OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

The End of Proprietary Big Iron ISA?

Guest post by SReilly 2010-02-18 Hardware 49 Comments

OSNews recently linked to several articles on the two remaining big iron RISC based platforms still alive and kicking, something of great interest to myself both in a professional capacity and for personal reasons (I wouldn't be an avid OSNews reader and poster if I wasn't into non mainstream architectures).

Microsoft-Yahoo Search Deal Approved

Kroc 2010-02-18 Legal 38 Comments

BBC News reports that the US and European regulators (yes, the same EC that slapped MS with a EUR900M fine) have approved the deal that will see Microsoft control Yahoo's search and advertising business. This will mean that one of the first, great search engines (there was a time before Google) will now be powered by johnny-come-lately Bing.

Windows Phone 7 Series Developer Docs Leaked?

Thom Holwerda 2010-02-18 Windows 4 Comments

A mobile operating system release by Microsoft that's worth rumouring about, and that actually gets people excited. Yes, it's been a long time, but here we are. A number of Windows Phone 7 Series developer documents have supposedly leaked, which provide answers to some of the question we have - including the multitasking thing.

Submitted by poundsmack 2010-02-18 Ubuntu 42 Comments

With the flood of ARM-based netbooks and tablets upon us (keep watch outside, the flood can come any day now, promise!), Linux distributions are trying to be ready for The Great Coming of ARM. A problem with ARM hardware, according to Jamie Bennett, an Ubuntu Mobile Developer working for Canonical, is that many 3D drivers are non-Free; this poses problems for Ubuntu's Netbook Remix UI.

IPFaces: Create an iPhone App Without Client Development

David Adams 2010-02-17 General Development 9 Comments

IPfaces is a client-server framework for iPhone (and presumably other platforms soon) that enables developers to create a server-side app using their familiar tools then connect to a generic client that's already downloadable in the App Store. It's dual license, with a GPL Open Source version for free projects and a commercial version for for-profit apps. Unlike other frameworks that allow you to create an iPhone app using non Objective-C tools, this one gives you a real client, not just a wrapper for a web app.

Submitted by poundsmack 2010-02-17 Hardware 3 Comments

"NEC Corporation and NEC Electronics Corporation announced today the development and successful demonstration of LSI technology for next-generation high-speed serial communication interfaces. This new technology allows inter-chip communication that is three times faster than modern communication interface standards, such as USB 3.0 and PCI Express 2.0, without using complicated transmission modes like multilevel transmission."

Smartphone OS Leaves One Hand Free

Thom Holwerda 2010-02-17 Wireless 7 Comments

"Today's smartphones are too much of a handful, according to Israeli company Else: You either need to grab them with both hands and punch away at the keyboard with your thumbs, or you hold them with one hand and touch the screen with the other. However, Else's Intuition software platform makes it possible to access all the functions, contacts and data in a phone with just one hand." The company's entire website is done in Flash. I'm not kidding.

Fitting Android and a Processor on a SIM Card

Thom Holwerda 2010-02-17 Wireless 2 Comments

The SIM cards in cellular telephones might be smaller than a postage stamp and less than a millimeter thick but that hasn't stopped South Korea's SK Telecom from cramming all the major components needed to run Google's Android OS inside one of them.

Submitted by lemur2 2010-02-17 Wireless 25 Comments

As promised, a write-up about Notion Ink's Adam. Yes, it's yet another tablet, and yes, there's only so many ways you can build a tablet, but this one is special: it has a much-vaunted Pixel Qi display, a type of display that is supposed to herald the coming of the Unicorn of Plenty. All hype aside, this is a pretty cool piece of technology.

The Facebook Login Thing: Blown Out of Proportion

Thom Holwerda 2010-02-17 Editorial 86 Comments

Recently, a story about people mistaking a news story for the Facebook login page has received considerable media attention. It's currently being seen by many as justification for the recent trend in locking people out of their computers for their own protection - but anyone with even basic mathematical skills and a calculator should come to the conclusion that this story has been blown way out of proportion.

RIM Woos Consumers with New WebKit Browser for BlackBerry

Thom Holwerda 2010-02-16 Wireless 13 Comments

"Enterprise stalwart Research In Motion showed off its new faster, smoother, all-round better WebKit-powered browser today at Mobile World Congress. RIM's BlackBerry has long been popular with corporate customers; with the new browser, the company wants to broaden the device's appeal to attract more non-business users to the platform."

Windows Phone 7 Series To Finally Bring CE 6.0 to Users

Thom Holwerda 2010-02-16 Windows 24 Comments

Since I'm a little under the weather at the moment, posting is a bit slow on OSNews (yes, a story about Notion Ink's Adam is upcoming!). I'm kind of picking the simple and easy-to-write items for now, and this is most certainly one of them. As some of you might know, Microsoft unveiled Windows Phone 7 Series yesterday, a complete reboot of its mobile operating system. While little is known about its internals, it's most likely based on Windows Embedded CE 6.0.

