IBM's 'Five in Five'

IBM has released a report outlining 'five innovations that will change our lives over the next five years.' The 'big five' concepts -- though not completely new -- are:

• We will be able to access healthcare remotely, from just about anywhere in the world
• Real-time speech translation-once a vision only in science fiction-will become the norm
• There will be a 3-D Internet
• Technologies the size of a few atoms will address areas of environmental importance
• Our mobile phones will come close to reading our minds

The iPhone Revolution?

The iPhone, released to the public last Friday, is one of the most hyped devices in memory. But is all the excitement justified?

John McCormick of Baseline suggests that the iPhone could blow the market for handheld rich Internet applications wide open, even though the iPhone was designed for the consumer rather than the enterprise market. Om Malik concurs, noting the significance of the built-in Safari browser that brings the full Web experience to mobile phones for the first time. Smart Mobs opines that mobile phones (not just the iPhone) represent a mass medium unto themselves that are revolutionizing the fundamental ways in which we communicate.

UPDATE: Read a contrarian view...

AT&T Leads in Smartphone Users

Citing independent market research, AT&T announced its customer base now boasts twice as many smartphone users as any other U.S. mobile operator, reporting that close to 32% of its postpaid subscribers now use an integrated device. According to AT&T, more new and existing customers activated integrated devices in Q1 than the carrier added in new postpaid subscribers. AT&T credits the smartphone user growth to its 3G network and nearly 20,000 U.S. WiFi hotspots.

"AT&T made a big push to be the mobile broadband and smartphone leader many years ago and it's clearly paying off in a big way for us and our customers," said David Christopher, chief marketing officer, AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets. "We've taken integrated devices mainstream and nearly a third of our postpaid customers use one. Our industry-leading 3G and Wi-Fi networks make mobile data accessible to everyone—from road warriors with advanced smartphones to texting teens with quick messaging phones. We offer something for everyone."

This is an impressive statistic as smartphone users outspend non-smartphone users considerably and are generally more profitable as well.

Linterna Led es una aplicación que en mas de una ocasión puede que nos solucione algún problema en alguna situación que no dispongamos de una linterna.He utilizado el potente flash led de la cámara , teniendo un control del flash con las opciones de la aplicación en modo Activado y Desactivado, el modo activado no permite el bloqueo de la pantalla manteniendo el flash activo, el modo Desactivado

Updated SDK Tools and ADT revision 17

Today we are releasing an update to the SDK Tools and the Eclipse plugin. Revision 17 brings a lot of new features and bug fixes in various areas such as Lint, the build system as well as the emulator.

Lint is a static checker which analyzes Android projects for a variety of issues around correctness, security, performance, usability and accessibility, checking your XML resources, bitmaps, ProGuard configuration files, source files and even compiled bytecode. It can be run from within Eclipse or from the command line.
New for r17:

• Added check for Android API calls that require a version of Android higher than the minimum supported version. You can use the new @TargetApi annotation to specify local overrides for conditionally loaded code. For more information, read here.
• Added over 40 new Lint rules for a total of over 80, including checks for performance, XML layouts, manifest and file handling. For a full list read here.
• Added ability to suppress Lint warnings in Java code with the new @SuppressLint annotation, and in XML files with the new tools: namespace prefix and ignore attribute. For more information, read here.
• Improved HTML and XML reporting and Eclipse integration. For more information, read here.

We've also made improvements to the build systems for Eclipse and Ant:

• Added strict dependency support for 3rd party Jar files. You can read more information here.
• Added support for custom views with custom attributes in libraries. Layouts using custom attributes must use the namespace URI http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto instead of the URI that includes the app package name. This URI is replaced with the app specific one at build time.
• Added a feature that allows you to run some code only in debug mode. Builds now generate a class called BuildConfig containing a DEBUG constant that is automatically set according to your build type. You can check the (BuildConfig.DEBUG) constant in your code to run debug-only functions such as outputting debug logs.

