Google demands veto on OEM Android changes, stretches definition of 'open source'

Google, according to reports from "a dozen executives working at key companies in the Android ecosystem" is finally locking down the open source and easily-fragmented Android operating system.

As it currently stands, Google hands over the 'final' code for each version of Android, and OEMs and developers then spend some time customizing the OS to fit their hardware, and to create a unique and marketable flavor. That's all set to change, however.

Over the last few months, according to several people familiar with the matter, Android licensees such as HTC, Motorola and Facebook, have been asked to sign 'non-fragmentation clauses.' This new contract caveat will give Google the right to review and pass judgment on all changes to the Android OS. Two executives at Facebook say that they're unhappy that Google gets to review its changes to Android -- which is understandable, given Facebook and Google are direct competitors -- and there have also been allegations that Google is preventing some Verizon devices from shipping because they include Microsoft's Bing instead of Google search.

Continue reading Google demands veto on OEM Android changes, stretches definition of 'open source'

Google demands veto on OEM Android changes, stretches definition of 'open source' originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 31 Mar 2011 07:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/31/google-demands-veto-on-android-changes-stretches-definition-of/

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IE9 and Firefox 4 post top marks in Web browser power use comparison

Over on the Internet Explorer Blog, Microsoft has posted results from an extensive comparison of the top five Web browsers. The goal: to determine whether Internet Explorer 9, Firefox 4, Chrome 10, Safari 5, or Opera 11 is able to squeeze the most life out of your laptop's battery.

A baseline was determined with test systems sitting idle, and then browsers were pointed at about:blank, a news site, the HTML5 Galactic demo, and the IE9 fish tank demo. Perhaps unsurprisingly, IE9 came out on top -- though Firefox 4 was a very close second on nearly every test. As you can see, the other browsers didn't necessarily fare quite as well, with Google Chrome, Safari, and Opera all posting significantly worse scores. In Opera 11's case, a laptop battery would last over one hour more with Internet Explorer 9 installed.

But what we'd really like to know is where did Microsoft find the dilithium crystals required to run a Galactic Total Power Consumption test...

IE9 and Firefox 4 post top marks in Web browser power use comparison originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 30 Mar 2011 07:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/30/ie9-and-firefox-4-post-top-marks-in-pc-power-use-comparison/

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Android Central Editors' app picks for Oct 29, 2011

With Halloween coming up so quickly we decided to treat you to a little bit of fun with a Halloween themed round up for this week! So, let's hit the break and take a look at some of our favorite Halloween flavored apps!

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/YTu7mTEN7-M/android-central-editors-app-picks-oct-29-2011

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Internet Explorer 9 nears 4% share on Windows 7, IE6 extinction countdown picks up steam

Microsoft has shared some news about the state of its most and least loved Web browsers -- Internet Explorer 9 and 6, respectively. Even with IE9 only recently exiting beta, Microsoft reports that 3.6% of Windows 7 users are now running the new browser (no mention of Vista... what's with that?). The post also reveals that the adoption rate is almost five times what IE8 garnered in the early going.

It's also interesting to note that there are now more than 1,000 sites utilizing Internet Explorer 9's Windows 7 integration features -- like the new desktop notification support we showed you in Hotmail.

But perhaps the best news of all is that Microsoft's IE6countdown.com now has more than 400 partners and is generating nearly two million pageviews per month, helping to lure users away from the woefully out-of-date browser. Can the end come soon enough, DS readers?

Internet Explorer 9 nears 4% share on Windows 7, IE6 extinction countdown picks up steam originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 01 Apr 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/04/01/internet-explorer-9-nears-4-share-on-windows-7-ie6-extinction/

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Laid Off BuyWithMe Employees Tells All

Former BuyWithMe copywriter Peter D'Amato was one of nearly 120 people let go from the daily deals site last week.

He recounted the final days and told TechCrunch what went wrong.

According to D'Amato, rumors were swirling days before the layoffs. An email with names and titles of people being axed was accidentally sent to the development team instead of the executive team.

