Tag Archives: Goolgle

Google’s Mobile World Congress App Provides Android Pin Checklist

Some of us at Mobile World Congress have been hunting down the massive amount of Android collectible pins. For those of you who need something to keep track of what you’re finding, the Google team has an awesome app for you.

Their Mobile World Congress application not only gives attendees information on developers featured at their booths and their hardware partners scattered throughout the Barcelona Fira, it also gives you an Android pins checklist.

Through five days of last year’s Mobile World Congress, I managed to track down 13 of them. With as many as 86 different pins available this year you’re going to have to work hard to catch’em all – might as well grab this app just to make sure you aren’t doubling up. If you’re at Mobile World Congress let us know what you’ve found!

Oh, and if you wanted to see what some of these pins look like in person, check some out in the pic below and be sure to find more on Android’s Google+ page!

Source: http://phandroid.com/2012/02/28/googles-mobile-world-congress-app-provides-android-pin-checklist/

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Google Do Not Track Privacy Feature Arriving on Chrome

Google plans to introduce ‘Do Not Track’ feature in its Chrome web browser by the end of this year. With the Do Not Track facility, users can avoid getting under scrutiny of advertisers, going online through Google’s Chrome.

Chrome manages to preserve user anonymity by modifying communication between browsers and servers. This facility has been demonstrated previously in many web browsing programs.

Do Not Track is a user selective feature. Browser requires demand from users to activate the facility. Mozilla had already integrated this feature into its web browser, FireFox. Microsoft and Apple featured Do Not Track in their browsers, which are Internet Explorer and Safari 5.1 respectively.

Google is now tracking the footprints of its predecessors in this field. In a statement Google’s representative said, “We plan to implement Do Not Track across our browser and advertising systems by the end of the year.”

But we are wondering, what might have delayed Google to track it down onto its browser? It might be because Do Not Track wasn’t a mature idea, as far as Google is concerned.

Of course it’s interesting, but seems to be too vague for Google. Moreover, it needs consent from websites to provide this feature. Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, and other Internet giants are in for Do Not Track, which underlines its importance.

Source: http://www.gizmocrave.com/11090-google-do-not-track-privacy-feature-arriving-on-chrome/

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Node.js: Doing Rather Well, Actually

A mere three years into its existence on our good green Earth, the JavaScript-based Node.js software system appears to be gaining enviable traction as an application development platform. Most notably, the software is leading developers to extend their use of JavaScript outside of the browser and into the server space.

Constructed using the Google Chrome V7 JavaScript engine, Node.js has been endorsed by both Microsoft and Yahoo!, who have backed its suitability for building data-intensive real-time apps that need to run across distributed devices. With an event-driven non-blocking I/O model, Node.js was conceived and built by Joyent developer Ryan Dahl, who sees the software supplanting Java’s position in the server space.

Backing Node.js as a suitable development language for use on the Azure cloud platform, Microsoft VP Scott Guthrie said that we are going to see all of the features of Azure having integrated Node.js libraries — and that this is going to happen very soon.

In November last year, Yahoo! showed its support for the technology by introducing cocktails — a mix of HTML5, Node.JS, CSS3, and JavaScript. At the time of launch the company stated, "We are announcing two Cocktails: Yahoo! Mojito, an environment-agnostic JavaScript web application framework, and Yahoo! Manhattan, a hosted platform for Mojito-based applications."

Yahoo! says that Mojito is an "evolution of existing web standards" and web technology. It builds upon standards where those exist as well as on proven technologies, and YUI for cocktails provides the necessary environment abstraction, scoping, packaging, etc. that allows Mojito-based applications to run equally well in a web browser, in a hybrid native/web runtime or in a server using Node.JS.

Source: http://drdobbs.com/jvm/232600655

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Google admits profiting from illegal Olympic ticket ads

The ads include unofficial London 2012 Olympics ticket resellers, as well as cannabis and fake ID card sellers.

These ads were promptly removed by Google after the BBC brought them to the company’s attention.

Google has also taken down links to illegal Olympic ticket resellers following requests from the police.

But the search giant told 5 live Investigates that the company keeps any money it might make from companies advertising illegal services before such adverts are removed.

