touchMaemo

What’s New with Silverlight

admin — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 20:08:37 +0000

Building The Foundation

Desktop Day – Practical deployment

What the cloud hackers think of Azure

Interviews displaying attendees reactions to the Windows Azure Platform.

The Cloud hack

Showcasing events from The Cloud Hack event, sponsored by Windows Azure.

The Cloud Hack API interview

Huddle and National Rail representatives discuss the features of their API’s and how Azure can be of use.

White iPhone 4 Now available for order on 3 UK, delivers on April 20th

admin — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 01:50:21 +0000

The mythical white iPhone 4 is now available for order on the 3 UK store. The phone is available for the standard subsidized price of £159 for the 32GB version.

The white iPhone 4 has been a topic of hot discussion as rumors of a late April release have been swirling around the net. This is the first time we’ve seen an official carrier officially offering the white model of the iPhone 4 for order.

Although the white iPhone 4 has been present on 3 UK’s page for some time, it has not been available to select for purchase. Now you can actually add it to your plan and basket.

The White iPhone 4 has been long delayed with every Apple Store refresh bringing hope that it would appear. Various carriers have listed the white iPhone 4 as coming soon on their sites but never actually allowed orders to be made. Recent rumors stated that the white model was set to arrive this month. These rumors were later substantiated by Apple themselves.

We have contacted 3 UK for confirmation and comment.

More details to follow as we have them.

LG and China Mobile may adopt MeeGo, the platform Nokia abandoned

admin — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 17:29:25 +0000

LG, China Mobile, ZTE, and others have been in talks to develop smartphones and tablets based on the open source MeeGo operating system. The same OS that Nokia recently left in favor of Windows Phone.

Nokia may have left MeeGo out in the rain, but LG could be the one to bring it an umbrella. LG is said to be in talks to adopt MeeGo, an open source platform, on some or all of its smartphones, reports Reuters. ZTE and China Mobile may also be developing handsets based on the fledgling, still unfinished operating system.

Though Nokia and Intel began the MeeGo project together, the Finnish phone maker’s departure may actually benefit the OS. Previously, other manufacturers have stayed away due to Nokia’s dominant role in the platform’s development. “It’s opening opportunities for the others to come in,” said Valtteri Halla, a member of the technical steering group of MeeGo, earlier today. ”Discussions are taking place. You’ll see things coming out this year, pretty soon.”

LG is still coy about the platform, but isn’t denying the possibility. “At this point in time LG has no definitive plans to mass produce devices with MeeGo other than car infotainment systems,” said one spokesperson. Like a lot of manufacturers, as of late, LG is neck-deep in Android development. However, as more and more Android handsets hit the market, it may be searching for new ways to differentiate its platform.

Nokia isn’t completely cutting the cord yet, however. Though the company is now committed to developing Windows Phone handsets, it is still releasing Symbian devices and will make and release a single MeeGo device later this year. No details on the device are yet available.

LG steps into Nokia’s MeeGo void

admin — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 16:23:31 +0000

Sure, Nokia will ship a single MeeGo handset this year. But after that, MeeGo, Nokia’s previous strategic smartphone platform, will be pushed into the incubation lab as the team shifts focus to future user experiences. According to Reuters, LG Electronics has stepped in to fill the void by joining a working group with ZTE and China Mobile intent on developing a handset version of the software. This, according to a member of the MeeGo technical steering group, Valtteri Halla, speaking at a developer conference today. Of course, LG was talking about MeeGo phones back in January of 2010 when it was showing off its short-lived Intel Moorestown-based GW990 (pictured above). Happy now, MeeGo fans? You should be, we certainly are.

Update: LG has issued a statement meant to dampen any early enthusiasm we may have felt about an LG handset running MeeGo. According to the Reuters update, an LG spokesman says, “At this point in time LG has no definitive plans to mass produce devices with MeeGo other than car infotainment systems.”

Updated MeeGo interface gets shown off on Atom Z670-based reference tablet

admin — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 16:18:53 +0000

Well, here’s something of a surprise. Not only has Netbook News managed to get its hands on a reference tablet based on Intel’s brand new Atom Z670 processor at IDF Beijing, but one running a new version of MeeGo with a spiffed-up UI. As you can see above and in the video after the break, it looks to be a marked improvement over the tablet interface that was just shown off at Mobile World Congress in February, with it offering both a more refined appearance and what appears to be a more intuitive navigation system. Like what you see? Then you’ll likely be seeing even more of it shortly — there’s a “MeeGo Day” planned for April 14th.

