Posts Tagged ‘Google Chome’

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Google axed Android multitouch at Apple’s request?

Thursday, February 12th, 2009

Google axed Android multitouch at Apple’s request?

It seems there’s a reason that T-Mobile’s new G1 touch-screen smartphone doesn’t have a multitouch display: Google doesn’t want to upset Apple.

Google – maker of the Android operating system used by the G1 – is cozily in bed with the Cupertino Fruit Company in a number of areas, from iPhone and iPod mapping capabilities to Safari search to the new geotagging Places feature in Apple’s iPhoto ’09.

It’s a partnership that Google apparently wants to keep healthy and happy, according to a report from VentureBeat.

An unnamed source told that venture-capital news service that Apple asked Google to not implement multitouch capability in Android and that Google acquiesced.

What’s more, the same source told VentureBeat that the Android team was “relieved that Google didn’t go against Apple’s wishes,” fearing the same assault that Apple appears to be preparing to mount against Palm due to that company’s multitouch Pre smartphone.

Its main weapon in that assault? The fearsome Patent #7,479,949, which covers many of the touch-screen technologies used in the iPhone and which Apple’s acting CEO, Tim Cook, brandished less than subtly during the company’s recent financials-phone-fest with analysts and reporters.

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Posted in Google Android, Google Chrome, google iphone, Google Operating System, internet, Internet Explorer, Microsoft, softwares - news, T-Mobile G1 with Google | No Comments »

Test Center review: A Web-based app builder with a Microsoft twist

Friday, October 24th, 2008

Test Center review: A Web-based app builder with a Microsoft twist

Now that the desktop revolution is largely over, most of the excitement lies in the counter-desktop revolution that is bringing all the flair developed by the desktop programmers back to the safe world of the server. Caspio is one of the most prominent players seeking to lure the desktop database builders away from Microsoft Access and back into the datacenter’s fold. The company has been around since before the last bubble burst, and now it boasts a number of prominent companies as customers.

The process is simple and requires, as Caspio’s Web site promises, “no more programming.” First you specify some database tables and then you describe how these tables can be filled up with Web forms. After a bit of testing, you push a button and copy some JavaScript, and the forms are deployed on your Web site. The data your Web application captures lives in Caspio’s datacenter.

Caspio’s solution, called Caspio Bridge, is part of a wave of Web-based applications for building Web applications. Some, such as JotForm, WuFoo, FormAssembly, and their many cousins, promise to help automate the process of turning forms into tables and CSV files (see “Application builders in the sky”). Others, such as Coghead, want to help you develop an entire Web application. The line between them is getting quite blurry, but Caspio Bridge lies much closer to Coghead because it aspires to help you build full-fledged, database-driven Web applications.

As a programmer, I’m loath to call what Caspio and Coghead let you do as “not programming” because it includes much of the architectural forethought and experience that pays my rent. You do need to think about the structure of the data and make a number of other decisions that take up many of the early meetings during a programming project. Smart database design can make a difference. After that, though, using Caspio is just filling out metaforms that specify what other forms will look like.

Wizards and widgets

Caspio won’t help you build the coolest applications, but you can accomplish quite a bit without much effort. The meat of the process comes during a fairly complex wizard for designing Web forms. Each field in the data table can have a number of basic and advanced rules for converting it into a field on the form seen by the user.

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Posted in Google Chrome, internet, Internet Explorer, Javascript, Microsoft, softwares - news, Web 2.0 | No Comments »

Rakon’s Google phone connection

Friday, October 24th, 2008

Rakon’s Google phone connection

Auckland-based Rakon could be poised to ride the gPhone wave.

The first cellphone based on Google’s Android operating system, T-Mobile’s G1, will go onsale in the US today.

T-Mobile had been targetting to sell 500,000 units by Christmas, but today said it’s taken more than 1.5 million pre-orders for the G1.

That’s good news for HTC, the Taiwanese company that’s manufacturing the G1 handset. HTC has announced it’s now tripled its initial production run.

And it could be even better news for Rakon, the New Zealand technology sucess story whose oscillating crystals are used in GPS systems – including those increasingly found in smartphones (and soon, most phones; Nokia says more than half its models will feature GPS by 2010).

Rakon marketing manager Justin Maloney confirms that Rakon has a close relationship with HTC, and supplies GPS components for many of its models.

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Posted in Google Android, Google Chrome, Google Operating System, internet, Internet Explorer, Microsoft, softwares - news, T-Mobile G1 with Google | No Comments »

Municipal Wi-Fi Analyst Questions Google’s Commitment to Android OS

Friday, October 24th, 2008

Municipal Wi-Fi Analyst Questions Google’s Commitment to Android OS

Google’s long-awaited mobile operating system, Android, becomes available throughout the U.S. today, with the launch of T-Mobile’s G1 smartphone. But even as customers line up to buy this hot new device, some industry observers have their doubts about its long term prospects.

Craig Settles, a leading analyst in the municipal Wi-Fi field, recently compared the Android OS to Google’s plan of offering free wireless broadband access in cities throughout America (which never panned out).

Detailing several of the many challenges facing Android, Settles asks us to consider the “show me the money test.”

“When some higher up at Google sat down and asked the question, show me the money in muni wireless (particularly after EarthLink folded its hand), the argument for potential ad revenue didn’t seal the deal,” Settles writes on his blog. “So where’s the money for Google in Android? They don’t sell the operating system, they don’t sell the applications that run on Android phones and they don’t lock in phones to use Google service and that makes ad revenue somewhat speculative.”

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Posted in Google Android, Google Chrome, Google Operating System, internet, Internet Explorer, Linux, Microsoft, softwares - news, T-Mobile G1 with Google | No Comments »

Vivaty Brings The 3D Web to Your Browser, Starting With AIM and Facebook

Friday, October 17th, 2008

Vivaty Brings The 3D Web to Your Browser, Starting With AIM and Facebook

Move over Second Life. The 3D Web is starting to make inroads into the plain old browser. By “plain,” I mean only Internet Explorer on Windows machines—which for now is what you need to experience Vivaty Scenes. But at least it’s a start. (Firefox support on PCs is coming in a few weeks, but Mac support is being pushed off further).

Vivaty Scenes is launching today in public beta on AIM and in Facebook. These are realistic rooms that act as virtual personal environments—a 3D version of your personal page. You can set the theme, decorate with furniture and other virtual goods, and chat with the avatars of friends who enter your room (they need to install the app as well). The best part is that you can bring in photos from Flickr and Facebook, or videos from YouTube and display them on screens in your room. You can play MP3 songs as well.

The graphics are a cut above what you’d find in pre-teen virtual-world social networks like Club Penguin, Habbo Hotel, or Cyworld. They are more along the lines of Second Life or a Sims videogame. Vivaty is backed by Kleiner Perkins and Mohr Davidow. It raised $9.2 million in August, 2007, and a $200,000 seed round before that. Says CEO Keith McCurdy:

We are enabling full-featured 3D experiences inside a Web browser, instead of a separate application like Second Life. Every virtual environment—we call them scenes—is a URL.

That could be a game-changer if Vivaty’s platform takes off. It is deep linking into the 3D Web. Since they have regular URLs, each 3D scene can be linked to from the regular Web. Even objects within each room can each have their own URL. That is what is exciting about Vivty Scenes. It is extending the Web to 3D environments. Vivaty Scenes work only with AIM and Facebook for now, but they can work with other services such as iGoogle, My Yahoo, or as standalone Web pages.

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Posted in Google Chrome, google Lively, internet, Microsoft, softwares - news | No Comments »

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