RIM Responds To an Employee's Open Letter 197

Posted by Soulskill on Friday July 01, 2011 @11:34AM from the don't-ignore-red-flags dept.

An anonymous reader writes "An executive at Research In Motion has written an open letter to the company's leadership, begging them to focus more on user experience, developers, and accountability. 'We urgently need to invest like we never have before in becoming developer friendly. The return will be worth every cent. There is no polite way to say this, but it’s true — BlackBerry smartphone apps suck. Even PlayBook, with all its glorious power, looks like a Fisher Price toy with its Adobe AIR/Flash apps.' RIM decided to address the letter, but their response completely skates over the issues. Unfortunately for them, the original letter triggered many more from current and former employees, who largely agreed with the need for better decisions at the top."

Facebook Wants To Buy Skype 192

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday May 05, 2011 @08:51AM from the poke-that-ebay dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Remember when we learned that Facebook had resumed talks with Skype? Well, it turns out that Facebook is considering buying Skype outright. 'Skype is reportedly talking to Facebook about some sort of deal. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been involved in internal discussions about buying Skype, while Facebook also reached out to the Luxembourg-based company about forming a joint venture.'"

Intel To Build Next Gen Processor For iOS Devices 255

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday May 03, 2011 @10:30AM from the out-with-the-old dept.

BogenDorpher writes "It looks like Apple will be using Intel as a main processor manufacturer to power the iPad, iPod touch, and the iPhone. Apple, who currently uses Samsung, will focus on making a switch to Intel within a year."

Figuring Out Why Android Wins On Phones, But Not Tablets 451

Posted by timothy on Friday April 29, 2011 @08:43PM from the apple-a-day-vs-swallowing-tablets dept.

GMGruman writes "Android smartphones have overpowered the iPhone in market share, yet Android tablets barely register in sales versus the iPad. Android tablets are as competitive in most respects against the iPad as Android smartphones are against the iPhone. So why the difference in success? Galen Gruman examines five theories for the gap, and concludes the reason is that Android tablets' real competitor is in fact not the iPad."

Comment Hidden SSID (Score 1) 458

by supernes on Friday April 29, 2011 @02:39PM (#35977732) Attached to: For Security, My Wi-Fi Access Point Relies On:

Security through obscurity.

Drizzle Hits General Availability 146

Posted by timothy on Thursday March 17, 2011 @04:43PM from the general-availability-turns-up-face-in-wonder dept.

snydeq writes "MySQL fork Drizzle has been released for general availability, giving companies a viable alternative to Oracle-owned MySQL, InfoWorld reports. 'Organizations that have been seeking a less-expensive alternative to Oracle's brand of MySQL — or a variant devoid of feature bloat — now have an option that Drizzle's creators deem ready to package in Linux distributions.'"

Comment Re:Like Gimp/Photoshop (Score 1) 91

by supernes on Monday February 28, 2011 @04:32PM (#35340986) Attached to: Book Review: Inkscape 0.48 Essentials for Web Designers

If you know C++ you can probably do 100% of what you can do with Photoshop... it's just a bunch of pixels at the end, is it not?

The question is whether you can do it efficiently, that's to say with the least amount of effort and/or in the least amount of time. I would argue that GIMP just doesn't support the kind of complex workflows that professionals are accustomed to. It's not necessarily that a lot of thought has gone in designing Photoshop's UI (although that's certainly the case to a point), but the sheer depth and stride for consistency makes it easy to achieve the desired results faster than the competition.

Anonymous Goes After GodHatesFags.com 744

Posted by timothy on Friday February 18, 2011 @07:59PM from the will-change-the-church's-facebook-relationship-status dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Anonymous is now recognised as a serious force to be taken seriously, but its activities aren't confined to mass global protests, as the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, is discovering, according to p2pnet. Says the Examiner, 'Fred Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church is infamous for their "Love Crusades," obnoxious displays of insensitivity and homophobia at the funerals of fallen American soldiers. The controversial if monotone message of the "Love Crusade" seems to be to blame everything that is wrong in the world on homosexuality. The crusades are part of a hate-based mission started in Kansas by the WBC and Fred Phelps.' In an open letter on AnonNews, 'We, the collective super-consciousness known as ANONYMOUS – the Voice of Free Speech & the Advocate of the People – have long heard you issue your venomous statements of hatred, and we have witnessed your flagrant and absurd displays of inimitable bigotry and intolerant fanaticism,' says Anonymous, stating 'Should you ignore this warning, you will meet with the vicious retaliatory arm of ANONYMOUS.'"