Then, on October 19, the company slashed more than half its staff from 200 to 85. D'Amato says his termination paper blamed "failure to identify sufficient funding to sustain the business' current employment levels."

But just a few weeks earlier, BuyWithMe had hired people and even acquired companies. So what went wrong?

Aside from being unable to raise another round of financing, D'Amato says the company's aggressive acquisitions caused it to fail. He also says merchants didn't make any money or generate valuable new business using BuyWithMe.  BuyWithMe's layoffs could also have been in preparation to be acquired by Gilt Groupe.

To read D'Amato's story about the mess at BuyWithMe, head over to TechCrunch >>

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See Also:

• REVEALED: Google Paid $151 Million For Zagat
• Gilt Groupe Will Acquire What's Left Of BuyWithMe
• Surprise, Surprise: Groupon Wants To Raise Its IPO Price

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider/~3/iLQ0YVuYVNE/laid-off-buywithme-employees-tells-all-2011-10

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The Most Effective Habit For Entrepreneurs

There was a girl at a party, Ona, who then started telling me how she met her current boyfriend. She just simply told him she liked him. I was insanely jealous right then of this guy. Here was this beautiful, hysterically funny girl who told a guy she liked him and now he was having regular sex with her. That doesn?t happen, right? It never happened to me. I sat there nodding, not being able to say anything but thinking, what if she said, ?I like you? to me right then. I would?ve been happy. Instead, I got depressed and went to sit on the stairs. There was another girl there. She was crying.I tried to comfort her by telling her I was an artist.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/XVWggJ5qN10/

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CHART OF THE DAY: Samsung's Meteoric Rise In The Smartphone Market (APAPL, NOK)

Samsung is now the world's largest smartphone maker churning out 28 million phones last quarter, according to data from Strategy Analytics.

In the chart below you can see its unbelievable growth. It looks like the introduction of the Samsung Galaxy in June 2010 across all the major carriers was the main cause of its growth spurt.

Follow the Chart Of The Day on Twitter: @chartoftheday

Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• ATTENTION APPLE FANS: Samsung Blowing Past Apple To Become The Biggest Smartphone Vendor Is Not Good News
• Samsung Rockets Past Apple To Take The Lead In Smartphones
• Jack Dorsey To Nokia: "You Make Too Many Products"

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider/~3/qzL5pKhMyg4/chart-of-the-day-samsung-apple-nokia-2011-10

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(Founder Stories) Houston On Pitching Dropbox: ?Tom Cruise In Minority Report Is Not Carrying Around A Thumb Drive?

Dropbox�co-founder,�Drew Houston�recently sat down with TechCrunch Editor,�Erick Schonfeld�to discuss the origins of Dropbox - a service that allows users to upload and access their files from virtually any device, anywhere.�With $250-million in funding and 45-million users, Dropbox is shaking up the world of digital storage. The roots of Dropbox were planted when Houston was a student at MIT. "You could sit down at any of tens-of-thousands of computers on campus and not only your files but your whole environment was just in front of you and kind of followed you around."�Then graduation hit and Houston says he was thrown "back to the stone age."

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/xllTKYw5oUg/

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Firefox 4 Mobile officially released for Android and Maemo devices

Moments ago, Mozilla stripped the release candidate moniker from Firefox 4 Mobile and pronounced it fit for public release. If you have a Nokia N900 phone, or a fairly-modern Android 2.0-or-later device, go ahead and install it from the Market, by using scanning the QR code after the break, or by visiting Firefox.com/m.

Accompanying the release is the launch of Spark, a cute social game that's designed to fuel the adoption of Firefox 4 Mobile, much like last week's use of Glow and Twitter Party during Firefox 4 PC's release.

While the browser still feels a little rough around the edges, it's definitely worth trying out if you're still using Android's stock browser. Its JavaScript performance is significantly better than any other Android browser, and if you use Firefox on your PC, its built-in Sync functionality is awesome.

Over the next few days we'll have plenty of tips and tricks for Firefox 4 Mobile, and a list of the best add-ons available for the new browser.

