Free Republic

While the left is frequently up in arms about the about the Koch brother’s money funding political and campaign projects, there is no shortage of big leftist corporate and foundation money floating around hot political issues. Both the Joyce Foundation and Google are established players in the anti-second amendment movement as well as other progressive political causes. The Joyce Foundation has injected large chucks of money into the anti-gun movement, including Mayor’s Against Gun Control and the Violence Prevention Center. (Aside: Who was on the Board of the Joyce Foundation? None other than President Barack Obama who keeps assuring us...

Only in Israel: a new app for android phones lets drivers know if they are about to drive into a mob of Arabs armed with firebombs and rocks. Such ambushes have killed and maimed many Israelis over the years, including a baby girl, Adelle Biton, who has been barely clinging to life in the Schneider Children's Hospital since last month. As reported exclusively on the Tamar Yonah Show, .....

Foxconn Signs License Agreement with Microsoft to Make Google Android- and Chrome-Based Devices.Microsoft and Foxconn Sign Patent Agreement For Android and Chrome DevicesMicrosoft Corp. and Hon Hai, the parent company of Foxconn, the world’s largest contract maker of electronics, signed a worldwide patent licensing agreement that provides broad coverage under Microsoft’s patent portfolio for devices running the Android and Chrome OS, including smartphones, tablets and televisions.

I have an IPad2 but am looking for an android tablet. Which one is the best?

Microsoft is rumored to cut the price of Windows 8 for tablets by 35-40 percent, according to Topeka Capital analyst Brian White. White is on a "China-Taiwan Technology Tour" talking to people in the industry. Currently, according to White's source, the tablet price for Windows is the same as the desktop/laptop pricing. If Microsoft is going to compete with Android, which is taking over the world, it needs to lower its price. Google's software is free. And it's just as good, if not better than, Windows on a tablet. Since consumers aren't clamoring to buy Windows-based tablets, there's little reason...

If you like what you've seen so far from RIM BlackBerry's big launch event today, then you might want to know when you can get it? Those in the US might have hoped the rumors weren't true, but indeed, you will have to wait until March before you can get your hands on BlackBerry 10. Though when it does land, customers of AT&T, Verizon, Sprint (only Q10 confirmed) and T-Mobile (Z10 confirmed) will all be able to get onboard. BlackBerry's giving its home turf a little bit of a head start with a February 5th release date and Bell,...

Japan gets first dibs Samsung will launch its first Tizen-based smartphone next year and Japanese consumers will get a taste of the new OS first. According to a Japanese daily, the new device will be sold through NTT Docomo and other carriers, starting at some point in 2013. European carriers are also interested in Tizen, including Vodafone and France Telecom.Samsung apparently hopes to build a platform around Tizen, to rival the likes of Apple and Google. High hopes to say the least, but then again we are already hearing rumours of an X phone from Motorola’s skunk works, which is apparently...

Samsung has created a new Linux file system called F2FS. Jaegeuk Kim of Samsung writes on the Linux Kernel Mailing List: F2FS is a new file system carefully designed for the NAND flash memory-based storage devices. We chose a log structure file system approach, but we tried to adapt it to the new form of storage. Also we remedy some known issues of the very old log structured file system, such as snowball effect of wandering tree and high cleaning overhead. Greg KH, the lead Linux kernel developer applauded the file system on his Google+ page, "Sweet, a new...

There’s no question that the Raspberry Pi is everyone’s favorite ARM development board right now: it’s cheap, silent, and exceptionally power efficient. The Raspberry Pi makes an excellent choice for low-energy applications like personal servers, routers, firewalls, environmental monitoring setups, etc, etc.But the Raspberry Pi has one big downside, it’s a fairly slow machine. With only 512 MB of RAM (if you have one of the newer builds) and a 700 MHz ARM, it certainly isn’t doing a lot of heavy lifting. Its dedicated GPU makes it possible to do things like playback HD video, but in terms of...

A Nokia job listing [since taken down] has been discovered seeking a Senior Engineer with Linux expertise, rather than Windows Phone experience, this leading the Android masses to have a freak-out-festival about the possibilities of a Google OS Nokia device. At the moment it’s a nearly all-Microsoft party at Nokia with the latter shaking hands heavily with the former for the launch of Windows Phone 8 with devices like the Nokia Lumia 920, a hero for the operating system. With a Linux expert on their team, (not that Nokia doesn’t already have engineers with such expertise), it would appear...

Microsoft is onto something. With Windows 8 it's better positioned than both Apple and Google to ride the coming laptop-tablet convergence wave.It might even eventually give Microsoft a shot at the all-important smartphone market. To understand why, let's count the ways in which Windows 8 is best.1. Tablet-laptop convergence Laptops and tablets are converging. And only Microsoft has an OS that's fit for that coming unification of devices.Apple has no convergence strategy at this time. That's because it fiercely guards product-specific profit streams and just doesn't go in for making things that cannibalise its own sales.So, Mac Mini is hobbled...

With so many fanboys spinning Silicon Valley history, it's sometimes easy to forget about the real chain of events that led to the ongoing Apple-Google thermonuclear war, how the romance turned to hate. This timeline presents an interesting case about why, despite patents and prior art, Steve Jobs had plenty of personal reasons to despise Schmidt, Page, and Brin.The simple answer is Google's leadership profoundly betrayed the longtime personal trust and friendship of Apple's leadership in stealing what Steve Jobs believed were Apple's most prized possessions. The fuller answer is below, in a telling timeline of the once exceptionally-close Apple-Google...

Digia has bought out Qt from Nokia. Uh oh? Nokia has announced today that Digia is acquiring the Qt software technologies and Qt business from Nokia. Digia is completely taking over Qt. Digia is the open-core company that previously took over Qt Commercial and releases their special version of Qt to customers. Digia claims they will take care of the commercial and open-source versions of the new Qt and they also want to bring the popular tool-kit to Android, Apple iOS, and Windows 8. With the Qt acquisition, a maximum of 125 people from Nokia will be joining Digia. Most...

Google massively underestimated demand This won’t come as a surprise to most of you, but according to our sources close to the matter, Google’s Nexus 7 tablets are selling beyond Google’s wildest dreams. This makes Google, Asus and even Nvidia happy as they are all part of the project and share the profits. Many investors in all three companies will like what they see. There is a big chance that Nexus 7 will outrun the Kindle Fire’s initial success with a big chance or being more than a one-quarter miracle. We can see many people wanting to buy Nexus...

It’s an amazing feat to behold when a company makes a device so popular that it sells out in one store, much less the entirety of the USA – but that’s what Google is doing with the Nexus 7. This ASUS-manufactured tablet appears very much to be capturing the imaginations – and pocketbooks – of users across the United States as well as the UK as retailers both offline and online are showing sold out signs galore. From what we understand it appears that 3rd party retailers are “frantically” attempting to get more units in stock as ASUS and Google...

SlashGearSamsung Galaxy S III blasts past 10m salesSlashGearSamsung has sold more than ten million Galaxy S III handsets, according to the company's president for mobile communications, passing the milestone less than two months after the smartphone hit shelves. Shin Jong-kyun, chief of Samsung's information ...Samsung Galaxy S3 hits 10 million sales mark earlyCNETSamsung Plans 64GB Galaxy S3 This YearPCWorldHow Does The Samsung Galaxy S III Fare In A Drop Test?TechCrunchPC Magazine -San Francisco Chronicle -AFPall 357 news articles »...

