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Displaying items by tag: Android

steve ballmer apple tablet

Microsoft is in a bit of trouble over their decision to grant users in the EU the right to choose their browser upon the installation of the Windows operating system. Now I know you are thinking that they have already been in trouble for this before, so why are we bringing it up again? Well the issue is that with the launch of Windows 7 Service Pack 1… Microsoft just stopped allowing for the browser election. Yup, any new system shipped with Windows 7 SP1 would boot up just like the good old days (for Microsoft). Well the European Union would like to talk to them about it.

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xbmc-win8

For home theater enthusiasts there is some good news today as we have found out that XBMC is working on a Media Center for use with the Android operating system. Many sites are reporting this as a “leak”, but as the information comes straight from XBMC’s own page we are going to call it a sneak peak. Ever since the first few Android based media players popped up on the market we have noted a rather large gap in what they offer. While most of them do have access to a limited form of the internet and you can access pictures and other items from your own network, the UI is clunky and not really suited for a home theater environment.

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iPhone-4

As we have told all of you before no system is secure. We have watched now as Android malware writers are using social engineering to mass-market spam and now we are seeing the first proof of concept of a method to “hack” Apple’s In-App purchase feature. We mentioned in our recent coverage of the Anrdoid.Dialup malware that this feature was not only vulnerable, but also could be used as a vector for attack and the installation of other malware.

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despd

We have been following Apple’s free run through the patent office for quite a while now (and I covered it long before starting this site). In the beginning Apple would patent advancements or refinements on technology they “borrowed” from others. Often these improvements were so noticeable that they were close to being a new technology. Even Steve Jobs once admitted to shamelessly stealing the ideas of others. What they were not doing at the time was using the patent system as a tool to stifle competition and they had not built the mythology that they invent everything just yet.

Published in Editorials
Code

On Saturday we published an editorial about some of the issues with Windows RT. These issues served to highlight why Microsoft might have chosen to build their own tablet. Although we do not agree with the decision and think that it will hurt Microsoft in the long run (with Windows RT) we cans still see how it all unfolded. As you might imagine not everyone saw things the way that we did, but what surprised me was a comment that seemed to indication that the development community was going to HAVE to write for Windows RT.

Published in Editorials
yahoo-mail-on-android

In the ongoing saga of the Android “botnet” that was reported by a Microsoft Engineer and then later backed up by a Sophos study we find now that it could be an altogether different item. When we first wrote about it we felt that it was hijacked accounts with an inserted or spoofed message ID that was then being sent back through Yahoo’s servers. It turns out that we were very close to the mark.

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News light-virus-1Hearing about a flaw in one product from a competitor in a product is sort of like asking your dog what food he likes best. You know you are not going to get a good answer and, of course, the dog is only going to stare at you and eat pretty much anything (including a bug…). So when we heard that a Microsoft Anti-Spam Engineer was reporting a new Android based email spam botnet we took it with a grain of salt (remember Microsoft has a new Phone OS coming out soon).

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MS-MythDespite the buzz over Google and Asus’ new Nexus 7 tablet there is still a lot of talk about Microsoft and their new Windows 8 combined push. Over the past week we have read a few very enlightening articles that tell us a lot more about the state of Windows 8 (RT and Phone) than is being publicly talked about. Right after surface there were several articles where analysts explored the possibility that Microsoft might be considering building their own phone in the same manner that they built the surface tablet.

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Facebook-logoThere are sometimes items that show up in the market that seem to point to something on the horizon that could be quite interesting. Although when we first saw the news that Facebook had picked up another Apple employee (this time the UI designer for iWeb and Numbers) we did not think much about it. Now however, there is something else that is on the horizon and that seems to counter some information that we had before about a possible Facebook phone. This is the news that RIM might be considering selling off their handset business.

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73There is rejoicing in many parts of the tech world tonight as common sense appears to have returned to at least a small portion of the legal system. On Friday (June 22 2012) Judge Richard Posner threw out a patent case between Motorola (Google) and Apple. He did not just dismiss it though; Judge Posner dismissed it with prejudice. This means that neither Apple nor Google can come back at each other for the same patents. True both have the right of appeal, but when something like this happens it is unlikely that an appeal will be granted.

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