Adobe Gives Up on iPhone App Development After CS5

The saga of Adobe and Apple or, more precisely, Flash app development for the iPhone, is drawing to its inevitable conclusion. It all started with Apple’s change to its iPhone Developer Program License Agreement – the notorious article 3.3.1 – which banned the use of the Flash-to-iPhone converter. In the simplest of terms, the article makes it meaningless for developers to create Flash apps that target the iPhone because Apple can ban them at any time. Now, Principal Product Manager for developer relations for the Flash Platform at Adobe, Mike Chambers, puts a full stop to the story from Adobe’s side. In a lengthy blog post, he calls developers of Flash apps for smartphones to focus on Android and stop developing apps for the iPhone. He also announces Adobe’s intention to stop working on the Flash-to-iPhone converter. “We will still be shipping the ability to target the iPhone and iPad in Flash CS5. However, we are not currently planning any additional investments in that feature,” Mike says. In the post, he also criticizes Apple’s treatment of developers. “If you want to develop for the iPhone you have to be prepared for Apple to reject or restrict your development at anytime, and for seemingly any reason,” he says. So, that’s it for Flash apps on the iPhone. Apple may have won this round, but the wall around its garden just got a little bit taller.

Source:Mashable.com

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Microsoft to Unveil Social Networking Phones on April 12

The rumor mill has churned on a Microsoft mobile initiative dubbed Project Pink for some time now, and according to the Wall Street Journal we’ll finally see the official results of that unveiled at a press event this coming Monday, April 12.

Project Pink is reportedly a line of mobile phones featuring social networking integrations aimed at a young demographic. The “Pink” line will reflect Microsoft’s taking a more hands-on role in developing the hardware side of the mobile spectrum, as opposed to their more typical strategy of handling the software operating system and letting partners design the phones themselves. They’ve also designed some undetailed “online services” for Pink phones in addition to the software and hardware, while Japan’s Sharp Corp. will handle the actual manufacturing.

According to the WSJ’s sources, some of the new phones will be available already later in April on Verizon. Until we have more details it’s hard to speculate on how the Pink line might impact Microsoft’s overall lackluster showing in the mobile realm, although it and the upcoming Windows Phone 7 Series seem to be signs that Redmond is doing their best to put up a fight. We’ll be on hand at the event to get the details, so stay tuned for more news on Project Pink this Monday.

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Google To Buzz Users

When Google announced its big jump into the social stream with the launch of Google Buzz back in February, the company thought it was doing everyone a favor by having users auto-follow the people they emailed and chatted the most with. That was a mistake, and the heat was turned on quickly by the broad press, vocal users and privacy pundits.

Two days after launching (prematurely), Google tweaked the product to make it clearer for new users what was going on behind the scenes when they click the ‘Buzz’ tab, and they made even more changes two days after that.

But those changes only affected new users, and not the – reportedly – millions of people who gave it a whirl in the first four days after launch. Later today, Google will start prompting all existing users to review their existing privacy settings upon launching the service.

The company will soon publish a blog post in which they admit they “didn’t get everything right” and confirm that they will gradually start presenting the following screen to users who click the ‘Buzz’ tab over the course of the day:

This page essentially highlights users’ current Buzz settings, which they can promptly confirm or change. It lets users view and edit the people they’re following as well as the people following them, choose whether they want those lists appearing on their public Google profiles, and modify any of the sites connected to Google Buzz (e.g. Flickr, Twitter and Google Reader).

The news comes shortly after multiple lawmakers had asked the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to investigate Buzz for breaches of consumer privacy. But while some are now implying that Google is letting users reset their privacy settings to get Congress off its back, the truth is that Google had already stated this was coming on February 13, when it blogged:

For the tens of millions of you who have already started using Buzz, over the next couple weeks we’ll be showing you a similar version of this new start-up experience to give you a second chance to review and confirm the people you’re following.

Of note is that Google has also set up a dedicated YouTube channel for Google Buzz, including eight videos explaining the basic concept and specific features. In an amusing twist of irony, 7 out of 8 videos are currently set to ‘Private’ and cannot be viewed yet.

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Benchmarks Show iPad is Faster than iPhone 3GS

The microchip inside Apple iPad makes the web pages load bit and zippier experience with apps

The Apple iPad is now available to general public in U.S. and initial tests by developers suggest that it is faster than the iPhone 3GS. Craig Hockenberry, Developer of Twitterrific Twitter App, published benchmarks comparing performance of iPad (iPhone OS 3.2) with iPhone 3GS (iPhone OS 3.0). This means we can see faster and graphics rich applications for the iPad. Large apps like game apps would load faster and the entire experience is zippy.

Hockenberry tested performance of iPhone OS 3.2 for iPad with iPhone 3GS device running iPhone OS 3.0 version. His results indicated that the iPad is as twice as fast as iPhone 3GS when it comes to running native applications based on Cocoa Touch; all thanks to the new Apple A4 System-on-Chip used in the iPad. As per AnandTech's tests, the Apple A4 System-on-Chip does help the tablet to run faster than Qualcomm's Snapdragon chip clocked at 1GHz. Anand tested the iPad with Snapdragon based Google Nexus One phone and found out significant (10 to 30 percent) performance improvement in initial testing.

