Monthly Archive:: April 2012

"RIM, the troubled maker of the BlackBerry smartphone, is in talks to hire a financial adviser to help it weigh strategic options, according to four people with knowledge of the matter. A decision to work with at least one bank could come in the next few days, said one of the people, who asked to remain anonymous because the deliberations are private. RIM would prefer an agreement to license its mobile-phone software, and its next choice is a strategic investment, one person said. RIM doesn't plan to sell itself, the person said." So, anyone interested in licensing BlackBerry OS? Anyone...? What if they throw in a free beer...?

European carriers are dissatisfied with the Nokia Lumia phones, Reuters has found out. According to the carriers, the Lumia phones are simply "not good enough" to compete with the iPhone and Android phones. Nobody comes into stores asking for windows phones, and one carrier executive said "if the Lumia with the same hardware came with Android in it and not Windows, it would be much easier to sell". Ouch.

While I was fast asleep, Microsoft unveiled the SKUs for Windows 8 - and we're in for a surprise. Yes, after years and years of fully deserved mockery for releasing 343 versions of each Windows release, the company has seen the light and reduced everything to just four - of which only two, Windows 8 and Windows 8 Pro, will be freely available in stores.

"Sometimes we get lucky, and today is one of those days. I got a draft release from a partner of Google's upcoming Google Drive service and it gives away a wealth of information about how Google plans to take on the incumbent Dropbox. The short story? 5 GB of storage, and it launches next week, likely on Tuesday." No Linux support. Huh.

Yes! The first batch of Raspberry Pi boards is finally shipping out to customers around the world. It's been a long journey (ugh), but at least we'll be seeing reviews and videos now. My Pi is still on backorder, so no review on OSNews just yet.

Interesting set of options Apple has to move the iPhone to a 4" display, as detailed by Dan Provost. I don't care how Apple does it, as long as they do it. The iPhone's tiny screen is nearly unusable once I got used to the 4.3" of my HD7 and SII. This is quite a personal choice, of course, and there's no right or wrong, but it's clear there is a demand for larger displays.

"The principles of openness and universal access that underpinned the creation of the internet three decades ago are under greater threat than ever, according to Google co-founder Sergey Brin. The threat to the freedom of the internet comes, he claims, from a combination of governments increasingly trying to control access and communication by their citizens, the entertainment industry's attempts to crack down on piracy, and the rise of 'restrictive' walled gardens such as Facebook and Apple, which tightly control what software can be released on their platforms." That governments - east and west - are trying to destroy the open web, that we know. As for Facebook and Apple... Well, all I know is that it is completely and utterly impossible to check what information Apple has about you. Unlike Google (more here) and to a lesser degree Facebook, Apple provides zero means to see, export, or delete the information they have on you, associated with your Apple ID or otherwise. In 2012, that's just sinister.

"Modern science relies upon researchers sharing their work so that their peers can check and verify success or failure. But most scientists still don't share one crucial piece of information - the source codes of the computer programs driving much of today's scientific progress." Pretty crazy this isn't the norm yet.

"Unfortunately, Cameron's declaration that the 'free flow of information' can sometimes be a problem, then an aberration, seems to have turned into a pillar of the UK government's 2012 agenda. Despite declaring early on in his term that internet freedom should be respected 'in Tahrir Square as much as Trafalgar Square', his government is now considering a series of laws that would dramatically restrict online privacy and freedom of speech." The United Kingdom's crippling nanny state culture reaches the web. A country in deep financial problems, facing pervasise social unrest, censors the web to prevent riots. Sure Cameron, make it so.

"These drawings date from 1982 (thirty years ago). Alan Kay had just become the Chief Scientist at Atari and he asked me to work with him to continue the work I started at Encyclopedia Britannica on the idea of an Intelligent Encyclopedia. We came up with these scenarios of how the (future) encyclopedia might be used and commissioned Glenn Keane, a well-known Disney animator to render them. The captions also date from 1982." Pretty cool.

AppleInsider, once one of the better Apple news sites, is rumouring that Apple CEO Tim Cook was spotted at Valve's HQ. Considering all the rumours Valve is working on a console (more fuel for the flames), this could potentially be interesting. As much as AppleInsider's story is being spread across the web - can anybody actually verify AI's story? It cites no sources, and could, for all we know, be completely made up. Anyone...?

Six-month-old web site Codecademy claims you can learn programming through its online tutorials. The free modules on JavaScript are now available. The site also allows anyone to post their own programming courses. The site has good funding, but question is: can you really learn programming this way? One blogger enthuses that Codecademy's approach "looks like the future of learning to me," while another slams it saying "Seriously? Wow, bull**** badging and sh**ty pedagogy wins the day in ed-tech investing." What do you think?

"The United States' global trade representative has strongly criticised a perceived preference on the part of large Australian organisations for hosting their data on-shore in Australia, claiming it created a significant trade barrier for US technology firms and was based on a misinterpretation of the US Patriot Act." It is somewhat entertaining that Australian citizens are apparently more concerned about the crazy Patriot Act (the name alone is hurl-inducing) than US citizens are.

The developers of the open source, Amiga-inspired Syllable operating system have chalked up a new release, releasing version 0.6.7. Rohan Pearce at Techworld caught up with lead developer Kaj de Vos for a chat about what's new and the team's future plans. Last year OSNews posted a longer interview with him about the background of the project, also performed by Pearce.