RIM has just revealed it will expand its free PlayBook promotion for Android developers by two weeks. What's more, it has expanded the offer to Native C/C++, HTML5, Adobe AIR, and Qt developers. The offer was due to end on Monday, but was extended due to the overwhelming interest, RIM said.
Mozilla, makers of the Firefox Internet browser, will release a version of its signature software that will resemble Microsoft's Metro user interface. A concept version will be out sometime in the spring, according to Mozilla's 2012 strategy, followed by an alpha and beta version later on, in the second half of the year. Metro uses tiles instead of the traditional Start button and menu in Windows, and Mozilla hopes to integrate its new Gecko-based browser with the Metro environment.
A somewhat sensationalist press release from Russian forensic-cryptology company ElComSoft claims that it can "crack" passwords users put on documents created in Apple's iWork software (which comprises Pages, Numbers and Keynote). However, the company admits that the attack is just a variation on a brute-force cracking method that attempts to guess the password.
O'Reilly has released a new programming book for iOS developers with more than 100 lessons. iOS 5 Programming Cookbook is geared towards users that are comfortable with the iOS SDK and includes lessons that show different approaches to designing an interface, how to develop location-aware apps, access the accelerometer, and more. Currently, the digital copy is being offered at the discounted price of $20, while print and print/digital options are set at $50 and $55 respectively.
Double Fine Productions has surpassed its Kickstarter funding goal in just eight hours since the developer began accepting pledges to help create an adventure game and a documentary to chronicle the experience. The project has achieved over $1 million in investment pledges, more than doubling the original goal of $400,000.
Mozilla and several other browser developers have voiced concern over the dominance of WebKit-based browsers, notably Safari and Chrome. World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) co-chairman Daniel Glazman suggests programmers have begun to disregard alternative browsers, such as Firefox and Internet Explorer, when optimizing website compatibility.
Apple has sent out notifications to iOS developers that future updates to apps now require higher-resolution, 960x640 (Retina Display) compatible screenshots or the apps will not be approved. The change is a minor one (previous guidelines suggested, but did not require, Retina Display-level screenshots) and reflects the company's burgeoning base of iPhone 4, iPhone 4S and fourth-generation iPod Touch users, all of whom have higher-resolution screens.
The social networking app Path, which provides its own community along with the ability to share statuses and pictures to other popular public networks like Twitter and Facebook, has been discovered to be uploading users' entire address books to its own servers on first use. The undisclosed (and unauthorized) uploading was discovered by developer Arun Thampi and detailed in a blog post. The co-founder of Path responded by saying users would soon have an opt-in on the "feature," but did not explain why opt-in wasn't there from the beginning.
RIM's Developer Relations VP Alec Saunders made aggressive claims about the state of BlackBerry App World at his company's DevCon Europe keynote on Tuesday morning. He contended that the store was the second-most profitable mobile app store after Apple's own and that Android lagged behind significantly. Along with having more overall paid downloads than the normally larger Google shop, BlackBerry titles typically made about 40 percent more revenue than their paid Android counterparts.
On the heels of a drive to kick out "copycat apps" that rely on name confusing and similar graphics to get sales intended for original apps, Apple is also warning developers to avoid using third-party marketing services that are known to employ "bots" to automatically download free apps that rely on in-app purchasing for monetization to push up rankings, AppleInsider reports. Simply hiring a third-party marketer that uses such tactics can get the developer banned, Apple says.
FileMaker-based solution developers have often debugged and optimized their products mainly by intuition -- looking at a bit of code and trying out alternative ways to accomplish the same thing until it works better, particularly when they are revising solutions that have been developed for clients over several years. A new product by 24U called FM Bench promises to introduce optimization through code analysis and bottleneck identification, saving time.
New leaks have shown that the Windows 8 public beta, the Consumer Preview, will take the risky step of dropping the Start button in the conventional desktop. As shown on PCBeta's forums, later pre-release builds now just have the app shortcuts, running apps, and taskbar. The menu will still be available, but users will have to mouse to the relevant corner to bring it up.
