Developers

Android to introduce new payment method for apps

By Terence Huynh on July 25th, 2010 1 Comment

Android users will soon have the option to pay for their applications via an alternative method than using a Google Checkout account – by paying it later when they get their monthly bills from your carrier. The revelations come after a change in the Developer Distribution Agreement that prepares for “introducing new payment options” for the Android Market. Developers will have 30 days to accept the new agreement.

The new payment option, which we can relate to (Jamster ringtones anyone?), is currently available in the US with T-Mobile, but more carriers are expected to participate in this new option is made available.

Image from: lwallenstein/Flickr (CC)

Firefox 4 Beta 1 released for download

By Terence Huynh on July 7th, 2010 No Comments

Well, took them long enough. Mozilla has released the first beta of Firefox 4, the upcoming update to the second-most popular browser. As you can tell, it is a substantial redesign to the user interface, taking on what Google Chrome (and now Opera) has done by moving the tabs at the top. Other improvements is a new Add-Ons manager and improvements on how HD video is played using HTML5.

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iOS icons recreated only using CSS

By Terence Huynh on June 27th, 2010 1 Comment

What an interesting find we have here. These, of course, are the icons you will find in iOS. However, these ones above are not images, all of them were created just using normal HTML code and CSS3. Wait, what?

Produced by the Louis Harboe, the icons look exactly like their iOS counterparts. These icons utilised what the W3C – the guys who create the standards that we use to render this site – have outlined in CSS3 and HTML – which makes it more of a web developer’s delight, as it shows exactly how powerful CSS3 is in styling the web.

This might actually be a test on which browsers support CSS3 now, as this only works for the latest versions of Google Chrome and Apple Safari.

To be fair, Webkit – what Chrome and Safari are based on – is the only rendering engine that fully supports CSS3. Mozilla supports it, but under the -moz prefix, which highlights that Mozilla isn’t ready to implement the right CSS3 syntax. We’re unknown about Opera’s position, but we know that Internet Explorer is way off in implementing CSS3.

Though, they really look nice. You can view them on his website.

Google Chrome update includes built-in Flash

By Terence Huynh on June 25th, 2010 No Comments

Chrome users will now notice that they should get an update, and it’s a very very big update. Google, along with Adobe, have finally pushed out the in-built Adobe Flash Player in the browser – effectively meaning that you can go straight onto YouTube and play a video without downloading the Google Chrome specific plugin for Adobe Flash, as it will now be in the browser.

Updates to Flash will also be updated in Chrome, utilising Chrome’s behind-the-scenes upgrading technology, minimising any risk of security holes of unpatched or outdated software as Chrome will be using the latest version of Flash.

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Nokia dumps Symbian for MeeGo on Nseries phones

By Terence Huynh on June 25th, 2010 1 Comment

After several years with Symbian, the open source mobile OS that it help to create, Nokia will be dumping the mobile OS in favour for the MeeGo platform it is developing with Intel. While this is was a long time coming, Nokia announced that the N8 will be the final device that will run on Symbian.

The switch means that Nokia is betting on MeeGo to be a challenger to Apple, after Symbian failed to catch up to the iPhone’s dominance when it went out in 2007. Plus, with Google Android and Palm/HP’s WebOS, MeeGo will have some tough competition.

MeeGo is a Linux-based platform that was created after a merger between Nokia’s Maemo platform and Intel’s Mobiln platform. It’s expected that Symbian will still be used in other Nokia phones.

WWDC: iPhone OS renamed iOS, iAds comes out on July 1

By Terence Huynh on June 8th, 2010 No Comments

In his keynote at this year’s WWDC, Steve Jobs has brought out some new changes and more information about its iAds platform it talked about earlier in the year, alongside its iPhone 4 announcement.

iPhone OS is no longer called iPhone OS. Apple has rebranded it as iOS, with the newest OS version dubbed “iOS4″. This comes as the operating system used for iPhones, and later iPod touches, expands on iPads – keeping a consistent name of an OS for the three devices. The name “iOS”, however, is a trademark licensed to Cisco – you know, the same people that owned “iPhone” before striking a deal with Apple – but it looks like they came prepared, as CNET News reported that Cisco has licensed them the trademark for their OS name only.

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Rumour Mill: Is Ballmer going to appear at WWDC?

By Terence Huynh on May 27th, 2010 No Comments

Apple Logo GenericLet’s end the day with a rumour that may cause some anguish in the Apple community.

Steve Ballmer is rumoured to be making a cameo at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) – Apple’s biggest event that it holds every year for developers? According to Trip Chowdhry, an analyst with Global Equities Research, who said that he will make an appearance on the opening keynote held on June 7. The topic? It’s most likely going to be about Visual Studio 2010, which will allow developers to write native applications for the iPad, iPhone and Mac OS X.

Any thoughts?

Android-iPhone hack ready for download

By Terence Huynh on May 21st, 2010 1 Comment

Remember that hack we reported on that had Android running on an iPhone? Well, now than just a YouTube video, with David Wang (or “planetbeing”) teaming up with PC World to write a guide on how to install Android on the Apple machine, and releasing the binaries of the files for the rest of us to try it out.

It currently works for any first-generation iPhone or iPhone 3G and must be jail-broken. You also should be running any firmware versions between 2.0 and 3.1.2 and should do this on a 32-bit Linux computer or virtual machine installation of Linux, but other than those requirements, you are ready to go.