Jon Stokes of Ars Technica pointed out last month that Apple A4 runs at 1GHz clock speed which is similar to that of Snapdragon. The Apple A4 processor is build on Cortex A8 generation ARM processor core and has three layers of silicon circuitry stacked one on top of other. These three layers include microprocessor core and two memory modules (DRAM). The higher DRAM boosts the performance of the iPad.

David Carey, vice president of technical intelligence at UBM technologists, told The Wall Street Journal that the DRAMs used in the iPad read and write data in 64-bit chunks, one potential reason why reviewers have called the iPad "surprisingly fast".

In all, the iPad's A4 SoC silicon has a nice combination of 1GHz CPU core and two DRM modules that write data in 64-bits. This means that you can expect the browsing experience to be faster and apps to run snazzier on the iPad.

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700,000 iPads bought on day one

Apple did not provide details of opening-day sales. But Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, who had predicted as many as 300,000 iPads would be sold this weekend, dramatically revised his numbers upward Saturday to between 600,000 and 700,000 units purchased just on the first day.

That contrasts with 270,000 iPhones sold during its initial launch. Apple plans to offer six variants of the iPad, starting with the three Wi-Fi models available now: a 16GB model ($499), a 32GB model ($599), and 64GB model ($699). In late April, Apple will ship three additional models that tack on 3G capability, for an extra $130 each. The 3G models will also have a GPS chip inside.

Source:guru3d.com

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Thermaltake launch new low profile CPU cooler

Thermaltake launch their low profile CPU especially targeting Home Theater PC users, the Thermaltake SlimX3. Since for Home Theater PCs usually small and mini size cases are used, the CPU cooler performance is of utmost importance, it has to come with a very small footprint in order to fit into the case, but at the same time offer sufficient cooling capacity in a silent environment.

The SlimX3 adopts two Ö6 mm Copper heat-pipes with an aluminum fins/base combination to provide a highly effective cooling performance for multimedia oriented CPUs. Through the heat-pipe design better heat conductivity is achieved to accelerate heat dissipation. With its slim design with a total height of only 36 mm the SlimX3 is for use in most mini cases.

With PWM functionality the SlimX3 adjusts the fan speed automatically between 1200RPM and 2400RPM according to the actual CPU load. This ensures a most silent operation at different CPU load levels so users won't be unnecessarily annoyed by potential fan noise while enjoying their personal entertainment.

With the special clip design, the SlimX3 CPU cooler provides multiple choices for both LGA775 and LGA1156 low profile solutions.

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µTorrent 2.0 Build 18907 Stable

µTorrent is an efficient and feature rich BitTorrent client for Windows sporting a very small footprint. µTorrent was designed to use as little cpu, space and memory as possible while offering all the functionalites expected from advanced clients. With BitTorrent, you can download files faster and contribute by sharing files and bandwidth. Most of the features present in other BitTorrent clients are present in µTorrent, including bandwidth prioritization, scheduling, RSS auto-downloading and Mainline DHT (compatible with BitComet). Additionally, µTorrent supports the Protocol Encryption joint specification (compatible with Azureus 2.4.0.0 and above, BitComet 0.63 and above) and peer exchange. µTorrent was written with efficiency in mind. Unlike many torrent clients, it does not hog valuable system resources - typically using less than 6MB of memory, allowing you to use the computer as if it weren't there at all. Additionally, the program itself is contained within a single executable less than 400 KB in size.

Various icon, toolbar graphic and status icon replacements are available, and creating your own is very simple. µTorrent also has support for localization, and with a language file present, will automatically switch to your system language. If your language isn't available, you can easily add your own, or edit other existing translations to improve them!

The developer puts in a lot of time working on features and making things more user-friendly. Releases only come out when they're ready, with no schedule pressures, so the few bugs that appear are quickly addressed and fixed.

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WordPress 3.0 Beta Released

WordPress has released its beta 3.0 version.

In a late-night announcement Jane Wells, the UX lead at Automattic (the parent company of WordPress.com), laid out some of the many new features that are featured in version 3.0 beta of the popular blogging software. The first thing she points out is a new custom menus system, which she makes clear “is not quite finished.”

The big announcement of this release though is the merger of WordPress and WordPress MU (multi-user), a fork of WordPress that allows multiple blogs to be operated from one installation. In WordPress 3.0, these two are fully merged, although you should probably read the instructions before taking this feature out for a test drive.

There are other changes to the UI and interface, including the addition of a new default theme (Twenty Ten) and custom post type functionality improvements.

If you’re brave, you can download the update and take it for a test drive for yourself. If you do, let us know what you think of the newest build of WordPress in the comments.

Source : mashable.com

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