A recent Apple Inc. job posting has revealed that the company intends to focus on bringing the iPhone OS onto new gadgets, devices and platforms. The job posting from the Cupertino, CA, company specifically calls for an engineering manager to handle “platform bring-up.” In the job description, Apple states that it’s looking for a manager “to lead a team focused on bring-up of iPhone OS on new platforms.” It seems like Apple wants some outside talent with very strong technical experience, especially when it comes to bringing software onto multiple hardware devices. Computerworld first caught the job post. Here are the first two paragraphs of the job posting, which explains exactly what the company is looking for: “The Core Platform team within Apple’s Core OS organization is looking for a talented and inspired manager to lead a team focused on bring-up of iPhone OS on new platforms. The team is responsible for low level platform architecture, firmware, core drivers and bring-up of new hardware platforms. The team consists of talented engineers with experience in hardware, firmware, IOKit drivers, security and platform architecture. This position requires a very technical and hands-on leader, experience in working closely with hardware team and a deep understanding of bare metal software. You must be a highly self-motivated individual who seeks to create a dynamic and creative team environment in which old problems are solved in new and innovative ways.” The job requires someone with experience developing for the Unix operating system, experience with system-on-chip (SoC) level design and experience with “bring-up of mobile phones running Unix like operating systems.” This job posting is very specific — not a lot of people are going to have this type of experience. We think it’s likely Apple is targeting product managers for Google Android since it is built off of a modified version of the Linux kernel and it has experience porting Android onto multiple handsets. This job posting raises a lot of questions. Clearly Apple wants to expand the iphone OS, but where exactly? Does it intend to create multiple phones running the iPhone OS? Could something like AppleTV or even the Mac or Macbook gain the iPhone OS interface? It’s tough to tell and probably too early to know as well. Let’s think about each of these scenarios for a moment: 1. Apple stops just selling one iPhone, but creates multiple models to suit multiple tastes, possibly including a version with a keyboard. Apple would retain control over all of these models, but it would use them to compete with BlackBerry, Android and other smartphones even further. It could also create a less-advanced version for users that don’t want an advanced smartphone, but that would be out of character with Apple’s history. We think there’s a chance it could create multiple models of the iPhone, but this is probably not the primary plan. 2. Apple brings the iPhone OS to AppleTV. It would certainly provide a boost and new attention to a mostly fledgling and forgotten project, but most TVs are not touchscreens. We’re not sure about this one. 3. Apple creates new computers that utilize the iPhone OS as its primary OS. We think this is actually the most likely scenario — it gives Apple full control over the user experience and gives it a chance to redefine computing for years to come. It seems like a next step from the ipad, although we’re uncertain how receptive people would be to a low-cost computer running the iPhone OS instead of the Mac OS orWindows. Apple is clearly bullish on its OS and thinks it is the future of computing and mobile. Now it’s just a matter of what device it puts it in next.What Is Apple’s Plan?