The emulator is seeing some big improvements as well:

• Thanks to contributions to AOSP from Intel, the emulator now supports running x86 system images in virtualization mode on Windows and Mac OS X. This allows the emulator running at near native speed. The drivers are available through the SDK Manager. Read more here.
• After adding webcam support and sensor emulation, we are adding experimental support for Multi-Touch input through a tethered Android device. (Read more here)

Finally, we are also releasing an updated Support Library with the following improvements:

• ShareCompat provides easy helper classes for both sending and receiving content for social sharing apps.
• NavUtils and TaskStackBuilder provide cross-version support for implementing the Android Design guidelines for navigating within your app including the action bar's 'Up' button.
• NotificationCompat.Builder provides a compatibility implementation of Android 3.0's Notification.Builder helper class for creating standardized system notifications.
• A new Library Project adds support for GridLayout back to API level 7 and higher.

You can get more information about these changes in the SDK Tools Release Notes and ADT Release Notes.

Is Tesla Getting the Electric Car Right?

If the internal combustion engine is the technology environmentalists love to hate, the electric car is the technology everyone else hates to love. Electrics have long had the reputation for being underpowered, inefficient, and no more eco-friendly than any other type of car, as the electricity needed to run them normally comes from fossil fuels.

Enter Tesla Motors, a California-based startup that has developed the Tesla Roadster, a stylish, high-performance electric car that can reportedly go from 0 to 60 in 4 seconds and travel up to 250 miles between charges. The Roadster is still in the prototype stage, but just as important as the car itself is the way that Tesla proposes to fuel it. Tesla envisions a distributed network of charging stations that draw power from sustainable, environmentally friendly sources.

Source: Long Tail

¿Es Windows Phone mejor que Android?

Hace un tiempo que uso ambos sistemas operativos, Android en un Samsung Galaxy S2 que creo es el mejor equipo con ese OS y un LG Optimus 7 P900 que es un buen primer intento, y bastantes veces me pregunto si Windows Phone es mejor o si el ecosistema que lo ayuda es el que le permite diferenciarse del resto…

En cierto punto creo que varios están preguntandose esto, por ejemplo la gente de MaximumPC y de hecho voy a usar su planteo como base pero agregando y agrupando mejor las ideas:

Interfaz de uso algo que muchos parecen olvidar es que la interacción con el teléfono se da constantemente, durante todo el día y de forma mucho mas personal que en la PC con lo que el "Factor diseño" es mucho más importante de lo que puede parecer… y en este punto ¿alguien vió la interfaz Metro de Windows Phone que encima es coherente sobre equipos en vez de estar modificada en todas?

Teclado ¿inteligente? acá quiero meter a un tercero en juego (el iPhone que tiene el mejor teclado touchscreen del mundo) y a alguien que le gana a todos (la Blackberry Bold 9900 que tiene el mejor teclado del mundo mundial :P) pero el teclado de Windows Phone es MUY bueno y me sorprende realmente que Android solo pueda competir con add-ons

Aplicaciones revisadas que el App Store de iOS es la vara con la que se miden todos es una realidad, y la anarquía del Android Market es buena porque permite que haya cientos de miles de ringtones y wallpapers pero… ¿preferís cantidad o calidad? ¿preferís apps sin control de seguridad? y eso termina en una pregunta más filosófica ¿preferís algo abierto o cerrado?

Ecosistema de Microsoft asi como todas las Apps de Google están disponibles para todas las plataformas, las de Microsoft no (las de Apple menos) y eso incluye la integración con Microsoft Office o con XBox Live el servicio que, personalmente, considero un punto de venta gigantesco y que interesantemente Samsung está construyendo por su cuenta en un ecosistema de aplicaciones en la nube

Y en esas 4 patas (interfaz, usabilidad, Aplicaciones, ecosistema) a veces pienso que Windows Phone tiene una gran ventaja sobre Android en algunos equipos; me gustaría ver como esto se conjuga con Nokia en su línea Lumia y en su línea de aplicaciones Nokia Collection para ver si encima la suma de estos jugadores termina siendo una competencia real para lograr al menos un 20% del mercado de smartphones porque con lograr ese peso, va a haber una pelea de plataformas reales que terminaran ayudando a los usuarios.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PocketPcLive/~3/Pg3bZVHNzwc/multi-touch-gestures-on-ipad.html

Multitouch Gestures from Apple have been in the pipeline for quite some time, with huge possibilities of Apple ditching the home button on future iPad and iPhone devices.