Happy first birthday, Windows Phone 7! One year on, and the fledgling mobile operating system has 36,000 active developers in its AppHub community, 1.5 million downloads of its Developer Tools, and 11,500 apps in its Marketplace.

Microsoft is quick to take a couple shots at competitors' app stores, beating its chest about not re-counting tanslations of an app or "lite" apps, "increasing tonnage" by supporting apps from other mobile platforms, and not listing wallpapers as a category.

That's all fine and dandy, but we spend a lot of time sifting through WP7 app feeds -- and we're still not seeing a lot of awesome apps on the platform. We think a few marquee apps would've made a pretty nice first birthday present -- along with a much smoother update process for WP7 users.

Microsoft trumpets Windows Phone 7 numbers on first birthday originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 01 Apr 2011 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/04/01/microsoft-trumpets-windows-phone-7-numbers-on-first-birthday/

LAWSON SOFTWARE LAND SOFTWARE LAM RESEARCH L1 IDENTITY SOLUTIONS

Mozilla, continuing its year-long crusade to speed up Firefox startup and shutdown times, has published a name and shame list of the Firefox's slowest add-ons.

The list is just one part of Mozilla's new efforts to highlight slow add-ons, and to help developers make their add-ons more efficient. Over the next two weeks, 'slow performance warnings' will be introduced in the add-on gallery so that users can see, before installation, which add-ons will slow down their browser. If that isn't enough to spur developers into cleaning up their add-ons, Mozilla has also begun reaching out to developers of slow add-ons with tips on how to improve add-on performance. Finally, add-on developers will soon have the ability to perform 'on-demand performance testing,' so that they can test their add-on before it's deployed publicly.

Mozilla reports that the average Firefox add-on slows down Firefox's start-up time by 10% -- which means, if you install 10 add-ons, you will double your start-up time. On fast desktop PCs that kind of slowdown might be negligible, but on older computers, laptops and smartphones, it could be the difference between a 5 and 10 second startup. Mozilla has obviously realized that while massive performance gains might've been made with Firefox 4, the addition of third-party add-ons can destroy any user-perceived improvements.

In other news, Mozilla says that a future build of Firefox will block the installation of add-ons (such as toolbars) by third-party software. Add-ons and toolbars that are bundled in this way will require explicit approval when you next open up Firefox. Hooray!

Mozilla publishes name and shame list of slow Firefox add-ons, cracks down on tardy devs originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 04 Apr 2011 05:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/04/04/mozilla-publishes-name-and-shame-list-of-slow-firefox-add-ons/

FISERV GOOGLE GRUPO IUSACELL HARRIS

Belkin has introduced two new covers to protect the back of your iPad 2.  The first is the Snap Shield Secure (right, shown in smoke).  This translucent polycarbonate shield has a soft-touch finish, and it snaps over the back of the iPad 2.  The camera and all ports and controls are accessible, and the case [...]

Source: http://the-gadgeteer.com/2011/09/29/two-new-smart-cover-compatible-ipad-2-cases-from-belkin/

AUTODESK AUTOMATIC DATA PROCESSING AVNET BHARTI AIRTEL

Today Amazon announced 4 new devices and I was so excited, that I ordered / pre-ordered 3 of them (Kindle, Touch 3G and Fire). New hardware might be fun, but I think we should all be more excited about the Kindle Fire’s new Silk web browser. It’s not been that long ago that the only [...]

Source: http://the-gadgeteer.com/2011/09/28/the-new-amazon-kindles-are-exciting-but-is-the-silk-browser-the-bigger-news/

PEROT SYSTEMS PALM RF MICRO DEVICES RED HAT

Google, in an interesting but not entirely unexpected twist, will not be open-sourcing Android 3.0 Honeycomb for the foreseeable future.

Historically, Android is usually open-sourced via the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) a few days or weeks after the code is finalized. While this departure from the norm won't affect OEMs like HTC and Motorola that have access to internal builds of Android, small-time developers will likely have to wait months before rolling their own distributions.

