Free Republic

BlackBerry's CEO John Chen wants companies to stop "discriminatory practices" against BlackBerry by not allowing them to use certain apps. Chen called out Apple and Netflix in a blog post about net neutrality and what he called a "two-tiered wireless broadband ecosystem" where developers create apps only for iOS and Android devices. "Unlike BlackBerry, which allows iPhone users to download and use our BBM service, Apple does not allow BlackBerry or Android users to download Apple's iMessage messaging service," he wrote. Apple's iMessage service is only available to customers using the company's ecosystem of devices. Calling out Netflix, Chen said...

Speed kills, and the iPhone goes from 0 to a good picture faster than anything else I was at Intel’s CES booth, composing a photo with my Android smartphone, when a pair of anonymous hands thrust a shining iPhone 6 Plus into my line of vision. A nonchalant tap of the camera shutter button later, the hands were pulling back, having captured a stupendously clear and sharp picture on the first attempt. By the time I’d completed my routine of setting proper focus and steadying myself, the dude who’d beaten me to a better shot with none of the effort...

The glasses can do everything its military-grade specs can do—display high-definition video, record video, lay visuals over the real world—but will be 30 percent smaller and 20 percent lighter, and they’ll look a little less awkward. ODG’s augmented reality glasses come packed with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 processor; Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and a global navigation satellite system; and sensors for figuring out where you’re looking. The glasses can do pretty much anything a tablet can do. Watching a movie on the glasses is something akin to watching a high-def movie on a 65-inch TV from across the room. The glasses also...

I want to load an android app for flash player on my Samsung Note III phone. Model SM-N900V Android OS 4.4.2 I read that this is possible. I'm not all that technical so an app I could download and run would be great.

The latest monthly report from internet security specialist Doctor Web shows that whilst Windows and Android users have no cause for complacency, November saw substantial numbers of malicious programs aimed at Mac OS X and Linux platforms. Trojans remain the most popular form of attack making up 8.7 percent of all malware detected. Trojan.InstallCore.12, which installs different adware, toolbars and browser extensions, ranks first. BackDoor.Andromeda.404, which downloads other malicious programs into an infected system when commanded to do so by intruders, ranks second. In November BackDoor.Andromeda.404 was distributed in large quantities by email thanks to a mass spam campaign. It...

All of the dozen different "doorbuster" Android tablets Bluebox examined were found to include unpatched Android vulnerabilities including Masterkey, FakeID, Heartbleed and Futex, while more than a quarter were sold with security misconfigurations or active backdoors installed. Bluebox discovered Android's Masterkey "zombie botnet" vulnerability last year and detailed FakeID super malware earlier this summer. While Google has released patches for both flaws—in addition to Android's Heartbleed and Futex bugs—the fact is that major retailers are actively promoting new Android products that still harbor these unpatched vulnerabilities. Several devices also ship with remote exploits wide open, block access to Google Play...

“Just months after selling its ailing handsets business to Microsoft, the Finnish company is planning to go back into the consumer market with a new tablet,” Matti Huuhtanen reports for The Associated Press. “It will launch a 7.9-inch device early next year in China, the world’s biggest market, before selling it elsewhere.” “The device will be manufactured by Foxconn, which makes Apple’s handsets. And it will operate Android instead of the Windows software Nokia used on its cellphones when it began a partnership with Microsoft in 2011. That partnership ended unsuccessfully — in April, Nokia sold its cellphones unit to...

PowerPoint for iPad is one of the Office apps where Microsoft will now let users create and edit documents for free. In a significant change for its flagship software applications, and a potentially risky move for its business, Microsoft will let users create and edit documents without a paid subscription in its Word, Excel and PowerPoint apps on iPhone, iPad and Android phones and tablets. The change, announced this morning, makes Microsoft more competitive by eliminating one of the biggest criticisms of the Office apps for iPad — the requirement to pay for an annual Office 365 subscription of...

A new app, which allows users to conveniently report voter fraud, will be available for iOS and Android on November 1. The app, called VoteStand, is being launched by True the Vote, an anti-voter fraud group that was one of the groups unconstitutionally targeted by the Obama IRS. According to the VoteStand website, “the app uses a high level encryption, inside the app allowing information to get to the right people to make reporting voter fraud easily.”

Anyone else catch the homosexual proposal during the Android commercial. These IT/tech companies know they're all drinking the same koolaid, so now they're just rubbing our noses in it.

