http://www.osnews.com/ Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2012, David Adams OSNews version 4 donotreply@osnews.com (Adam Scheinberg) donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Wed, 15 Feb 2012 07:33:33 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com/ 120 http://www.osnews.com/story/25593/Chrome_browser_comes_to_Ice_Cream_Sandwich/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25593/Chrome_browser_comes_to_Ice_Cream_Sandwich/ So, how long have we been waiting for this to happen? Google has finally unveiled the future if the Android browser: it has no future. Google unveiled Chrome for Android Ice Cream Sandwich, and has designated it as the future default browser for the Android platform. Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:59:25 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Google 47 http://www.osnews.com/topics/28 News fran http://www.osnews.com/story/25584/Google_Unveils_Solve_for_X_/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25584/Google_Unveils_Solve_for_X_/ "Google's just pulled the curtains off of its 'Solve for X' website, and it appears that Google is nearing the creation of a TED-like think tank that will focus on talks about radical technological ideas. The site describes the effort as 'a place where the curious can go to hear and discuss radical technology ideas for solving global problems'." Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:50:15 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Google 2 http://www.osnews.com/topics/28 News http://www.osnews.com/story/25579/EU_Regulators_Want_Google_to_Halt_New_Privacy_Policy/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25579/EU_Regulators_Want_Google_to_Halt_New_Privacy_Policy/ "A group of European regulators has written to Google calling on it to halt the introduction of its new privacy policy, saying it needs to investigate whether the proposals sufficiently protect users' personal data." I'd rather regulators are on top of this now than when it's too late and we're all plugged into the Google Hivemind Overlord. Sat, 04 Feb 2012 14:53:59 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Google 24 http://www.osnews.com/topics/28 News bowkota http://www.osnews.com/story/25575/Google_Now_Scanning_Android_Apps_for_Malware/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25575/Google_Now_Scanning_Android_Apps_for_Malware/ "Google has added an automated scanning process that is designed to keep malicious apps out of the Android Market , the company announced today. The new service, code-named 'Bouncer', scans apps for known malware, spyware, and Trojans, and looks for suspicious behaviors and compares them against previously analyzed apps. Every app is then run on Google's cloud infrastructure to simulate how the software would operate on an Android device, he said. Existing apps are continuously analyzed, too." Thu, 02 Feb 2012 23:11:56 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Google 9 http://www.osnews.com/topics/28 News fran http://www.osnews.com/story/25543/Google_Consolidates_Updates_Its_Privacy_Policy/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25543/Google_Consolidates_Updates_Its_Privacy_Policy/ Google has updated its privacy policy - in fact, it has consolidated a mess of over 70 different privacy policies each covering an individual service into one, simpler policy. You'll now be treated as a single account, and data will be shared between Google services to make search results and ads more personalised (I assumed they already did that - makes sense). Wed, 25 Jan 2012 22:45:32 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Google 40 http://www.osnews.com/topics/28 News http://www.osnews.com/story/25522/Google_Contractors_Vandalised_OpenStreetMap_Data/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25522/Google_Contractors_Vandalised_OpenStreetMap_Data/ Fascinating. After the whole Mocality story, we were greeted by another story of Google misconduct. This time, it's OpenStreetMap, which claims that users connecting from the same Google IP addresses in India as in the Mocality incident are vandalising OpenStreetMap data. Google has confirmed to ReadWriteWeb that two contractors acting on their own behalf while on the Google network were responsible. Another, less serious instance of Google misconduct, perhaps, but OpenStreetMap's handling of this issue does smell fishy. Tue, 17 Jan 2012 21:11:59 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Google 10 http://www.osnews.com/topics/28 News bowkota http://www.osnews.com/story/25516/Fragmentation_Is_Not_the_End_of_Android/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25516/Fragmentation_Is_Not_the_End_of_Android/ "The fragmentation of Android is very real and very problematic for end users, developers, mobile operators, device manufacturers, and Google. However fragmentation does not mean Android is going to 'die' or 'fail' as some seem to think. On the contrary I think we can count on Android playing a significant role in our world for a long, long time. I also am confident that Google has already lost control of Android and has zero chance of regaining control. This post explains why I'm so confident about this." Mon, 16 Jan 2012 22:55:30 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Google 27 http://www.osnews.com/topics/28 News http://www.osnews.com/story/25508/Google_Employees_Caught_Scamming_Kenyan_Company/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25508/Google_Employees_Caught_Scamming_Kenyan_Company/ It really hasn't been Google's week. First the entire internet exploded because of some uninteresting nonsense regarding social networking (really internet?), but today something happened that's actually a bad thing and worth talking about: in Kenya, Google has been caught accessing the databases of a competing business, and offering Google's own product to the people in the database. Google has already apologised, and is currently investigating the matter. Fri, 13 Jan 2012 22:45:48 