Archive for the ‘google iphone’ Category

IE9, Firefox 4.0, Chrome 6.0, Opera 10.70 – Browser Race on Steroids

Saturday, July 17th, 2010

IE9, Firefox 4.0, Chrome 6.0, Opera 10.70 – Browser Race on Steroids

It’s the same old browser-eat-browser world, but the pace at which the main market players are unveiling new moves has changed considerably, compared to just a few years ago. The continuously accelerating browser race hasn’t left anyone without breath yet, with Microsoft, Google, Mozilla and Opera stepping up their game to keep up with each other. But there’s little doubt over the fact that the game itself has changed to suit a new, instant gratification-focused world.

Mobility. It automatically implies additional characteristics, as adaptability; high speed for the introduction of innovation; and modern browsers to take the experiences on the world wide web further. Not only are interim testing releases, nightly builds and development milestones succeeding one another at a fast pace, but pressure is on browser makers to catalyze the evolution of their respective applications as fast as possible.

Immobility. Not the perception that customers should get from any of the top browser vendors worldwide, not that any of them would afford it. In the past, Microsoft has seen its fair share of criticism for holding the web back, in part also because of the IE6 to IE7 gap. But after unveiling the pre-release versions of IE9, it is clear that the Redmond company has changed the strategy for building IE, falling in line with rivals.

Chrome 6.0

I think it’s safe to say that the introduction of another player on the browser market has brought new, healthy and welcomed competition. Synonymous with Internet search, Google unveiled its own open source web browser, dubbed Chrome, less than two years ago, in September 2008. In the past couple of years, the Mountain View-based search giant has delivered major version after major version, relentlessly. Google Chrome 6.0 is currently under development, and if the company keeps up the pace, v.10.0 will be here in no time at all.

Google has already been hard at work on version 6.0 of Chrome since May 2010, and even earlier, considering the efforts put into the Chromium open source project that is at the foundation of Chrome. Offered for testing through the Dev channel, Chrome 6.0 will follow the same path to general availability as previous releases before it. In this regard, it will graduate to the Beta channel, before being moved to the Stable channel and offered to end users worldwide, most probably in the next few months, by which time, Google would have already started looking ahead to Chrome 7.0.

Opera 10.70

At the start of July 2010, Opera Software wrapped up and made available for download Opera 10.60. With support for Geolocation, Web Workers and Offline Applications, a new version of the Presto rendering engine, an optimized JavaScript engine and a touched-up UI, Opera 10.60 was offered just a few months after version 10.50.

Opera 10.50’s time in the spotlight was short lived, since it was only released in March, to have a replacement in place just four months later. Still, the Norwegian browser maker has already shifted its focus on the next version of Opera, with the first development snapshots of Opera 10.70 already available for testing by early adopters.

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Firefox Home Hits the iPhone

Saturday, July 17th, 2010

Firefox Home Hits the iPhone

Mozilla on Friday announced that Firefox Home is now available on the iPhone.

First announced in late May, the app was submitted to Apple for vetting earlier this month. No doubt due to Apple’s long-standing policy of blocking any app that “duplicates existing functionality” of proprietary iPhone programs, the app is not a complete mobile version of Firefox. Instead, Home works in conjunction with Apple’s Safari browser, and gives users mobile access to their desktop browsing history, bookmarks, and tabs.

In April, Opera broke download records with Opera Mini for the iPhone. That is also not a mobile browser in the traditional sense of the term. Rather than rendering full pages on the phone, it sends requests to Opera’s servers, which then return most of the pages in image form.

In order to use Firefox Home for the iPhone, users must install Firefox Sync on their desktop. Once Sync is installed and Home is downloaded from the App Store, users enter their Sync account information into Home, and the two apps will begin the syncing process.

Mozilla promises that user data will be “encrypted end-to-end.”

Source : pcmag.com

Google Earth 2.0 for iPhone imports My Maps

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

Google Earth 2.0 for iPhone imports My Maps

Google Earth made a splash when it spun onto the iPhone last October, giving users the capability to explore the virtual globe for free from virtually anywhere with an Internet connection. But without some practical mapping features, like turn-by-turn navigation and street maps, Google Earth was largely a discovery tool that didn’t have much real-world impact.

This week, Google Earth 2.0 for iPhone gets more useful by pulling those Google maps you saved in the My Maps section of the Google Maps Web site into the app’s mobile orbit. In Google Earth, you’ll tap the settings icon (the “i”) and sign in to your Google Account. Just below the login field, there’s any entry for My Maps. Tap it to view your saved maps, and tap again to select the map you’d like to zoom to. While you can view a saved location or route in Google Earth, the app doesn’t replace Google Map’s directions-dispending feature.

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The iPhone wars: AT&T vs. Verizon

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

The iPhone wars: AT&T vs. Verizon

Claiming “irreparable harm,” AT&T (T) has filed its second lawsuit in two weeks asking a U.S. District judge to force Verizon (VZ) to pull its new TV ads — cartoons that depict the iPhone as the latest arrival to the “island of misfit toys.” The issue, once again: coverage maps that AT&T claims are “false” and “misleading.”

On Thursday, AT&T followed up with a “set the record straight” letter reminding customers and the press that it, not Verizon, carries the “most popular smartphones” — i.e. Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone — and that its customers, not Verizon’s, have access to more than 100,000 applications.

The letter includes a link to the version of AT&T’s coverage map — shown above — that the company thinks Verizon should be showing in its ads.

We’re not so sure. Let’s look a little closer at this map — and some others — below the fold.

Here are the two that triggered the lawsuits. They show Verizon’s 3G coverage (red) next to AT&T’s 3G coverage (blue).

AT&T takes strong and litigious objection to this comparison because, in the words of its lawyers, all that white space in the right-hand map “falsely communicates that AT&T does not have wireless data coverage throughout much of the United States.” (Full text of the complaint is available here.)

According to AT&T, its wireless network actually reaches 303 million Americans — 97% of the population — if you include 3G, EDGE and GPRS. That’s how they can justify drawing a map in which most of the country is painted blue.

But is that fair? AT&T’s 3G service, when it works, is zippy enough. But EDGE (a 2.5G service) is considerably slower, and GPRS (2G) is slower still. A more accurate AT&T map would distinguish among the three services. You can get that from AT&T here, but it takes some effort (and a Photoshop session) to get one map that shows the entire lower 48 states. When the work is done, this is what it looks like:

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Motorola Plans Low-Cost Android Phones

Saturday, August 1st, 2009

Motorola Plans Low-Cost Android Phones

Motorola says it will use Google’s Android platform to make smartphones at feature phone prices.

Motorola (NYSE: MOT) will be making a strong push with the Google (NSDQ: GOOG)-backed Android operating system, and the pricing of these handsets will be a big part of its strategy.

Manufacturers such as Samsung, Sony (NYSE: SNE) Ericsson, and HTC are also using the Linux-based operating system for handsets, but Motorola appears to be taking the most aggressive approach. While the smartphone market is rapidly growing, the majority of U.S. customers still use handsets classified as feature phones. Motorola said it can use Android to create devices that have the capabilities of smartphones but with the pricing of feature phones.

“Our core strategy really is to take Android as low down the feature phone tier as we possibly can, by bringing in smartphone features,” sand Co-CEO Sanjay Jha in a conference call Thursday.

The company plans to have two Android smartphones out before the holiday season for two major U.S. carriers, one of which may be Sprint Nextel. Additionally, the handset maker said it will have multiple Android devices in the first quarter of 2010.

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