Are Flickr Images Abused By Foreign Businesses? 227

Posted by samzenpus on Sunday February 06, 2011 @12:16PM from the unknown-spokesperson dept.

eldavojohn writes "My friend Drew was notified via Twitter that one of his Flickr images had been selected as poster child for freeloaders who abuse the benefits system in an Elsevier news story in the Netherlands. The original image clearly gives an CC BY-NC 2.0 license to the image which doesn't appear in the story — a story which generates revenue for Elsevier. My friend doesn't speak Dutch so he's a little confused about what, if anything, he can do in this situation. I'm reminded of a family's Christmas photo showing up on a billboard in Prague and I wonder if photo sharing sites are treated as free to abuse regardless of copyright by foreign businesses? Has anyone else heard of this sort of thing happening with images from social photo sharing sites?"

Bing Is Cheating, Copying Google Search Results 693

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday February 01, 2011 @01:32PM from the everyone-gets-a-c-plus dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Google has run a sting operation that it says proves Bing has been watching what people search for on Google, the sites they select from Google's results, then uses that information to improve Bing's own search listings. Bing doesn't deny this."

Kongregate App Pulled From Android Market 139

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday January 25, 2011 @04:28AM from the gone-in-a-flash dept.

itwbennett writes "Last week Google took a page from Apple's book and pulled the Arcade by Kongregate app from the Android Market for violating its terms of service. In particular, the part that forbids distributing 'any Product whose primary purpose is to facilitate the distribution of Products outside of the Market.' As Kongregate's Jim Greer explained to Joystiq, the app is essentially a custom web browser that loads in a Flash game from the mobile version of Kongregate. Plus, it will cache the game so you can play offline. And this may be the feature that got it yanked, speculates Ryan Kim at GigaOm."

Comment Re:That's an "explanation"? (Score 2) 270

by supernes on Thursday January 20, 2011 @12:25PM (#34940620) Attached to: Microsoft Explains Windows Phone 7 'Phantom Data'

How is it better? His holiness points out you're holding it wrong, you stop holding it wrong, problem solved! Microsoft tells you it's a third-party app, what do you do? Stop using third-party apps? Oh wait...

Comment Re:MS Fault Playbook: Two Answers (Score 1) 270

by supernes on Thursday January 20, 2011 @12:20PM (#34940548) Attached to: Microsoft Explains Windows Phone 7 'Phantom Data'

... I hate the fact that on the iPhone the developer can turn off that display so you don't know if any connection has occured.

Just a quick note - that network activity spinner you talk about doesn't show up by default, it's entirely up to the developer whether he chooses to notify the users that data is being transmitted over the network (even when that's actually not true). So I guess you shouldn't be mad at evil develoeprs that turn it off, but instead should thank the benevolent ones that turn it on as appropriate.

And while we're on the subject, iOS' neutered multitasking makes it much harder for this type of quota-eating background transfer to even occur in the first place. Guess it's not all bad...

Comment EULA (Score 1) 257

by supernes on Monday January 17, 2011 @04:47AM (#34902742) Attached to: Dating Site Creates Profiles From Public Records

As a means of protecting unwitting people from all sorts of damaging misappropriation of their public records, I propose social networking sites put into place a mandatory 42-page EULA that you must scroll through and agree to in order to view pictures of said someone and their cats.

20 Years of Commander Keen 152

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday December 15, 2010 @04:51AM from the aliens-ate-my-babysitter dept.

angry tapir writes "This week marks the 20th anniversary of the release of the first Commander Keen game. For those too young to remember, Commander Keen was a series of shareware 2D platform games for the PC released by Apogee Software (aka 3D Realms) developed by no less than id Software — the developers of Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake."