One of Google’s biggest Android challenges has been devices running various versions of the software. But two things have happened that are helping the issue disappear as 1 in 4 Android devices now run the Ice Cream Sandwich or Jelly Bean versions of Android. Read more »
The Nokia spin-off is solidifying its strategy of focusing on China first. The alliance around its mobile OS will be based in Hong Kong and take in major industry players from chipset vendors and OEMs to retailers and operators. Read more »
When HTC said it was changing strategies and cutting back on phone models, it never said anything about refreshing existing handsets. That’s precisely what it has in the HTC One X+: Same on the outside, but better performance and battery life with new internal hardware. Read more »
Thanks to the rise of online business, companies must now get their products and services to market as fast as they can, and releasing software now means small releases that occur very frequently. Enter devops, which is disrupting traditional assumptions about the roles of development and operations. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
After buying webOS and Palm for $1.2 billion, HP pulled the plug and open-sourced the platform. The first fruits of that labor are appearing as multiple devices are getting ports of the new Open webOS, keeping Palm’s excellent mobile operating system alive for many fans. Read more »
So I broke down and ordered a Galaxy Note 2 from overseas. Why spend the money when I have a Galaxy Nexus phone and Nexus 7 tablet? A video demo shows how Samsung is further bridging the mobile and traditional computing space and I bought in. Read more »
The more-wood-behind-fewer-arrows Google has announced its latest round of retired products, among them Insights for Search, which has been merged into Google Trends, and Google News Badges. Additionally, storage accounts will be consolidated across Picasa and Drive, giving users one pool of capacity. Read more »
Apple CEO, Tim Cook, has already apologized for the quality of Maps in iOS 6, which certainly acknowledges the issue. But how big of an issue is it? According to data from Snappli’s iOS app, people quickly adopted Apple Maps only to leave it even faster. Read more »
Cook apologizes to users for the mapping debacle touched off by the iOS 6 launch last week. In an open letter Friday he points customers to other mapping products to use until Apple’s maps data gets better. Read more »
It’s day two of Google’s 25 billion app download celebration and that means more twenty-five cent apps. My picks today include two fun puzzle games, a super-looking alarm clock and one of the most amazing camera apps that I’ve seen yet for any smartphone. Read more »
EU competition commissioner Joaquin Almunia has indicated that formal antitrust proceedings are almost certain in the case of Microsoft, and pretty likely with Google too. In both cases, fines could run into the billions. Read more »
Got an AMD chip in your Windows PC? Then you just gained access to more than half a million Google Android apps thanks to an AMD partnership with Bluestacks. A virtualization app and website filled with Android titles can help bridge your mobile and desktop world. Read more »
App developers are the cornerstones of the multibillion-dollar app market, but the overall community remains largely unknown. As app downloads increase, organizations that can bring tools, resources, and a collective voice to this group will be an important factor in the evolution of mobile-app development. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Here’s our daily pick of stories about Apple from around the web that you shouldn’t miss. Today’s installment: Apple’s copywriters are freaking out linguists; Samsung, Google meet to talk Apple; guilt over buying iPhones made by exploited workers; accessibility features in iOS 6, and more. Read more »
Google is working on a new Maps app for iOS 6, but there are a couple of things that have held up development, according to the New York Times. Google claims it was surprised by Apple’s move away from its maps app. Read more »
For the first time Google has purchased wind power to directly power a data center in Oklahoma. Previously Google has invested hundreds of millions of dollars into clean power projects, but had yet to power its data centers directly with clean power. Read more »
Would Google chairman Eric Schmidt like his company’s search engine to replace Microsoft Bing as the default search in Yahoo.com? Do you really have to ask? If so, the answer is yes, according to reports out of Japan. Read more »
Welcome to the fast-growing world of work media, a class of social tools oriented toward the needs of enterprises. Their emergence is due to the shifting expectations of an increasingly social workforce and the sense that older approaches to work like email are arguably approaching obsolescence. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Google added new Japanese reading features to its ebooks app yesterday and is now selling the Nexus 7, ebooks and movies through the Google Play store in Japan. Kobo expanded to Japan in July, and Kindle is expected to launch there in October. Read more at paidContent »
At a security conference a scary demonstration showed that a single line of HTML code can remotely wipe out a Samsung Galaxy S III handset. Worse: It appears to work on many Samsung smartphones that run TouchWiz, which is most of Samsung’s line of handsets. Read more »