Selling tickets on the open market without permission from the Olympic authorities is a criminal offence in the UK under the London Olympic and Paralympic Games Act 2006.

Promoting ticket touts

The Metropolitan Police, which is dedicated to stopping crime associated with the 2012 games through Operation Podium, said it is aware of LiveOlympicTickets and that the company is breaking the law.

However, as the company is registered overseas, it may be difficult to prosecute as it is outside the UK’s jurisdiction.

The maximum penalty fine for reselling Olympic tickets without authorisation from the Olympic authorities was raised last year from £5,000 to £20,000.

Despite this, Google has placed adverts for unofficial ticket resellers which are breaking the law by selling London 2012 tickets to customers in the UK.

In this case, LiveOlympicTickets was Google’s top sponsored link for 2012 tickets – and remained so for more than a week even after the Metropolitan Police had asked the search engine to remove the advertisement.

The company link was finally removed after 5 live Investigates contacted Google.

But research by the programme team found other sponsored Google adverts – for online cannabis sellers, fake ID cards, and fake UK passports.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16468846

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Android platform distribution statistics updated

The latest Android platform versions distributions chart was announced yesterday after the Android Developers’ website collected data for two weeks, and the share results reaped a few surprising figures.

Gingerbread gobbled 55 percent of the share, and Froyo landed at second place with 30 percent. However, according to last month’s results, Gingerbread increased from 50.6-percent while Froyo decreased from 35.3-percent. The statistical difference may be due to Froyo smartphones receiving an upgrade or Gingerbread smartphones seeing an increase in activations over the holiday season. Google recently announced it added 3.7 million devices on Christmas.

Android 4.0, also known as Ice Cream Sandwich, is making the biggest amount of noise with these latest results. Ice Cream Sandwich devices -only the Galaxy Nexus and Nexus S for now- account for just .6-percent of the share of all of the devices that have called the Android market in the last two weeks.  If that total is near the 200 million that Google announced in November, that means over a million Galaxy Nexus Devices have been activated in the few weeks since release.

Ice Cream Sandwich unveiled at the “May 2011 Google I/O” event, and it officially launched Oct. 19, 2011.

Source: http://9to5google.com/2012/01/04/android-platform-distribution-statistics-updated-only-6-percent-of-devices-on-ics-gingerbread-maintains-majority/

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iPad & iPhone Still Leaders of Mobile Purchases

QQ截图20111228095119 It’s really no surprise that Apple’s iPad and iPhone are still leaders when it comes to mobile purchases, but this situation is poised to have turn for the worse. The truth is that Apple should enjoy its leader position for as long as it lasts, because Google, Samsung, Amazon, Barnes & Noble and HTC are fighting hard for the same ranking.

It’s only a matter of time, until some of Apple’s acerb competitors will come up with a gadget that will sweep users off their feet. All these competitors need is a man with a similar taste for new, innovative and high tech as Steve Jobs had. Do not assume it will take ages before such a man will set the hype in IT once again. Remember that the model is already there, and people with an eye for detail and understanding of consumer behavior are poised for success in this field.

But let’s leave projections for analysts and mediums. Today we’re talking real time figures that show Apple is still successful in keeping its competitors away from its crown.

According to data from IDC, Apple’s iPad has dominated the tablet market in the second quarter. Total shipments for this sector rose 23.9 percent to 18.1 million. Apple’s iPad took 61 percent of the overall third quarter market, with 11.1 million units shipped. Meanwhile, Android is still getting to know the market, with 6 million units delivered.

Source: http://www.dailygossip.org/ipad-iphone-leaders-of-mobile-purchases-so-far-2070

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Android Opens Online Training Site

In an effort to address its ongoing app inferiority complex, Google just unveiled an extensive online training site. Android Training is a series of tutorials, best practices, code samples and general advice that the company hopes will help the development community produce better apps.

Lessons cover everything from designing better navigation to implementing smoother multimedia streaming and optimizing battery life. In typical Google fashion, the effort is tagged “beta,” and Reto Meier, Android developer relations tech lead, blogs that the company plans to expand the offering considerably in coming months, including sample apps and course design for a broader range of general topics.

It may not be coincidental that Google launches this trainer now.

In recent weeks, research emerged suggesting that despite the Android operating system’s dominant market share, the majority of developers (51%) still plan to write for the Apple iOS platform in the coming year. Only 30% expect to write for Android.

