TechnoPhile Blog

The Other HP Slate Runs On Android

Last night, during his keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer showed off a prototype for a new HP Slate computer running on Windows 7. It was supposed to be an Apple-stealing moment and it was Microsoft’s moment, which is probably why Hewlett-Packard has not yet publicly mentioned that it is working on another tablet/slate computer that is running on Android. You know, Google’s mobile operating system. HP did announce an Android-powered netbook yesterday, but that has a keyboard. A source who has seen a prototype of HP’s Android Slate says it looks just like the Windows-powered one Ballmer held last night (see image below), maybe a little smaller. “It is almost identical in every respect to the one he showed off except for the OS,” says my source. And that, my friends, could be all the difference in the world. Already, developers have created more than 10,000 apps for Android mobile phones, and the launch of the Nexus One will keep pushing the OS into more and more hands. These apps might have to be modified for a tablet, but it shouldn’t be too much of a stretch. Already, a number of Android tablets are on the way from Archos, Dell, and Notion Ink. It looks like you can add HP to that list. The bigger question that all of these Android tablets raise is what about Chrome OS? Maybe these are just stop-gaps until the Chrome Netbooks and Tablets are ready for the market.

Crazy Bob: Square Nabs A Core Android Engineer

In terms of new hot startups, Square is among the hottest. And for good reason. If it takes off, it has the potential to transform the way vendors and consumers handle transactions. (There’s a reason it was worth $40 million before launch.) Not surprisingly, the talent is also flowing to them. Square has just hired Bob Lee, a software engineer at Google. And not just any engineer, Lee led the core library development for Android — yes, Google’s mobile platform that is exploding with growth and excitement right now. And yet, Lee is leaving after 5 years at Google for something he clearly feels is even more exciting, Square. Square’s Buzz Andersen tweeted the news today, and confirmed that Lee is on board fulltime with Square now. Lee, who is apparently known as “Crazy Bob,” will be heading up development of Square’s Android app, we hear. Currently, Square only works on the iPhone and iPod touch. Getting to the other mobile platforms will be vital for the company’s success. And of these platforms, Android is clearly the first priority. How Square will interact with Android devices isn’t yet clear since the system requires a hardware component as well. On the iPhone and iPod touch, a little square (hence, the name) plugs into the headphone jack — something which the iPhone OS 3.0 allows for.

Fandango comes to Android, Babylon makes its way to BlackBerry

We’re rolling two separate announcements into one post, if you don’t mind. Fandango this morning announced the official release of its free app for the Android platform, enabling owners of Google’s Nexus One and other devices that run Android to check out movies showtimes and more on the go. The news comes a couple of weeks after the company put out a beta release of the Android app. Mobile movie fans can use the app to find movies playing nearby by using Android’s GPS feature and connect straight to Google Maps for driving directions to the theatres, watch trailers, view fan ratings and buy tickets for more than 16,000 movie screens. Fandango is waiving the service fee for tickets purchased through the app from now until March 7, 2010. Translation and dictionary software maker Babylon, on the other hand, has today released its application for BlackBerry. At least, we’ll take their word for it, since we couldn’t find it in the App World catalog yet. Conceivably, it’s only offering the application to large-volume Babylon-Enterprise corporate customers who will now be able to host Babylon’s dictionary application locally on their own BB smartphones. Babylon says it is currently in the process of developing an application for the private sector as well, and expects it to be available within a few months.

Android’s App Storage Limit Will Be Lifted With A Future Software Update

Today during Google’s Nexus One event, Android lead Andy Rubin revealed something that’s sure to be a relief for Android users and developers alike: you’ll eventually be able to store a vast number of applications on your phone — even large ones — the same way you can on an iPhone. The change will come with a future software update, when Android begins storing applications as encrypted files on the SD card. Rubin didn’t say how long it will be until we see the update, but it’s clear that the team is working to resolve the problem. Up until now, developers have been hampered by the fact that every Android phone to date has had a relatively small amount of storage available for applications (a couple hundred megabytes as opposed to the iPhone’s many gigabytes). Apps are stored in the phone’s ROM rather than the phone’s removable (and cheaper) SD storage, which grants developers enhanced protection against having their apps pirated. But it’s also proven to be a handicap. Many of the iPhone’s most popular applications are graphics intensive, rich games. But these games often require high quality visual assets to go with them. The iPhone handles these fine — you can download massive apps over Wi-Fi or through iTunes sync. On the other hand, while the newest Android phones are certainly capable of rendering high quality graphics, their ability to handle large apps is limited by the phone’s available storage. Yes, developers can choose to download their app’s assets to the SD card after the initial install, but this isn’t a good experience for the end user.