Google continues to negotiate with the European Union about its alleged anti-competitive behavior. A potential settlement directly involving Android, however, could make things "messier" for Google. - A settlement deal being negotiated between Google and the European Union to resolve antitrust issues could now be expanded to include Google's Android mobile technologies, in addition to Google search platforms. quot;The outcome is finely balanced and will partly depend on Google's willingness to ...... Published By: eWEEK - 2 days ago

Google's Nexus 7 tablet is off to an encouraging start, with major retailers running out of the gadgets as the Internet company's first entry in an increasingly crowded market showed up in U.S. stores on Friday. GameStop said on Friday it had already run through its first two allocations of the tablet, co-developed by Google and Taiwan's Asustek that starts at $199 and has drawn glowing reviews from major gadget reviewers.Sam's Club, the warehouse chain owned by Wal-Mart Stores Inc, and Staples listed the device as being out of stock on their websites as of Friday. Office Depot's website continued...

US startup Ouya has attracted $2.3m (£1.47m) of pledges for its Android-based games console, less than 24 hours after launching its campaign on crowdfunding website Kickstarter. Nearly 19,000 people have backed the project at the time of writing, and with 28 days still to go, it has a shot at rivalling the Pebble smart-watch, which attracted $10.3m of Kickstarter pledges earlier in 2012. Chief executive Julie Uhrman had told the Guardian that venture capital firms had been skittish about the prospects for the Ouya console, leading the company to raise its seed funding from family and friends, before turning to...

Veteran Judge Posner says "animals" like Apple are just exploiting the weapons an ineffectual gov't has created "It's a constant struggle for survival.  As in any jungle, the animals will use all the means at their disposal, all their teeth and claws that are permitted by the ecosystem," states Judge Richard A. Posner in a recent interview with Reuters.   As a sitting judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals who occasionally moonlights as a judge in Chicago's U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois, Judge Posner has watched the devolution of America's intellectual property system over the past several decades. I. Google v. Apple -- A...

So you say your Android Phone has seized up and you're unable to access all that Intarweb Goodness*, let alone make phone calls? Have all other remedies failed?Is that what's got ya down, Bucky?WELL, I'VE GOT THE TOUGH LOVE CURE FOR YOU RIGHT HERE. Here are the steps for performing a "hard reset" of your Android phone.But this is the Nookyular Option, so only follow these steps if all other reset attempts have Epically Failed. Why do I post this? Just because it might not otherwise come up in Polite Conversation. Make sure your Android phone is off. The screen...

June 14 is Flag Day, a national holiday celebrating the Stars and Stripes since 1949. But don’t ask Google about it. The search giant is known for its colorful, interactive logos for everything from the 78th birthday of the inventor of the Moog synthesizer to Earth Day to the anniversary of Pac-Man. But for Flag Day, the company was presenting visitors with nothing but its usual site, declining to play up the red and blue in its logo. Even Google users noticed the omission. "You create elaborate doodle's for random holidays like when the Ferris wheel was created, but Memorial...

Apple's World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) kicked off today with the unveiling of iOS 6 for the iPhone and iPad. Apple is promising over 200 new features in the latest version of its mobile operating system, but only a few of them were highlighted in the keynote. June is an exciting month for smartphone fanatics as Microsoft is expected to unveil the next generation of Windows Phone at an event next Wednesday, June 20 while Google is expected to reveal its plans for the next version of Android, codenamed "Jellybean." While some of the features Apple announced today already exist...

Asus has announced another new device at this years Computex, the Asus Transformer AiO, which is a tablet with a giant display that can also be used as an all in one computer.The Asus Transformer AiO is a dual boot device that will run Microsoft’s Windows 8 OS and Google’s Android OS, and the device features a 18.4 inch touchscreen display.

SUS and BlueStacks have signed a deal to pre-load the company’s Android-on-Windows software on ASUS Windows based computers. BlueStacks software allows the user to download and run Android mobile apps on a traditional Windows PC. "This is like a nitrous boost to the accelerating merger of mobile and PC," BlueStacks CEO Rosen Sharma. Comments

ENTERPRISE VENDOR Oracle has lost its alleged Java patent infringement case against Google after the jury returned a unanimous verdict that Oracle had failed to prove patent infringement in Android by Google. Oracle's lawsuit against Google started falling apart just weeks after it was filed, with lengthy and often comical pre-trial proceedings leaving little of Oracle's case standing. Nevertheless Oracle continued to throw money at the case, however now the jury has returned a verdict that clears Google of infringing Java patents in its Android operating system.Judge William Alsup has yet to rule on whether the Java language APIs are...

