Already pondering that long-awaited trip to Japan in order to snag a PlayStation Vita in advance? Hold your horses, vaquero. Sony has just given anxious US and Canadian gamers reason to look forward to a launch of their own by laying out the official software plan for 2012. We’re told that February 22nd will be the day to remember, with a total of 25 titles being available alongside the console. In fact, the company’s calling this “the biggest and best lineup [it has] ever launched across the history of PlayStation platforms.” Over 100 titles are in development, with the 25 shipping on day one being priced between $9.99 and $49.99; moreover, each one will be available for purchase at retail locations as well as downloadable on the PlayStation Network. Hit the source link below for the full spiel, and keep your eyes peeled for pre-orders to go live in the coming weeks.
Microsoft has scored another victory against the Android camp as the ITC confirmed a claim that Motorola is violating one of the company’s patents. The patent in question describes the creation of meeting requests with a scheduling function on mobile devices. the decision by the ITC is the second hit against Android within two days. Earlier this week, the ITC found that HTC violates an Apple patent and issued an injunction against the affected devices beginning in April.
The decision in the Microsoft versus Motorola case is an “initial determination” and may change at the review in the second phase of the process. If the ITC confirms its current decision, Motorola is likely to be prevented from importing its smartphones from their manufacturing facilities in Asia to the United States. Motorola already responded and said that the ITC decision will help the company to figure out ways how to avoid a violation of the Microsoft patent.
However, given the dimension of the smartphone patent battlefield, the finding is just a drop in the bucket. Microsoft currently alleges that Motorola violates 30 Microsoft patents, which is substantial especially in the view that Motorola will soon be part of Google and at the core of Android development.
Intel is reportedly demonstrating reference designs for smartphones and tablets sporting the company’s latest Atom mobile chip, dubbed Medfield, running Google’s Android OS. Stephen Smith, vice president of Intel’s architecture group, says that products based on these designs will be announced in the first half of 2012. Some may even rear their head next month during CES 2012 if we’re lucky.
In speaking with MIT Technology Review, Smith claimed that engineers tweaked Medfield specifically to speed up Android apps and web browsing. He also said the SoC will offer a significant technological step toward lower power consumption. Unlike previous Atom designs which spread the processor work across two or three chips, Medfield will be the company’s first offering that’s truly a single system-on-a-chip design.
“The phone prototype seen by Technology Review was similar in dimensions to the iPhone 4 but noticeably lighter, probably because the case was made with more plastic and less glass and metal,” Technology Review reports. “It was running the version of Google’s operating system shipping with most Android phones today, known as Gingerbread; a newer version, Ice Cream Sandwich, was released by Google only about a month ago.”
The prototype phone was reported to be on par with the latest iPhone 4S and Android smartphone, and could even play Blu-ray quality video and stream it to an HDTV if desired. The device also featured a camera using a “burst mode” which captures ten full-sized 8MP images at a rate of 15 per second. This is accomplished by a combination of image-processing circuits built into the Medfield chip, and dedicated software tweaks which were obtained by Intel’s acquisition of Silicon Hive earlier this year.
Technology Review reports that it also sampled a prototype tablet using the same Medfield SoC and Android 4.0 “Ice Cream Sandwich.” It had a slightly larger screen than the iPad 2 but was about the same in thickness and weight,” reads the report. “A limited trial suggested that it was noticeably nicer to use than older tablets based on the abandoned Honeycomb version of Android.”
To learn more about the Medfield reference designs, check out Technology Review’s full hands-on here.
Right after Mozilla unleashed Firefox 9 for the desktop, the company launched the latest mobile version for Android-based smartphones and tablets, Firefox 9 for Android. What’s important about this build is that Mozilla redesigned the user interface to work and look optimally on tablets. The company has also done an excellent job in keeping the app’s overall size down, consuming a mere 128 KB once it’s moved to the SD card.
“Firefox for Android leverages large tablet screen sizes and optimizes popular features for tablets,” Mozilla said Tuesday in a blog. “The Awesome Screen integrates Firefox Sync and makes it easy to access your browsing history, open tabs, bookmarks and saved passwords across desktop and mobile devices so you can type less and browse more.”