Riding The Nexus One Wave, Google Releases The Android 2.1 SDK

One of the key features of the Nexus One has nothing to do with its hardware. The latest and greatest Android phone also is the first device to come with the new Android 2.1 OS. And while other phones, like the Droid, are going to get it too (likely later this month), for now, if you want to play around with it, you’ll need a Nexus One. Or, starting today, you can also download the Android 2.1 SDK. As noted on the Android Developers Blog, the team is releasing it before most devices have it so that developers can play around with and build for the new features introduced in 2.1. Though Google calls 2.1 a “minor platform release” over Android 2.0, there are a number of new elements such as voice recognition, live wallpapers, a new launcher, more home screens, and some WebKit changes. Those who have ported it over to the Droid note that the new OS is also faster. Google also notes that there is a new USB manager available through the SDK Manager that supports the Nexus One. This may or may not be related to the new services that it seems like Google wants to include with the device, such as a new docking station for backing up your data.

iPhone Doubles Up Android On Mobile Ad Click Rates

When you think about mobile advertising, you might think the iPhone or Android are the hot platforms (thanks to ads like this). But you’d be wrong. Some new December data from the mobile advertising company Smaato suggests that it’s actually Symbian that kills both the iPhone and Android. Now, I know what you’re thinking: that’s because Nokia, despite the buzz surrounding the sexier smartphone devices, remains the biggest mobile player in the world. But actually, the numbers are for the all-important click-through rates on the various platforms. As you can see in the chart below, with the average CTR on ads for all mobile platforms set to 100, Symbian led the way by far with a 161 score. This was followed by the iPhone (and iPod touch) with 119. Android? They’re way down the list with a 65. Only Palm and BlackBerry fared worse. So why is Symbian doing so well with click-through rates? Smaato suspects is may have to do with the high saturation of Nokia devices in emerging markets. But they also note that the CTR in the U.S. are higher for Symbian, though on a much smaller scale since Nokia isn’t nearly as popular here.

In terms of overall usage, Symbian makes of some 46.2% of the phones that Smaato tracks. RIM (BlackBerry) is in second place with 20.6%, but the iPhone is quickly catching up, with 17.8% after experiencing huge growth this year. But Smaato expects Android to the the big mover in 2010, likely going from just 3.5% now to over 10% by the end of the year. Something else interesting from the report: Quattro Wireless tied Millennial Media as the top-performing mobile ad network in the U.S. That’s significant since Apple just acquired Quattro after Google stole AdMob away from them. Smaato didn’t specify AdMob data in its report.

TuneUp Utilities

TuneUp Utilities acting on all fronts (configuration, protection, cleaning and maintenance) in order to improve computer performance, eliminating potential problems and adjust your operating system to your needs. You will have so TuneUp Maintenance, Speed Optimizer, Shortcut Cleaner TuneUp, TuneUp Drive Defrag, etc.. The application contains all the tools necessary to: configure to your liking the look and operation of Windows, remove unnecessary files, clean the registry, back up critical data, protect your privacy, increase your internet connection, free of RAM and many other features.
The software is simple to use and has a very clear interface.

PC information

This utility was created to help you gather information on software and hardware in your computer to perform an inventory and other tasks. The main functions of this utility are:
A diagnostic tool for all Windows operating systems higher than 3.1.

Detection components: processor, BIOS, memory, motherboard, CD-ROM drives, video card, sound card, network cards, IP, MAC addresses and e-mail …
Detection devices: modems, keyboards, monitor, mouse, printers, …
Comprehensive list of all software installed locally.

It has the following functionality

*This utility does not require installation on a PC tested and can be started from a floppy or from any shared network directory.
*Opportunities to publish the data collected, add filler fields and individuals.
*Flexible control of the utility parameters of command line and configuration files.
*Printing of reports and backup data in TXT, HTM or CSV.

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BleachBit 0.6.4

For those not familiar BleachBit would become like a ccleaner, which allows us to do a thorough cleaning of our system.
This version adds a command line interface shows a more detailed summary, correct mistakes, add a Malay translation and updates the 17 remaining translations.

List of changes:
* Add command-line interface. Often requested as a feature, the command line interface allows you to invoke BleachBit scripting, cron, batch files, or the Windows Task Scheduler. For example, Firefox BleachBit automatically empty every night or every time you log on.

* At the end of the record shows how many files were deleted, how many special operations have been conducted, and how many errors have occurred, if any.

* When the files manually crushed (by clicking File – destroys files), now ignores BleachBit related preferences overwrite files.

* Make BleachBit more portable to other POSIX systems like NetBSD. (BleachBit already available in NetBSD.)

* Fixes two typographical errors in spelling.

* Improve test unit.

* Specific for Linux
– aspect of GNOME options for toolbars (text below the icon, the icon only, etc.).
– corrects Yum error checking for non-English languages.
* Specific Windows

- plant size reduces to 6%, using a unique compression technique in the GTK + translation sites. If you notice any untranslated strings, please report them.
- delete one or more Windows registry file system.
- offers a version in English-only, which is 11% smaller by not including translations.
- Perform the software update notification evident.

Download:

- The installation packages are ready for 20 platforms, including CentOS, Debian, Fedora, Mandriva, openSUSE, Red Hat, Ubuntu, and Windows.

VIPRE Antivirus + Antispyware

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