS apps crash more often than Android apps, study shows

In this episode of smartphone myth busters, we'll investigate the claim that Android apps are often released to the market unstable, whereas iOS apps are always bug-free and buttery smooth.

According to a study by Crittercism, quoted by Forbes, both platforms have their share of apps that crash and, if anything, the iOS ones do so more often. The company which specializes in providing real-time crash reports for mobile apps evaluated reports over a period of one month and found that iOS apps crash quite a lot more than their Android counterparts.

In the first of the three quartiles we got data for, iOS apps crashed after 0.51% of all launches, whereas Android apps only crashed in 0.15%. In the second quartile the picture is similar with iOS apps crashing in 1.47% of the cases, whereas Android apps did so 0.73% of the time. Things are much closer in the third quartile - 2.97% crashes for Android vs 3.66% for iOS.

Crittercism even gave us a detailed breakdown of the most problematic releases by OS. As it turns out, iOS 5.0.1 generates more than a third of all iOS crashes - 33.93%, while iOS 4.3.5 is the second most problematic with 10.62%. That sounds quite believable as these two software versions are the two latest releases of iOS4 and iOS5.

On Android, it's the two Gingerbread releases that generated most of the trouble - 2.3.3 with 24.76% and 2.3.4 with 23.38%.

Of course, those are the most popular releases of each platform, so it's only logical that they will generate the most crashes.

Study data shows apps crash more often on iOS than on Android

Still, the study warns against making hasty conclusions - despite what the data might show at the moment, iOS isn't a worse system for making more apps crash. It's just that Apple introduced iOS 5 relatively soon, made it available to a lot of devices simultaneously and is still working to fix its issues on all of them. The scales might tip the other way once Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich updates start hitting more devices.

What the study was bound to show is that every OS has its more stable and its buggier releases and there's a good portion of apps everywhere that don't behave as they should. Now can we put that debate to sleep, please?

Source | Via | Image source

Windows Phone 7 App Store Still Lags Behind Apple, Android

2011-08-15T13:46:00.000+05:00

Microsoft has bragged about its growing app store for Windows Phone 7 devices, but the store's offerings are still puny compared to Apple's or Google's stores. The Windows Phone 7 app store has around 10 times less apps than the Android Market and around 30 times less than Apple's App Store. Will Microsoft ever catch up?

Since the store's introduction, Microsoft says that out of the 11,500 apps for the Windows Phone 7 platform, 7,500 are paid apps from around 36,00 developers. Some analysts are predicting Windows Phone 7 will boom in the coming years, overtaking the iPhone by 2015, but the outlook, at least for app stores, is not that bright.

For example, Apple reached the 100,000 apps milestone for its store in 15 months. Microsoft will be hard-pressed to hit that mark by the time it celebrates the 15-month anniversary of the Windows Phone Marketplace in January 2012.

The discrepancy between Microsoft's and Apple's app stores grows ever more when looking at the more than 350,000 apps in Apple's store. The Apple App Store has more than 30 times more apps than Microsoft's.

Even Google, which is activating more Android devices than Apple does iPhones lately, is having trouble catching up with the iOS app store. The Android Market has around 150,000 apps, less than half the amount of apps for iOS. The contrast between Google and Apple is starker in the tablet area, where Android has dozens of Honeycomb apps, while there are more than 60,000 for the iPad. Regardless, the Windows Phone 7 app store has still 13 times less apps than the Android Market.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is taking the playground route to fight Apple's App Store supremacy: they're taking them to court. Microsoft started the fight in January, when it asked the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to deny Apple's 2008 trademark application for the term "App Store." Apple is fighting back against claims that the term is too generic to trademark, and says that Microsoft should know better.

Technorati Tags: WP7, Windows Phone 7, Microsoft, Apple, iPhone, iOS, Android, Google, Smart Phone, Mobile Phone, App Store, Android Market, Market Place, iPad

Mr Bean blitzes BBC's Top Gear track

2011-08-05T15:23:00.000+05:00

Mr Bean blitzes Top Gear track

Car-loving comedian Rowan Atkinson has become the fastest celebrity driver on the popular motoring show Top Gear.

Making his long-awaited debut on the latest episode of the show overnight, Atkinson lapped the track more than half a second faster than the previous record holder.

Atkinson's time of 1:42.2 seconds bested fellow comedian John Bishop's 1:42.8 second lap, and was significantly faster than the previous high-profile record holder Tom Cruise - whose time was a 1:44.2.

"It is remarkable because when Bishop did that time and it was so much faster than Tom Cruise we thought it would never be beaten," Clarkson said on the show.

Atkinson is an amateur racer in historic events in the UK and his driving style was unspectacular but smooth and quick, drawing praise from Clarkson.

"What is interesting is all your times were very consistent, as is the mark of a great racing driver," Clarkson said. "Turns out you're in the wrong career."

The Mr Bean actor's passion for cars is well known but this was his first appearance on Britain's most famous car show. The publicity-shy star said he was reluctant to appear because people assumed he would be quick because he competes.

He currently races an historic Ford Falcon but has previously raced an Aston Martin V8 Zagato and a Renault 5 GT Turbo.

He has written for several leading car magazines and is very particular about choosing the right car to match his various characters. For his latest movie Johnny English Reborn he had Rolls-Royce build a custom car with a unique V16 engine.

His collection of road cars includes a McLaren F1, the one-time fastest car in the world, which he had lent to Top Gear for a previous episode.

He was also famously involved in an accident with the car when he ran into the back of a Rover.

He revealed on the show he has driven more than 65,000km in the three-seater V12-powered machine.

Face-matching with Facebook profiles: How it was done

2011-08-05T14:47:00.000+05:00

Image via CrunchBase

Facebook's online privacy woes are well-known. But here's an offline one: its massive database of profile photos can be used to identify you as you're walking down the street.

A Carnegie Mellon University researcher today described how he assembled a database of about 25,000 photographs taken from students' Facebook profiles. Then he set up a desk in one of the campus buildings and asked willing volunteers to peer into Webcams.

The results: facial recognition software put a name to the face of 31 percent of the students after, on average, less than three seconds of rapid-fire comparisons.

In a few years, "facial visual searches may become as common as today's text-based searches," says Alessandro Acquisti, who presented his work in collaboration with Ralph Gross and Fred Stutzman at the Black Hat computer security conference here.

As a proof of concept, the Carnegie Mellon researchers also developed an iPhone app that can take a photograph of someone, pipe it through facial recognition software, and then display on-screen that person's name and vital statistics.

This has "ominous risks for privacy" says Acquisti, an associate professor of information technology and public policy at the Heinz College at Carnegie Mellon University. Widespread facial recognition tied to databases with real names will erode the sense of anonymity that we expect in public, he said.

Another test compared 277,978 Facebook profiles (the software found unique faces in about 40 percent) against nearly 6,000 profiles extracted from an unnamed dating Web site.

About 1 in 10 of the dating site's members--nearly all of whom used pseudonyms--turned out to be identifiable.

Facebook isn't the only source of profile data, of course. LinkedIn or Google+ might work. But because of its vast database and its wide-open profile photos, Facebook was the obvious choice. (Facebook's privacy policy says: "Your name and profile picture do not have privacy settings.")

Facial recognition technology, which has been developing in labs for decades, is finally going mainstream. Face.com opened its doors to developers last year; the technology is built into Apple's Aperture software and Flickr. Google bought a face-recognition technology in the last few weeks, and Facebook's automated photo-tagging has drawn privacy scrutiny.

In the hands of law enforcement, however, face recognition can raise novel civil liberties concerns. If university researchers can assemble such an extensive database with just Facebook, police agencies or their contractors could do far more with DMV or passport photographs--something that the FBI has been doing for years. (The U.S. Army partially funded the Carnegie Mellon research.)

Acquisti is the first to admit that the technology isn't perfect. It works best with frontal face photos, not ones taken at an angle. The larger the database becomes, the more time comparisons take, and the more false-positive errors arise.

On the other hand, face recognition technology is advancing quickly, especially for nonfrontal photos. "What we did on the street with mobile devices today will be accomplished in less intrusive ways tomorrow," he says. "A stranger could know your last tweet just by looking at you."

Study: Dumb People Use Internet Explorer

2011-07-31T05:27:00.000+05:00

Here comes the flame war. According to a new report, dumb people are more likely to use Internet Explorer than smart people. It's a finding so apparently defamatory that the company responsible for the statement is allegedly being threatened with a lawsuit by inflamed Internet Explorer aficionados.

Online psychometric testing company AptiQuant, based out of Canada, turned its analytical skills to a group of more than 100,000 individuals in an effort to determine the IQ scores associated with various Web browser users. Over a period of around four weeks, the company gave a Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) to users looking for free online IQ assessment tests, then recorded the results and browsers used for all participants above the age of 16.

Across the board, the average IQ scores presented for users of Internet Explorer versions 6 through 9 were all lower than the IQ scores recorded for Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Camino, and Opera users. Humorously enough, those using Internet Explorer with the Chrome frame built-in actually ranked third in IQ scores among this browser list. Opera users reported the highest average IQ score – hovering around the 120 to 130 range, which is a bit higher than the WAIS test's population mean of 100 (and standard deviation of 15).

AptiQuant's report notes that the only statistically significant difference in IQ scores occurred between Internet Explorer uses and their counterparts. There was not a significant difference in IQ scores between non-IE browser users, even though these users, in aggregate, reported a higher average IQ score than IE users.

"In addition, the results were compared to another unreleased study of a similar nature undertaken in year 2006. The comparison clearly suggests that more people on the higher side of IQ scale have moved away from Internet Explorer in the last 5 years," reads the report.

Although AptiQuant does get a little heavy-handed against Internet Explorer in its report, suggesting that the "nuisance" browser should be "eradicated," the company has been quick to note that its findings only indicate a one-way relationship between IQ scores and browser use. Perhaps, in part, prompted by alleged threats of a lawsuit against the company by upset Internet Explorer fans.

"I just want to make it clear that the report released by my company did not suggest that if you use IE that means you have a low IQ, but what it really says is that if you have a low IQ then there are high chances that you use Internet Explorer," said CEO Leonard Howard.

For more from David, follow him on Twitter @TheDavidMurphy.

Save your friends from outdated email

2011-07-29T14:05:00.000+05:00

You’ve probably already improved the lives of your friends and family members by helping them switch to Gmail, but what about that one friend who still hasn’t made the switch? It’s time to take a stand and stage an intervention.

How to stage an intervention Follow these three simple steps

1 Select from your contacts

2 Create a customized email

3 Send to your friend

ShareMeNot: Firefox plugins takes the tracking out of social media buttons

2011-07-29T11:48:00.002+05:00

Did you know that buttons like these allow Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, and others to track your online browsing activities on every site that includes one of these buttons, even if you never click the buttons and (in some browsers) even if you have third-party cookies disabled?

Students in the University of Washington Computer Science project have created “ShareMeNot,” a Firefox Add-On that defangs social media buttons like the Facebook “Like” button (and others) so that they don’t transmit any information about your browsing habits to these services until (and unless) you click on them. That means that merely visiting a page with a Like or a Tweet or a +1 button (like this one) doesn’t generate a data-trail for the companies that operate those services, but you still get the benefit of the buttons, that is, if you click them, they still work. Smart.

