David Adams Archive

Nielsen's latest smartphone numbers show Apple's iPhone by far the most popular device among mobile computing hardware, but Android in a strong lead as the most popular OS. But while it's great to have choices in hardware, it can certainly be maddening to have to choose, especially if you don't have the fortitude to keep up with what's new on the market. So, dear readers, for the benefit of those who might be in the market for an Android handset, which one is best?

Apple is now more liquid than the United States government, the Financial Post reports. As the government struggles to resolve the debt ceiling debate, the operating balance in Washington is at US$73.768 billion and falling. Meanwhile, Apple has US$75.876 billion.

ACROS Security has discovered a vulnerability in Sun Java, which can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user's system. The vulnerability is caused due to the application loading an executable file in an insecure manner when an out of memory condition occurs.

In an interview with the Austrian tech site derStandard.at/web Google's Chris DiBona talks about the important role Open Source plays inside of Google. He also goes on to explain why "Android is the Linux desktop dream come true".

Apple is likely to replace Hewlett-Packard (HP) as the global number one notebook vendor in 2012 if tablet PCs are included in the calculation of global notebook shipments, according to industry sources.

There's no question Research In Motion is in the midst of a major transitional period. The company is planning to launch a brand new product line based on a brand new operating system within the next 12 months, and even though the first device born out of RIM's new QNX OS was impressive in some ways, it was incomplete. There still is a chance for RIM to deliver some really interesting competitive products, but time is quickly running out, as we have written time and time again. Update: RIM's response.

OSNews interviews Alexander Tsolkas, security consultant, Director Sales & Marketing at IÏ€sec Ltd. Germany, and creator of HSS, or High Security Server, a highly secure Linux kernel and a proprietary management Control Panel. We ask him about his product and about the state of ultra high security computing.

Google is activating half a million Android devices a day, a big jump in just the last couple months, a sign of growing momentum for the platform. While SymbianOS appears to be hanging on in the mobile arena, trends indicate that the iOS share is slipping slightly, losing ground to Android. The pure marketshare numbers don't tell the whole story, since the entire segment is growing rapidly, so even platforms that are in declining share might be adding new users. But if the upsurge in Android activations continues, Android may overtake iOS in a few months and move into second place behind SymbianOS. Blackberry is in a slow decline, while WP7 does not have enough market share to appear in the statistics.

Make no mistake, Microsoft isn't playing coy in the smartphone market any longer. The folks in Redmond are making a significant jump forward in the mobile arena, announcing that the upcoming version of Windows Phone, codenamed "Mango," will be heading to a device near you in time for the holidays. As its competitors have raised the bar of expectations to a much higher level, Microsoft followed suit by adding at least 500 features to its mobile investment, which the company hopes will plug all of the gaping holes the first two versions left open.

Developers are stepping back from BlackBerry because they say creating apps is too complex and costly for the size of the market. RIM’s devices have different screens sizes, varied operating systems and several ways to navigate, from a physical keyboard to touchscreen to a scroll button. In deploying Apple applications, there are very few surprises . . . In Android, there are increasingly more surprises. But in BlackBerry, there are immediately lots of gotchas across the board.

"Mozilla's VP of Technical Strategy, Mike Shaver has rejected Microsoft's criticism of WebGL in which it said it would not implement the 3D graphics standard because of security issues in the design. Shaver says that "there is no question that the web needs 3D capabilities" to enable developers to create "advanced visualisations, games or new user interfaces" and points at Molehill (Adobe's 3D for Flash) and Microsoft's Silverlight 3D which are offering just those capabilities." One discussion of Microsofts WebGL criticism can be found here.

Mozilla has released the final version of Firefox 5.0 to download webistes ahead of the official announcement of the release. Here some features that are newly available on Firefox 5.0: Improved HTML 5 and CSS3 support, Improved overall performance, Firefox 5.0 Web apps, A Do-Not-Track option.

RIM's first quarter results are in and things don't look good. . . RIM said it shipped 13.2 million BlackBerrys and 500,000 PlayBooks. Keep in mind that number is shipped, not sold. That means many of those products could be in the channel or sitting on store shelves somewhere. The company also announced a "headcount reduction" to keep costs in line.

Microsoft has released a beta SDK for Windows, allowing Windows developers to officially make use of the XBox Kinect hardware. From their own press release: "The Kinect for Windows SDK, which works with Windows 7, includes drivers, rich APIs for Raw Sensor Streams, natural user interfaces, installer documents and resource materials. The SDK provides Kinect capabilities to developers building applications with C++, C# or Visual Basic using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010."