Column Oracle won't win this case against Google IT SEEMS that Oracle's lawsuit against Google over its use of Java in Android has fallen apart. Although the trial is still ongoing, and the judge has yet to hand down an important copyright ruling while the jury has yet to return its verdicts on patents and damages, if any - it's already apparent that Oracle is unlikely to win billions or even millions of dollars from Google, and it's possible that Oracle might lose entirely. This lawsuit is rather important, however, if only because it has raised the spectre that software...

Fragmentation matters to the entire Android community: users, developers, OEMs, brands & networks. It's a blessing and a curse. The Blessing. Fragmentation allows users to take their pick from thousands of devices. You can choose from phones with 3D screens, projectors, CDMA, GSM, or even CDMA & GSM. You may not care that Tag Heuer has made an Android phone but at least one person does (and they use OpenSignalMaps). It's a triumph for Android that as a single OS it can target so many markets. The Curse. The proliferation of devices with their associated screen sizes, internal hardware and...

One month into the Oracle v Google trial, Judge William Alsup has revealed that he has, and still does, write code. Will this affect the outcome? So far all that Oracle has managed to prove is that Google copied nine lines of Java code, that are incorporated into Android operating system and eight test files that are not part of the production code. And yesterday, in a hearing about "infringer profits" Judge Alsup challenged Oracle's lawyer David Boies for trying to pin so much on the rangeCheck infringement. U.S. District Judge William Alsup, Northern District of California (Image: Hillary Jones-Mixon/The...

If anyone reading this owns a ZTE Score M Android smartphone, your device has been found to include a backdoor allowing root access without user authentication.The discovery of the backdoor comes via a post on the text storage website Pastebin. It has since been confirmed via Reddit by Justin Case of Cunning Logic and TeamAndIRC. He has confirmed with someone at ZTE that the backdoor does indeed exist and that a fix is in the works.The question that needs to be asked is, why is it there at all?Apparently the handset includes a hard-coded password that allows access to a...

Summary: There were no winners in Oracle vs. Google. Only losers, including all programmers, and perhaps everyone else as well.Not counting the APIs, here's how much code Google was found to have copied from Java.On the surface, it may look like Oracle won the first round of its intellectual property (IP) lawsuit with Google. Look again. No one’s won anything and that includes Oracle.While we wait to see what the jury has to say about the two remaining patents, let’s take a closer look at what the jury decided. They said that Google’s Android mobile platform infringed on part of...

Smartphones will outperform the overall market for mobile phones, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 24.9% for the period 2011–17 to reach 1.7 billion units, according to Ovum. Predictions show Android as the dominant operating system over the next five years as handset vendors rush to make it their primary smartphone platform. In its latest forecast*, the leading telecoms analyst house reveals global annual mobile phone shipments will grow at a CAGR of 6.3% between 2011 and 2017, driven primarily by demand from emerging markets where connection growth will continue to fuel handset shipments. New shipments in...

Open-source Java: Part One Open source Java has a long and torrid history, rife with corporate rivalry, very public fallings-out, and ideological misgivings. But has all the effort and rumpus that went into creating an officially sanctioned open JDK been worth it? Java co-creator James Gosling certainly thinks so - although he didn't seem entirely open to the idea in the early days. Gosling told The Reg that putting Java under the GPL has helped unify what was a fractured community while making the code freely available has helped uptake from a grassroots up. "In general, I'd say that it's...