As it promised in October, Google has now started to add search results in real-time to its engine, giving end-users the option of seeing relevant links that have just been added to its index. The move is an acknowledgement by Google of the increasing importance of providing literally up-to-the-minute results in its engine, as end-users have found value in searching through messages and status updates posted to microblogging and social-networking sites like Twitter, MySpace and Facebook. In fact, these three companies have struck deals with Google for this initiative, feeding the search engine posts, status updates and other content that people and organizations have labeled as public. "Google's real-time search is Google's relevance technology meeting the real-time Web," said Amit Singhal, Google fellow, at a press event the company held in San Francisco that was also webcast. "Relevance is the foundation of this product. It's relevance, relevance, relevance. There's so much information being generated out there, that getting to you relevant information is the key to success of a product like this. That's where we as Google come in, because for 11 years that's what we have done," he added. Bing, Microsoft's competing search engine, unveiled real-time search features in October, primarily focused on Twitter results, with plans to expand its scope. Yahoo is also making moves in this area. Google's real-time results won't be limited to Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook. They will include results from other social networks, blogs and news outlets as well. Google had to develop more than 12 new technologies to power real-time search, which requires monitoring more than 1 billion fast-changing pages and documents. Google will roll out this real-time search functionality gradually to users over the coming days. For now, it will be available only for English-language results. When real-time becomes available to them, users will see a section in the results labeled "latest results." This will open up a section right on the search results page with relevant items scrolling in as they become available. There will also be a specific menu option to filter results down only to real-time ones by clicking on "latest." An option called "updates" will limit real-time results to those from microblogging services like Twitter. Real-time search functionality will also be available to mobile users of iPhone and Android devices. The real-time technology will also power a new option in the Google Trends service. Called "hot topics," this new option will contain the most popular topics online at any given time. Google also announced new mobile search services designed to let users find out what local businesses are in their current vicinity, as well as search for information on an item by snapping a photo of it with their phone's camera. The local business search feature is called "What's Nearby" and included in the latest version of Google Maps for Android devices, said Vic Gundotra, a Google vice president of engineering. In a few weeks, the same functionality will be available from Google's mobile home page via a new option called "Near me now." Google Goggles, the photo-based search, is available as an early prototype from the company's Labs team for now, because it works well only for specific items in specific categories, he said. The service, which Gundotra called "a mouse pointer for the world," should eventually be able to identify virtually any item a user photographs. Gundotra also demonstrated an early version of an upcoming feature that translates speech in real time, acting like a real-time interpreter for phone conversations. He also announced that the mobile search engine's existing ability to field voice queries has been sharpened, as well as extended through the addition of Japanese. It already worked in English and Mandarin. "This is just the beginning, but the possibilities ahead inspire us," he said about the new and improved mobile services. Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search products and user experience, said that the mobile search advances offer a peek into how the search engine interface will evolve and change from its current format of a search box into which text queries are typed.Users will get the option to view up-to-the minute results from sites like Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace.
Microsoft wants you to know that even as you read this article, "people around the world are hunting for vulnerabilities in software applications." To help thwart such efforts, Microsoft this week announced a new mitigation security utility for application developers and IT professionals. The Enhanced Mitigation Evaluation Toolkit (EMET), currently at Version 1.0.2, is conceived as an "extensible framework" that will include future mitigation technologies as they are released, according to a Microsoft blog.. This EMET release contains just four mitigations: dynamic data execution prevention, heap spray allocation, NULL page allocation and structured exception handing. EMET users can opt into these mitigations for their applications by using the command line in the utility. Users don't have to have to recompile their applications after using the tool, according to the blog. EMET is the latest component in Microsoft's overall Security Development Lifecycle strategy. It allows developers to write security into applications at a more granular or "command-line" level. Thus, instead of securing an entire application, programmers can code security parameters into a single process. Security mavens like the idea of going deep into the anatomy of an application rather than just relying on anti-virus software or operating system security functions. For instance, Phil Lieberman, president of Lieberman Software, called EMET "a good value-add for Microsoft ISVs [independent software vendors]." EMET allows Windows enterprise pros to "harden their applications for free," which is "always a good price," Lieberman said. "This adds an extra post-production step that allows ISVs to make it much harder for hackers to exploit their applications," he added. "The extra post-production step hardens the rules for memory usage (finer grained protection) and also strengthens the exception mechanisms." As hackers begin to focus more on specific applications, developers have begun to pay more attention to embedded security. EMET is worth a try in the face of server attacks, automated bugs, browser attacks and stack-buffer overflow exploits, according to Andrew Storms. "Every third-party partner, application developer or part time coder should at least consider checking out the new EMET from Microsoft," said Storms, director of security at nCircle. "The toolkit makes it even easier to utilize the newest security enhancement mitigations built into the newer Microsoft operating systems." EMET Version 1.0.2 can be accessed at the Microsoft Download Center here.