Users who have been recommended to get a certain game but are not totally clear on the name of the app are the target market of "copycat" games that have similar names and borrow gameplay and other elements from more successful apps, hoping to cash in on brand confusion, TechCrunch reports. Titles like "Plants Vs. Zombie" and "Tiny Birds" are "fast fakes" of real apps. Apple is again removing such apps from the App Store, highlighting an ongoing problem.
Research In Motion is currently running a promotion for Android developers, handing out free BlackBerry PlayBooks to devs that submit apps to the BlackBerry App World. The program was announced by RIM's VP of developer relations, Alec Saunders, in a recent Twitter post.
Apple has begun seeding a beta Safari 5.1.4 release to developers. Mac and Windows distributions are available, although if not on Snow Leopard the Mac version requires OS X 10.7.3. The Lion and Snow Leopard disk images measure about 44MB and 47MB, respectively, while the Windows ZIP file is 109MB.
Quest Visual has updated its augmented reality translation tool, Word Lens, with the ability to translate between French and English. The software uses the device's built-in camera to identify text, and is capable of performing real-time translations without an internet connection. The app itself is available as a free download in the App Store, however, individual language packs are sold as $10 in-app purchases.
DataStax, which specializes in commercial tools to deploy and work with the open-source Apache Cassandra database management system (DBM), has updated its own browser-based visual management and monitoring system for Cassandra's linear-scalable P2P post-relational database system and introduced its first version of the Mac after polling its users and discovering demand for a Mac version.
Nintendo has reportedly continue to make adjustments to the technical specifications for its upcoming Wii U game console. In an interview with Dutch magazine NGamer, Team Ninja's Yosuke Hayashi suggests that the hardware specs have been "changing constantly" since the game studio first began developing for the upcoming device.
On February 14 FileMaker will be hosting a web seminar designed to teach participants how to use their current database in a mobile setting. The session will focus on both user interaction and system architecture, and will show how screen design, lightweight schema and hybrid development techniques can be used to improve productivity. Two one hour sessions have been scheduled, the first will take place at 11am EDT and the second at 2pm EDT. Registration is open for both and can be completed online.
On schedule, Microsoft has started shipping the Kinect for Windows add-on and its matching software. The sensor lets those on Windows 7, 8, and Embedded use the motion control from the Xbox with optimizations for the PC world, such as tracking subjects as close as 15.7 inches as well as a PC-oriented USB cable. It costs $249 for anyone, although it will cost $149 for educational users later.
[Update: ZEVO web site is back up after prolonged outage] A former Apple engineer who worked on ZFS integration in Leopard and Snow Leopard has debuted a new software program to implement full ZFS support on the Mac. The alternative disk formatting, which offers a more efficient way to utilize disk space and actively prevents file corruption among other benefits, was touted by Sun Microsystems and considered by Apple as a possible replacement for HFS, but ultimately abandoned due to licensing issues.
Mozilla has released finished versions of Firefox 10 for both Windows PCs and Macs this week. Changes, according to the release notes, include a Forward navigation button that doesn't show up until users hit the Back button first, included APIs for viewing web apps in full-screen mode, and anti-aliasing for WebGL graphics. Likewise new is an Extended Support Release that allows enterprises to only download security updates and stay on the same version for seven releases.
Google appears to be ramping up efforts to attract developers to the search giant's Android OS. A new Google+ page now serves as the "official Google+ home of the Android Developer Relations team," providing advice and links to development tools for Google+ and the Android platform in general.
CyanogenMod team member Koushik "Koush" Dutta has just shared a video teaser (below) of his latest project, a touch-native version of ClockworkMod Recovery. The early build shows touch to select and scrolling working, and treats the menu as buttons. The software will let users create full firmware backups to ensure they can go back to a stock phone if their hacked operating system isn't what they expected.
UK-based RealMac Software, known for titles like Rapidweaver and Little Snapper, will be releasing a new to-do app in the next few weeks called Clear. The app is a collaboration with MacHeist organizer Phill Ryu, engineer Milen Dzhumerov and artist David Lanham, and puts an iPhone-centric, gesture-oriented but minimalist spin on the idea of a to-do list, focusing on visual design rather than excessive features.
