2010년 9월 13일 월요일

Android Will Be Number 2 Mobile Operating System Worldwide by Year-End

Research analysts at Gartner have forecasted that Google's Android mobile operating system (OS) will become the second largest platform in terms of market share by year-end 2010. Symbian, however, will remain number one. Garner also notes that by 2014, the end of the forecast period for this latest market research report, Android will vie for the top spot against Nokia's Symbian OS.

Yes, Android is officially on the path to world domination.

Here in the U.S., much of the tech news is centered on the smartphone battle between Apple's iPhone and Android. But on the global stage, the top mobile players are Nokia's Symbian, Android, Research in Motion (makers of Blackberry smartphones), then iOS, the operating system that powers the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

Principal analyst Roberta Cozza at Gartner noted that recent and upcoming launches of new smartphone operating systems including iOS4, Blackberry OS 6, Symbian 3 and 4 and Windows Phone 7, will help maintain the current trend of heavy growth in the smartphone sector, but her firm believes that market share worldwide will still revolve around the four key providers mentioned above.

The reason these companies have maintained, and likely will continue to maintain, their top spots involves a number of factors, most notably the support they have from communications service providers and developers, as well as their strong brand awareness with both enterprise and consumer customers.

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Introducing Google Instant

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElubRNRIUg4&feature=player_embedded

Google Instant Search Inspires Mashups Across the Web

google150.jpgPeople are still getting used to Google Instant Search, the format that displays search results as you type. But the idea has captivated developers and inspired a growing number of search engines that let you preview the results without having to press enter.

You can now try Instant Search for Twitter, Flickr or iTunes, or just head to the new site Instantise to find links to 16 instant search apps inspired by Google's innovation last week.

Why do developers love instant search

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This App Recommender Would Like to Use Your Location

appazaar-logo.jpgThe Software Engineering Lab at Münster University of Applied Sciences in Germany has released an interesting Android app discovery tool as part of a research project on context-aware mobile systems.

Appazaar learns which applications you find interesting by tracking your application usage and comparing you to other people with similar interests, much like Apple's Genius does in the App Store. It also takes your real-time location into account.

appazaar2.jpg"Android users are mobile people and often change their location," researcher Matthias Böhmer wrote in an email. "With their location they also change their activity, for instance from working at the office to chilling at the beach. Appazaar uses that to optimize its recommendations! Surely you agree that you require apps for productivity at work and games and music apps for relaxing at the beach."

Like other app discovery tools, appazaar makes recommendations based on users' interests and the apps they've previously downloaded. But it also uses context - time and location - to serve up suggested apps. "A use that has never been in a specific context before receives recommendations on what other users have used in a similar context before," the researchers wrote in a paper that will be presented at an upcoming international conference on recommendation engines in Barcelona. In downtown Portland? Try the PDX Food Cart Finder.

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A Fail Whale For the Rest of Us: Social.DownorNot.com

social-down-or-not.jpgNetherlands-based website monitoring company WatchMouse has created a public website dedicated to measuring performance at social networking sites including Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, LinkedIn, Del.icio.us, Digg, Xanga and Flickr.

WatchMouse also release uptime statistics for the top 20 social sites for the month of August. The leaders were Orkut, which had no downtime, Flickr with just four minutes of downtime, Del.icio.us with 12 minutes of downtime and the gaming site hi5 with 32 minutes of downtime.

failwhale.jpgDigg was in the bottom five with 15 hours and 35 minutes (2.16%) downtime due to issues with its relaunch. Other relatively poor performers included MySpace with a day, seven hours and 27 minutes of downtime (4.36%) and YouTube with a day, five hours and 18 minutes or 4.07% downtime.

Twitter was only down for an hour and 16 minutes total all month, tied with LinkedIn and Yelp.

Uptime for the top 20 social networking sites monitored by WatchMouse:
watchmouse-social-uptime.jpg

 

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