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RIM Hopes Apps Will Help Sales
January 18, 2012 by admin
Filed under Consumer Electronics
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Research In Motion is highlighting the native and Android apps available on its struggling PlayBook at the Consumer Electronics Show as it gets ready to launch the first major overhaul of the tablet’s software in February.
The company is showing the PlayBook OS 2.0 in its booth, demonstrating the Android apps that will finally be available to users of the tablet. RIM said in March last year that it would release a player that would let users of the tablets run apps designed for Android, and that capability will finally be available with PlayBook OS 2.0.
Popular games such as Cut the Rope and Plants vs. Zombies will be available in the store, said Alec Saunders, vice president of developer relations and ecosystem development. The apps appear and work like any other app; users don’t have to launch a separate player to run them.
Not just any Android app will be accessible to users, and that’s by design, Saunders said. “We don’t want to enable an open marketplace the way the Android Market is,” he said. Android developers must use a software package to make their apps compatible with the PlayBook, and then they must submit it to RIM’s standard app curation process. The company hopes to weed out the malware and pirated apps that often appear in the Android Market, he said.
When PlayBook OS 2.0 becomes available, “some number of thousands” of Android apps will be available in the market, Saunders said. The company has been working with some of the aggregator marketplaces to port apps and attending Android meetups to encourage developers to make their apps available to PlayBook users, Saunders said.
RIM is taking pains to attract as many developers as possible by supporting as many languages and frameworks as possible. “One thing we’re focused on is providing a rich palette of tools developers can use,” Saunders said. RIM has developed ports for a number of frameworks and languages to make it easy for developers to use whatever tools.
Is Samsung Flip Flopping?
January 3, 2012 by admin
Filed under Consumer Electronics, Smartphones
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Samsung is apparently rethinking its decision not to bring Android 4 to the Galaxy S and Galaxy Tab.
Earlier the company stated that neither device could be updated due to the size of Samsung’s TouchWiz interface. The news created a bit of an issue with users sharpening scythes, pitchforks and lighting torches to go on a lynching. Now word on the street is that the company is considering backing down on its decision due to “strong customer demand.”
IBM’s Watson Shows Up For Work
IBM’s Watson supercomputer is about to start work evaluating evidence-based cancer treatment options that can be delivered to the doctors in a matter of seconds for assessment.
IBM and WellPoint, which is Blue Cross Blue Shield’s largest health plan, are developing applications that will essentially turn the Watson computer into an adviser for oncologists at Cedars-Sinai’s Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute in Los Angeles, according to Steve Gold, director of worldwide marketing for IBM Watson Solutions.
Cedars-Sinai’s historical data on cancer as well as its current clinical records will be ingested into an iteration of IBM’s Watson that will reside at WellPoint’s headquarters. The computer will act as a medical data repository on multiple types of cancer. WellPoint will then work with Cedars-Sinai physicians to design and develop applications as well as validate their capabilities.
Dr. M. William Audeh, medical director of the cancer institute, will work closely with WellPoint’s clinical experts to provide advice on how the Watson may be best used in clinical practice to support increased understanding of the evolving body of knowledge on cancer, including emerging therapies not widely known by physicians.
IBM announced earlier this year that healthcare would be the first commercial application for the computer, which defeated two human champions on the popular television game show Jeopardy! in February.
Android Hits 10 Billion
December 13, 2011 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
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Google said it exceeded 10 billion total app downloads from the Android Market over this past weekend at a growth rate of 1 billion downloads per month.
By comparison, Apple’s App Store passed the 15 billion download mark in July, with more than 200 million iOS devices now being used globally.
Google estimates there are more than 200 million Android smartphones and tablets.
“We can’t wait to see where this accelerating growth takes us in 2012,” said Eric Chu, direct of the Android Developer Ecosystem in a blog post Tuesday.
Alibaba Debuts Smartphone Running Its Cloud OS
August 3, 2011 by admin
Filed under Smartphones
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Alibaba Group unveiled its first self-developed mobile operating system and smartphone on Thursday in a bid to capture a slice of China’s burgeoning mobile Internet market.
The cloud computing-based operating system, Aliyun, will run the K-Touch Cloud Smartphone, to be launched at the end of July in 10 colors, said Wang Jian, president of Alibaba Cloud Computing, a unit of Alibaba Group.
A tablet PC running the Aliyun OS, which is based on a customized Android system, will also be launched in China by the end of the year, Wang told reporters after a presentation in Beijing.
Handset manufacturer Tianyu will manufacture the K-Touch as well as the tablet, Wang said.
“Mobile users want a more open and convenient mobile OS, one that allows them to truly enjoy all that the Internet has to offer, right in the palm of their hand, and the cloud OS, with its use of cloud-based applications, will provide that,” said.
The Aliyun operating system will feature cloud services such as email, Internet search and support for web-based applications. Users will not be required to download or install applications onto their mobile devices, Wang said.