Developers have demonstrated an unofficial feature for Microsoft's Kinect system that mimics holographic effects. The Programming4fun team used the Kinect beta SDK and Windows Phone to create the illusion of a holographic scene, using the Kinect sensors to track a user's position and change the perspective of the scene projected on a flat surface.
Raspberry Pi executive director Eben Upton has made several performance claims regarding the company's micro PCs. The startup argues that the devices outperform NVIDIA's Tegra 2 chipset, and even doubles the iPhone 4S' performance, when benchmarking graphics capabilities.
A week after the last release, Apple has again posted a new beta of the upcoming Mac OS X 10.7.3 for developers. The new version lists no known issues and again asks testers to focus on iCloud Document Storage, Address Book, iCal, Mail, Spotlight, and Safari. The build, numbered 11D50, weighs in at 1.26GB for the combo update, and 997.01MB for the delta release (reversioners are no longer required).
On its developer blog on Tuesday, Microsoft talked about how Windows 8 will use sensors to optimize the user experience. As the OS will be used on tablets and notebooks as well as desktop PCs, Microsoft found it important to include an automatic adaptive brightness that uses ambient light sensors. This feature aims to strike a balance between reading comfort, battery life and legibility when outdoors.
Microsoft platform evangelism GM Tim O'Brien in a blog post said his company was dropping another major event, MIX. At least the 2012 developer show would be cancelled in favor of one, monolithic developer event "sometime in the coming year." The notion of separating the web and native apps was no longer needed, O'Brien said, but Microsoft was also getting backlash from an excess of events.
MonkeyBread Software has launched a new version of MBS FileMaker Plugin, its collection of tools for FileMaker Pro. Version 2.5 now contains 765 different functions, including new CURL functions to enhance upload and download capabilities. Additionally, the update includes new CUPS functions for querying printers and print jobs, canceling print jobs, and sending data to a printer. A free trial can be downloaded from the company's website, while licenses start at $150.
While Apple screens submitted apps for "reliability, technical, content and design criteria" according to its own developer page, the company does not yet seem to have found a foolproof way to prevent "counterfeit" apps from gaining approval. Recently a copycat version of Tap Tap Tap's Camera+ was spotted at the App Store, though it was pulled after being reported to Apple. The issue has also been seen on the Android platform on a larger scale.
Ovum on Monday predicted based on a developer survey that Android would become more important to developers than iOS by the start of 2013. While Apple would still be the other major platform creator to write for, the research firm saw the momentum in hardware leading to Google taking the edge. Ovum didn't give ratios for how much of a lead it expected.
Google together with MIT has posted an open-source version of App Inventor for Android developers. The early code for the simplified app tool has little supporting text and isn't yet completely open-source, with users not yet having the option of contributing code back. Until then, MIT is promising periodic code updates and has a Google Group for app writers to help each other.
(Updated with iBooks Author availability) Presenting at today's education event in New York City, Apple has introduced iBooks 2, a major update of the company's reading app. A strong emphasis of the app is on textbooks, which can include things like movies, animations, and interactive elements, such as the ability to zoom into cell structures in a biology book. Books now also support elements like indexes, glossaries, review questions, and turning highlights or glossary items into study cards. Titles can be read in a new fullscreen mode, and a Textbooks section has been added to the iBookstore.
Amazon has released yet another firmware update for its Kindle Fire tablet, as the company continues to quietly battle with unofficial tools that enable users to gain root access. The latest firmware, version 6.2.2, temporarily closed the loophole that had been exploited by BurritoRoot, however developers quickly released an update to the root utility to restore its functionality.
Nokia has revealed it will soon release the Meego Harmattan 1.2 beta update to developers who already have the N950 developer phone. The update is said to contain more than 3,000 new features, fixes and other changes, with video calling, folders for the home screen, and new camera and gallery apps rumored to be among them.
The CyanogenMod TouchPad team has now officially released the previously teased CyanogenMod 9 software for the HP TouchPad over on the RootzWiki forum. This alpha release will allow users to run Android 4.0 on the discontinued tablet. As the software is at an early stage, however, many features do not work.
Apple seeded a sixth OS X 10.7.3 beta to developers last night, build 11D46, reports note. The code is arriving roughly a week after 11D42, and contains no known issues. Because of this and the number of builds released already, 11D46 may be the last beta before v10.7.3 is released to the public.
As of today Apple has put a stop to a $100 printer rebate offered alongside new Macs, says 9to5Mac. The information comes from a leaked internal support document. The memo does note, though, that people still have up to 90 days after their original date of purchase -- the last eligible date being January 16th -- to submit a rebate. "An additional 30 days will be given to correct invalid claims," Apple offers.
PhatWare has launched a new version of its note-taking and handwriting recognition app, WritePad. Version 6.0 introduces a new handwriting recognition engine that supports seven languages: English, German, French, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. The ability to look up word definitions has also been added with the latest release, along with improved Twitter support, and a new startup wizard. WritePad 6.0 can be purchased in the App Store for $10, which includes one language of the user's choice. Support for additional languages can be purchased in-app for $3 per language.
Microsoft has announced details surrounding its new file system, known as ReFS or Resilient File System. The Windows team has worked to build the new system "from the ground up" to improve upon the current NTFS technology, maintaining compatibility while expanding features and reducing complexity.
A member of the Chronic Dev Team has taken the exploit that allowed for an "untethered" jailbreak of iOS 5.0.1 on A4 devices and made it work on A5 devices, as demonstrated by a video showing an iPhone 4S running the stock operating system rebooting with its jailbroken apps (including Cydia and iFile) intact, reports hacker pod2g. The new technique is planned for a public release in the near future, though pod2g was not specific about when.
Whatsapp, an inexpensive app that offered a service similar to Apple's own iMessage but across platforms and iOS versions, has temporarily been pulled by the app developer for reasons not yet made clear. The company recently patched a potential security issue, but says this has nothing to do with the unavailability, and that it has "submitted a new version and [is] awaiting approval by Apple." It has also published a blog post warning users of hoaxes circulating about the app.
Syncro Soft has updated its Oxygen XML multi-platform editor to version 13.2, which most prominently adds a new Syntax Highlight feature capable of handling many mixed content types. The update also improves authoring support by including an updated DITA Mats Metrics Report, improves JSON editing support and bidirectional document rendering, adds "experimental" support for CGM images, extends the XML-native database support with find-and-replace capabilities and more.
Apple yesterday began seeding a fifth build of OS X 10.7.3 to developers, reports note. Listed as build 11D42, the code is arriving about three weeks after the distribution of the last beta. Developers are being asked to concentrate testing on five key components: Address Book, iCal, Mail, Spotlight, and Safari. A delta version of the update currently measures 989.75MB.
Although Intel is focusing on ultrabooks this week at CES, the company also brought along a prototype Android handset referred to by the CPU code-name Medfield. Electronista had a chance to try out the Atom-based platform, which aims to compete with ARM-based hardware utilized by most Android smartphones.
[Updated with Siri Dictation info] Apple has posted a third developer beta of iOS 5.1, reports say. The firmware is identified as build 9B5141a, and includes a variety of bugfixes and minor improvements over beta 2. One major change, though, is the reappearance of the "Enable 3G" toggle, which Apple inexplicably removed with the advent of iOS 5.0.
Texas-based Genuitec has released a new version of MobiOne, an iOS programming environment that now lets users create and test native iOS apps without needing to purchase or use a Mac, and without needing to learn Objective-C. Previously limited to creating web-based apps only, version 1.4 features a PowerPoint-like design studio that lets inexperienced developers assemble native iOS apps using drag-and-drop elements, and tested in the cloud or on actual iDevices.
AT&T appears to be preparing to introduce new Windows 8 tablet next week at CES in Las Vegas. The carrier is holding a special event ahead of CES for developers, with a session to be focused on "Windows 8 tablets super charged with LTE."