Continue reading Firefox 4 Mobile officially released for Android and Maemo devices

Firefox 4 Mobile officially released for Android and Maemo devices originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 29 Mar 2011 11:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/29/firefox-4-mobile-officially-released-for-android-and-maemo-devic/

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YouTube Video Editor gets impressive stabilization and 3D Video Creator

Google has just updated its cloud-based YouTube video editor to include the fruits of its recent purchase, plus a bit of 3D thrown in for good measure. The in-browser editor can now dramatically reduce camera shake using technology acquired from Green Parrot Pictures. It works by charting the best camera path for you, as if you were using a dolly or tripod, using a 'unified optimization technique.' In essence, it gives you a one-click solution for clearing up your shaky camera work, and the best bit is that you can preview it in real-time before you publish. Considering how much processing power video optimization like this demands, Google's pushing some impressive cloud computing here, distributing the load across a range of servers.

If video stabilization wasn't enough to sate your demands for a cloud-based video editor, how about a bit of 3D? Google's integrated 3D video production using two separate streams -- the kind of thing you get when you bolt two cameras together filming at a set distance apart at the same time. It's been quite difficult to create a 3D video from two cameras using just free tools, but now Google has integrated it into the YouTube 3D Video Creator and made it compatible with YouTube's 3D features.

So if you're a budding 3D movie maker on a budget, or you're a tad shaky when it comes to hand-held video, then checkout the new YouTube 3D Video Creator or the YouTube video editor. Hit the jump for a before and after comparison of the video stabilizer in action.

Continue reading YouTube Video Editor gets impressive stabilization and 3D Video Creator

YouTube Video Editor gets impressive stabilization and 3D Video Creator originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 23 Mar 2011 06:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/23/youtube-video-editor-gets-impressive-stabilizer-and-3d-video-cre/

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Google's Blogger platform adds five new HTML5 Dynamic Views

Google, as part of its ongoing and much-needed overhaul of its popular Blogger platform, has just enabled five dynamic, HTML5ish, AJAXy 'Dynamic Views'. There's a video introducing the new layouts after the break.

The five new views provide fresh and interesting ways to explore your favorite Blogger blogs. The Mosaic view, for example, creates a wall of thumbnails -- click one, and it zooms to fill the screen; click it again and it minimizes. Flipcard is similar to Mosaic, but not quite as eclectic. Sidebar, Timeslide and Snapshot round off the new views, with each one obviously targeted at different types of content, from photo blogs, to text-only philosophy blogs, and everything in between.

For now, you have to visit a Blogger blog and add /view to the URL to enable the new Dynamic Views. If you own a Blogger blog, you can disable the new views -- and really, why weren't they disabled by default?

If feedback is positive -- which we're sure it will be -- these Dynamic Views will soon be enabled by default. You'll also be able to edit the views in much the same way as current Blogger templates.

Continue reading Google's Blogger platform adds five new HTML5 Dynamic Views

Google's Blogger platform adds five new HTML5 Dynamic Views originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 31 Mar 2011 10:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/31/google-blogger-platform-introduces-five-new-html5-dynamic-views/

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Motorola shipped 4.8 million smartphones, just 100,000 Xoom tablets in Q3

Motorola Mobility just announced its third-quarter 2011 earnings, dropping word that it shipped 4.8 million smartphones for the three months ending Sept. 30. It also said it shipped 100,000 Xoom Honeycomb tablets. By comparison, it shipped 3.8 million smartphones in Q3 2010, The Xoom wasn't available until 2011, but consider that Motorola said it shipped 440,000 of them in the second quarter. That's quite the drop.

Moto also give an update regarding its merger with Google, but didn't do much more than just repeat that shareholders will vote on the deal Nov. 17, and that it's all contingent on passing legal muster in the U.S., Europe, Canada, China, Israel, Russia, Taiwan and Turkey, and that the whole deal could be final by the end of 2011, or in early 2012. Motorola's attributing $18 million in expenses to the merger.

No conference call this quarter. Too bad. They're usually pretty juicy. Hit the link below for all the financial nitty gritty.

Source: Motorola

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/DZtN4KCHbdE/motorola-mobility-shipped-48-million-smartphones-100000-xoom-tablets-q3

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