QNX Software 30th Anniversary

QNX Software has posted a page for its 30th anniversary, noting 30 ways that QNX touches your life (whether you know about it or not. It includes QNX's use in high capacity routers, power generation systems, emergency dispatch systems, OnStar, navigation systems, warehouse automation, television broadcasting systems, trains and planes, and many more.

Intel Brews x86 Android

Intel has been working lately on "Atomising" the Android mobile OS in lieu of the upcoming Froyo (or 2.2) release so that it can be installed natively on x86 devices-- Atom-based netbooks in particular. Says Renee James, Senior VP for software and services at Intel: "Our expectation is that will be based on the Froyo release and will be available this summer to developers... wasn't tremendously difficult, as we have a lot experience in Linux". The fun is supposed to arrive for developers this summer.

Profiting From Open Source – Without Selling Out

InfoWorld's Peter Wayner discusses the difficulties of transforming an open source project into a profitable endeavor, offering 8 business models for balancing openness with revenue. 'The debate over permissiveness is woven throughout the discussions of open source business models. Some companies stay small on purpose, while others argue that there's nothing wrong with proprietary options if they encourage all users to share the costs of development,' Wayner writes. 'The challenge for businesses is to find viable mechanisms for aligning the interests of the users and the programmers -- a complex task of social engineering.' From selling support, to selling documentaiton, to selling FUD, each business model offers a unique opportunity to strike a balance between purity and profit.

IE9 Platform Preview 3 Marches to the Standards Beat

Microsoft have released IE9 Platform Preview 3, an application that gives developers access to the IE9 rendering engine (it's not a full browser). In this update they have added hardware accelerated HTML5 Video, Canvas, Fonts (using WOFF) and big improvements in JavaScript with ES5, DOM Traversal, L2 and L3 events and 83/100 Acid3 score. It sits between Firefox and Chrome 6 on JavaScript speed, but outperforms every browser in real tests.

Google Flicks Remote Kill Switch on Two Android Applications

While it's currently cool to love Google's Android and hate Apple's iOS, especially because of the massive difference in philosophy (open vs. closed), Google still retains a fair amount of control over the Android Market. This was demonstrated this week Google employed its remote kill switch for two Android Market applications, removing them from all Android devices on which they were installed.

Why Xbox Kinect Needs an App Store

The Xbox 360 Kinect may be designed for games, but its true potential lies in Apps. Because Kinect has full-body tracking, gesture recognition, and specialized microphones that are good for hands-free voice recognition, new types of non-game apps that have never been seen anywhere except maybe in Star Trek could come into being. "Computer, show me the best Italian restaurants in North Beach." Kinect could then show these on the screen, and you could flick through this list with gestures, minority report style. What app is this? Why, Yelp for Kinect, of course.

Linaro Seeks to Simplify ARM Linux Landscape

The ARM processor family is a complicated one, with many different variations, leading to large numbers of separate sub-architectures in the Linux kernel. A quick glance at the ARM directory in a recent kernel tree shows nearly 70 different sub-architectures, each corresponding to a different CPU or system-on-chip (SoC). That complexity has made it harder to develop new products for new or existing ARM devices. A new organization that was formed by six silicon vendors, Linaro, seeks to simplify that landscape, and allow easier--faster--development of ARM-Linux-based products.

Sad State of South Korean Internet

Internet users throughout the world, and particularly in the United States, have long been chastened to hear of South Korea's legendary broadband penetration. The urbanized, technologically-advanced nation has been famous for rolling out ultra high speed network for the majority of its citizens, and many of us have looked on with envy. However, it turns out it's not all good news. An OSNews reader gives us the skinny from the trenches in Korea.

Android App Security Risk

About 20 percent of third-party apps available through the Android marketplace allow third-party access to sensitive data, and can do things like make calls and send texts without the owners' knowledge, according to a recent security report from security firm SMobile Systems. There's no indication that any of the highlighted apps is malicious, but the report does underscore the inherent risks of a more open ecosystem as opposed to Apple's oppressive yet more controlled environment, with every app being vetted before availability.

iOS4 and Linux

One thing that is always of concern when dealing with Apple is the extent to which Apple might break "unauthorised" access to "your" device with a new OS update. The recent 1.0 release of libimobiledevice allows access to iPhones and iPads on Linux. So does iOS4 break this newcomer to the iPhone scene? Read more.