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One of the key characteristics that has contributed to Android's popularity among technology enthusiasts is the platform's flexibility. It's possible for third-party developers to build replacements for many different components of the Android user experience, including the home screen. Among the third-party home screen implementations available from the Android Market, the most functional and popular is arguably LauncherPro.
Created by independent developer Federico Carnales, the LauncherPro home screen offers a multitude of useful configuration options and practical features that are not available in Android's standard home screen. Launcher Pro can be installed at no cost from the Android Market, but the developer also recently began offering a "Plus" version for $2.99 that offers some premium functionality, including a sophisticated collection of custom home screen widgets that are inspired by HTC's Sense environment.
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Mozilla has announced the availability of the fourth Firefox 4 beta release. The new beta brings some extremely significant new features that have been gestating in Mozilla's labs, including built-in synchronization functionality and a sophisticated new tab management system. Tabs have arguably had a major impact on how users operate Web browsers, but the concept hasn't scaled very well as browsing habits become more complex. Mozilla devised a compelling solution with its Tab Candy concept, which allows users to arrange groups of tags in spatially-organized collections. Mozilla's experimental implementation of Tab Candy has matured swiftly and is going to be fully integrated in Firefox 4. It's available for testing in the new beta release, though it's said to not be fully feature-complete yet.
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In response to growing concerns among third-party developers about Android application piracy, Google recently released a new framework called the License Verification Library (LVL). It is intended to make it easier for Android applications to verify that the user is authorized to run the software. The framework is still at an early stage of development, however, and has already been shown to be susceptible to a trivially simple attack.
The LVL is technically not part of the actual Android operating system--developers who want to use the framework compile the library into their own applications. The standard verification implementation offered with the framework relies on a validation service operated by Google that integrates with the Android market, but developers can modify the library to make it use alternate verification methods.
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Although Google's Android mobile operating system is principally designed for phones, it is also increasingly showing up on low-cost tablets and other kinds of mobile devices. The platform is rapidly emerging as a major contender in the e-book reader market, where it is attracting a growing number of hardware vendors.
Barnes and Noble's popular Nook is arguably the most prominent Android-based e-book reader, but there are also a number of intriguing offerings from other vendors. Some are differentiating their readers by eschewing battery-friendly e-ink in favor of color LCD screens. These products take a more tablet-like approach and give users the advantage of a multifunction Internet-enabled device at nearly the same price point as regular e-book readers.
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The growing user base of Google's Android mobile operating system has attracted some truly talented game developers. Great games are available from the Android Market, but it's not always easy to find the best. This guide will familiarize you with some of our favorites.
We embedded a QR code next to each review so that you can easily install the games. In order to interpret the QR codes, you will need to first install a code reader application such as Zxing's Barcode Scanner. If you are reading this article on an Android device, you can simply tap the barcode image and you will be taken to the relevant entry in the Android Market.
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Motorola set the standard for Android-based QWERTY sliders when it launched the original Droid last year. An aggressive advertising campaign, excellent specs, and an appealing form factor propelled the Droid to the top of the charts and made it one of the best-selling Android smartphones. Motorola is sticking to its winning formula for the product's sequel, the Droid 2, which recently launched on Verizon's network.
Like its predecessor, the Droid 2 has a solid QWERTY keyboard and a 3.7-inch LCD. The form factor is largely unchanged, but Motorola has boosted the specs to make the device more competitive relative to the latest Android offerings from other handset makers. The Droid 2 has a 1GHz OMAP 3630 processor, 512MB of RAM, and 8GB of internal storage.
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Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth revealed today that Ubuntu 11.04 will be codenamed Neutered Nudibranch Natty Narwhal. In a blog entry, he described the reasoning behind the codename and discussed some of the features that are planned for the release.
Ubuntu is developed on a time-based six-month release cycle. There are two new versions every year, which typically arrive in October and April. The version number is derived from the year and the approximate month of the planned release date. Each version has a development codename that consists of an animal name preceded by an adjective that starts with the same letter. The names follow an alphabetically ordered sequence. In many cases, a future version is referred to by its letter prior to the disclosure of the intended codename.
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Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth announced Monday that multitouch support and gesture-based interaction will arrive in Ubuntu 10.10, the next major version of the popular Linux distribution. The feature will be tightly integrated in Unity, Ubuntu's new lightweight netbook environment.
Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, has developed a software framework called uTouch that is intended to simplify gesture handling. The company's team of designers has published an early draft of a gesture guideline document that explains how multitouch capabilities will be used in Unity. It defines a common grammar of gestures and introduces concepts like chained gestures, which will allow users to convey gesture-based instructions to the software in a more expressive way.
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An internal Oracle memo that was released last week provides a detailed summary of the company's plans for the Solaris operating system, which Oracle obtained when it acquired Sun. The memo offers a mix of good and bad news for Solaris enthusiasts. It reveals that Oracle is strongly committed to advancing the Solaris platform and intends to increase the availability of resources for Solaris development. The bad news is that Oracle plans to discontinue Sun's community-centric OpenSolaris distribution.
The OpenSolaris project emerged in 2007 with the aim of producing a downloadable distribution that includes a complete computing environment built around the open source components of the Solaris operating system. Sun brought in Debian founder Ian Murdock to orchestrate the endeavor in collaboration with contributors from the Solaris enthusiast community.
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During the annual LinuxCon conference last week in Boston, Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin moderated a discussion panel about the Linux-based MeeGo platform with Nokia's MeeGo Ecosystem Development head Thomas Miller and Intel open source technologist Derek Speed. During the panel, Miller and Speed discussed some of the technical and logistical characteristics that differentiate MeeGo from other mobile platforms.
The MeeGo project was launched earlier this year when Intel and Nokia brought together their respective mobile Linux platforms in a combined effort to reduce fragmentation and offer device vendors a standardized platform. The MeeGo platform is endorsed by the Linux Foundation, which has taken on a stewardship role with the aim of facilitating collaboration around the software. Although the underlying software components on which MeeGo is based are relatively mature and functional, the convergence process is still ongoing.
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Thursday, Oracle filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Google, accusing the search giant of infringing on patented Java technologies in its Linux-based Android mobile operating system. Even though Oracle appears to have a solid basis for legal action, the lawsuit could permanently burn bridges between Oracle and the broader Java ecosystem. Such blatantly antagonistic litigation sends a clear message to the open source software community that Oracle is a hostile and abusive interloper rather than a contributor.
It raises very serious questions about the company's stewardship of other open source technology that it obtained during the acquisition of Sun. The resulting uncertainty will likely not be conducive to retaining the customers and mindshare that Sun had built around certain open source products. It will also likely have a serious chilling affect on community involvement and third-party contributions. It's important to recognize that the impact of this lawsuit will be felt far beyond the scope of Java and will also influence perceptions of other key open source projects obtained by Oracle, such as the MySQL database system.
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