He may have co-founded the company that became Microsoft's largest competitor, but former Apple boss Steve Wozniak has glittering things to say about his former rival's mobile OS. Mr Wozniak, who co-founded Apple with the late Steve Jobs in 1976, has given a shocking endorsement of Windows' 7.5 Mango interface. The 61-year-old, who no longer works full-time for Apple, says of the four phones he travels with (including two iPhones), the Nokia Lumia makes him feel as though he is 'with a friend, not a tool'. Shock endorsement: Steve Wozniak, who co-founded Apple with the late Steve Jobs in 1976,...

BRITISH OUTFIT Datawind has announced that it will upgrade its latest $35 tablet to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich following its release in India later this month. Speaking to ComputerWorld, Datawind CEO Suneet Singh Tuli said that an upgraded version of the Aakash named the Aakash 2 will start shipping in two to three weeks. Tuli added that although the $35 tablet will ship running Android 2.3 Gingerbread, it will be upgraded to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich within "six to eight weeks". That's not all the new Aakash 2 tablet, which is also known as the Ubislate 7+, improves...

In short order, Google will launch its tablet. And in doing so it will start down the path of abandoning Android. As I explained in my article on how to think about Android fragmentation, fragmentation is not the end of android, but means Google has lost control of Android. Google has lost control of both the Android platform and the Android brand. Google is desperate to compete in the phone and tablet spaces (not to mention social networking). Android is a perfectly suitable technical platform to build on, but as a brand it is atrocious.

Late last summer, I wrote an article titled Dear tablet makers: You’re doing it wrong in which I shared my view on what I believe to be one of the biggest problems currently facing tablet vendors. In this article, I postulated that most Android tablets failed to make a splash because, in a nutshell, they bring nothing new to the table. Of course Android offers a vastly different user interface and user experience as compared to Apple’s market-leading iPad, but in terms of true differentiation — unique and desirable features offered to tablet buyers that cannot be found on the...

The patents present four (somewhat) novel forms of unlock that range from simple to complex The "Big Three" of the Android world -- HTC Corp. (TPE:2498), Samsung Electronics Comp., Ltd. (KS:005930), and Google Inc.'s (GOOG) nearly-acquired subsidiary-to-be Motorola Mobility -- all share a common legal adversary -- Apple, Inc. (AAPL). Apple has asserted a slew of claims against the Android phonemakers, and they haven't been shy about firing back, sometimes quite successfully (other times not so much). I. The Backup Plan One of Apple's biggest successes, however, came when it scored a German injunction on Motorola's smartphones, thanks to its...

Remember when Apple’s voice recognition app Siri refused to give directions to abortion clinics? Well, Verizon’s Android application Iris has the same socially conservative politics. As Right Wing Watch and ThinkProgress report, little Iris also refuses to guide users toward abortion providers. But Iris goes one step further. While Siri simply refuses to give the information, Iris quotes the Bible to make her point. “Abortion is wrong. The Lord has said ‘You shall not murder,’ (Exodus 20:13). The life that is growing within the mother is a child, a baby. The Bible looks at the life in the womb as...

Gaydar for Android **SNIP** From QSoft Consulting Limited: Discreetly take pictures to judge whether a person is straight, metrosexual, or gay! Picture is automatically saved to your phone so you can view it at any time! The most accurate Gaydar on Android! Recent changes:Version 1.0.1 features larger "Straight", "Metro" and "Gay" graphics.

AppTech was the buzz of the mobile tech world Thursday as the company rolled out “ReconAge,” a mobile age recognition app for Android-powered devices. The application, which is free and available now for download from the Android Market, recognizes the approximate age of a person by making use of real time face recognition biometric systems online.Pretty nifty, indeed – especially with regard to the mobile marketing implications the app and its underlying technology deliver.“We’re changing the face of mobile marketing. AppTech is uniting brilliant minds around this idea. With the launch of ReconAge, we intend to introduce the usefulness of...