While Google Docs is brilliant, the only issue is that you need an active Internet connection to create new Office documents in Google Docs as well as for editing /reading old files that already exist in your Google account. That’s a problem because, unless you use something like Google Gears, you won’t have access to your Google documents while you are in an airplane or are using an old computer that has Microsoft Office but no Internet connection. Therefore the best option is that you download a copy of all your documents, PDFs, etc. from Google Docs and put them on a local hard-drive or USB stick so that you can at least read them which you are in offline mode. While there are third-party tools that let you easily download Google Documents to the local drive in one go, the good news is that the batch export feature is now available in Google Docs by default so you don’t have to hunt for external tools to help you do so. Select Google Documents for Exporting Just open your Google Docs account and select the documents that you want download locally. Then use the Export option from “More Actions” and within minutes, all your Google documents will be available on the desktop as one large zip file. You may even convert Office files to PDF or HTML format before exporting them out of Google Docs. Choose the Export Format – PDF, Word, etc.Download Google Documents for Offline Use
A training kit includes presentations, hands-on labs, and demos. This content is designed to help you learn how to utilize a variety of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 technologies. The Beta 2 release of the Training Kit contains 15 presentations, 19 hands-on labs, and 13 demos. Many technologies are covered in this release, including: C# 4, VB 10, F#, Parallel Extensions, Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Workflow, Windows Presentation Foundation, ASP.NET 4, Entity Framework, ADO.NET Data Services, Managed Extensibility Framework, and Visual Studio Ultimate. There’s a lot of content covered here. See for yourself: Presentations Hands-On Labs Demos Enjoy!
The Beta 2 version of DPE’s Visual Studio 2010 Training Kit is now live (you can find it at http://tinyurl.com/Beta2Training).
Adobe Systems on Friday introduced a new Photoshop app for iPhone users that lets them edit photos from both their phone and their online library on Photoshop.com The app is free of charge and offers tools such as cropping, image rotation, color controls, and simple one-touch filter effects that can change the look and feel of shots all at once. It also features undo and redo controls so that if users make a mistake, or want to revert back to the original, it takes just a few taps. As soon as users are done editing any photo, they can either save it back to their phone or upload it to their Photoshop.com account. The app also doubles as a photo-taking tool since you can simply take a photo, then have it upload right away. What makes the app notable (besides from being from Adobe) is that the entire editing control set works off gestures. Instead of using dials or sliders, users just need to swipe their finger across the screen to change things such as brightness or color values. The same goes for its filters, which can be whisked from one end of the screen to the other instead of taking up more screen real estate or using a drop-down menu. It's one of the more intuitive control methods I've seen on a mobile photo-editing app, and can be quite precise once you get the hang of it. The app is available now and is free of charge, although Adobe's free Photoshop.com service has a 2GB limit, which can be expanded with an annual paid storage plan.
Windows Marketplace for Mobile, Microsoft’s equivalen to the Apple’s iPhone App Store, opened for business officially on October 6 with 246 applications. Yes, that is nowhere near the more than 85,000 apps in the App Store. But Microsoft officials claimed not to be discouraged by the disparity. At Microsoft’s consumer-focused open-house showcase in New York City today, company officials noted that the company has 753 independent software vendors working on Windows Mobile ports. Robbie Bach, the President of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices Unit, told press and analysts that he was upbeat about Microsoft’s progress. “Apple had less than 100 applications when it first launched its marketplace,” Bach said. (I did a quick search and found a story claimingthat number was actually closer to 500, when Apple launched its store in 2008.) Bach also claimed it was “kind of goofy” to focus on the absolute numbers of applications in Microsoft’s Windows Mobile store, since the real measure of success is how many of those applications get used. Bach told press and analysts who attended a private roundtable that there are more than 20,000 applications available for Windows Mobile 6 and 6.1 phones — and even if the applications focused on specific business verticals and IT tasks are subtracted, there are still “tens of thousands” of Windows Mobile apps out there. The newly launched Windows Marketplace for Mobile currently only works with Windows Mobile 6.5 phones, which launched today. Microsoft officials have said that the Marketplace will also be accessible to Windows Mobile 6 and 6.1 phones before the end of the year. But that doesn’t mean the current crop of Windows Mobile 6 and 6.1 apps get an automatic berth in the Windows Marketplace; they still need to go through the certification and evaluation process. Windows Live services are going to be available via the Marketplace. Windows Live Hotmail will be included with all Windows Mobile phones, but the some other Windows Live services will be available preloaded on select phones, since “operators are trying to monetize this space separately,” as Aaron Woodman, Director of Product Management for Windows Mobile told me today. (Note: Corrected my misunderstandings here.) Microsoft also officially “turned on” the commercial version of its My Phone premium service for Windows Mobile users on October 6. (My Phone is the service formerly codenamed Skybox.) The final version of the service includes several new capabilities that were not part of the beta service. These are: Windows Mobile 6.0, 6.1 or 6.5 users can access these services, which Microsoft considers to be a “premium pack” for free until Nov. 30, 2009. seven-day access to the premium package will be available for purchase for $4.99.