ShareMeNot is a Firefox add-on designed to prevent third-party buttons (such as the Facebook “Like” button or the Twitter “tweet” button) embedded by sites across the Internet from tracking you until you actually click on them. Unlike traditional solutions, ShareMeNot does this without completely removing the buttons from the web experience.

http://sharemenot.cs.washington.edu/

A Touch Mouse’s Tale

2011-07-28T17:56:00.000+05:00

How do you take a concept from research to product? In the case of the Microsoft Touch Mouse, it took a collection of prototypes, collaboration between transatlantic teams, and a lot of user testing. It also helps when the research that launched the project won the best-paper award during the Association for Computing Machinery’s 22nd Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology.

Mouse 2.0: Multi-Touch Meets the Mouse, a joint effort between Microsoft Research Redmond, Microsoft Research Cambridge, and Microsoft’s Applied Sciences Group, introduced five research prototypes, each exploring a different touch-sensing strategy that influenced the design of different mouse form factors and their interaction possibilities. The research featured extensive user feedback, as well as practical comparisons of different techniques for enabling multitouch on the desktop. The prototypes included three camera-imaging approaches, multiple optical sensors, and the use of capacitive sensors on a curved surface.

Members of the Mouse 2.0 research team expressed the hope that they would be able to refine their prototypes, both ergonomically and in terms of their sensing capabilities, and make a deeper exploration of the interaction techniques specific to this new class of input devices.

The researchers soon got an opportunity to refine their prototypes. Microsoft Hardware decided to get behind the research, and a team was formed to bring a multitouch mouse to market.

New Possibilities for the Humble Mouse

Hrvoje Benko, researcher with the Adaptive Systems and Interaction group at Microsoft Research Redmond, has worked on both the Mouse 2.0 research and the Microsoft Touch Mouse product-development project. He recalls one of the key product decisions: selecting from five prototypes the one that would be the launching point for the new device.

“In the end,” Benko says, “we selected the prototype using capacitive touch sensing to track the position of multiple fingers on its surface. This approach offered the most consistency and flexibility in terms of how we could mount and integrate the sensor, which is important in a small form factor. Plus, unlike camera-based tracking, there are no issues with ambient light, so you reduce the calibration issues. It’s a much more controllable sensor.”

Microsoft Touch Mouse: the final form factor.

Although the choice of prototype simplified some of the technical issues, there were still plenty of challenges when it came to refining the mouse to the point where it was ready for consumer use. The design of the final form factor required sculpting and testing of hundreds of models. The team also examined user interactions and evaluated the kinds of gestures that made sense, developing an entire gestural set focused on enhancing window manipulation and management. At the same time, core technologies, such as firmware and hardware for capacitive sensing, had to be built and optimized for this specific form factor and device functionality.

“The gesture-recognition software is the brains behind all these interactions,” says John Miller, software architect with the Cambridge Innovation Development team at Microsoft Research Cambridge. “Our gestures are multitouch and designed to amplify your experience with Windows 7. So they are optimized for window management: docking, moving, minimizing and maximizing, going backward and forward on your webpage, switching between tasks, and so on.”

Getting the Right Touch

Benko and Miller agree that one of the toughest problems they tackled was the requirement that users should be able to operate the device using classic point-and-click interactions, as well as the newly developed set of multitouch gestures. The mouse form itself added complications: The shape encourages a user to rest both palm and curled fingers on the entire touch-sensitive surface, creating constant contact.

“That made everything much, much harder,” Benko smiles ruefully. “Instead of making palm rejection and other issues easier, it added a few more challenges. But at the end of the day, our goal was to have a comfortable, great-looking mouse that people enjoy using, with a nice look and feel that support the gestures, so it was definitely worth the effort.”

Unlike touch-screen devices on which one or two clear touches make user commands easy to interpret, a small sensor surface and the nature of mouse usage creates an entirely different set of problems.

“If you have a touch-sensitive phone,” Miller explains, “you interact by touching the screen, and as soon as you’re done, your finger lifts off the screen. We have completely different issues with the mouse. We have a device that not only has to support gesture touches, but also has to deal with times when the user is just holding it.

A core technical challenge: developing a gesture set that enables clear differentiation between various types of user contact with the touch surface.

“Next, fingers can be very close together when making contact. To the sensor, they can appear as one finger rather than multiple fingers. But if you want to have reliable gesture recognition, you need a way to differentiate between one, two, or three fingers. We had to develop technology that enhances signal processing and reliably tracks contacts.

“And here is one more example,” Miller continues. “Everybody holds the mouse in a slightly different way. Some people hold their fingers flat on the mouse, and people with very small hands will hold the device differently than people with very large hands. So the mouse does not make contact the same way for all users, and they are all going to be performing these gestures in a slightly different way. As a result, there’s a lot more ‘noise’ to handle than from a touch-screen phone or a Tablet PC. We had to deal with a lot more data.”

To mitigate some of these problems, the team set a design goal that gestures should be both intuitive and distinct—the kind that would be hard for a user to perform by accident. This helped simplify the job of the recognition software.

They also developed a tool that recorded sensor data while human testers were using the mouse for actions such as pointing and clicking, multitouch gesturing, and grabbing and releasing the mouse.

“We ended up with data examples of good gestures for mouse usage and unintentional movements,” Benko says, “and this helped us conceive strategies for distinguishing between intentional gestures and incidental movements. It’s what allowed us to develop an engine that’s able to recognize some movements and ignore others.”

Collaboration Delivers a Quality Product

The Microsoft Touch Mouse project is unusual compared with other hardware-development projects, because it is not simply about hardware. Rather, it is a product that combines multiple disciplines in a tightly integrated way, a task that would have been impossible without close collaboration between multiple Microsoft Research and Microsoft hardware-development teams in different locations.

Decisions about the final product, for example, involved testing and evaluation of different prototypes and features by all parties.

Touch Mouse collaborators Hrvoje Benko (left) and John Miller.

“There were a lot of concepts from the original research,” Benko says, “and some of those we decided to leave out. That doesn’t mean they were bad ideas, just that we were being very careful about our choices. It’s how making a product works: You assess the pros and cons of every choice. Both the research and hardware teams were focused on nailing down the core experience, to make sure that everything we included was critical and didn’t distract from the user’s task. Our goal was to deliver a delightful, fluid desktop experience.”

Even though the multitouch-mouse project officially belonged to the hardware team, Microsoft Research remained integral to the development.

“The original Mouse 2.0 paper was just the starting point,” Miller says. “The research efforts didn’t stop there. They continued in tandem with product development. There was a lot of additional research from different parties before we could turn the multitouch-mouse concept into a device that consumers can buy off the shelf.”

For Benko and Miller, one of the most rewarding aspects of this project has been the close collaboration between the hardware team and Microsoft Research in both Cambridge and Redmond. It went beyond technology transfer and was absolutely critical to delivering a successful transition from research prototype to consumer product.

The Microsoft Touch Mouse proves that quality research doesn’t have to address technologies that are many years away from commercialization. Sometimes, it’s about exploring new possibilities. There’s always room for a better mousetrap—make that, a better mouse.

Microsoft's MS-DOS is 30 today

2011-07-28T17:55:00.000+05:00

MS-DOS is 30 years old today. Well, kind of. On 27 July 1981, Microsoft gave the name MS-DOS to the disk operating system it acquired on that day from Seattle Computer Products (SCP), a hardware company owned and run by a fellow called Rod Brock.

SCP developed what it at various times called QDOS and 86-DOS to run on a CPU card it had built based on Intel's 8086 processor.

Command line: MS-DOS 1.19 still running after all these years

The company had planned to use Digital Research's CP/M-86 operating system, then still in development. But, having released the card in November 1979 - it shipped with an 8086-compatible version Microsoft's Basic language interpreter-cum-operating system - and reached April 1980 without CP/M-86 becoming available to bundle, SCP decided it had to create its own OS for the card.

Enter, in August 1980, QDOS. It really did stand for Quick and Dirty Operating System. That's actually what it was: a basic but serviceable OS good for coding and running programs written in 8086 assembly language - the x86 instruction set. It was written by SCP's Tim Paterson, who had joined the company as a programmer a couple of years previously and began work on it in April 1980.

Some observers later claimed that QDOS too closely resembled CP/M for comfort. Paterson himself would later say that QDOS' design criteria specifically included the abililty to support programs written for CP/M and compiled for the 8086. That's not at all surprising given that SCP undoubtedly saw QDOS as a temporary stand in until Digital Research (DR) shipped CP/M-86.

The picture we have today is muddied by the claims that IBM originally wanted to use CP/M-86 in its first personal computer. IBM and DR famously failed to come to terms that would allow CP/M-86 to be bundled with the PC, and IBM turned to Microsoft for an alternative. Digital Research founder Gary Kildall, who died in 1994, would later allege that Microsoft's product was a rip off, fuelling plagiarism claims that Paterson has always denied - he reverse engineered it.

The competition: CP/M-86 in action
Source: Wikipedia

Update My fellow Reg hack Andrew Orlowski points out that, no matter what Paterson says, the US court ruled against the programmer in a defamation lawsuit he brought against publisher Little Brown for claiming the origins of QDOS were not clear-cut.

Back in 1980, Paterson continued to evolve QDOS through the year, the OS being renamed 86-DOS - it was now evidently no longer viewed as a rough-and-ready stand-in - between September and December 1980. Accounts differ as to when the name - and the OS' status - was switched, but December is the date Paterson himself gave during a Softtalk interview published just a few years later.

'Hi, it's Microsoft. Say, can we license your OS?'

It's at this point that Microsoft re-enters the picture, acquiring from SCP a licence to market and sell 86-DOS, paying $25,000 for the privilege. Microsoft was now working with IBM in place of DR - the two had been partners since November 1980 - to supply the operating system for the hardware giant's first personal computer, but it kept IBM's identity hidden from SCP and Paterson until it acquired the OS in its entirety the following year.

"We all had our suspicions that it was IBM that Microsoft was dealing with," Paterson would later say, "but we didn't know for sure."

Microsoft would later advertise MS-DOS' claimed superiority to CP/M-86

Microsoft had been in contact with SCP ever since the latter asked to use its Basic, so it would have been aware of SCP's work on QDOS, the operating system's design goals and its convenient compatibility with CP/M-86. Microsoft would have seen how closely QDOS matched the product it had been commissioned to supply to IBM, and its ties with SCP would have helped it gain that initial re-distribution licence.

You can read a copy of the 86-DOS Programmer's Manual (PDF) here.

By July 1981, Microsoft had sufficient understanding of IBM's plans - and the vision to conceive of what the personal computer market might become - to consider not merely licensing 86-DOS but buying it outright from SCP, for a further $50,000 - $75,000 in total, $180,000 (£112,000) in today's money. SCP was allowed to continue to offer the OS with its own hardware. Paterson had already quit SCP, in April 1981, to join Microsoft the following month.

Seattle Computer Products' DOS
Source: Ty's Computer Interest Website

"So on 27 July, 1981, the operating system became Microsoft's property," Paterson said in the 1983 Softtalk interview. "According to the deal, Seattle Computer can still see the source code, but is otherwise just another licensee. I think both companies were real happy. The deal was closed just a few weeks before the PC was announced. Microsoft was quite confident."