Nokia talking homegrown ‘Harmattan’ release of MeeGo at May conference, but it’s nothing new

admin — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 16:12:37 +0000

Some noise has been made today over the news that Nokia is going to be chatting up its Harmattan platform at May’s MeeGo conference in San Francisco, suggesting that Nokia will be releasing Harmattan devices as a precursor to its MeeGo offerings — some sort of postmortem Maemo 6 sendoff before Espoo starts to take MeeGo seriously. In reality, there’s nothing new here: it’s been known for the past year that Harmattan was happening — and it’s looking more than ever like it’s Nokia’s full-on MeeGo play, having pulled the code over from the work it had already done on Maemo 6. The abstract for the Harmattan session at the conference says that Nokia will “clarify” the relationship between the project and MeeGo proper, but at no point has Nokia skirted around the fact that Harmattan was still in the works — and with the company’s commitment to MeeGo beyond its 2011 product line a big question mark right now, we wouldn’t be surprised if Harmattan was as far into the MeeGo ecosystem as Nokia ever got.

ASUS’ Jerry Shen pledges 3D tablet, MeeGo and Android netbooks, plus a 2012 Windows Phone

admin — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 15:44:38 +0000

ASUS (A-seuss) CEO Jerry Shen is rarely a man without a good quote or two for journalists and this year’s CeBIT has been no exception. Sitting down for a chat with some Russian scribes, Shen outlined ASUS’ general product roadmap, which includes a 3D tablet (the iPad 2-threatening secret weapon, perhaps?), Atom-based netbooks for both MeeGo and Android platforms, and a Windows Phone device that should be with us next year. An aside from his PR aide Mae Wang also states that ASUS aims to be second in the tablet market by 2012, with a giant five to eight percent market share. We’re sure the Apple board are all shaking in their hemp sandals right now. Anyhow, hit up the source for the full story.

Editorial: Intel keeps pushing MeeGo, but why?

admin — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 15:39:22 +0000

If you hadn’t noticed, Intel’s running huge MeeGo ads all over the place today, including here on Engadget. That’s got our attention for a few reasons: first, our editorial staff wants the hair-trigger audio playback and content-obscuring animation disabled as badly as you do, and second, we’re sort of wondering what Intel is trying to accomplish by pushing MeeGo now that Nokia has strongly backed away from the OS in favor of Windows Phone 7. It’s hard to understand, especially since Intel’s directing these ads at developers — who’s going to develop apps for a platform that has zero shipping mass-market devices? And even if there were a groundswell of MeeGo development action, why is Intel leading the charge, when it has yet to ship any chips suitable for a phone or tablet, and MeeGo tablet development appears to have completely stalled out? It’s very curious.

Now, we have great faith in Intel — the company is smart, capable, and big enough to succeed at anything it wants to, and it’s made it very clear at MWC that devices with Medfield mobile processors will ship sometime this year and be competitive with the best of what ARM can offer. That will be an enormous and noteworthy accomplishment when it happens — Intel’s been promising a serious mobile chip for years now, and it’ll be exciting to see the company finally join the race. But let’s be honest: any viable Medfield device will be running Android, not MeeGo. To quote Nokia’s Stephen Elop, the battle of devices has become a war of ecosystems, and MeeGo simply doesn’t offer an ecosystem that’s competitive with iOS, Android, or what Nokia and Microsoft are planning to build with Windows Phone 7. It’s a harsh truth, but it’s inescapable. Sure, maybe Intel can convince a second-tier manufacturer to ship a Medfield / MeeGo device — it’s using the Atom-based ExoPC Slate to demo the MeeGo tablet UI, for example — but it’s simply not going to entice the Samsungs and HTCs of the world to invest the serious capital required to make MeeGo a success without some sort of major industry disruption.

Now, that disruption isn’t impossible to imagine — let’s say one of the various IP lawsuits aimed at Android is successful, or something — but unless and until that happens, we’d say Intel’s far better off investing its resources into working with a vendor on a top-tier Android handset that can run with something like the Motorola Atrix 4G or the HTC Thunderbolt. That’s a sure way to get back into the conversation — and after years of empty promises around Moorestown, Medfield, Moblin, and now MeeGo, getting back in the mobile conversation is something Intel desperately needs to do.

Oh, and figuring out how to make ads that don’t autoplay audio wouldn’t hurt, either.

Intel shows off more of its MeeGo Tablet UI, still needs lots of work

admin — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 15:29:03 +0000

You may remember back at Computex we caught a very quick look at Intel’s MeeGo for tablets. Well, Intel’s landed at MWC with that very same tablet user interface, except it has done a bit of work to the underlying software and it’s finally ready to start letting the press play around with it. If you were to closely compare the design of the UI or what Intel is calling its “tablet user experience” to the one we saw back in June, you probably wouldn’t notice much of a difference in terms of aesthetics, and that’s because most of the work Intel’s been doing has been to the code and framework — it shifted it away from C++ and moved it over to QML, which is part of the Qt language. The brunt of the experience and the individual apps (we’ll get to those, or the lack there of soon) are all built on QML, which Intel’s Mike Richmond promises will enable lots of neat UI elements. So yes, Intel’s done some important retooling on the technical and software end of things, but unfortunately, that doesn’t mean the interface is anywhere close to done yet. We got a look at the software running on an Atom-powered ExoPC, so hit the break to find out just what we are talking about.