Alibaba Cloud plans to integrate the operating system with other devices including mobile phones with larger screens and tablet computers in the coming months.
Wang said the company was looking to launch tablet computers running Aliyun by the end of the year.
The company is currently in talks with Qualcomm Inc to develop a lower-end chipset optimized to run Aliyun OS in lower-end mobile phones, Wang said. The K-Touch phones use a high-end chipset from Nvidia Corp for crisp display of intricate games.
Nokia Had Horrible Quarter
July 27, 2011 by admin
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Nokia has just posted very disturbing quarterly results this morning. The European smartphone giant outlook appears to be getting worse and CEO Stephen Elop has acknowledged that things will not turn around overnight.
Elop is reporting that Nokia’s operating profit is down 44 percent since Q1 and sales of mobile devices are down 23 percent consecutively. While the overall sales of mobile phones and smartphones are down, along with average selling prices.
Elop labelled the results as “clearly disappointing” and went on to say that competitive pressures are continuing. He tried to paint a somewhat more positive outlook for the rest of the year, thanks to Nokia’s clear strategy and several major product launches.
Pentagon Practices Cyberwar
June 23, 2011 by admin
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A mock Internet where the Pentagon can practice cyberwar games — complete with software that simulates human behavior under multiple military threat levels — is due to be up and running in a year’s time, according to a published report.
Called the National Cyber Range, the computer network mimics the architecture of the Internet so military planners can study the effects of cyberweapons by acting out attack and defense scenarios, Reuters says.
Planning for the Cyber Range was carried out by Lockheed Martin, which won a $30.8 million Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) grant, and Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, which won $24.7 million.
Cyber Range plans call for the ability to simulate offensive and defensive measures of the caliber that nations might be able to carry out. DARPA wants the range to support multiple tests and scenarios at the same time and to ensure that they don’t interfere with each other. “The Range must be capable of operating from Unclassified to Top Secret/Special Compartmentalized Information/Special Access Program with multiple simultaneous tests operating at different security levels and compartments,” according to DARPA’s announcement of the project.
Microsoft’s IE Latest Flaw: ‘Cookiejacking’
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A technology security researcher has discovered a flaw in Microsoft Corp’s widely used Internet Explorer browser that he said may allow hackers to steal credentials to access FaceBook, Twitter and other websites.
He coined the technique as ”cookiejacking.”
“Any website. Any cookie. Limit is just your imagination,” said Rosario Valotta, an independent Internet security researcher based in Italy.
Hackers can exploit the flaw to access a data file stored inside the browser known as a “cookie,” which holds the login name and password to a web account, Valotta wrote.
Once a hacker has that cookie, he or she can use it to access the same site, said Valotta, who calls the technique “cookiejacking.”
The vulnerability affects all versions of Internet Explorer, including IE 9, on every version of the Windows operating system.
To take advantage of this flaw, the hacker must first persuade the victim to drag and drop an object across the PC’s screen before the cookie can be hijacked.
That sounds like a difficult task, but Valotta said he was able to do it fairly easily. He built a puzzle that he put up on Facebook in which users are challenged to “undress” a photo of an attractive woman.
“I published this game online on FaceBook and in less than three days, more than 80 cookies were sent to my server,” he said. “And I’ve only got 150 friends.”
Microsoft said there is little risk a hacker could succeed in a real-world cookiejacking scam.
“Given the level of required user interaction, this issue is not one we consider high risk,” said Microsoft spokesman Jerry Bryant.
Samsung Infuse Smartphone Outed
May 9, 2011 by admin
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AT&T Wireless and Samsung Mobile jointly announced the thin and lightweight Infuse 4G smartphone during a press conference Thursday in New York.
The phone is 8.99 millimeters (0.35 inches) thick, making it just a fraction thinner than Apple’s iPhone 4, and has a 4.5-inch Super AMOLED display, one of Samsung’s most advanced, stated Jeff Bradley, senior vice president for devices at AT&T Wireless.
The device weighs 4.7 ounces and is powered by a single-core ARM processor running at 1.2GHz. It runs Google’s Android 2.2 OS and will become available in the U.S. on May 15, priced at $199 with a two-year wireless contract. It runs on AT&T’s HSPA+ (Evolved High-Speed Packet Access) network, which AT&T considers a 4G service.
The display shows more pixels than Samsung’s earlier AMOLED smartphone screens offered on the AT&T network, Bradley said. Infuse also includes an 8-megapixel camera with auto-focus and flash.
Facebook Growth Very Good
May 3, 2011 by Mike
Filed under Around The Net
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Facebook Inc’s business is growing faster than forecast several months ago and the social media company is on track to surpass $2 billion in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization in 2011, according to a story in The Wall Street Journal.
Facebook’s growth is above the growth projections that circulated when Goldman Sachs and Digital Sky Technologies invested in the closely held Internet company, the newspaper said in its online edition.
The newspaper did not indicate by how much Facebook may exceed those original expectations.