In August 1981, Big Blue introduced what would eventually become known as the IBM PC, though it was originally the 5150. It was based on the Intel 8088 CPU, a lesser - but cheaper - version than the 8086 that used an 8-bit external bus rather than the 16-bit bus found on the 8086.

Paterson came with his operating system, and stayed with Microsoft for a year while 86-DOS was honed into MS-DOS 1.0, released as a standalone product early in 1982. He left in March 1982, after the completion of MS-DOS 1.25, but would later return (twice) to Microsoft, where he would go on to work on Visual Basic. He eventually formed his own hardware company, Paterson Technology, though his blog now lists his status as retired.

Microsoft boxes up MS-DOS 3.2
Source: Hugepedia

Now 55, Paterson continues to blog about the QDOS' development, emphasising the reasons for its CP/M friendliness yet stressing its under-the-hood differences.

MS-DOS triumphant

From July 1981, SCP continued to sell the operating system it had created, now calling it Seattle DOS and bundling it with its hardware products. It continued to do so until 1985, by which time its was clear buyers wanted systems, and cheap ones - whether from IBM or the many 'cloners' who'd released products compatible with its technology.

Microsoft advertises DOS in 1983
Source: Fraggle UK at Flickr

Brock now sought to sell his rights to MS-DOS, a scheme with which Microsoft was not best pleased and said its agreement with SCP did not permit. Brock sued, and the case went to trial in the last few months of 1986. Brock and Microsoft quickly came to an out-of-court arrangement, however: Brock sold his licence to Microsoft for $925,000, leaving the software giant in complete ownership of the OS.

Through this time, Microsoft was releasing version after version of MS-DOS, each mirrored by a release of IBM's IBM-DOS and, later, PC-DOS, as its take on the OS came to be called.

Other versions appeared, tweaked by PC manufacturers using Microsoft's OEM kit to more closely fit the specifics of their hardware. Many would run software developed for the IBM PC, others would not, though they would run generic MS-DOS-compatible applications.

CP/M-86 was eventually released, in 1981, and subsequently offered by DR as a third-party alternative to MS-DOS. As you can see from the ad above, Microsoft saw it as as a threat. DR's OS was bundled with a number of IBM PC rivals, from the likes of Apricot and Siemens.

You can view the source code for CP/M-86 - and other versions of the OS - here.

In May 1988, CP/M-86 was effectively re-released as DR-DOS and pitched more directly as an alternative to MS-DOS itself than to IBM's PC-DOS.

DR-DOS found many supporters but failed to dent Microsoft's market share. Microsoft quickly established the technique of announcing new MS-DOS features well ahead of their appearance, previously seen as an approach that could only kill sales of the current version. Instead, it kept buyers away from rival offerings, and it's now a common tactic employed by highly competitive tech companies.

MS-DOS gets upgraded, kind of

Meantime, MS-DOS continued to evolve, gaining a graphical user interface of sorts with version 4.0, disk compression tech with version 6.0, and FAT32 support with version 7.1.

Version 4.0 should have been the final release - even Microsoft said so, announcing in 1987 that "DOS is dead" and that we should all be using OS/2, jointly developed by IBM and Microsoft, though the latter stepped away from it when Windows 3.0 became a huge success. That's another story.

Microsoft's work on DOS eventually took the OS to version 8.0, the release used for Windows XP boot discs. With that release, on 14 September 2000, MS-DOS development formally came to an end, though significant work stopped some years earlier with MS-DOS 5.0 when it ceased to be offered as a standalone product. ®

Is Apple declaring war on DVDs?

2011-07-28T17:45:00.000+05:00

Apple is pulling the DVD drive from its Mac mini. Are we moving towards a future of only streaming video?

In its new product announcement last week, Apple rolled out a lot of new features – including significantly faster processers and greater expandability for its Macbook Air and Mac Mini lineups. But Cupertino also quietly took something out of its lineup (besides the vanilla Macbook, that is): the Mac Mini is now missing its DVD drive.

Mac mini review

2011-07-28T17:44:00.000+05:00

For those familiar with last year's Mac mini, what you're peering at above isn't likely to strike you as jarring. Heck, it may even seem somewhat vanilla at this point. In truth, Apple did exceedingly little in terms of design changes with the mid 2011 Mac mini, but given the relatively recent cosmetic overhaul, it's not like we were genuinely expecting anything above a top-to-bottom spec bump. And that, friends, is exactly what we've received. The mini remains quite the curious beast in Cupertino's line -- it's the almost-HTPC that living room junkies are longing for, yet it's still a country mile from being the headless mid-tower that Apple steadfastly refuses to build. It's hardly a PC for the simpleton (given that it's on you to hunt down a mouse, keyboard and monitor), and it's actually taking a giant leap backwards on one particularly important front. Care to hear more? You'll find our full review just past the break.

Apple Core i5 Mac mini unboxing (mid 2011)

Hardware and design

Make no mistake about it -- the mini is just gorgeous to look at. As with the prior model, this 2.7 pound slab of aluminum looks nicer than its price tag indicates, and it honestly feels more like a decoration than a computer. It's sized at 7.7 x 7.7 x 1.4 inches, exactly the same as its predecessor, and outside of the chromed Apple logo on the top, a matte black strip of ports on the rear and a similarly hued lid on the bottom, it's a clean sweep of brushed silver. It'll sit nicely on its edge for those contemplating a vertical installation, but the protruding lid on the bottom makes it a little less elegant for those applications.

Speaking of the rear, the dozen connectors found there aren't cosmetically different than those on the last build. From left to right, you'll find an AC input, gigabit Ethernet jack, FireWire 800 port, HDMI (full-size), Thunderbolt, four USB 2.0 sockets, an SDXC slot, an audio input and a 3.5mm headphone port. Funny enough, last year's DisplayPort socket looks identical to this year's Thunderbolt connector, and not surprisingly, DisplayPort monitors and peripherals will happily fit themselves in with no adapters needed. For what it's worth, Apple does include an HDMI-to-DVI adapter, but oddly, no Thunderbolt dongle. Sure, we know those cables are laced in gold, but what better way to encourage adoption of a new I/O port than to toss in an appendage for newcomers? Even a DisplayPort / Thunderbolt-to-HDMI or DVI cable would've been greatly appreciated -- making it simple to hook up dual displays right from the get-go would have seriously tickled our fancy.

Tinkerers are bound to love that bottom lid... and then grow frustrated by what's underneath; a simple twist reveals a WiFi module, cooling fan, two SODIMM slots and plenty of other, not-easily-accessible components. Our test unit came with a pair of 1GB memory modules, but even the greenest DIYer could swap those out with more sizable ones -- a couple of snaps and a tug is all it took. Unfortunately, we're still miffed at Apple's decision to keep the HDD away from a user's fingertips. If we had our druthers, the RAM wouldn't be the only thing that's just a few clips away, but alas, we're stuck with what we've got.

We shouldn't have to chide Intel and Apple (and whoever else wants to claim responsibility) for not having USB 3.0 on Macs in the year 2011, but regretfully, we are. A foursome of USB 2.0 ports are cute, but when sub-$400 netbooks are boasting SuperSpeed USB ports... well, let's just say it's about time Apple took notice. Unfortunately, Steve Jobs still seems to think that the newest iteration of the world's most popular port isn't going anywhere fast, so we're apt to see Thunderbolt pushed as the true USB 2.0 replacement. That doesn't mean we have to like it, though.

Given that it's the only new port onboard, it's worth mentioning that Thunderbolt is a fantastic addition to the array. The ability to daisy-chain monitors and peripherals off of it enables the bantam desktop to play grown-up in a few key ways. It'll handle vast display resolutions (up to 2,560 x 1,600; the HDMI socket tops out at 1,920 x 1,200) and outlandish storage solutions, and thanks to the revised CPU, it can more easily handle 'em with poise (more on that in a bit). It's also worth pointing out that the power supply is still internalized (huzzah!), leaving you with nary a power brick to fiddle with. Let's all breathe a simultaneous sigh of relief, cool?

Performance

We tested out the base mini -- a $599 rig with a 2.3GHz dual-core Core i5, 2GB of 1333MHz DDR3 memory, a 500GB (5,400RPM) hard drive and Intel's HD Graphics 3000 processor with 288MB of DDR3 SDRAM, which is shared with main memory. All things considered, that's a halfway decent spread for an MSRP that's $100 less than the base model of 2010, but alas, there's no optical drive to pay for, either. Whisking about Lion and handling mundane tasks (we're looking at you, Office) was a breeze, though we confess to getting a little impatient when waiting for heavier applications to load for the first time. Bootup routinely took right around 45 seconds from off to usable, and there's no question that an SSD swap would do wonders for the general snappiness of the system.

We also noticed a bit of slowdown after having Photoshop, Word, Firefox, Chrome, TweetDeck and Lightroom open for around three hours. We're pinning that on the lowly 2GB of RAM; granted, we were intentionally pushing it, but those hoping to get creative work done on a mini will certainly want to invest in a few more gigs (and a speedier disk drive). Thankfully, 2GB proved plenty when playing back 1080p files, YouTube HD clips and anything we could find in Boxee / Hulu.

On the gaming front, the results were downright impressive. We fired up Half Life 2: Episode 2, turned the details to "High" and cranked the resolution to 1,920 x 1,200 to natively fill our 24-inch panel. The result? A consistent 31 frames per second. Granted, that title isn't exactly the newest in the stack, but this at least confirms that light-duty gaming with your favorites from yesteryear is indeed possible. Turning to XBench and Geekbench -- staples in the world of OS X benchmarking -- we found similarly impressive stats. This particular system scored 291.21 (overall) / 228.84 (CPU) / 400.30 (Thread Test) on the former, while notching 5,919 on the latter. For comparison's sake, the mid 2010 Mac mini scored 3385 on Geekbench, proving that the Core i5-infused newcomer is leaps and bounds more powerful in terms of raw number crunching.

The so-called HTPC factor...

Like it or not (Apple's firmly on the 'not' side from what we can gather), the Mac mini looks like it'd be the ideal home theater PC. It's tiny, beautiful, and it supports insanely high resolutions and just about any HDTV / monitor you could think of. It's also a dream come true for heavy Boxee users and iPhone owners; just toss up the overlay and allow your phone to handle the controls. It couldn't be simpler, and if you're able to find an easy solution like this that negates the need for a dedicated mouse and keyboard, you might be just in heaven. It's also worth noting that regardless of how hard we pushed this thing, it simply refused to get even a notch above 'warm,' and the fan noise was practically inaudible from ten feet out.

But here's the rub. While we're able to forgive the mini for not having room for a TV tuner (internally, at least), the sudden and unwarranted departure of the optical drive is downright baffling. We know -- too many people will simply write this off without a second thought, rationalizing it as Apple just killing off something that's on the way out, but it's a decision that we wholeheartedly disagree with. Losing the floppy drive when you have a smattering of other options is one thing; but spiking the optical drive? On a desktop computer? It's a terrible, terrible decision, and the truly ludicrous part is that Apple didn't even shrink the size the chassis to make up for it. As much as Apple would love to have you believe that nothing worthwhile will ever ship on a physical disc again, the HTPC argument alone rebukes that. Having access to Hulu, Boxee, iTunes and Netflix is just half of the story -- there aren't too many HTPC owners that never pay their local Redbox a visit.