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Google 61 http://www.osnews.com/topics/28 News bowkota http://www.osnews.com/story/25506/Introducing_the_Android_Design_Site/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25506/Introducing_the_Android_Design_Site/ Pretty interesting. "Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) is our biggest redesign yet - both for users and developers. We've enhanced the UI framework with new interactions and styles that will let you create Android apps that are simpler and more beautiful than ever before. To help you in that mission, we're introducing Android Design: the place to learn about principles, building blocks, and patterns for creating world-class Android user interfaces. Whether you're a UI professional or a developer playing that role, these docs show you how to make good design decisions, big and small." Thu, 12 Jan 2012 23:06:03 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Google 15 http://www.osnews.com/topics/28 News http://www.osnews.com/story/25471/Is_Google_Paying_Bloggers_to_Write_Garbage_Content_/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25471/Is_Google_Paying_Bloggers_to_Write_Garbage_Content_/ Last year, Google implemented one of its more ambitious changes to its core consumer products (that would be search, in case you lost track) with Panda, an effort to reduce the amount of pointless and low-quality review sites and the like from the top of Google's search results. Interesting, then, that there's hints Google is actually generating garbage content to promote Chrome, as SearchEngineLand and SEO Book. Or is there a more reasonable explanation? Update: And this is why - rightfully so or no - Google tends to get more love than, say, Apple or Microsoft. The company has announced that even though the sponsored posts were not the company's fault, Google will still penalise the Chrome browser's homepage, lowering its pagerank for at least 60 days. Tue, 03 Jan 2012 16:15:15 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Google 16 http://www.osnews.com/topics/28 News http://www.osnews.com/story/25440/Review_Android/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25440/Review_Android/ Once upon a time, in a land, far, far away, there were two mobile operating systems. One of them was designed for mobile from the ground up; the other was trying really hard to copy its older, desktop brother. One was limited in functionality, inflexible and lacked multitasking, but was very efficient, fast, and easy to use. The other had everything and the kitchen sink, was very flexible and could multitask, but had a steep learning curve, was inconsistent, and not particularly pretty. Mon, 19 Dec 2011 20:11:03 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Google 101 http://www.osnews.com/topics/28 Feature http://www.osnews.com/story/25435/Chrome_15_Surpasses_IE8/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25435/Chrome_15_Surpasses_IE8/ Only weeks ago StatCounter reported that Chrome pushed past Firefox to become the second most popular web browser after IE. A new StatCounter report says Chrome 15 has jumped into the number one spot, replacing IE8. This is the first time a non-Microsoft browser has led the list in StatCounter's tracking. Fri, 16 Dec 2011 07:36:05 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Howard Fosdick) Google 58 http://www.osnews.com/topics/28 News http://www.osnews.com/story/25407/Android_A_Visual_History/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25407/Android_A_Visual_History/ "Google's Android operating system has undergone a pretty incredible metamorphosis in the three short years since it debuted on the T-Mobile G1. Think about it: three years, eight major releases. Eight. To put that in perspective, there have only been ten major consumer-grade releases of Windows (give or take, depending on how you count) in over twenty-five years of retail availability. You could make a pretty convincing argument that no consumer technology in history has evolved as quickly as the smartphone, and Android has been at the very center of that evolution. With the release of Android 4.0 - Ice Cream Sandwich - on Samsung's Galaxy Nexus, we wanted to take a look back through the years at how Andy Rubin's brainchild has evolved into the industry titan that it is today. What's changed? What has (sometimes stubbornly) stayed the same?" Fantastic article. Fri, 09 Dec 2011 00:27:57 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Google 9 http://www.osnews.com/topics/28 News http://www.osnews.com/story/25392/Android_Graphics_Performance/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25392/Android_Graphics_Performance/ Dianne Hackborn has posted on Google+ about some common myths regarding Android's graphics rendering pipeline, and we have a rebuttal to that one as well. Interesting stuff, but I want to talk abut something related: Android's gaphics performance. I'm hearing a lot of talk about how Android's effects and transitions and such aren't as smooth as those on iOS, but on my Galaxy SII, everything is super-smooth. So, I'm wondering - what's it like for you? Tue, 06 Dec 2011 22:16:54 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Google 52 http://www.osnews.com/topics/28 News http://www.osnews.com/story/25398/Could_Google_Kill_Firefox_/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25398/Could_Google_Kill_Firefox_/ "In Mozilla's recently released 2010 annual report, the foundation indicates that 86% and 84% of royalty revenue came from one contract in 2009 and 2010, respectively. Mozilla separately confirms that Google is its largest contract." Evan Niu at Motley Fool then estimates that of Mozilla's last year royalty revenue of $121.1 million, $101.7 million came from Google. The article speculates that Google might eventually kill Firefox by withdrawing its financial support. Tue, 06 Dec 2011 21:38:48 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Howard Fosdick) Google 33 http://www.osnews.com/topics/28 News