While Android’s smartphone penetration is approaching 50% of the market, that reach has come at a price. The multiple handsets and iterations of the operating system make the platform a difficult target for many developers. In fact, the first lesson in the new Android Training program addresses “Designing for Multiple Screens.”

Source: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/164409/android-opens-online-training-site.html

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2011: The year Android had Multiple Personality Disorder

For all of the progress Android has made in the last year in establishing itself as the leading smartphone operating system, commanding over a 46 percent market share according to comScore in its Q3 findings and sending RIM and its BlackBerry well on its way towards platform irrelevance, so many other distracting things went on that kept it from fully realizing its true potential.

In modern psychiatric medicine, the term “Dissociative Identity Disorder” (or DID for short) is used to describe what is commonly referred to as Multiple Personality Disorder — a rare mental illness in which a human being manifests distinctly different and separate personalities in their own brain, each of which have their own pattern of perceiving and interacting with the environment.

Awareness of the condition was first popularized with the 1974 novel and then the 1976 NBC television miniseries “Sybil” starring actress Sally Field, which was re-made in 2007 with Tammy Blanchard reprising the title role.

If you could sum up what was wrong with Android in 2011, this despite it having achieved the market leading platform position in the mobile industry, Dissociative Identity Disorder just about describes it exactly. Here’s why.

Split Smartphone and Tablet Personalities

The first and most easily recognizable dissociative identity problem is that for the past year, we’ve had entirely different versions of Android for smartphones and for tablets — Gingerbread (2.3.x) and Honeycomb (3.x).

A Split Commitment to Open Source

As if having two distinctly different versions of Android in the wild to address two different target device formats wasn’t painful enough, Google also decided to withhold the Honeycomb 3.x source code from developers, which potentially damaged their relationship with the Open Source community in the process.

A Split Universe Between Google and Amazon Ecosystems

Not to be deterred by Google’s own dissociative identity problems with Android, Amazon went off on its own tangent and released Amazon Appstore for Android.

Splits Between Preferred OEMs and Carrier Implementations

The wide proliferation of shovelware, varied implementations of Android versions and the overall inability to get software updates rolled out by the carriers and by the hardware manufacturers despite Google’s stated commitment to rectify this problem back in May at Google I/O is another form of fractionalization that hurt Android in 2011 and projected an overall feeling of Multiple Personality Disorder.

Source: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/perlow/2011-the-year-android-had-multiple-personality-disorder/19486

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Google kills off seven more products including Wave

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Google has announced that it is dropping seven more products in an effort to simplify its range of services.

The out-of-season "spring clean" brings an end to services including Google Wave, Knol and Google Gears.

It is the third time that the US firm has announced a cull of several of its products at the same time after they had failed to take off.

Experts said the strategy might put off users from signing up to new services.

Google announced the move in its official blog.

"We’re in the process of shutting a number of products which haven’t had the impact we’d hoped for, integrating others as features into our broader product efforts, and ending several which have shown us a different path forward," said Urs Holzle, Google’s vice president of operations.

"Overall, our aim is to build a simpler, more intuitive, truly beautiful Google user experience," he added.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15853323

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The Only Way Google’s Chromebooks Will EVER Succeed (GOOG)

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Google and its partners just cut the price of Chromebooks $100, to $299.

They should keep cutting prices and make them free.

By giving Chromebooks away in a carrier-subsidized model, Google might just create something useful out of an otherwise unimpressive product.

We’ve been extremely skeptical about Chromebooks and the Web-only Chrome OS ever since Google unveiled them last fall. They do a lot less than traditional computers — you can’t run desktop apps, and a lot of peripherals like printers aren’t supported. You couldn’t even plug in a camera in the first iteration. And they don’t have the cool factor of a touch screen tablet.

But after using the Samsung Chromebook that Google sent me for a few months, I’ve come to the conclusion that it could make a decent secondary computer for home use.

We keep ours in the kitchen. When we need to look up some information from the Web, like a recipe or a calendar event, or check our email, it’s perfectly fine.

It’s very fast. It’s stable. It has never crashed or hung.

Source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/11/21/businessinsidergoogle-cuts-100-from.DTL

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