Monthly Archive:: October 2011

InfoWorld's Peter Wayner provides an in-depth comparison of four Java cloud platforms, putting CloudBees, Google App Engine, Red Hat OpenShift, and VMware Cloud Foundry through their paces to 'reveal the pleasures and perils of coding on a public cloud platform.' 'The danger of lock-in seems to lurk around every corner, and that's not necessarily the worst part. What if we're happy with everything about our cloud except we need one missing feature that the cloud's masters either can't or don't want to deliver?' Wayner writes. 'Some of the clouds rely upon standard tools that take standard WAR files and deliver their information to the world. Others have so many proprietary twists that you might as well tattoo the code on your arm -- it's going to be with you for the rest of your life.'

On its website, Apple has just confirmed that its co-founder and former CEO, Steve Jobs, has passed away at age 56. After bringing the company back from the brink of bankruptcy and turning it into one of the world's most succesful technology companies, Jobs lost the battle with pancreatic cancer.

"India has launched what it says is the world's cheapest touch-screen tablet computer, priced at just $35. Costing a fraction of Apple's iPad, the subsidised Aakash is aimed at students. It supports web browsing and video conferencing, has a three-hour battery life and two USB ports, but questions remain over how it will perform. Officials hope the computer will give digital access to students in small towns and villages across India, which lags behind its rivals in connectivity."

"Sources tell us that Nokia is developing a Linux-based replacement for its S40 phones, called Meltemi. The news was leaked, accurately, by the Wall Street Journal last week. Now we can confirm it. The thinking is that a Linux-based replacement for S40 will allow developers to tap into proven development tools - and Qt. The April memo referred to Meltemi as a platform for 'rich Featurephones' and stated that development will be centered in Ulm, Germany. There's no U-turn, however. Meltemi had been long-been touted as a richer successor to S40. Windows phones will occupy the budget smartphone segment, not Linux."

"Samsung Electronics said it would file for a sales ban on Apple's new iPhone with courts in France and Italy as the phone infringed its patents, widening its legal battle with Apple. The maker of Galaxy smartphones and tablets, which has emerged as a credible challenger to Apple's mobile devices, said on Wednesday it would file for a sales ban in other countries after further review. The latest salvo by the company comes less than a day after Apple's iPhone 4S left investors and Apple's fans wishing for more than a souped-up version of its previous device introduced more than a year ago." So yeah.

I'm down with the flu at the moment, so I wasn't really looking forward to doing a detailed write-up of all the awesome stuff Apple was going to show off today. So, Tim Cook, thanks for talking about nothing for almost two hours straight. The only mildly interesting thing is a slightly specbumped iPhone 4, dubbed the iPhone 4S, which has a faster processor and graphics chip, better camera, and a few other improvements here and there to bring it in line with Android phones launched earlier this year. Sadly, Apple insists on the teeny tiny 3.5" screen, which is too small even for my girly fingers (I'm not kidding, I have to buy gloves in women's clothing stores). For the rest, it was a long rundown of iOS5 features we already knew, and improvements to voice recognition - which is something WP7, Android, and every other self-respecting mobile operating system does already anyway. They do claim it will sport a more natural feel to it, but only time will tell how well it'll work outside of pre-recorded and widely tested on-stage demos.

I generally try to steer clear from the silly and crazy rumour mill surrounding soon-to-be-expected-to-be-launched devices, but this one is kind of interesting. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the US carrier Sprint is pretty much betting the company on Apple's next iPhone, ordering a staggering 30.5 million of them. At the same time, BGR reports that the iPhone 5 will be exclusive to Sprint (in the US at least), as a WiMAX device.

"Computer networks proved their organizing power during the recent uprisings in the Middle East, in which Facebook pages amplified street protests that toppled dictators. But those same networks showed their weaknesses as well, such as when the Egyptian government walled off most of its citizens from the Internet in an attempt to silence protesters. That has led scholars and activists increasingly to consider the Internet's wiring as a disputed political frontier."

Apple has the right to continue restricting its operating systems to its own hardware thanks to a decision handed down by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday. Circuit Judge Mary Schroeder wrote in her opinion that Apple's Mac OS X licensing agreement was indeed enforceable against Psystar, which had sold non-Mac computers with Mac OS X installed.

The idea is for the Urban OS to gather data from sensors buried in buildings and many other places to keep an eye on what is happening in an urban area. The sensors monitor everything from large scale events such as traffic flows across the entire city down to more local phenomena such as temperature sensors inside individual rooms. The OS completely bypasses humans to manage communication between sensors and devices such as traffic lights, air conditioning or water pumps that influence the quality of city life.