Google is adding some new features to its Android ebooks app, including highlighting and annotation, translation, dictionary definitions and geographic information. Google Play Books for iOS lacks these features for now. Read more at paidContent »
The New York Times article on data center power consumption got a few things wrong but a couple things really right. Read more »
Should the same app have a different interface on different devices? Netflix doesn’t think so, updating its Android app for smartphones to replicate the tablet interface found on Android slates and on Apple’s iPad. The improvements make it easier to find and watch content. Read more »
With multiple Amazon Kindle Fire tablets that differ in screen size, display resolution and even hardware capabilities, how will developers manage their mobile apps across the platform? A new “device targeting” feature will help and it supports Android devices through Amazon’s app store as well. Read more »
Samsung is wasting little time in getting Android 4.1 to its successful Galaxy S III smartphone. Although slated for an October release, the company has the software available in one country now and it listed the 15 other Galaxy devices that will get Jelly Bean. Read more »
Sometimes the lack of $10k means the difference between life and death for a startup. Upstart, says founder Dave Girouard (formerly president of Google Enterprise) will match college grads with patrons who will back their proposed startups money and advice. Read more »
Rich Miner isn’t a huge fan of Apple Maps. The co-founder of Android, who is now a partner at Google Ventures, had that to say, as well as that carriers just keep on conceding and RIM’s market share loss is an opportunity for startups. Read more »
According to The Guardian, Google has already begun working on a Google Maps app for iOS 6, and it “will appear in time” on Apple’s App Store. But when? Apple new Maps app is attracting a ton of criticism and has seriously disappointed new iOS 6 users. Read more »
Dennis Crowely of Foursquare has a big goal of creating an ambient-aware location service that will recommend people, places and events happening nearby, but the hardware isn’t quite up to snuff yet. In the meantime, he’s using location data to take on Yelp and Google. Read more »
More people watched video on the Internet through YouTube than any other site by a wide margin during August, as Google continues to enjoy the benefits of having the most engaged online viewers. Still wondering if Google is a media company? Read more »
A solid app gets even better today with the ability to read aloud saved articles on an Android device. This will make Pocket, already one of my most used apps, an even bigger part of my day, allowing me to hear offline articles at spare moments. Read more »
Listening platforms — or social media monitoring, analysis, and engagement tools — are bringing massive amounts of new information to businesses’ marketing departments. These tools are also leading the way in the growth of social media information and access throughout organizations so that customers’ wants and needs can be better understood and, presumably, satisfied. This report analyzes how the adoption of listening platforms is transforming marketing departments, their relationships with central IT, and the core systems that run the enterprise. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Small slates are expected to account for 32 percent of all tablet sales this year says iHS iSuppli. After nearly two years of saying there’s a market for the 7-inch tablet, it’s good to see the analysts reaffirm my own experiences. Now: Where’s that 7.85-inch iPad? Read more »
Google+ now has 400 million registered users, and more than 100 million active users visit the service every month. However, chances are, many of them don’t actually realize they’re visiting Google+ at all. Instead, they might just be there to make a video call. Read more »
Google, which is notoriously secretive about technology advances, has opened up the vault and spit out a research paper on its Spanner database. And like other Google innovations, this one is hot. It’s a database that scales to millions of machines and trillions of rows. Read more »
New updates to Alfresco’s content management system and Box’s cloud sync service renew questions about whether these file-share-and-sync services are best offered as part of a larger, legacy product or by an independent provider that specializes in this technology. Read more »
On this week’s audio podcast with Matt and Kevin, find out which host upgraded to iPhone 5 while the other sold iPhone 4S and ordered a new iPod touch. Also: What happened to NFC in the iPhone and why so many LTE handset models? Read more »
Open Handset Alliance partners have to follow the rules, else face the wrath of Google: The company effectively shut down a press event for a new Acer phone for China. Meanwhile, it looks like Intel is about to redouble its Android smartphone efforts. Read more »
In the five years since the iPhone hit the market, Apple and Google have delivered more than 40 billion cumulative downloads of apps. Other sources predict the app marketplace will swell to surpass 66 billion downloads in 2016, a growth fueled by tablet, entertainment, and enterprise apps. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
A patent troll, working with the University of California, gained infamy by filing patent suits claiming to own the world wide web. Even though Amazon and Google knee-capped it earlier this year, the troll marches onward. Read more »
