Archive

Spritefish's Fast Burst Camera may be just the app for sports photography. I've reviewed camera apps for Android OS before, and I've been particularly fond of Vignette, with its 76 customizable photo effects including infrared. That app is superior to market leader Instagram. I'm now raving about C...

MeeGo, the ill-fated Nokia mobile operating system project that had the plug pulled on it earlier this year, is being revived. JollaMobile, a company consisting of former Nokia executives and techies, has announced that it will release a new MeeGo smartphone later this year. That goal is reachable, ...

The month of June has not been kind to Microsoft hardware partners. Last week, Redmond revealed that it's getting into the Windows tablet game with the introduction of the Surface, meaning it will compete for sales with its own allies. It followed that up with news about Windows Phone 8. The upcomin...

Samsung's forthcoming Galaxy S III smartphone will be the company's first device to be officially branded and sold under its new SAFE program. SAFE stands for "Samsung Approved for Enterprise." The Galaxy S III will be available in the U.S. from Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and U.S.

Samsung on Tuesday deepened its involvement in the Linux ecosystem, reportedly upgrading its silver membership in The Linux Foundation to platinum and forking over the $500,000 annual membership dues its new status requires. The move will give Samsung a seat on the Foundation's board alongside six o...

China's antitrust authorities have approved Google's purchase of Motorola Mobility, on the condition that the Android operating system remain open source and its code be made freely available to original equipment manufacturers. Android devices had nearly 74 percent of the Chinese market in Q4, 2011...

Recent news that Microsoft and Barnes & Noble agreed to partner on the Nook e-reader line rather than keep fighting over intellectual property suggests the prospect of more settlement and fewer IP suits in the industry. However, the deal further obscures the blurry IP and patent landscape curren...

The recently released Who Writes Linux kernel contributor list reveals that some of the usual supporters of Linux -- Red Hat, SUSE, IBM, Intel, Oracle -- remain firmly behind the open source OS. There has also been a lot of attention on the other contributors, which now include Microsoft. What I fin...

OK, Greenpeace, arrest me now as an eco-criminal. I must have single-handedly deforested a good tract of the Amazon rain forest over the last few days. In mitigation, I plead that this was because of the requirements of my job. I was testing the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. The device is sleek and sexy, ha...

Linux continues to grow both its reach and credibility among enterprise IT users and customers, bringing competition, price and time-to-market pressure and options to key markets such as cloud computing and mobile software. Looking at the coming year for Linux, these are the key areas to watch: clou...

Ever since the Galaxy Nexus, the Samsung-built Android phone that will usher in Ice Cream Sandwich, was announced in Hong Kong in October, the device has been making the headlines. On Thursday alone, there were stories about its launch in Canada, Verizon Wireless' excluding Google Wallet from the de...

User forums are lit up with complaints about Samsung's Galaxy Nexus smartphone, which was released in the UK late last week. It seems that the handset's volume control goes haywire when the connection shifts to a 2G band. Unfortunately, 2G is widespread in Europe. The Galaxy Nexus is the first phone...

Microsoft has signed an agreement with Compal Electronics granting the device maker coverage under Microsoft's patent portfolio for its tablets, mobile phones, e-readers and other consumer devices running Android or Chrome.The deal comes hard on the heels of similar arrangements made with Wistron a...

Google unveiled Android 4.0, aka "Ice Cream Sandwich," in Hong Kong on Wednesday. The presentation was accompanied by Samsung's announcement of the Galaxy Nexus, the first smartphone running Ice Cream Sandwich. Ice Cream Sandwich is a redesign of the Android OS. It has a highly visual interface, a f...

The Kindle Fire, the Android-based tablet Amazon revealed in late September, could well be the next step in the ongoing metamorphosis of Google's Linux derivative into a proprietary operating system. Even if Amazon does not lock down its altered Android platform, it clearly has created a major fork ...