For Google, it's personal. The Internet search giant is no longer going to roll out the same search results to everyone. Starting Tuesday, Google will pluck only the results most relevant to you --and not just from billions of Web pages but from the personal stuff that you and your connections privately share. The idea, says Google Fellow Amit Singhal, is that Google now searches your world, not just the Web, and serves up results that combine both for your eyes only. "Your world was missing from search until now," he said. "We are bringing your world into search."

If you’re a first-time smartphone shopper or a current smartphone shopper approaching an upgrade, you may be curious about the mobile platforms that are available. Everyone knows about the iPhone and iPad, and everyone knows about “Droids� (Android is the platform, Droid is one specific brand on Verizon). Often overlooked is the newcomer, Windows Phone. How do the three mobile operating systems stack up?We broke down the three platforms into some of the most distinct categories so you can better understand the differences between them. Let’s take a look…Total Devices Before delving into the specifics of each operating system, one...

The new Android application, Flip-Flop Mitt is an interactive quiz game that features an animated character dressed in the standard blue suit, red tie and the a-typical bright yellow boxer shorts. He holds a spatula with a pancake on it, which he tosses in response to players answering questions. A video of the game is available on YouTube at this link: Video The purpose of the game is to test the player’s knowledge about Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney’s position on several important issues. The goal for the player is to answer every question correctly. The player has an option to...

Android and iOS continued to gain market share at the expense of struggling platforms like BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7 (WP7), according to a new report from NPD Group. Android’s share of smartphone sales grew to 53 percent of the U.S. smartphone market (53 percent) from January through October 2011, while Apple’s iOS share grew to 29 percent of the market. Research In Motion’s OS share declined to 11 percent. RIM and other companies that were formerly on top of NPD’s smartphone rankings, however, have made critical business decisions this past year in a quest to shore up their U.S....

If you are like us, every day you pick up a smartphone and you send email, visit with friends on Facebook, send a text message or even log into your bank's website and pay a bill. These modern day conveniences have become routine. We all believe that our passwords are secure, our data is protected, and life is easier if we don't have to write a check to pay a bill or dig around and find a stamp to send a friend a quick note. But this morning we are no longer sure. The tech world is in a fury,...

A security researcher, Trevor Eckhart, recently made a startling discovery. Hidden inside every Android and iPhone is a program called Carrier IQ (CIQ), which is capable of monitoring virtually everything you do on a SmartPhone. And then it has the ability to send all that data back to your wireless carrier and then who knows where it will wind up and how it will be used. Perhaps these phones have become too Smart for our own good. This is our worst nightmare potentially being realized. With our freedoms being eroded at a rapid rate, this is a biggie. A cellphone...

Intel Corp. has formed a partnership with Google Inc. to optimize the Android operating system for its processors, with hopes the move will help the chip giant make inroads into the mobile market and have everything from servers to smartphones running on its technology.While the Santa Clara, Calif., company dominates the PC and server markets, it has struggled to make inroads in smartphones and tablets because its chips are viewed as too power-hungry compared to designs based on ARM Holdings PLC architecture. But Intel hopes new lower-power chips and advanced-process technology will help it break into the market.Read the rest...

PERRY, IA, -- Despite missing numerous release dates, MCP Entertainment is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Piein' Palin. The game offers an exciting pie tossing experience. Even if she isn't running for president, doesn't mean she can't take a pie in the face. This is a fun, fast paced, carnival style game. Fun for the entire family. You choose to throw pies as your favorite Palin hater for three levels of raucous good times. A great soundtrack and Palin quips keeps the game fun and fresh for hours of entertainment. You can get your copy through the Android...

The Department of Energy is standing by a $529 million loan guarantee to a company building an electric car line in Finland. A department official, in a lengthy response posted on a government blog Thursday night, confirmed that the company Fisker is assembling its Karma electric car at its "overseas facility." The response comes after ABC News reported that the Obama administration gave the green light for the company to move the manufacturing to Finland two years after announcing the loan. The ABC News report noted the political connections enjoyed by Fisker and another company, Tesla Motors, which together received...