Mozilla said that it attempted to be more visual, more magazine-like in the browser’s overall content presentation with this latest release. The left-hand thumbnail column, which is typically tucked away, has been updated to provide a tab-like feel, connecting the thumbnail to the actual page. Mozilla has also added an “Action Bar” menu next to the Awesome Bar that allows the user to access Firefox Preferences, Add-ons, downloads and more.
“The Action Bar adds the back, forward and bookmark buttons for easy access,” Mozilla explains. “One-touch bookmarks enable you to add an icon to your Android home screen for your favorite websites and Web apps, making Web apps as easy to use as native apps.”
Mozilla reports that it has also thrown in some tools especially for HTML5 developers including the HTML5 Input Tag for Camera Access that enables the tablet owner to take pictures and scan bar codes within the browser without having to load the external camera app. The browser also supports the HTML5 Form Validation API which automatically validates website form fields like numbers, emails and URLs without developers needing to write a custom code or use a third-party library.
Note to Kindle Fire owners: even though Mozilla reports that the new browser is compatible with the Amazon tablet, currently the tablet UI isn’t appearing, and doesn’t appear in later beta builds either. The interface reverts to the smartphone mode, shoving the open window thumbnails to the left and the bookmark star and settings icon on the right. The browser also doesn’t seem to render HTML5-based websites correctly either like the revamped Facebook or Google Music.
Unfortunately, comments on the Android Market show that users are complaining about the new release, calling it “sluggish, unresponsive, and essentially unusable” and “still not ready for prime time” and “flaky when going back and forth between landscape and portrait.
Threat Post, a Kaspersky Lab security news service, reports that researchers are now warning about a new remotely exploitable vulnerability discovered in the 64-bit version of Windows 7. This vulnerability can be used by an attacker to run arbitrary code with kernel-mode privileges on a vulnerable machine.
The problem was first reported days ago by an independent researcher via Twitter, but has since been confirmed by Secunia. He claimed to have discovered a method for exploiting the vulnerability by simply feeding an iframe with an overly large height to Safari.
“A vulnerability has been discovered in Microsoft Windows, which can be exploited by malicious people to potentially compromise a user’s system,” reads the Secunia warning. “The vulnerability is caused due to an error in win32k.sys and can be exploited to corrupt memory via e.g. a specially crafted web page containing an IFRAME with an overly large “height” attribute viewed using the Apple Safari browser.”
“The vulnerability is confirmed on a fully patched Windows 7 Professional 64-bit,” the warning adds. “Other versions may also be affected.”
After the exploit was reported, Microsoft didn’t confirm the problem, but merely stated that it was investigating the evidence. “We are currently examining the issue and will take appropriate action to help ensure the customers are protected,” said Jerry Bryant, group manager of response communications in Microsoft’s Trustworhty Computing Group.
As indicated, the only known attack vector for this specific vulnerability is through the use of Apple’s Safari browser on Windows 7. As of November 2011, the Safari browser commanded only 5.92-percent of the browser market, so there doesn’t seem to be a potential widespread problem. So far there’s no indication that the three most popular browsers — Internet Explorer (40.63-percent), Chrome (25.69-percent) and Firefox (25.23-percent) — share a similar vulnerability when used in Windows 7.
Earlier this week, the ITC ruled that HTC was infringing upon one of Apple’s patents and issued a ban preventing certain HTC phones from being imported into the U.S. Soon after the ruling was handed down, the company announced plans to modify its phones so that they no longer infringe upon this patent.
“[...] the ’647 patent is a small UI experience and HTC will completely remove it from all of our phones soon,” the company was quoted as saying.
Now, just a couple of days later, it looks like HTC has already successfully taken action to remove the offending feature, which allows users to interact with phone numbers and other types of formatted data in an unstructured document by tapping the number to launch another application, such as the dialer or SMS app. Bloomberg reports that the company has “completed a technical workaround” and quotes HTC CEO Peter Chou as saying the feature was rarely used in the first place.
