Against the odds, Canonical and Spanish company BQ are continuing to push Ubuntu for smartphones over Android and iOS. BQ’s second Ubuntu phone is a step up from its inaugural effort, and the two companies are also working on a smartphone that’s also a PC.Earlier this year, BQ started selling the Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition and will later this month start shipping the Aquaris E5 HD in Europe from its online store for €200 (US$220).The struggles of Samsung’s Tizen, Mozilla’s Firefox OS and Microsoft’s Windows Phone have shown how difficult it’s to compete with the dominant smartphone platforms of Apple and Google, but that doesn’t seem to scare Canonical and BQ.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Disconnect.me, maker of an Android privacy app banned from the Play store, has filed an antitrust complaint with the European Commssion accusing Google of abusing its dominant market position.The complaint could add fuel to an ongoing European Union antitrust investigation of Google’s business practices.Google banned the Disconnect Mobile app last year, saying it violated its developer distribution agreement.Disconnect Mobile routes traffic through an encrypted Virtual Private Network (VPN) tunnel, which makes it harder to track users. By installing a special network profile, the app also blocks ads, tracking services and suspected malware sites, both inside apps and in Android’s browser.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When you search for a recipe on Pinterest, the results soon might include a way to have the ingredients delivered to your door within 45 minutes.That’s not a function built into Pinterest yet, but it could arrive in the future as the company grows its new platform for third-party developers. That platform, announced last month, is designed to let outside developers incorporate their own apps and services into Pinterest’s site to expand how the site can be used.Content on Pinterest is organized into visual bookmarks, or “pins.” Outside partners, such as advertisers, already work with Pinterest to incorporate content like images and product information into their pins. The new developer platform would allow select third parties to integrate services and do it on their own, without Pinterest’s help.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft's 2015 acquisition spree shows no sign of abating: The latest scuttlebutt is that the company has snapped up Germany's 6Wunderkinder to-do list app maker.As I documented in April ("What's behind Microsoft's not-so-crazy acquisition spree?"), Microsoft was off to its fastest acquisition pace ever this year with 4 deals confirmed and 1 widely rumored to have been signed (and in fact, Microsoft recently confirmed the buyout of that 5th company, Surface pen maker N-trig).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft has acquired 6Wunderkinder GmbH, a German startup that makes the popular Wunderlist to-do list application, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.The deal was worth between $100 and $200 million, and is the latest in a string of acquisitions from the Redmond company aimed at bolstering its cross-platform holdings in the mobile productivity space. 6Wunderkinder’s staff will continue to work out of the firm’s Berlin office, but will report to Microsoft’s headquarters in Washington. The report squares with an earlier article from VentureBeat, which said the deal would be valued below $250 million.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
BlackBerry has reached a settlement with Typo Innovations, which made an accessory keyboard for iPhones that the handset maker said infringed its patents.Under the settlement announced Monday, Typo, which was co-founded by “American Idol” host Ryan Seacrest, is barred from selling keyboards for devices with screen sizes smaller than 7.9 inches.BlackBerry sued Typo in 2014 after the company released a keyboard that fit the iPhone 5 or 5S like a protective case; BlackBerry claimed the keyboard copied those found on its own handsets. The keyboard is one of the differentiating features that has made BlackBerry loyalists cling to their old-school smartphones.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
As regular TechWatch readers (hi Mom!) readers know, I'm a big "phan" of giant phablet devices. That's not because I like to tote around comically large slabs of metal and plastic, but because I find smartphones more useful the more screen real estate they present.Last week, Chinese tech manufacturer Lenovo showed off its Smart Cast concept phone at its own Tech World conference in Beijing. Like a concept car, it's not clear if the Smart Cast phone will ever make it to production, but the technology has the potential to eventually shatter the connection between device size and screen size. By projecting the device's touch screen on to any convenient surface, smartphones may one day be able to have displays of any size. Critically, the Smart Cast technology lets you interact with the projected screen, so you can use it as a keyboard or other input channel, as well as a monitor. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When you stop and think about it, the word "smartphone" is starting to sound a little stale.Sure, these pocket-size gadgets we tote around are capable of making calls -- but for most of us, that's become a secondary feature compared to the range of data-centric functions the devices enable. In reality, we're carrying tiny, capable computers that also happen to work as phones.[ Get the best office productivity apps for your Android device, and explore 12 great Lollipop APIs every Android developer will love. | Keep up on key mobile developments and insights with the Mobile Computing newsletter. ]
Android devices in particular offer advanced functionality when it comes to the computer-level task of managing and manipulating files. The Android operating system allows you to perform all sorts of PC-like tasks, from dragging and dropping files between your phone and computer to plugging a USB drive directly into your device and accessing its contents. Between what Android offers out of the box and the features that third-party apps add to the equation, that shiny little slab in your pocket packs serious productivity potential.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Apple Watch could become our central hub in a wheel of identity, in which all spokes rotate around our wrist. Some early Watch apps already have a high degree of utility. But we’re only scratching the surface of what’s to come.MORE: 10 mobile startups to watch
In this roundup, we look at six apps that offer varying forms of authentication on the Watch. Three allow a tap on the Watch to unlock something: an account, a login, a computer, or more. The other three handle the most common form of app-generated second-factor authentication codes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
New products of the weekOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.Arista NavigatorKey features: software tool designed for supporting Arista network infrastructures. The Arista Navigator reduces troubleshooting analysis time by visually providing intelligent access to Arista information. More info. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Our Amazon Echo, a voice-controlled appliance—for want of a better word—arrived on May 17 and we’ve been using it all week. As Prime members, we paid $100 for ours, but the list price is $200. While some parts are beautifully done, the information services at the back end have a long way to go before the Echo is more than a novelty.The Echo is a heavy cylinder, about nine inches tall and three inches in diameter. Colored black, it sits inconspicuously anywhere you can get it AC power and a Wi-Fi connection. (Wired Ethernet is not included) Most of the Echo is made up of speakers, which gives you an idea of what the Echo is best at: playing music.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Google developer advocate Colt McAnlis: “Bad networking costs your customers money.”