Microsoft has released Windows XP Mode to manufacturing on October 1, company officials said, and it will be generally available on Microsoft.com on October 22, the launch day for Windows 7. XP Mode is a Microsoft virtualization technology aimed primarily at small/mid-size business users (SMBs), and is designed to allow them to run legacy Windows XP applications on Windows 7. Microsoft made a near-final release candidate build of XP Mode available to testers in August. The final version of XP Mode will be available to Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate users. It will be downloadable from the Microsoft Web site and also available directly from certain PC makers “based on their manufacturing cycle,” according to a Microsoft spokesperson. Windows 7 users don’t have to have a Software Assurance license from Microsoft in order to get XP Mode. Microsoft is positioning XP Mode as a “last-mile compatibility solution” that is designed for use when Microsoft’s Application Compatibility Toolkit and other means don’t result in older apps working on Windows 7.
Ant Commander For Mac is a well designed file manager that will efficiently manage your files with its configurable interface.
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vCard Converter is a well designed tool which can efficiently convert your Outlook contacts to vCard file. As the name speaks for it, this efficient tool is exclusively designed to easily convert your Outlook contacts .pst files to vCard file, Windows Address Book WAB file and MS Excel .xls file. The simple interface of this program will convert your files in just a few steps. The program can easily read your contacts from MS Outlook PST files and will efficiently process the PST files to extract all the information from your Outlook contacts and converts them to vCard file, WAB file and MS Excel file. The other features include: conversion of MS Outlook contact PST File to MS Excel file, conversion of Ansi Format (MS Outlook 2000/2002/XP), Unicode Format ( MS Outlook 2003/2007) to vCard, WAB and MS Excel File, and works well with your Microsoft Office 2007 and Windows Vista. vCard Converter, to gain better output and lessen manual stress both at the user and administrator end.
In case you haven’t had enoughlocation-based news tonight, here’s another very interesting bit. It looks like Apple has very quietly bought an online mapping company, Seth Weintraub of Computerworld Apple’s purchase of Placebase actually took place this past July, and a founder of a partner company that was using Placebase maps tweeted about it Here’s why this is very interesting: It could well signal yet another rift in the relationship between Google and Apple. At the very least, the fact that Apple bought a Google Maps competitor, was probably yet another reason why Eric Schmidt had to step down from Apple’s board of directors (which he did in August). But the bigger picture is that such a purchase could potentially allow Apple to move away from its dependency on Google Maps, which it uses on the iPhone and also its iPhoto computer software. Obviously, much has been made about Apple’s rejection of the Google Voice app, but remember too that they also rejected (or did not approve, whatever) Google’s Latitude app, forcing Google to make a browser-based version. The reason Apple gave for not approving it was that it would confuse users with the built-in Maps application on the iPhone — the one that runs, yes Google Maps. And Google actually helped Apple build the entire Maps application, aside from just letting them use their mapping data. So this whole episode has been bizarre, to say the least. But it may be over soon with the Placebase purchase. Or maybe not. It is certainly possible that Apple simply realized the importance of geolocation, especially in the mobile space, and wanted to acquire talent in that field. While Placebase was a competitor
reports tonight.. But it slid under most people’s radars as that was the only news out there about it. But Weintraub dug up Placebase CEO Jaron Waldman’s LinkedIn profile tonight, and sure enough, he is now part of the “Geo Team” at Apple. to Google Maps, it also was slightly different, focusing on different layers and customizations.