Last year's mini could easily play back any DVD rental (read: the only reasonable way to get newer movies at home), install applications that shipped on physical discs, rip your CD collection, and even burn back content and homemade movies. For whatever reason, Apple has decided that you won't need to do any of that with this year's mini, and the only consolation prize is a $100 discount at the register. Gee, thanks for the option. In reality, Apple spiraled off in the wrong direction here. Instead of downgrading the mini from optical drive to slotless, it should've swallowed its misplaced disdain for Blu-ray and finally offered the clear next-gen format victor as a build-to-order option. We can pay $600 (!) to swap in a 256GB SSD in what amounts to a mid-level desktop with no expansion options, but we can't pay $100 to throw in a Blu-ray drive in what's obviously a made-for-HTPC machine? It's not only senseless, it's laughable.

In case it's not crystal clear, Apple has made it effectively impossible for us to recommend this as a media PC, but those dead-set on making it one will be glad to find that multichannel audio output is supported over HDMI, and finding the proper resolution to fit one's TV is a lesson in simplicity. So, for those content with a streaming-only HTPC option, this one's about as gorgeous as they come, but we'd definitely recommend a phone-based remote option. Apple doesn't make a combination mouse / keyboard, and even the best of those tend to feel awkward in use. In all honesty, HTPC diehards are better off dropping $99 on an Apple TV and bidding the hassle adieu -- without an optical drive, we're struggling to see why one would pay an extra $500 for something that'll never leave the den.

Wrap-up

It's not often that Apple products take a turn for the worse when a new revision comes out, but there's no question that the design of 2010's mini is superior to the design of this guy. Sure, the revised edition is a heck of a lot more powerful and $100 cheaper, but it's in the same infelicitous spot that it's always been in: by the time you invest in a halfway decent keyboard, mouse and monitor, you're pushing $850+ for a mid-level machine with a sluggish hard drive, the bare minimum amount of RAM that we'd recommend for Lion, no USB 3.0 and no optical drive. For whatever reason, Apple's made the new mini even less useful than the last, and while a Benjamin off the sticker is appreciated, it hardly puts it in a new class in terms of value.

On the upside, OS X Lion is a superbly polished operating system, and the mini itself is easily the most stunning SFF PC on the market today. It's also eerily quiet, power efficient and cool, and it's everything the average college student or studio apartment dweller needs. Handling 1080p multimedia, basic video / photo editing and even gaming is no problem, but we just can't get over the paradoxes here. Apple dumbs down the back panel so the DIYers among us can't access the hard drive, but selling a computer without three essential peripherals (monitor, keyboard and mouse) ensures that the target market will be one that's at least remotely familiar with technobabble.

In isolation, the Mac mini is a fine computer. It's quick on its feet, and it's happy both beside your TV or in the office. As with all Macs, there's an elusive premium that comes with the overall software experience, and those placing a high value on OS X and the bundled iLife suite may find the compromises here acceptable. But imagining how stellar this bundle of joy could have been with a Blu-ray drive (or any drive) is an impossible vision to shake. Perhaps it's just getting more difficult to logically recommend a Mac desktop, particularly one that's underpowered for serious AV work and near impossible to upgrade. Apple has fine-tuned its laptop options in such a way that makes the revamped mini look underwhelming -- grandiose thoughts of an entry-level MacBook Air docked to a (reasonably priced) 27-inch Thunderbolt Display continue to find their way into our brains.

If you're still fixated on the beauty here, our honest recommendation is to pick up last year's model as it inevitably drops in price (and in turn, increases in value). We've been looking long and hard for an ideal use-case for this guy, and sadly, we've yet to find it.

Google+ traffic falls as users spend less time on site

2011-07-28T17:42:00.001+05:00

Last week, comScore reported that Google+ hit 20 million unique visitors.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Total visits to Google+ declined about 3% to 1.79 million in the U.S.
Average time on the site was down 10% from 5 minutes, 50 seconds
Google+'s traffic had enjoyed a steady climb since its June 28 debut

RELATED TOPICS

(Mashable) -- After a running start, Google+'s growth may be slowing down a bit. A report from Experian Hitwise found both traffic and users' average time on the social network fell last week in the U.S.

Total visits to Google+ declined about 3% to 1.79 million in the U.S. for the week ending July 23 compared to the previous seven days, according to the research company.

The site received 1.86 million visits the prior week. Average time on the site was down 10%, from 5 minutes, 50 seconds to 5 minutes, 15 seconds.

Matt Tatham, a rep for Experian Hitwise, was careful not to overplay the findings. "This is not a huge drop," he says. The company extrapolates its figures from data from ISPs and from an opt-in panel of about 2.5 million users.

The report comes after Google+'s traffic enjoyed a steady climb since its June 28 debut. Last week, comScore reported that the network hit 20 million unique visitors.

Some were so enamored with Google+ that they closed out their Facebook accounts and moved all their activity to the new network.

What do you think? Has the novelty of Google+ worn off or is this just a blip on the road to world domination? Let us know in the comments.

Samsung Galaxy S II Sales Hit 5M Ahead of U.S. Debut

2011-07-28T17:42:00.000+05:00

Samsung said it has sold 5 million Galaxy S II handsets in 85 days of availability in South Korea, Japan and some European countries, according to Yonhap News.

That speedy clip comes after Samsung sold 3 million of the Android 2.3 "Gingerbread" devices in 55 days and 1 million in less than a month in Korea alone.

The white-hot sales bode well for Samsung, which just launched the Galaxy S II in China but has yet to release the much-ballyhooed phones through carriers such as AT&T and Verizon Wireless in the U.S. The big mystery is: when will the new devices launch stateside?

Shin Jong-kyun, president of Samsung's mobile business and digital imaging, said at a media briefing July 19 the company would launch the Galaxy S II phones in the U.S. this August.

However, Samsung's U.S. contingent told eWEEK July 20: "Samsung Mobile politely declines to comment on the upcoming availability of the Galaxy S II in the U.S.

Meanwhile, Boy Genius Report snagged these images of AT&T's Galaxy S II slider smartphone.

Other Galaxy S II handsets have proven to be thinner and lighter than the Galaxy S predecessors that sold over 10 million units in the U.S. in 2010. The new handsets also use 4.3 inch Super AMOLED Plus (Super active-matrix organic LED Plus) screens and are powered by 1.2GHz processors.

The phones also include an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera that captures video in 1080p, as well as a 2MP front-facing camera.

Samsung is believed to be targeting an August U.S. launch to get on retail shelves ahead of Apple's highly anticipated iPhone 5, which is expected to launch this September or October.

Samsung's urgency to get out the door in the U.S. may be appropriate. Experian's PriceGrabber said 35 percent of nearly 3,000 U.S. consumers surveyed online said they would buy the iPhone 5 upon its release.

Samsung may have sold between 18 million and 21 million smartphones worldwide from April through June, compared with 16.7 million for Nokia and 20.3 million iPhones, according to research firm Strategy Analytics via Bloomberg.

Nintendo Cuts Profit Forecast and Price of Key Product

2011-07-28T17:41:00.000+05:00

TOKYO — In a striking reversal of fortune for the world’s largest videogame maker, Nintendo drastically cut its annual profit outlook and said it would discount its new 3DS handheld device as it struggles to stem a flow of users to casual online games.

Nintendo said Thursday that it had tumbled to a loss of 25.5 billion yen for the three months to June 30, as sales plunged 50 percent from a year earlier. The loss prompted Nintendo to lower its annual profit forecast 82 percent to 20 billion yen ($257 million) for the year to March, down sharply from a previous estimate of 110 billion yen. The company also slashed its annual sales forecast by 18 percent to 900 billion yen.

Nintendo had been banking on the 3DS, its first major new gaming system since its wildly-popular Wii home console, to lock in a new generation of fans and bolster profits eroded by maturing sales. The handheld machine lets users play games that appear in 3-D, without the need for the clunky glasses that accompany most current 3-D technology.

But sales of the 3DS — which went on sale in February in Japan and in March in other parts of the world — have fallen short of expectations, hurt partly by the device’s unfortunate release date just before the devastating earthquake that struck Japan in March. The Kyoto-based company said it had sold just 710,000 units of the portable console in the three months to June, bringing the total number of units sold to 4.32 million. The company had said it was aiming to sell that many devices in just the first weeks following the product’s rollout.

The lackluster sales also reflect increasing competition for video game companies from new players that are redefining the industry. Apple has sold more than 200 million devices like the iPhone and iPad that let users choose from tens of thousands of games to download for a few dollars, or for free. Smartphones that run Google’s Android operating system also run simple, downloadable games. Casual games played within social networks like Facebook have taken off, too, as membership of those networks grows.

The new crop of casual games has added to the traditional rivalry between gaming systems developed by the videogames sector’s traditional top three: Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft. Nintendo has dominated the last generation of game consoles, selling over 146 million DS handheld game machines and 86 million Wii home consoles. Nintendo’s Japanese rival, Sony, is set to introduce a new portable game machine called the PlayStation Vita later this year, while Nintendo plans to sell a new home console in 2012.

But for now, players complain of a lack of game titles for the 3DS, a problem that plagues most new gaming systems. Nintendo said Thursday that two flagship titles for the 3DS — Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart — would go on sale in November and December, releases that are expected to improve sales of the device. But unless more consumers start buying the 3DS soon, third-party developers could be scared away from making games for the device, leading to a vicious cycle of fewer games released and fewer 3DS units sold.

Nintendo is hoping that a steep price cut will help kick-start sales. The 3DS will cost 15,000 yen in Japan from Aug. 11, down 40 percent from the original price of 25,000 yen, the company announced Thursday. In the United States, the price will drop the following day to $169.99 from $249.99. The company said that it expected the price cut to help it meet a previous sales forecast of 16 million 3DS machines by the end of March.

In a letter posted online, Satoru Iwata, Nintendo’s president and chief executive, offered a profuse apology to Nintendo users, saying that lowering prices so soon after a game machine’s release was a painful move.

“Never in Nintendo’s history have we lowered prices to such an extent, less than half a year since the product launch,” Mr. Iwata said. “But we have judged that unless we move decisively now, there is a high possibility that we will not see many of our customers enjoying a Nintendo 3DS.”

KDDI officially announces first Mango phone in Japan

2011-07-28T17:39:00.000+05:00

Shortly after the news that Windows 7.5 aka Mango has been released to manufacturers comes the official announcement of the first phone to run the updated OS, the Toshiba-Fujitsu made IS12T. Japanese carrier KDDI confirmed that the device will be the first to run the new build of Windows Phone 7 and is set to launch in September. Hopefully the phone will signal the start of a new wave of devices running the platform as since its launch relatively few WP7 handsets have hit the market.

Despite the handset having a less than memorable name the specs should leave quite an impression as the IS12T will feature a 3.7" WVGA screen, 1GHz processor and a generous 32GB of internal storage. There's a rear-facing 13mp camera which offers one-touch activation even in standby mode and though WP7.5 can support video calling there's no mention of a front-facing camera. The handset will be available in a choice of three colours and in addition to this it will also be waterproof.

Not only will the IS12T be the first to offer Mango but it will also be the first Japanese Windows Phone handset. Up until now the OS hasn't offered support for Japanese language, one of many improvements that have been delivered with the new build. Japan is one of 19 additional markets which the Windows Phone marketplace will now support and should help Microsoft to significantly increase its smartphone userbase in 2012.

For the rest of the world it looks like Nokia's "Sea Ray" will be the first Mango phone which offers some decent specs in a form factor similar to the Nokia N9. While the IS12T probably won't be seen in the US consumers can expect to see plenty of new Windows Phone 7 devices in the new year not just from Nokia but from Samsung, HTC and Dell as well.

Fujitsu IS12T: First WP7 Mango Phone

2011-07-28T17:38:00.000+05:00

We already knew that KKDI was going to get a “Mango” device, but it seems that the IS12T will be the first Windows Phone 7.5 (aka Mango) device to ship to consumers. “Hip” Japanese carrier KDDI, which is well known for its eccentric phone designs, will commercialize a series of colorful handsets from Fujitsu. This was just announced (officially) in Japan.

The IS12T (what an awful name) is not only smart, but it is also dust and water resistant. At 113g, it is a very light phone which is comparable in weigh with the Samsung Galaxy S2, one of the lightest Android phone. On the back, the IS12T has a 13.2 Megapixel camera, and while we will have to check the actual image quality, we wonder if the manufacturer knows that the Megapixel war is over and that “low-light” is the new frontier.During my last trip to Japan in October 2010, I have seen how the iPhone had spread, and how Android was starting to gain traction. Now, we will see if Windows Phone 7 can wow one of the biggest phone markets in the world. Let’s wait and see.

Specifications

3.7″ Display (800×480)
Processor Qualcomm MSM8655
Colors: Citrus, Magenta, Black
DLNA media sharing support
Internet Explorer 9 rendering engine (GPU Accelerated)
13.2 Megapixel camera, 1-LED Flash
NFC
59x118x10.6mm, 113g
See Japanese specifications

Microsoft apologizes for tasteless Amy Winehouse tweet

2011-07-28T17:37:00.000+05:00

By STEVEN D. JONES

Microsoft Corp. stepped up its battle for a share of the smartphone market by releasing the Mango update for its Windows Phone operating system.

The update, which integrates voice commands into a variety of functions and unifies personal messaging services, was released to manufacturers Wednesday.

In a blog post, Terry Myerson, corporate vice president of Windows Phone engineering, said the update is aimed at creating a "smarter and easier approach to communications."

Mango raises the ante in mobile multitasking by enabling users to email, listen to music and even drop into an online game without having to shuttle between applications, making Mango Microsoft's best weapon yet against Apple Inc.'s iPhone and phones running Google Inc.'s Android operating system.

It also provides a technology boost for Nokia Corp., Microsoft's leading phone manufacturing partner that has been losing market share to Apple and Google.

"With the Mango update, Microsoft's operating system is arguably on a par with both iPhone and Android," wrote Needham & Co. analyst Charlie Wolf in a note to clients. "So if Nokia can hold for two more quarters, the company has a chance to reclaim a position among the three leading platforms."

Microsoft has taken steps to make phones running Mango truly different. For example, addresses for email, instant messaging, phone numbers and Twitter and Facebook accounts are all under a person's name, not separate applications.

Mango also integrates voice recognition and control for dialing or searches. Users can launch a search through a button on the phone and either by typing or voice commands, from any application. A new feature called Scout shows information in the user's area, with links to reviews for places of interest.

Write to Steven D. Jones at steve-d.jones@dowjones.com

Microsoft apologizes for tasteless Amy Winehouse tweet

2011-07-28T17:34:00.000+05:00

Microsoft's UK Twitter account "@Tweetbox360" committed the ultimate social media faux pas Sunday.

Yes, it actually tweeted "Remember Amy Winehouse by downloading the ground-breaking 'Back to Black' over at Zune:social.zune.net/album/Amy-Wine..." - pushing users to buy the singer's music only one day after her death.

In the world of social media, all it takes is 140 characters to completely change public opinion for the better or worse. The tasteless tweet garnered negative responses from followers like "Crass much?" and "Stay classy Microsoft PR jackals."

Clearly the majority of the attitudes towards the tweet were "really?" and "too soon!" but another Twitter user claims "it's what she would have wanted."

Every time a celebrity dies, there are some people out there who see it as an opportunity to make a buck.

Let's not forget about Michael Jackson's infamous estate sale, in which his sparkly glove sold for somewhere in the neighborhood of $50,000. Or there's Heath Ledger's death, which prompted sales from three of his older movies, helping launch them to Amazon's top 25 list.

Part of the phenomena is organic because humans want to rediscover the fallen celebrity. When brands tap into this curiosity by pushing sales initiatives, there is a fine line between tasteful and tasteless.

Apple has Amy Winehouse's face splashed across their iTunes homepage with the words "Remembering Amy Winehouse." The reason why Apple has not gotten much flack is probably because their sales initiative was much more subtle than Microsoft's blatant tweet.

After sending out the initial tweet, the Microsoft PR team followed up with a tweet stating "Apologies to everyone if our earlier Amy Winehouse 'download' tweet seemed purely commercially motivated. Far from the case, we assure you," acknowledging the negative backlash.

Later, Microsoft sent out a third tweet stating "With Amy W's passing, the world has lost a huge talent. Our thoughts are with Amy's family and friends at this very sad time."

Sadly, the damage had already been done.

Microsoft isn't the only brand to baffle us with its social media ineptitude. Other companies, like Entenmann's who tweeted "Who's #notguilty about eating all the tasty treats they want?" after Casey Anthony was proven #notguilty in the murder of her child.

Or there's Kenneth Cole who infamously tweeted "Millions are in uproad in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online at httpL//bit.ly/KCairo -KC."

Fail.

What any of these social media snafus can teach us is the power of social media for changing public opinion whether it's for the better, or in Microsoft's case, worse.

WP7 Mango dev tools get updated

2011-07-28T17:32:00.000+05:00

Microsoft has just released a new version of the software development kit for the updated version of its Windows Phone software, Mango.

The move would seemingly come as an assurance that Microsoft is well underway to deliver its promise of having Mango open for business by the end of the fall season.

Earlier this week it was revealed that Mango would go live in Japan before any other country, and the first Mango-powered devices would be available there in September.

The new version of development tools it called Windows Phone SDK 7.1 Beta 2 Refresh. "The phone OS and the tools are two equal parts of the developer toolkit that correspond to one another. When we took this snapshot for the refresh, we took the latest RC drops of the tools and the corresponding OS version," wrote Microsoft in a company blog.

Mango, also known as Windows Phone 7.5, will be a cataclysmic update to Microsoft's still-nascent mobile platform that launched late last year. In its brief time on the market, WP7 has managed to make significant splashes but has also suffered from bungled management and updates that were delayed an almost comical amount of time.

Here are a few more features that will be coming to WP7.5:

- Streaming video or music content from the phone's Web browser will continue even if users open up another app or put the phone in sleep mode.

- Expanded Xbox Live connectivity - voice chatting with other Xbox Live users, attending or hosting Xbox Live parties, and possibly even playing online Xbox 360 games in real-time with console players.

- Extremely deep Facebook integration, tying the user's login credentials directly to the phone, eliminating the need to log in over and over.

In other words, Mango looks to be one heck of an update. The only thing to worry about is whether or not the update will happen as scheduled. Microsoft hasn't exactly boasted a stellar record with Windows Phone software updates up to this point.

Google Offers To Re-Write Your Webpages On The Fly, Promising 25% To 60% Speed Improvements

2011-07-28T17:30:00.000+05:00

Google has long been obsessed with speed. It’s paramount in pretty much everything they do. Which is why the launch of Google+ with some — gasp — attention paid to design is even more surprising. But a new service Google is launching this evening very much puts the focus back on speed — an obsessive amount of focus, one might say.

Page Speed Service is the latest tool in Google’s arsenal to help speed up the web. This service is also their most ambitious yet. When you sign up and point your site’s DNS entry to Google, they’ll enable the tool which will fetch your content from your servers, rewrite your webpages, and serve them up from Google’s own servers around the world. Yes, you read all of that correctly.

“Your users will continue to access your site just as they did before, only with faster load times,” Google notes. They say that applying web performance best practices across these pages should improve speed by 25 to 60 percent. Google will allow you to test out how much they’ll be able to speed up your site before you commit to it, apparently.

“Now you don’t have to worry about concatenating CSS, compressing images, caching, gzipping resources,” Google says. Okay, but isn’t that a little freaky, giving Google the ability to re-write and serve your pages on the fly? Perhaps. But if they really can deliver on the results they’re promising, it may be worth it.

Google says that Page Speed Service will be offered for free to a limited set of testers right now. Eventually, they will charge for it, and pricing will be “competitive”.

Nielsen: Apple Leading U.S. Smartphone Manufacturer, Android Leading OS

2011-07-28T17:26:00.000+05:00

No surprises here. Google’s Android operating system continues to lead its rivals in the race for US smartphone market dominance, pulling further ahead of Apple, Research In Motion and pretty much everyone else.

According to Nielsen’s latest survey of the US smartphone market, Android now holds a 39 percent share of the U.S. consumer smartphone–up 3 percent from the research outfit’s last report which tracked market share between February and April. Apple’s iOS holds the second largest with 28 percent, up from 26 percent. And RIM’s Blackberry holds third with a 20 percent share, down 3 percent from that Feb. – Apr. 2011 time period.

So, the same basic breakdown we’ve been seeing for a while now. That said, viewed through the manufacturer share lens, the market looks quite different. There, Apple is the undisputed leader, RIM and HTC rank second with 20 percent shares, and Motorola, with an 11 percent share ranks third.

Bringing up the rear: Hewlett-Packard and the long suffering Nokia, with a meager 2 percent.

2011-07-27T18:50:00.003+05:00

Imran Khan: World's 3rd most popular politician on Facebook

http://statistics.allfacebook.com/pages/leaderboard/-/-/-/f/desc/184

We Want Imran Khan To Be The Next Prime Minster Of Pakistan

Facebook page setup by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf is currently at number 3 by number of fans according to www.allfacebook.com

total 370,193 fans as of today and with daily growth are of 1170

Pakistan Tehreek-e-insaf [Offical page] is now 15th in the world among political party pages.

Ufone Launches 3 Android Handsets

2011-03-10T22:37:00.004+05:00

Ufone has formally stepped into Smartphone handset business. Earlier, Ufone has already tried selling low-end phone and we know the experience has been remarkable, except that the phones used to get unlocked.

Today, in a single go, Ufone has launched 3 android based handsets, which come with 30 MB of free Free GPRS Usage for 18, 15 and 6 Months based on phone model.

All three handsets are manufactured by Huawei and comes with network locked setting. Ufone claims that its Image Phone (U8800) is unlock-able.

Ufone has arranged hands-on for all the android handsets at its main service centers in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad (F-7).

We managed to catch Mr. Waqar Nayyar, AM Devices and Special projects for Ufone, who briefed us about the Android handsets that Ufone launched today.

Ufone Image (U8800):

Ufone Image sports a 3.8-inch capacitive touchscreen, a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash, Bluetooth, GPS / A-GPS and WiFi connectivity.

Ufone Image Android Phone is powered by a 800MHz Cortex-A8 processor with 512MB RAM.

It has 4 GB of internal memory and supports microSD / SDHC expansion.

Specifications:

Android™ 2.2 (Froyo) OS
5 MP Auto Focus Camera with LED flash
3.8” full touch screen supporting auto rotation
G-sensor
720p HD video capture and playback
WIFI with portable hotspot support
GPS/AGPS
Google Software Suite
Web browsing with Flash support
512 MB RAM + 4GB Memory
Price: Price: Rs. 24,999
Free 30 MB GPRS, Every month for 18 months

Ufone Verve (U8500):

Ufone Verge runs on the Android operating system, and comes with a music and video player supporting H.264, H.263, MP4, eAAC+, WMA and MP3 file types.

This model sports a 262K color touchscreen measuring 3.2-inches; you also get features such as an Optical trackpad, Accelerometer sensor, Bluetooth, 3G and a memory slot for up to 32GB MicroSD cards.

Specifications:

Android™ 2.1 OS
3.2” full touch screen
3.2 MP Camera
Google applications
G-Sensor
Optical Trackpad
FM Radio
GPS/AGPS
Price: Rs. 15,499
Free 30 MB GPRS, Every month for 15 months

Ufone Ideos (U8150):

We are familiar with Huawei Ideos, which is now brought by Ufone as well. Ufone says it is offering Black Ideos, which is otherwise not available in Pakistan. In addition, Ufone is giving away one free casing with all Ufone Ideos (until stock lasts).

Android™ 2.2 (Froyo) OS
2.8” full touch screen
Micro SD Card support upto 16 GB
G-Sensor
GPS/AGPS
Google Software Suite
Price: Rs. 11,999
30 MB Free GPRS for 6 months

source: http://propakistani.pk/2011/03/09/ufone-launches-3-android-handsets/

Android Developers Blog: On Android Compatibility

2010-11-25T14:28:00.001+05:00

Android Developers Blog: On Android Compatibility

[This post is by Dan Morrill, Open Source & Compatibility Program Manager. — Tim Bray]

At Google I/O 2010, we announced that there are over 60 Android models now, selling 100,000 units a day. When I wear my open-source hat, this is exciting: every day the equivalent of the entire population of my old home city starts using open-source software, possibly for the first time. When I put on my hat for Android Compatibility, this is humbling: that’s a whole lotta phones that can all share the same apps.

Another thing we launched at Google I/O was an upgraded and expanded source.android.com. The new version has refreshed info on the Android Open-Source Project, and some new tips and tools for device manufacturers — useful if you’re an OEM. However, it also has details on the Android compatibility program, now. This is also aimed mostly at OEMs, but Tim Bray suggested that developers might be interested in a peek at how we keep those 100,000 devices marching to the same beat, every day. So here I am, back on the blog.

The F-word, or, Remember remember the fifth of November
I remember sitting with my colleagues in a conference room in Building 44 on November 5, 2007, listening to Andy Rubin and Eric Schmidt announce Android to the world. I remember a lot of the press stories, too. For instance, Android was “just words on paper” which was especially entertaining since I knew we were getting ready to launch the first early-look SDK a mere week later.

Another meme I remember is... yes, “fragmentation”. Literally before the close of business on the same day we announced Android (4:46pm to be precise), I saw the first article about Android “fragmentation.” The first day wasn’t even over yet, and the press had already decided that Android would have a “fragmentation” problem.

The thing is, nobody ever defined “fragmentation” — or rather, everybody has a different definition. Some people use it to mean too many mobile operating systems; others to refer to optional APIs causing inconsistent platform implementations; still others use it to refer to “locked down” devices, or even to the existence of multiple versions of the software at the same time. I’ve even seen it used to refer to the existence of different UI skins. Most of these definitions don’t even have any impact on whether apps can run!

Because it means everything, it actually means nothing, so the term is useless. Stories on “fragmentation” are dramatic and they drive traffic to pundits’ blogs, but they have little to do with reality. “Fragmentation” is a bogeyman, a red herring, a story you tell to frighten junior developers. Yawn.

Compatibility
Now, that’s not to say that there aren’t real challenges in making sure that Android devices are compatible with each other, or that there aren’t very real concerns that keep app developers awake at night. There definitely are, and I spend a great deal of time indeed thinking about them and addressing them. The trick is to define them clearly.

We define “Android compatibility” to be the ability of a device to properly run apps written with the Android SDK. This is a deceptively simple way to frame it, because there are a number of things that can go wrong. Here are a few:

•Bugs - devices might simply have bugs, such as a buggy Bluetooth driver or an incorrectly implemented GPS API.

•Missing components - devices might omit hardware (such as a camera) that apps expect, and attempt to “fake” or stub out the corresponding API.

•Added or altered APIs - devices might add or alter APIs that aren’t part of standard Android. Done correctly this is innovation; done poorly and it’s “embrace and extend”.

Each of these is an example of something that can make an app not run properly on a device. They might run, but they won’t run properly. These are the things that I spend my time preventing.

How It Works
As stewards of the platform we realize that it’s vital to allow only compatible devices to participate in the Android ecosystem. So, we make compatibility a strict prerequisite for access to Android Market and the right to use the Android name. This means that developers can rely on the fact that Android Market — the keystone of the Android ecosystem — will only allow their apps to run on compatible devices. It’s pretty self-evident that a single app ecosystem is better than many small ones, so OEMs are generally pretty motivated to ship compatible devices.

But motivation alone doesn’t get us very far without tools to actually ensure compatibility, which is where the Android compatibility program comes in. This program is like a stool with three legs: the Android source code, the Compatibility Definition Document, and the Compatibility Test Suite.

It all starts with the Android source code. Android is not a specification, or a distribution in the traditional Linux sense. It’s not a collection of replaceable components. Android is a chunk of software that you port to a device. For the most part, Android devices are running the same code. The fact that all Android devices run the same core Android code goes a long way toward making sure those devices all work the same way.

However, this doesn’t solve the problems of missing components or altered APIs, because the source code can always be tweaked. This is where the Compatibility Definition Document (or CDD) comes in. The CDD defines in gory detail exactly what is expected of Android devices. It clearly states, for example, that devices may not omit most components, and that the official Android APIs may not be altered. In a nutshell, the CDD exists to remove ambiguities around what’s required of an Android device.

Of course, none of that overcomes the simple reality of human error — bugs. This is where the Compatibility Test Suite comes in. The CTS is a collection of more than 20,000 test cases that check Android device implementations for known issues. Device makers run the CTS on their devices throughout the development process, and use it to identify and fix bugs early. This helps ensure that the builds they finally ship are as bug-free as possible.

Keeping Up with the Times
We’ve been operating this compatibility process with our OEM partners for over a year now, and it’s largely responsible for those 60+ device models being interoperable. However no process is ever perfect and no test suite is ever 100% comprehensive, and sometimes bugs get through. What happens then?

Well, we have great relationships with our OEMs, and like I said, they’re motivated to be compatible. Whenever we hear about a serious bug affecting apps, we report it to our partners, and they typically prepare a bugfix release and get it out to end users. We will also typically add a test case to the CTS to catch that problem for future devices. It’s an ongoing process, but generally our partners are as interested as we are in the user experience of the devices they sell.

The mobile industry today is “very exciting”, which is code for “changes painfully fast”. We believe that the only way Android will be a success is to keep up with that change, and ultimately drive that change. This means that over time, the CDD will also change. We’ll add new text to handle problem cases we encounter, and the actual requirements will change to accommodate the innovations happening in the field. For example, in the 2.1/Eclair CDD, we tweaked the CDD slightly to make telephony optional, which allows Android to ship compatibly on non-phone handheld devices. Whenever we do this, of course, we’ll make corresponding changes to the Android APIs and Android Market to make sure that your apps are protected from ill effects.

On a somewhat related note, a lot of ink has been spilled on the fact that there are multiple versions of Android out there in users’ hands at the same time. While it’s true that devices without the latest software can’t run some of the latest apps, Android is 100% forward compatible — apps written properly for older versions also run on the newest versions. The choice is in app developers’ hands as to whether they want to live on the bleeding edge for the flashiest features, or stay on older versions for the largest possible audience. And in the long term, as the mobile industry gets more accustomed to the idea of upgradeable phone software, more and more devices will be be upgraded.

What It Means for You
All that is great — but what does it mean for developers? Well, we put together a page in the SDK Documentation to explain this, so you should take a look there. But really it boils down to this:

1.As a developer, you simply decide what features your app requires, and list them in your app’s AndroidManifest.xml.

2.The Android compatibility program ensures that only compatible devices have access to Android Market.

3.Android Market makes sure your app is only visible to those devices where it will run correctly, by filtering your app from devices which don’t have the features you listed.

That’s all!

There almost certainly will be devices that have access to Android Market that probably weren’t quite what you had in mind when you wrote your app. But this is a very good thing — it increases the size of the potential audience for your app. As long as you accurately list your app’s requirements, we’ll do the rest and make sure that your app won’t be accessible to a device where it won’t run properly. After all, we’re app developers ourselves, and we know how painful it is to deal with users upset about an app not working on a device it wasn’t designed for.

Now, that’s not to say that we think our current solution is perfect — no solution is. But we’re continuously working on improvements to the SDK tools and Android Market to make your life as an Android developer even easier. Keep an eye on this blog and on the Android Market itself for the latest info.

Thanks for reading, and happy coding!

Android

2010-11-25T10:42:00.011+05:00

First of all, as Dan Morrill memorably explained in On Android Compatibility, “Android is not a specification, or a distribution in the traditional Linux sense. It’s not a collection of replaceable components. Android is a chunk of software that you port to a device.”

Linux · Underneath everything is a reasonably up-to-date Linux kernel (2.6.32 in my current Nexus One running Froyo), with some power-saving extensions we cooked up; the process of trying to merge this stuff into upstream Linux has been extended and public and is by no means over.

Android runs on Linux, but I’d be nervous about calling it a distro because it leaves out so much that people expect in one of those: libraries and shells and editors and GUIs and programming frameworks. It’s a pretty naked kernel, which becomes obvious the first time you find yourself using a shell on an Android device.

If it were a distro it’d be one of the higher-volume ones, shipping at 200K units a day in late 2010. But nobody counts these things, and then there are a ton of embedded flavors of Linux shipping in unremarkable pieces of consumer electronics, so there’s a refreshing absence of anyone claiming to be “the most popular Linux”. I like that.

Dalvik · The next big piece is Dalvik, comprising the VM and a whole bunch of basic runtime essentials. Its design is fairly unique, and judging by recent history, seems to be working out pretty well as a mobile-device app substrate.

All the standard APIs that you use to create Android apps are defined in terms of Dalvik classes and interfaces and objects and methods. In fact, some of them are thin layers of Dalvik code over native implementations.

It’s possible, and common practice, to call back and forth between Dalvik and native code using the JNI protocol, which is a neat trick since what’s running on Dalvik isn’t anything like Java bytecodes on a Java VM.

How It’s Generated · Native code is currently produced more or less exclusively by compiling C or C++ code; but there’s no reason it has to be that way. Dalvik code is currently produced by generating Java bytecodes and translating them; but there’s no reason it has to be that way.

I want to emphasize this point a little. Android apps are defined as code that runs on the platform and uses the APIs. As long as an app does these things properly, it’s really nobody’s concern how it got generated.

Special Apps · The picture is a little misleading, because some of those Dalvik-based apps are provided by Google and sometimes are seen as “part of Android”. I’m talking about the Dialer and Contacts and Calendar and Gmail and Chat and so on. Most of them are open-source and replaceable (and have been replaced by handset makers); a few are closed-source and proprietary, like Google Maps and Android Market.

That Open-Source Thing · In the big picture above, most of the stuff in green is Apache-licensed. The rest is a mixture of GPL and LGPL and BSD, with some Apache in there too. This excludes some low-level device drivers and of course the majority of non-Google apps, which are closed-source.

The Framework · This is the stuff that uniquely defines Android; more or less everything that Google wrote and you wouldn’t expect to find on a reasonably-configured GNU/Linux box. Its proper use is the subject of all the many pages on display at developer.android.com and of endless mailing lists, sample sites, and a growing number of books.

Libraries · The word “standard” here means “generally available to programmers working in an open-source environment”. The picture isn’t comprehensive.

Quite a few people, including me, have over-emphasized the role of the Harmony libraries. To start with, the Android selection excludes lots of stuff, for example AWT and Swing and OMG CORBA; all superfluous for apps using the Android framework.

Also, just counting roughly by code bulk of all the sort of stuff in this picture, the Harmony code comprises less than half the total. I don’t want to diss Harmony, they’re a wonderful project and I’m a huge fan; but it’s inaccurate to give the impression that Android is just Dalvik plus Harmony.

What’s In an App? · An Android app lives in what’s called an APK, which is simply a ZIP file, with a particular internal file layout that allows it to be run in place, without unpacking. There’s nothing magic about them, you can email them around and drop them on USB keys and extract pieces with unzip.

The Android Manifest is the interface between an app and the Android system, and that’s all I’m going to say here because it’s a key piece of the puzzle and deserves lengthy discussion if any at all.

The resource bundle contains your audio and video and graphics and so on, the pieces that come with the app as opposed to being fetched over the network.

Native or Not · Most apps these days are written for Dalvik. When I say “most apps” I mean “everything that isn’t a game”; game developers typically want to code in C/C++ and that’s it. Dalvik offers a nice fast gateway to OpenGL and all the phone’s hardware, but game devs just don’t want to hear about virtual machines, so they use the Android NDK.

If you’re writing code in the Java programming language you can use Eclipse and a pretty nice toolchain that makes the barrier to entry remarkably low. If you’re coding to the NDK, you’re going to be doing a lot of the build-time machinery yourself and living without some of the nice debugging and profiling candy, not to mention signing up to port your code to other CPU architectures if they run Android and have lots of users. But game developers revel in pain.

And that’s what Android is · Hope you liked the pictures.

Source: http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2010/11/14/What-Android-Is

Windows Live Writer: Post 1

2010-11-19T17:35:00.001+05:00

Using this desktop blog-publishing application that is part of the Windows Live range of products. It features WYSIWYG authoring, photo-publishing and map-publishing functionality, and is currently compatible with Windows Live Spaces, SharePoint blogs, Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, WordPress, Telligent Community, PBlogs.gr, JournalHome, the MetaWeblog API, the Movable Type API, Blogengine, Square space and all blogs that support RSD (Really Simple Discoverability).

5 Five FOCUS tips. Help you concentrate better.

2009-07-29T17:47:00.003+06:00

These five FOCUS tips can help you concentrate better -- whether you're working in a busy office, studying at school, sitting in a meeting, or trying to finish a project.

F = Five More Rule
There are two kinds of people -- those who have learned how to work through frustration, and those who wish they had. From now on, if you're in the middle of a task and tempted to give up -- just do FIVE MORE.

Read FIVE MORE pages. Finish FIVE MORE math problems. Work FIVE MORE minutes.

Just as athletes build physical stamina by pushing past the point of exhaustion, you can build mental stamina by pushing past the point of frustration.

Just as runners get their second wind by not giving up when their body initially protests, you can get your "second mind" by not giving up when your willpower initially protests. Continuing to concentrate when your brain is tired is the key to S-T-R-E-T-C-H-I-N-G your attention span and building mental endurance.

O = One Think At a Time
Samuel Goldwyn said, "If I look confused, it's because I'm thinking." Feeling scatter-brained? Overcome perpetual preoccupation with the Godfather Plan -- make your mind a deal it can't refuse. Yes, the mind takes bribes. Instead of telling it NOT to worry about another, lesser priority (which will cause your mind to think about the very thing it's not supposed to think about!), assign it a single task with start-stop time parameters.

For example, "I will think about how to pay off that credit card debt when I get home tonight and have a chance to add up my bills. For now, for the next thirty minutes from 1-1:30 pm, I will give my complete focus to practicing this presentation so I am eloquent and articulate when pitching this proposal to our VIP clients."

Still can't get other concerns out of your head? Write them down on your to-do list so you're free to forget them. Recording worrisome obligations means you don't have to use your brain as a "reminder" bulletin board, which means you can give your undivided attention to your top priority task.

C = Conquer Procrastination
Don't feel like concentrating? Are you putting off a task or project you're supposed to be working on? That's a form of procrastination. R. D. Clyde said, "It's amazing how long it takes to complete something we're not working on."

Next time you're about to postpone a responsibility ask yourself, "Do I have to do this? Do I want it done so it's not on my mind? Will it be any easier later?" Those three questions can give you the incentive to mentally apply yourself because they bring you face to face with the fact this task isn't going away, and delaying will only add to your guilt and make this onerous task occupy more of your mind and time.

U = Use Your Hands as Blinkers
Picture your mind as a camera and your eyes as its aperture. Most of the time, our eyes are "taking it all in" and our brain is in "wide-angle focus." We can actually think about many things at once and operate quite efficiently this way (e.g., imagine driving down a crowded highway while talking to a friend, fiddling with the radio, keeping an eye on the cars beside you, and watching for your exit sign.)

What if you want to switch to telephoto focus? What if you have to prepare for a test and you need 100% concentration? Cup your hands around your eyes so you have "tunnel vision" and are looking solely at your text book. Placing your hands on the side of your face blocks out surroundings so they are literally "out of sight, out of mind." Think about the importance of those words.

Want even better news? Does the name Pavlov r-r-r-ring a bell? If you cup your hands around your eyes every time you want to switch from wide-angle to telephoto focus, that physical ritual becomes a Pavlovian trigger.

Remember? Pavlov rang the bell, fed the dog, rang the bell and fed the dog, until the dog started salivating as soon as he heard the sound of the bell. Similarly, using your hands as blinkers every time you want to narrow your focus teaches your brain to switch to "one track" mind and concentrate on your command.

S = See As If For the First or Last Time
Want to know how to be "here and now" and fully present instead of mindlessly rushing here, there, and everywhere? Frederick Franck said, "When the eye wakes up to see again, it suddenly stops taking anything for granted." Evelyn Underhill said, "For lack of attention, a thousand forms of loveliness elude us every day."

I constantly relearn this lesson. One time I was giving my sons their nightly back rub. Although I was sitting right next to them, I might as well have been in the next country because I was thinking of the early morning flight I needed to take the next day and wondering if I had packed my hand-outs, if my ticket was in my purse, etc.

Suddenly, my unfocused eyes fell upon my sons and I truly SAW Tom and Andrew as if I was looking at them for the first time. I was immediately flooded with a sense of gratitude for these two healthy, thriving boys. I felt so blessed to have been gifted with such wonderful sons. In an instant, I went from being absent-minded to being filled with a sense of awe and appreciation for their presence in my life.

Next time your mind is a million miles away, simply look around you and really SEE your surroundings. Study that exquisite flower in the vase. Get up close to the picture on the wall and marvel at the artist's craftmanship.

Lean in and really look at a loved one you tend to take for granted. This will "Velveteen Rabbit" your world and make it come alive in your mind's eye.

What people have said about concentration

"I used to think the human brain was the most fascinating part of the body, and then I realized, 'What is telling me that?'" - Emo Phillips
"I'm getting so absent-minded and forgetful. Sometimes in the middle of a sentence, I . . . " - Milton Berle
"Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen, even so does inaction sap the vigors of the mind." Leonardo da Vinci
"Tell me to what you pay attention, and I will tell you who you are." - Jose Ortega y Gasset
I would go without shirt or shoe sooner than lose for a minute the two separate sides of my head." - Rudyard Kipling
"It's not that I don't want to listen to people. I very much want to listen to people. I jut can't hear them over my talking." - Paula Poundstone

About Sam Horn
Sam Horn is the author of ConZentrate. Sam's four books from St. Martin's Press have received critical acclaim from Investors Business Daily, Publishers' Weekly, Chicago Tribune, Readers Digest, and Washington Post, and have been published in more than twenty countries including China, Japan, France, Canada, Israel, and Germany. Foreign Service Journal said, "If you use the strategies outlined by Horn, it will change your attitude, the attitude of others, and the way others treat you."

Sam has had the opportunity to speak to more than a half million people in more than 35 states since 1981. Her keynotes, training workshops, and conference presentations consistently receive excellent evaluations for being full of fun, real-life ideas participants are motivated to use immediately at work, at home, and in their community. She was the top-rated speaker at both the 1996 and 1998 International Platform Association conventions in Washington DC, and won the 2003-2004 Outstanding Capital Speaker Award.

www.SamHorn.com . . . California office: 805-528-4351 . . . Virginia office 703-456-0870

Migrating 32bit applications to 64bit Windows

2009-05-13T09:31:00.006+06:00

Porting 32-bit applications to 64-bit Windows

The PC industry is gradually transitioning from an installed base of primarily 32-bit systems to one of primarily 64-bit systems. In the interim, many application developers will continue to build 32-bit versions of their applications or will provide both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. To ease the effort involved in porting applications and to help encourage adoption of 64-bit computing, Microsoft provides Windows 32-bit On Windows 64-bit (WOW64), an emulation layer that enables 32-bit Windows-based applications to run seamlessly on 64-bit Windows.

Following version offer 64bit as well as 32bit version.
Windows7
Windows Server 2008
Windows Vista
Windows Server 2003
Windows XP

Thanx to WOW64, any existing 32bit application is suppose to run fine on these 64bit operating systems without any changes.

Experiencing Vista slowdown, Move to Linux

2008-07-08T16:16:00.002+06:00

Experiencing Vista slow down, solution is Linux...!
For performance and speed.

http://www.infoworld.com/archives/t.jsp?N=s&V=95345

Open Source Projects

2008-07-08T16:08:00.003+06:00

Best open source software projects...

12 catagories and 120 open source projects

http://sourceforge.net/community/cca08-finalists

Catagories are:

Best Project
Best Project for the Enterprise
Best Project for Educators
Most Likely to Be the Next $1B Acquisition
Best Project for Multimedia
Best Project for Gamers
Most Likely to Change the World
Best New Project
Most Likely to Be Accused of Patent Violation
Most Likely to Get Users Sued
Best Tool or Utility for SysAdmins
Best Tool or Utility for Developers

Remote sign out and info to help you protect your Gmail account

2008-07-08T15:58:00.001+06:00

Your email account can contain a lot of personal information, from bank alerts to love letters. Email that, I'm sure, you don't always want other people to see. We understand how important your Gmail accounts are to you, so we're adding a new layer of information and control. With this new feature, you can now track your recent sessions and you can also sign yourself out remotely.If you are anything like me, you probably sign in to Gmail from multiple computers. I, for example, occasionally sign into my Gmail account from a friend's house when I need to check an important email. Usually I remember to sign out, but every once in a while I wonder if I really did. Now I no longer have to wonder.

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/remote-sign-out-and-info-to-help-you.html

A series of experimental features including a game called Old Snakey have been added to Google Mail

2008-07-04T18:32:00.000+06:00

Google is currently rolling out the new features to English-speaking users of Google Mail and the most popular ones will stand a chance of becoming permanent.

To find the new features you'll need to sign in, click on the Settings tab and then the Labs tab. You can then choose whether to enable or disable them.

Google product manager Keith Coleman outlined some of the new, experimental features.

"Some of them we've found really useful, like Quick Links, which lets you save searches and any other views in Gmail," he said.

Coleman said that those that prove popular will be kept though the ones that aren't will be retired. There are 13 new features in all.

Five Best Windows Maintenance Tools

2008-07-04T18:27:00.002+06:00

You download, create, delete, and move around countless files and endless piles of data on your PC every day. While your PC would ideally handle all of this data for you, it doesn't take long before you end up with a disorganized, cluttered computer. Hit the jump for an overview of the five best Windows maintenance tools, then cast your vote for the best of the bunch.

CCleaner

Any application called CCleaner where the first 'C' stands for Crap has to be good, right? Okay, maybe not, but this one is, thoroughly cleaning out your web browser, Recycle Bin and temporary files, registry, unnecessary third-party application trash, and oh so much more. Running CCleaner on your system promises to free up space, keep your computer running smoothly, and protect your privacy. It's also very fast and very easy to use.

Revo Uninstaller

Revo Uninstaller is a feature-rich replacement for the Windows default Add or Remove Programs feature (or Uninstall Programs in Vista). Why use Revo Uninstaller instead? Because not only does it just uninstall a program—it also removes all traces of the program from your system where the basic uninstaller may not. Revo also boasts a Hunter Mode for uninstalling apps by dragging a cross-hair onto the app you want to uninstall, whether it's the app's system tray icon or just a shortcut. It even helps manage your startup applications

Auslogics Disk Defrag

Auslogics Disk Defrag is a fast and effective disk defragmenter intended to replace the Windows default. It's quick and easy to use, and Auslogics DD provides a nicely formatted report of the latest defrag, including a motivating "Defragmentation has increased this computer performance by X%" message.

JkDefrag

JkDefrag is an open-source disk defragmenting tool. Unlike Auslogics DD, JkDefrag boasts command line support to allow you to set up your disk defrags on a schedule. Perhaps even better, JkDefrag has an installable screensaver that will automatically start defragging your hard drive whenever the screensaver is launched—it even displays the defrag process. Out of the box JkDefrag isn't the most attractive application you'll ever use, but when teamed with the previously mentioned JkDefrag GUI, it's just as attractive and easy to use as any defragger you'll find.

Spybot - Search & Destroy

Even if you're using one of the best antivirus applications available, you may still end up with some form of malware on your computer. Spybot-S&D will ensure that it isn't there for long. Apart from removing spyware, adware, dialers, keyloggers, and trojans, Spyware-S&D can also cover your usage tracks—like browsing or file history—to give you enhanced privacy on your computer.
Now that you've seen the most popular five Windows maintenance tools as chosen by your fellow readers, it's time to vote for the best.

most data on enterprise networks rarely gets accessed after it is written to network storage

2008-07-04T18:20:00.001+06:00

Statistically speaking, most data on enterprise networks rarely gets accessed after it is written to network storage, according to researchers from NetApp Inc. and the University of California (UC). Evidently, we are too busy writing new data to go back over old data.

Andrew Leung, a computer science researcher at the UC, presented the findings at the USENIX conference in Boston last week. Given those results, organizations might want to consider moving much of their data to slower but less expensive storage units since it rarely gets accessed, he said.

The team studied the traffic that flowed through NetApp's enterprise file servers, which manage more than 22T of material relating to all aspects of the company's business operations.
Leung said the study is the first large-scale examination of network traffic patterns. "How people have been deploying network file systems has been changing over the past five to 10 years," he said. "They are being used more commonly for different kinds of things. So what we would like to know is how this affects the workloads of the network."

During the three-month period that the network was under scrutiny, more than 90 percent of the material on the servers was never accessed. The researchers captured packets encoded using the Common Internet File System protocol, which Microsoft Windows applications use to save data via a network. About 1.5T of data was transferred.

"Compared to the full amount of allocated storage on the file servers, this represents only 10 percent of data," Leung said. "[This] means that 90 percent of the data is untouched during this three-month period."

Moreover, among the files that were opened, 65 percent were only opened once. And most of the rest were opened five or fewer times, though about a dozen files were open 100,000 times or more.

"What this suggests, in general, is that files are infrequently re-accessed," Leung said.
The team also observed that the ratio of data being read from storage versus the amount of data written to storage has changed from what had been seen in previous studies. Bytes written compared to bytes read by a ratio of about 2-1. "Past read-write ratios saw read-to-write ratios of 4-1 or higher," Leung added.

Developers of file systems might want to take into consideration the fact that their creations are spending almost as much time writing data as reading data. "The workloads are becoming more write-oriented, so the decrease in read-only traffic and the increase in write traffic suggests that file systems want to be more write-oriented," Leung said.

File server vendors also might want to consider re-jiggering their pre-fetching and caching algorithms to improve performance, given those findings. "If we know that files aren't frequently re-accessed, what this suggests is that [caching] algorithms may not be the best for network file systems" because the material cached will probably not get retrieved, he said.

Speaking to Government Computer News after the presentation, Leung described the 10 percent of data that was being re-accessed. Typically, it is in the file format most closely associated with the user's job. Architects might use computer-aided design files, while developers use source-code files. Also, files that are higher up in a file path or closer to the user's home directory tend to be accessed more often than those buried deeper down in a hierarchy of subfolders.

More than 75 percent of the files being opened were very small -- less than 20K each -- although another 12 percent were more than 5G each.

Free Web app security scanner

2008-07-04T18:14:00.002+06:00

Google claims that Ratproxy is quick and less intrusive than other security scanners

Google has released for free one of its internal tools used for testing the security of Web-based applications.

Ratproxy, released under an Apache 2.0 software license, looks for a variety of coding problems in Web applications, such as errors that could allow a cross-site scripting attack or cause caching problems.

"We decided to make this tool freely available as open source because we feel it will be a valuable contribution to the information security community, helping advance the community's understanding of security challenges associated with contemporary web technologies," wrote Google's Michal Zalewski on a company security blog.

Ratproxy -- released as version 1.51 beta -- is quick and less intrusive than other scanners in that it is passive and does not generate a high volume of attack-simulating traffic when running, Zalewski wrote. Active scanners can cause problems with application performance.

The tool sniffs content and can pick out snippets of JavaScript from style sheets. It also supports SSL (Secure Socket Layer) scanning, among other features.

Since it runs in a passive mode, Ratproxy highlights areas of concern that "are not necessarily indicative of actual security flaws. The information gathered during a testing session should be then interpreted by a security professional with a good understanding of the common problems and security models employed in web applications," Zalewski wrote.

Google has posted an overview of Ratproxy as well as a download link to the source code. Code licensed under the Apache 2.0 license may be incorporated in derivative works, including commercial ones, but the origin of the code must be acknowledged.

Weak web application security continues to embarrass companies, potentially causing the loss of customer or financial data.

A 2006 survey by the Web Application Security Consortium found that 85.57 percent of 31,373 sites were vulnerable to cross-site scripting attacks, 26.38 percent were vulnerable to SQL injection and 15.70 percent had other faults that could lead to data loss.

As a result, security vendors have moved to fill the need for better security tools, with large technology companies acquiring smaller, specialized companies in the field.

In June 2007, IBM bought Watchfire, a company that focused on Web application vulnerability scanning, data protection and compliance auditing. Two weeks later, Hewlett-Packard said it would buy SPI Dynamics, a rival of Watchfire whose software also looks for vulnerabilities in Web applications as well as performing compliance audits

The worst time to send an email is between 5pm and 6pm on Thursdays

2008-07-04T15:37:00.003+06:00

The worst time to send an email is between 5pm and 6pm on Thursdays, research has found.

Web performance monitoring firm Epitiro said that an estimated seven per cent of emails are either severely delayed or lost altogether during this 'rush hour'.
This is due to the number of people using the web at that particular time, Epitiro said.

And it's not just the day of the week or time of day that can affect email delivery times - the time of year is also a factor too.

Epitiro found that in the autumn months, email delivery times got slower, with eight per cent taking longer than three minutes to arrive.

"Email delivery speed is a very important factor in internet communications, not least for the credibility of an online business," said Gavin John of Epitiro.

"When customers shopping online are told to await email confirmation of a purchase, they expect this to arrive in no more than a couple of minutes. If an email takes longer than three minutes to arrive, many customers will worry that something has gone wrong," Johns continued.

Accessing Information is not Acquiring Knowledge

2008-07-03T19:32:00.000+06:00

It used to be traditional to blame bad decisions with lack of foresight and risk averse leadership. Both reasons have at their core a lack of information that cumulatively led to the bad decision being taken in the first place.

But with the advent of advanced computing power, and the networking enabled by the Internet, this reason, of lack of information, no longer holds water. The information is there, collected in sometimes repetitive, overlapping cycles.

The issue is therefore no longer a lack of it, but more of accessing and finding the right info at the right time - to be delivered to the right target. The challenge is to match an information need with an appropriate resource.

This challenge focuses our attention on two key aspects are:

(1) Accessing information - covering the technology dimension. How do we ensure that a decision-maker, in need of information to choose between alternatives and take a decision, is provided that info? How can the information be provided? The question is one of technology - how can a decision-maker access information quickly and efficiently?

(2) Finding information - covering the management dimension. With the advent of the Internet comes a new expression - information overload - of an overwhelming volume of information being delivered without sufficient disseminating justification. How can information be managed better - packaged better - to facilitate effective decision-making? Is a 200-page folder detailing the entire activity necessary to take a decision to initiate it (for the decision-maker)? Or is a one-pager with a bulleted list giving the salient points sufficient?

Knowledge is a construct that is created in the mind of the user, as a result of the cycle of accessing, processing and understanding information.

But providing and ensuring access to information will not complete the knowledge cycle. Quite clearly, it is the opportunity for value adding to information given to the user, which leads to generation of knowledge and understanding. Thus along with the provision of access to information, lies the need to create a two-way flow of opportunities to generate knowledge.

On one hand are value-adding opportunities for the user to contribute experiences, insights and related information to the information being accessed. On the other are opportunities to contextualize and localize the information being accessed to the environment within which the user works.

It is this value-adding, interactive give-and-take that leads to the generation of real knowledge.

Hari Srinivas