As to why Google is holding back Honeycomb, its reasons are actually rather rational. Honeycomb, while originally intended to run on all mobile form factors, is only ready for deployment on tablets. "To make our schedule to ship the tablet, we made some design tradeoffs," says Andy Rubin, the head of Google's Android group. "We didn't want to think about what it would take for the same software to run on phones. It would have required a lot of additional resources and extended our schedule beyond what we thought was reasonable. So we took a shortcut."

In other words, Google wants to prevent OEMs and homebrew developers like Cyanogen from rolling their own smartphone versions of Honeycomb -- it doesn't want to see the same bitter-tasting tabletified bastardization that occurred with Android 2.1 and 2.2 last year.

Continue reading Google holds back on open-sourcing Honeycomb, heralds massive shift for Android

Google holds back on open-sourcing Honeycomb, heralds massive shift for Android originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 25 Mar 2011 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/25/google-holds-back-on-open-sourcing-honeycomb-heralds-shift-android/

YAHOO YAHOO XILINX WESTERN DIGITAL

It stands to reason that anyone with an online presence will enjoy some level of immortality long after their gone. But for the old-school? You had statues and you had nouns. And language is much cooler than sculpted stone. [ Vimeo via Geekosystem] More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/pI8lAf55dbk/this-is-how-geniuses-live-forever

LOGITECH INTERNATIONAL APPLE COMPUTER APPLIED MATERIALS ARIAN SEMICONDUCTOR EQUIPMENT

Tablet pcs or tablet personal computer is a tablet sized- computer that has all the key features of a full sized personal computer. They are many variations of tablet pcs, but generally a tablet pc is essentially a small laptop computer, equipped with a rotating touch screen as an additional input device, and running a standard( or lightly adapted) PC operating system like windows or Mac OSX.   The history of the term tablet PC and its origins lies solely [...]

Source: http://tabletbuzzblog.com/tablet-pcs/

UNITED ONLINE UNISYS TRIQUINT SEMICONDUCTOR TRIMBLE NAVIGATION LIMITED

Our Brazilian brothers, Gizmodo.com.br, got their hot little hands on a few photos of a new iPhone, to be announced next week. How? Well, there's a Foxconn factory in Brazil, and Pedro & co got one of their men inside. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/a3vispuPNHk/gizmodo-exclusive-looks-like-there-will-be-a-cheaper-iphone-4-made-in-brazil

FIRST SOLAR FINISAR MOTOROLA MOODYS

Happy first birthday, Windows Phone 7! One year on, and the fledgling mobile operating system has 36,000 active developers in its AppHub community, 1.5 million downloads of its Developer Tools, and 11,500 apps in its Marketplace.

Microsoft is quick to take a couple shots at competitors' app stores, beating its chest about not re-counting tanslations of an app or "lite" apps, "increasing tonnage" by supporting apps from other mobile platforms, and not listing wallpapers as a category.

That's all fine and dandy, but we spend a lot of time sifting through WP7 app feeds -- and we're still not seeing a lot of awesome apps on the platform. We think a few marquee apps would've made a pretty nice first birthday present -- along with a much smoother update process for WP7 users.

Microsoft trumpets Windows Phone 7 numbers on first birthday originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 01 Apr 2011 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/04/01/microsoft-trumpets-windows-phone-7-numbers-on-first-birthday/

SCIENTIFIC GAMES SYKES ENTERPRISES INORATED SYBASE SUN MICROSYSTEMS

If you own an iphone you must have at one point come across the term firmware. This is an operating system that Apple Company creates for specific type of iphone. The iphone firmware, regardless if it?s original or custom is the operating system that brings the iphone to life, and its graphic user interface has not changed since the introduction of the iphone. This is why many people believe that iphones are over priced toys with virtually no value, though [...]

Source: http://tabletbuzzblog.com/iphone-original-firmware-and-custom-firmware/

BHARTI AIRTEL BT GROUP FISERV FIRST SOLAR