Those who create apps can also promote them on their own site with the use of an "Add to Yahoo" button that Yahoo is providing. "Any app that meets our terms of service criteria, regardless of whether it is actively promoted in the Yahoo! homepage app gallery, can be added from a remote entry point," the spokesperson says. "People can continue to use our App Maker and create their own app on the fly by adding virtually any URL of their choice."
Yahoo! Integrates App Platform with New Homepage
Today Yahoo! announced the integration of is Yahoo! Application Platform (YAP) with the new Yahoo! Homepage, which lets advertisers and publishers develop apps for the homepage. "In support of the Yahoo! Open Strategy, this integration offers a more customizable and personally relevant experience for over 118 million monthly homepage users across the U.S.," a Yahoo! spokesperson tells WebProNews.
"Migrating the homepage to YAP means that any developer can create apps once to be deployed across the Yahoo! network - for the new homepage as well as My Yahoo! for example," she adds. "This means faster delivery of new product rollouts; and the ability for global regions to customize apps for their markets."
Before, Yahoo! had over 75 apps available to U.S. users at Yahoo.com from partners like AOL Mail, Gmail, eBay, MySpace, and Facebook, plus publisher partner apps from publications like NPR and Glamour. This was in addition to Yahoo! apps. Now that the homepage is integrated with YAP, all publishers, advertisers, and developers have access to build apps for Yahoo!.
Yahoo! also announced 13 new featured apps in the homepage app gallery. These include Mint.com, Target, and Flixter to name a few. Developers at Open hack Day in New York City next week will be offered the first opportunity to build applications on YAP for availability on the new Yahoo! homepage.
- Lenovo Group Ltd. is staking an early claim to potentially key turf in the Windows 7 gold rush: The PC vendor boasts it has the fastest boot-up and shutdown times. ThinkPad notebooks and ThinkCentre desktop PCs for businesses will boot Windows 7 up to 56% faster than when loading XP or Vista, Lenovo said. Meanwhile, IdeaPad and IdeaCentre consumer PCs certified for "Windows 7 Lenovo Enhanced Experience" will load 33% faster and shut down 50% faster than hardware that's noncertified but otherwise identical. Howard Locker, director of new technology at the Chinese PC maker, told Computerworld that in some cases, "we went from a one-minute boot-up to 30 seconds, and took shutdown from 20 seconds down to 10." Locker, who also holds the title of "master inventor" at Lenovo, credits this "unbelievable job" to three years of engineering work during which Lenovo's Velocity team, in close collaboration with Microsoft Corp., literally "timed every single driver and app." Here are some of the specific steps Lenovo took to fine-tune Windows 7: Independent analyst Jack Gold applauded Lenovo's work with Windows 7, saying that customers were fed up with Windows' slow boot-up time even before Apple Inc. and Google Inc. used it as a talking point to score points against Microsoft. "It was Vista that screwed it all up, as boot-ups took twice as long as [with] XP," Gold said. "It was just ugly." It's not clear, however, that Lenovo has done more work than its rival PC vendors or is merely "branding it better," he said. "HP does this; Toshiba and Dell, too," Gold added. And what about the tendency of Windows to slow down over time as applications, hardware and service packs are added to it? Lenovo will try to stem that by keeping its Velocity team in North Carolina busy testing drivers of popular devices against Windows 7 and its hardware, Locker said. With Windows 7, "Windows rot is less of a problem than in past versions," Locker said. "But only time will tell." Lenovo said the Enhanced Experience label also connotes other guarantees. For example, IdeaPad and IdeaCentre PCs with the sticker will be able to output stutter-free HD video up to 1080p HD quality, and support Microsoft's DirectX 10 APU for advanced gaming and graphic features. Certain Enhanced Experience tablet and notebook PCs will also support Lenovo's recently introduced SimpleTap multitouch technology, which recognizes up to four fingers at a time. That potentially enables more complicated and precise touch-screen commands than conventional two-finger multitouch. Despite Lenovo's embrace of multitouch, Locker said Lenovo's iconic red TrackPoint, which debuted 17 years ago and is available on all ThinkPads, probably won't go away anytime soon. "The TrackPoint has a lot more precision, and you don't have to move your hands off the keyboard," he said. "People still really love it."