Google developer advocate Colt McAnlis said that Android apps, almost across the board, are not architected correctly for the best networking performance, during a talk he gave Friday at Google’s I/O developer conference in San Francisco.“Networking performance is one of the most important things that every one of your apps does wrong,” he told the crowd.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
You know it’s a slow week for iPhone 6s and iPhone 7 rumors when most of the scuttlebutt centers around who’s going to be making the next great Apple smartphone’s processors.But that’s what we’ve largely been reduced to, in nanometer detail, this past week.Apple in recent years has used rival Samsung as well as Taiwan’s TSMC as chip suppliers, with speculation about the future of Samsung’s contributions to the iPhone and iPad fluctuating in sync with just how nasty or nice Apple and the Korean company are being to each other at the time.GforGames, which has been increasingly making a name for itself as a source of early news on mobile devices, reported this week on the battle for the next iPhone processor – the A9 – and the one after that, presumably the A10. The thinking goes that the iPhone 6S/6S Plus would get the A9 later this year and the iPhone 7 next year would be powered by the A10.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Gone are the days of skydivers landing on the tops of buildings wearing Google Glass, or new Chromebooks, tablets and smartwatches. This year, the focus of much of Google’s big I/O conference was to propel the Android operating system into new areas others have pioneered, like peer-to-peer payments and smart home appliances.There were no new hardware platforms, like Google Glass, Android TV or Android Auto. No new smartwatches like the LG G and Samsung Gear Live that debuted last year, marking Google’s entrance into the watch market.Instead, Google confirmed rumors this week by giving us Brillo, a stripped-down version of Android to power things like smart light bulbs and Internet-connected toasters and let them be controlled by Android devices. It might be radical were it not for Samsung, Apple and Microsoft developing similar systems.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A parade of top Google executives cycled on and off the stage for more than two hours yesterday at the company's annual I/O developer conference in San Francisco, but because Google is involved in so many projects and markets, the company barely scratched the surface of what it is up to. For example, driverless cars, easily Google's most popular moonshot project, weren't even mentioned until the closing minutes of I/O keynote address. Cloud computing and Google+ weren't mentioned at all. Neither were Google’s plans for the enterprise.+ ALSO AT GOOGLE I/O: Google hypes Android M, Android Pay, Google Photos at I/O 2015 +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In case you missed it, Google launched a new mobile payment service at its annual I/O developers conference Thursday. It’s called Android Pay. But didn’t Google already have a mobile payment service? Yes, yes, Google Wallet. That’s not going away—in fact, it’s getting a reboot as a peer-to-peer payment service—but Android Pay works a lot more like Apple Pay than Google’s last attempt.That’s a good thing. Google Wallet required you to wake your phone, open the Wallet app, and enter a pin number if you decided to protect the app with a passcode, all before waving your phone near the payment terminal. That’s a lot of work.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Mary Meeker, a partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, has for years released an annual report on where she sees the internet going.
Things have changed since she started it. In 1995, the first year of the report, mobile phone penetration was 1% of the population. Today, it's 73%.Latest report
The latest report has just come out and within it she's collected pages of fascinating snippets of data and factoids related to changes in our internet-driven lives. She talks of new forms of e-commerce, smartphones, and how Millennials see things differently than older folks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google executives have a vision that one day soon your jacket, shirt, pants -- even your socks -- might control your phone, tablet or even the lights in your house.Ivan Poupyrev, Google's technical program lead, received wild applause at a morning session at Google I/O today when he talked about Project Jacquard.The project isn't about a new smartphone or tablet or even a giant humanoid robot. It's about smart textiles that could change the way we connect and communicate with our environment and devices. They can also track health and physical activity. (Yes, your pants will know if you're sitting on the couch instead of doing power squats.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here