Category: Mobile (Page 18 of 65)

Palm’s Pre is the mobile hacker’s dream

April 12, 2010 / Jeff Morgan

As smartphones get more and more robust, hackers are looking for new ways to get the most from what have become powerful mobile computers. Manufacturers want to keep that from happening, though, which is why we have situations like the strict lockdown on the iPhone’s OS. There is one OS that still gives hackers the freedom they desire: Palm’s WebOS. With news that Palm could potentially be purchased, it’s sad to think this might all go away. In the meantime, though, it’s pretty damn cool.

It turns out WebOS can be hacked to run virtually any Linux program. The proof of concept was done by installing OpenOffice on a Palm Pre. A Pre people! Okay, it’s not that exciting, but it is a neat discovery, even if it doesn’t have much practical application.

The hack is much more involved than typical homebrew installs. You have to root the phone, install a new windows management system, modify the startup system, and then install everything using Debian. Why you would do all of this is beyond me but just knowing that you can has to feel good, right? Right guys? Palm users? Palm does have users…right?

Source: PreCentral

Mobile

open office open office mobile palm pre pre web os webos webos hacks

How do you beat Apple lawsuits? Buy Palm!

April 11, 2010 / Jeff Morgan

According to Bloomberg, Palm is for sale, and the top candidate might not be somebody you’d expect. HTC is currently the target of an Apple lawsuit claiming 20 counts of patent infringement on iPhone IP. Buying Palm could give Google’s handset maker of choice the patents it needs to fight the Apple suit. Smart play, fellas.

HTC isn’t looking for hardware – it needs an operating system. As it stands, only Google and Apple have what is considered a modern mobile operating system (sorry, RIM, you aren’t even close). Unfortunately, HTC would probably only use the purchase to give it enough patents for a war with Apple, not because it actually thinks WebOS will go anywhere. Palm didn’t sell nearly enough handsets to keep the world interested in WebOS.

HTC wants to avoid is a costly licensing settlement with Apple that could affect profits far into the future. Spending several hundred million dollars on a dying company could be the cheap alternative it’s been looking for.

Mobile, News

htc htc buy palm palm palm broke palm buyer palm for sale palm market viability web os webos

Twitter developers should stop plugging holes

April 8, 2010 / Jeff Morgan

Fred Wilson laid out an interesting post at the Business Insider this morning. For those who don’t know, Wilson is a partner at Union Square Ventures and one of Twitter’s top investors. Wilson’s basic point was that current Twitter development focuses on plugging holes in the service, not creating new things with what the service can offer.

Consider this – not terribly long after Twitter launched people realized they needed a way to share long URLs in a compressed format. Along comes bit.ly with its URL shortening service. How bout TwitPic for sharing pictures. The examples continue from there. Point is, though, that none of these things take any sort of interesting advantage of the Twitter platform or concept. They’re just methods by which people share the shortened versions of information encourage by Twitter. As Wilson says it, these are things Twitter should have had built in to the service at launch.

Maybe you didn’t hear him correctly. These are things Twitter is going to do. Just like Facebook did with all of the crazy apps that just filled the gaps, Twitter will be rounding out its own feature set to compete with and provide the services of third-party developers. In some cases, as was the case with FriendFeed, that could mean acquisitions. Wilson didn’t say it overtly, but his message is loud and clear.

It’s time for developers to do something great, like the social gaming apps for Facebook. Analysts estimate social gaming will hit $1.6 billion in revenue next year, and Wilson thinks that number is too low. That’s a pretty nice pie to slice up.

Source: Business Insider

Mobile, Websites

bit.ly developers development fred wilson twitpic twitter union square ventures

My experience with broadband penetration

April 1, 2010 / Jeff Morgan

There has been a lot of talk, both in government and among non-profit groups, about bringing the web to everyone. Rural areas still struggle with slow connection speeds and a lack of quality service. I’ve been having some problems with my service over the past few days that make me really appreciate what it is to have broadband basically whenever I want it.

I have a pretty cool job. I work from home, I get to write, I do a little programming. All of those things, though, require the internet, and for most I need a pretty fast connection. I’m actually writing this post from my phone. It’s great to have that option, but cellular service is still pretty slow and the data fees are too expensive for a lot of people. It’s also ridiculously cramped typing full posts on a touchscreen keyboard. Tablets could change that, but there’s still the 3G speed cap to deal with and the cost of a monthly data plan.

With the economy still struggling, I can think of few better ways to stimulate rural and low-population areas, areas typically hit hardest by tough economic conditions, than a rollout of affordable, reliable internet service. When service goes down, it’s tough not to immediately start shopping for better broadband deals. At the very least, I could use the reliable connection. Waiting on yet another modem is painful.

Lifestyle, Mobile

broadband broadband penetration download speed internet service internet speeds ISP upload speed

RIM looks better than expected

March 31, 2010 / Jeff Morgan

For a while there it seemed as if every analyst was ready to sell RIM up the river. The company wasn’t performing well outside the enterprise market according to most, and the iPhone and Android were gaining speed at alarming rates. Not much has changed. The iPhone has slowed a bit and Android continues to skyrocket, but according to the latest RIM numbers, the BlackBerry brand is doing surprisingly well.

The company missed its quarterly earnings mark, but not by much. Activations are at an all-time high with 4.9 million this quarter. Annual revenue is up a whopping 35 percent. CEO Jim Balsillie sounded positive and said the company is, “off to a great start in fiscal 2011 and expect strong shipments, revenue, subscriber and earnings growth in Q1.”

Shares were still down for the day, likely because of the missed earnings numbers, but all in all things don’t seem so dire. In fact, it all sounds pretty good.