Contiki 2.4 Released

Submitted by Adam Dunkels 2010-02-16 OS News 6 Comments

Contiki is an open source, low-power operating system for networked embedded systems. It includes the worlds smallest IPv6 stack and provides full IP networking in a few kilobytes of RAM, as well as low-power mechanism that makes a tiny radio-equipped microcontroller run for years on a pair of batteries. Version 2.4 has been released today.

Biggest Mobile Operators Join Forces on App Store Project

Thom Holwerda 2010-02-16 Wireless 10 Comments

"Twenty-four mobile network operators have formed the Wholesale Applications Community to avoid fragmenting the apps market and to give developers one point of entry to all the members, the GSM Association announced on Monday. The operators will now start working on uniting their existing developer communities, so developers will be able to go to one place to get their applications distributed instead of having to go through multiple application approval processes. The community will also start working on a common development standard that should be ready within the next 12 months. The standard will be independent of phone type and operating system, according to the members."

Submitted by Zifre 2010-02-16 3D 6 Comments

"Fedora started out by shipping the Nouveau DDX driver, then turned to kernel mode-setting support that has matured and is used by default with the current Fedora 12 release. With Fedora 13, Red Hat is again shipping with the latest free software NVIDIA bits, which now includes 3D support. Thanks to an update to the mesa-dri-drivers-experimental package, there is 3D/OpenGL support enabled for NVIDIA hardware. This 3D support is coming from Nouveau's Gallium3D driver for most of the NVIDIA graphics hardware while there is also a classic Mesa driver for old NV hardware that recently came about. Yes, there is finally a deployed Nouveau-NVIDIA Gallium3D driver that will be easily deployable out in the wild with Fedora 13."

OSnews Podcast Now Available in OGG

Kroc 2010-02-16 OS News 106 Comments

We fought you off for as long as possible, but in the end we had to give in :) What decided it was that OSnews is not a mainstream source of news like Engadget or even sites where they actually employ people, we are not an entity like AOL that fails to grasp the reality of the web today and the issues surrounding the technology landscape. We have the technical background, and the community to boot to know that when we criticise others, we had better be doing the right thing ourselves. Get the feed here.

Microsoft Unveils Windows Phone 7 Series

Thom Holwerda 2010-02-15 Windows 114 Comments

So, after much, much speculation and many, many rumours, Microsoft finally took the wraps off Windows Phone 7 Series, its newest mobile operating system. Hold on to your hats, because uncharacteristically for the Redmond giant, they've rebuilt everything from the ground up - this system has little to no connection to the Windows Mobile of yore. I don't say this lightly - but dear lord, Windows Phone 7 Series is full of win. Update: Hands-on video from Engadget inside. Update II: There is no sync application. It's all done over-the-air, to the internet. Only videos and music are synced via the Zune software. Update III: Since I didn't mention it clearly, here it goes: Windows Phone 7 Series is a clean break. There is no backwards compatibility at all. Update IV: Channel9 has a 22-minute in-depth demonstration of Windows Phone 7 Series.

Windows Mobile 7 Interface, Device Leaked on MWC Banners

Thom Holwerda 2010-02-15 Wireless No Comments

Only a few hours left to go until the big Windows Mobile 7/Windows Phone Series 7/whatever announcement by Microsoft at Mobile World Congress, but shots of what is supposed to be the new UI have already leaked - and it looks refreshingly different from the barrage of iPhone copies we've been seeing the past few years. Microsoft's press conference starts 15:00 CET.

Nokia, Intel Merge Moblin, Maemo Into MeeGo

Thom Holwerda 2010-02-15 Wireless 75 Comments

We've got some breaking news, folks: Intel and Nokia have just announced a partnership in which they will merge Maemo and Moblin into a new product called "MeeGo", aimed at just about any type of device you can imagine. This is one of the rare (but very welcome!) moments of convergence in the mobile Linux space.

Teacup, Meet Storm, pt. IV: Adobe Blocking HTML5?

Thom Holwerda 2010-02-14 Internet 38 Comments

There's a bit of ruckus going on at the moment in the world of HTML5. A number of people are claiming that Adobe has blocked the latest publication of the HTML5 standard. However, after diving into the actual mailing list threads, it becomes obvious quite quickly that it's nothing but a misunderstanding. Update: Masinter replies: "No part of HTML5 is, or was ever, 'blocked' in the W3C HTML Working Group - not HTML5, not Canvas 2D Graphics, not Microdata, not Video - not by me, not by Adobe."