There’s a few downsides – like the ‘proper method’ of shutting down in Android mode and it would last for two hours. But with subsequent releases, it should be fixed. However, you most likely will not get some of the features on Android because of the lack of keys.

However, if you have a spare iPhone somewhere in your house or really really want to try this on your iPhone (we suggest you don’t, unless you are able to restore it), then download the binaries (first-gen iPhone can be found here), follow the guide, and enjoy your new iPhone Android.

Apple faces antitrust review on coding restrictions

By Terence Huynh on May 4th, 2010 No Comments

Apple Store GenericApple might be in trouble with its restrictions after all, and it took them this long? Reports coming from the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission are looking in beginning who will be taking on Apple on an antitrust complaint on developing applications for the iPhone – the main question, however, is who will it be?

After the launch of the SDK for iPhone OS 4, it made restrictions on what programming language to make the applications, including Objective C and Javascript. Apple claims that this is to keep the quality of applications, but it also seemed to be a hit on Adobe’s Creative Suite 5 software.

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iPhone hack makes running Android a reality

By Terence Huynh on April 22nd, 2010 1 Comment

I bet you, as readers on TECHGEEK.com.au, that you wish that you want to experience the magic of Android – a phone where you can run almost any application that you want, especially those “porn apps” that the CEO of Apple said that you aren’t going to get on the iPhone (unless you use Safari, almost any restriction is bypassed with Safari).

Well, now you can – without ever leaving the stylistic designs of the iPhone – with David Wang’s (or “planetbeing” on the Dev Team) hack that he announced on his blog that will let you run the rival OS on the device. It’s also simple to switch over, just reset and hold the home button when you see a dual-boot menu and then you’re done.

Not everything works, especially when the iPhone OS is built around one button (the home button), when Android uses many more, an drivers for Android phones do not exist for iPhone technology – and it’s very, very slow (granted, it is a debug version).

You can watch the video after the jump.

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Hell has frozen over: Opera Mini now on iPhone

By James Wilson on April 13th, 2010 No Comments

Yes folks, you heard right. As of right now, UK and Australian Appstore goers can officially download the Opera Mini web browser for iPhone. This app approval has come with a collective sigh of disbelief as Apple has approved an app that directly competes with one of it’s native apps – Safari Mobile Browser. Who knows what the future may hold for future approvals?

Apple announces WebKit2 – Chrome-like process split included

By Terence Huynh on April 9th, 2010 2 Comments

So, thought Apple’s big iPhone OS 4 announcement would be the only thing that Apple would be revealing? Turns out, developers will be getting some more good news from Cupertino, with the announcement of WebKit2. One big announcement will be that it will have separate processes for web content – including JavaScript, HTML and the layout – to which it points out that it is similar to how Google Chrome does each process separately (bet you didn’t know that, did you?) – which also uses WebKit via Chromium (the open source version of Google Chrome). However, unlike Chrome, it will be built within the API, so other browsers can take advantage of it.

Developers, crazy to try it? Well, Apple has provided the Mac and Windows ports for WebKit2 over at their Trac site. Oh, and please tell us how it is. But for the rest of us, no word if Apple will put this inside the next version of Safari.

Automattic releases WordPress 3.0 Beta

By Terence Huynh on April 3rd, 2010 No Comments

Five years ago, WordPress announced the launch version 2.0 – which saw WYSIWYG editing and numerous features that are still present today. Over the years, we saw changes in its UI (twice within the 2.* era), additional features and one-click updating and installation of themes and plugins.

Now, skip to today, and Automattic, the guys who run WordPress, have released the beta of WordPress 3.0.

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Google shows off port of Quake 2… on a browser with no Flash!?

By Terence Huynh on April 2nd, 2010 No Comments

Yes, you have read that correctly. In an attempt to show off the power of HTML5 and its GWT engine, Google has created a port of Quake 2 – proving that a lot of people have a lot of time on their hands. Anyway, it is not an April Fools joke, and you can install it and battle your friends (because it is also multiplayer!). However, don’t expect to use Firefox or (the dreaded) Internet Explorer as they won’t work. You basically need Google Chrome/Chromium or Safari to play the game. Why? In a nutshell, they have a similar method of reading the HTML code.

According to the Googlers:

We started with the existing Jake2 Java port of the Quake II engine, then used the Google Web Toolkit (along with WebGL, WebSockets, and a lot of refactoring) to cross-compile it into Javascript. You can see the results in the video above — we were honestly a bit surprised when we saw it pushing over 30 frames per second on our laptops (your mileage may vary)!

So have fun!

Interview: More questions from Nokia’s Purnima Kochikar

By Terence Huynh on March 21st, 2010 2 Comments

We sent some more questions before we published our interview with Nokia’s Purnima Kochikar, Vice President of Forum Nokia; but we didn’t get them answered before today. So, here is (what we deem) Part Two of the e-mail interview with her.

Q. The Qt UI framework makes it easier for applications to be built for both mobile and desktop computers. What do you see are the benefits of this, and do you think or see applications for desktops using Qt porting their products for mobile devices?

As Qt on top of MeeGo will run on multiple device types, people can keep their favorite apps whenever they change device or upgrade; they are not locked in to one kind of device or manufacturer.For developers, they not only get the cross-platform benefit with Qt across Symbian and Maemo, but in the future also to wide range of devices built using this new merged software platform.

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