Virtualization, Cloud Computing and Mobile: 09/09/10

2010년 9월 9일 목요일

How to Get Android Notifications on Your Computer Desktop (Mac, Linux or Windows)

Do you want to be notified of Android notifications like calls, text messages, low battery alerts and more when you're on your computer? An open source mobile application called "Android Notifier" does this by connecting your mobile phone's notification system to the notification system on your computer. The desktop application currently works on Mac only, via the popular notification app, Growl. The project's developer says the Linux port will arrive "soon" and he's looking for volunteers who will connect the app to Windows systems as well.

But he needn't bother. We came across another application called the "Android-Notifier-Desktop" which offers a multi-platform desktop client for the above mobile app to the overlooked Linux and Windows users.

iPhone Apps Overtaking Songs in Total Downloads

There's an interesting chart making its way around the Net this morning comparing the number of iTunes app downloads to the total downloads of songs. The surprising reveal is that it shows apps are being downloaded much more rapidly than songs. In only 2.2 years, the iTunes App Store has reached the same total downloads as the iTunes Music Store did after five years. And before the year is out, the two curves on the chart will be around the same height - 13 billion downloads each.

Why is this happening? Why are apps becoming more popular than music?

More Apps Downloaded Than Songs by Year-End

The original chart was posted on Asymco's website, home to a hybrid industry analysis advisory and app development firm. Assuming the data the firm has collected is accurate (they say it comes from statements made by Apple representatives), Apple customers will have downloaded more iPhone/iPod/iPad apps than songs sometime in the near future, either by year end or just a few weeks later.

Jailbreakers: Do Not Update to iOS 4.1

Apple has released the latest version of its operating system for the iPhone and iPod Touch, iOS 4.1 today. The update was announced last week at Apple's fall event and brings a number of new features and bug fixes.

While the latest version of iOS offers some nifty features like HDR photos and Apple's brand new Game Center, those behind the latest jailbreaks warn that updating will cause you to lose your jailbreak.

For those of you with a standard, non-jailbroken phone, update away. The new iOS fixes the proximity sensor bug, which allowed touchscreen input when you were talking on your phone, as well as Bluetooth connectivity issues. It also takes care of iPhone 3G users that updated to iOS 4.0 and found their phones suddenly unusably slow.

As for new features, iOS 4.1 introduces HDR, or "high dynamic range" photos, a new Game Center, the ability to upload HD video of WiFi, and TV show downloads directly from the phone.

VLC Submits iPad App to App Store

Video support on Apple's mobile devices is far from universal and that's an issue that Applidium hopes to solve with its submission of VLC, the open-source video player, to the App Store.

According to the company's release, "if everything goes well, VLC for the iPad should be available next week".

The free video player supports "nearly every video format" and when we asked Romain Goyet, co-founder of Applidium, if it supported Flash (the most obvious and controversial of missing video formats), he told us "This unfortunately I cannot answer right now (you guess why :-) )."

While he expects the player to be available in the App Store for download by September 14, it will initially only be available for the iPad, with a version for the iPhone and iPod Touch in the works. Goyet had a few other details to offer about the potential release:

As compared to the "desktop" version, the user interface will be quite a lot different, to fit the iPad. Behind the scene, the engine is the one from the "ususal" version of VLC, so it should play pretty much anything you throw at it. One small difference though : even though the iPad is a really neat device, it's nowhere as powerful as your desktop machine / laptop. So it might have a hard time decoding HD movies, but that's a hardware limitation.

According to a recent tweet, a pre-release version will be given out to a small number of users this weekend, before it hits the app store.

Big Data and a Critique of Geek Culture

We are fascinated here at ReadWriteWeb about Hadoop. It can be used in so many ways. It gives you that sense of excitement that shows how big data can open up all kinds of possibilities.

So we got a tad excited tonight when we ran across a post by Mike Pearce about "10 Hadoopable Problems: or in other words, 10 things you can do with Hadoop. But excitement turned to disappointment when it reminded us of how limiting we can be when thinking about big data in standard terms.

We won't go into detail about each of the 10 ways Hadoop can be used. You can go check out the post yourself. Instead, we'll highlight a few and provide our own little view about big data, the failings of geek culture and the role information plays in our interface culture.

Hadoop is a transforming technology that through its analytic capabilities, can change the way we interface with the world. We use the term interface in deference to Interface Culture, the book by Steven Johnson that explored the Web's interactive elements and technology interfaces. He looked at buttons, links and metaphors such as the desktop and traced them back to medieval planning, Victorian novels, early cinema and the rise of our modern culture.

The interface culture we develop out of big data will spawn new works that help guide us into unfamiliar spaces as much as novels helped the Victorian era make sense of the new, industrial world.

"Window to the World" - Scandinavia

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4iRvqJRc3w&feature=player_embedded

First Android TV Launches Weeks Before Google TV Arrives

Earlier this week we looked at the upcoming launch of Google TV. It's slated for this fall (U.S.) and will be integrated into a new line of Sony Internet TVs. Meanwhile a Swedish company has just launched its own Internet TV, built on top of Google's open source Android Operating System.

The company is called People of Lava and its new line of Internet TVs is called Scandinavia (in the same way that Sony has a line of TVs called 'Bravia'). With the tagline "Window to the World," the Scandanavia comes in 3 sizes: 42", 47" and 55". The new product was unveiled this week at the IFA consumer electronics trade show in Berlin.

Firstly, to clarify that Google TV is a software product built on Android. It will be integrated into televisions (like the Sony Internet TV) and set-top boxes. It appears that People of Lava plans to integrate Google TV into its TVs too, but for now it has gotten a jump on Sony by building its own Android-based Internet TV software.