“It’s actually quite rarely used,” Chou said.
Though the ITC ruling was in Apple’s favor, HTC isn’t too upset by it. The company said yesterday that it was pleased with International Trade Commission’s ruling and no wonder: According to CNET, Apple’s original complaint alleged infringement on 10 patents, as opposed to just the one that HTC was ultimately found guilty of.
“We are gratified that the commission affirmed the judge’s determination on the ’721 and ’983 patents, and reversed its decision on the ’263 patent and partially on the ’647 patent,” HTC told BGR this week. “We are very pleased with the determination and we respect it. However, the ’647 patent is a small UI experience and HTC will completely remove it from all of our phones soon.”
About three months ago, there was an article about Google’s idea how to turn its Chrome browser into a gaming platform. That strategy has not changed and it is clear that Google will be steamrolling its weight into this market to compete with Microsoft for cloud app market share. What has changed however, that Mozilla is now quite apparently also thinking about its chances in this segment and if gaming is a fitting app environment for Firefox.
Mozilla quietly launched the developer preview of its Apps project, which outlines some guidelines how developers can create apps to run in Firefox. It’s Mozilla’s version of web apps, but it’s all done in the open and other browser makers (if they matter) could adopt the idea. What is noteworthy is the gaming and entertainment component that was outlined by Rob Hawkes in a Mozilla Hacks post. If you have been following this topic, there is not much news and you may very well be aware that there is a Full Screen API, the Mouse Lock API, the Gamepad API, Websockets and WebRT than can be leveraged for online gameplay within the browser window. Hawkes, however, also states that BrowserID can be used to identify players. Even more importantly, it is the first time that Mozilla publishes, for the first time, ideas how the browser, in this case Firefox, could become a game platform.
Of course, feature such as the gamepad API are not yet available in Firefox (Chrome already supports this API) and Firefox lacks a certain standout feature to attract gamers and create the kind of buzz Chrome currently owns. We should notice, however, that Mozilla has gaming in its sights and given Firefox’ HTML5 capabilities, it is a smart and necessary move. Of course, the strategy will only work if those features that are supporting online gaming will be available rather sooner than later.
Much like the Hubble Telescope before it, the Kepler Spacecraft Observatory has turned out to be an astonishing scientific resource. It’s already been established that Kepler is ridiculously adept at locating extrasolar planets, with a possible 99% success rate that defies some of the most optimistic early estimates. Among those recent planetary discoveries is the confirmation of an Earth-like world currently called Kepler 22b, a so-called ‘super earth’ twice the size of our own. As fantastic a discovery as that was, 22b is officially old news as of today, thanks to NASA’s announcement that the Kepler Observatory has nabbed an even more remarkable discovery: not one, but two confirmed Earth-sized planets.
Unlike Kepler 22b, whose large size guarantees a high-gravity environment unsuitable for humans, the two latest discoveries, both in the Kepler 20 star system, are almost the same size as our own lovely planet. Kepler 20E has a radius approximately .87 times the size of earth, just slightly smaller than Venus. Kepler 20F (that images is an artist’s conception) is just barely larger, measuring 1.03 times Earth’s girth. Both planets are thought to be of terrestrial (rocky) composition with masses similar to Earth’s, making them perfect fits for bodies conditioned over millions of years of evolution to Earth standard G.
There’s just one catch. Though Kepler 20 is similar to our own sun, none of its planets are remotely habitable. The Kepler 20 star system has a total of 5-detected planets, all of which orbit at a distance that puts them within the orbit of Mercury around our own sun. That means extremely fast orbits and correspondingly horrid surface temperatures; Kepler 20F orbits Kepler 20 every 19 (earth) days and enjoys a mercury-esque 800 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s positively chilly compared to Kepler 20E’s incomprehensibly hot 1400 degrees and incredible 6.1 day orbit. So don’t pack your astro-vacation gear just yet.
Even though we have yet to find another place to call home, it has now been proved we have the ability. Thus the Kepler mission can consider itself justified. Now if we could only figure out how to actually reach any of the planets we discover…
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