Home News Business, Financial & Legal Google tried to acquire Cyanogen, refused, now seeks $1bn valuation Cyanogen denied Google's attempt at an acquisition, now seeks a $1 billion valuation (NASDAQ:GOOG)By: Anthony Garreffa | Business, Financial & Legal News | Posted: 12 hours, 13 mins agoComment | | Font Size: Tweet7 Share0 Just weeks out from Google's unveiling of the 5.9-inch Nexus 6 smartphone, the NVIDIA Tegra K1-powered Nexus 9 tablet and Android L, the company has reportedly met with the executives of Cyanogen Inc. to talk about an acquisition, which Cyanogen denied.    Cyanogen is now talking of a...

Windows Phone cracks, Blackberry's out of juice and even Apple's squeezed The Google spawn's market share is up a third compared to the same quarter in 2013. Every other mobile operating system is not even eating Android's dust – they're so far back on the road they can see the plume of dust Android throws up are falling behind and don't even look to have a chance of choking. We offer that analysis because, as the chart below shows, Android's nearest rival – Apple's iOS – now has just 11.7 per cent market share.Top Five Smartphone Operating Systems, Worldwide Shipments,...

Frustrated Mom says: “We need to develop an app that just shuts their phone completely down and they can’t even use it,”

While Microsoft and Google are rivals in many arenas, Microsoft makes a substantial profit from patents used by Android vendors. However, despite Microsoft's commitment to transparency, these agreements have only been revealed in legal surroundings -- until now.Patent licensing deals agreed between the Redmond giant and Android device makers grant Microsoft revenue for every device made using the company's intellectual property. In November last year, Nomura analyst Rick Sherlund estimated that Microsoft was making as much as $2bn in Android patent licensing agreements. These funds are believed to be covering losses in the tech giant's entertainment division, covering Xbox, Windows...

Hewlett-Packard has kicked off an ambitious project that aims at nothing less than reinventing the basic architecture of computers. It looks like servers are its initial target, but HP is also working on an Android version that it says could lead to smartphones with 100TB of storage. HP said Wednesday it was working on a new computer architecture, dubbed The Machine, based on memristors and silicon photonics. Bloomberg Businessweek reports up to 75% of HP’s once fairly illustrious R&D division — HP Labs – are working on The Machine. In the words of HP Labs, The Machine will be a...

I have a Samsung smart phone and when I start to play with more than one app, I get this message that my battery is about out of charge and the phone proceeds to shut down. This occurs even after I have fully charged the battery. Last week I was driving to a meeting, was late, and was lost, and I was on the phone with a coworker getting directions when phone shut off. I need the phone in case some thing like this happens. I am 3 months away from an upgrade, so I am going to get rid...

Asking for opinions on the best budget tablet. Something big enough for me to work on -- i.e., be able to type easily and see the display without holding it six inches from my face. Not worried about communications -- as long as it's got WiFi built in (which I'm sure they all do), I can use my cellphone as a mobile hotspot to transfer/send files. This is intended to be a replacement for a working laptop/notebook. And again -- "budget" is the keyword. Thanks all!.

Is your smartphone running low on battery for seemingly no reason? Are things taking longer to render or load? Your gadget could be secretly mining bitcoins, thanks to a piece of mobile malware in Google Play that quietly uses an Android phone’s processing power, while hiding behind innocuous-seeming wallpaper apps. Lookout Software uncovered the bug, dubbed “BadLepricon,” after which Google removed five applications that were incorporating it. The apps had between 100 to 500 installs each at the time of removal. “And yes, that is how the malware authors spelled ‘leprechaun,’” wrote Lookout researcher Meghan Kelly, in a blog detailing...

The big news from Microsoft today was that it has finally launched Office for iPad, which will give users full access to the popular productivity suite if they sign up for the Office 365 subscription service. But under the surface of the announcement, we got our first look at CEO Satya Nadella's broader vision for Microsoft's future. Nadella has only been CEO for 52 days, but we're already getting a sense of how he plans to expand the company's offerings beyond its core products like Windows. In short, Nadella sees Microsoft powering all sorts of devices through services and apps...

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- I saw a promo the other day for Google (GOOG) Work. Sadly, I can't locate it or I would have inserted it here so you could see it for yourself. However, it might be fitting that you can't see the promo. Because Google's assault on Microsoft (MSFT) continues to fly under the radar. For whatever reason, it's the most under covered story in tech ... in finance ... and for the sake of extraneous ellipses ... the world. But it's real and it's happening. And Microsoft has no idea what to do in response. How could...