Silent Gary...source of all opposition to Open Source software

Clearly Apple must have a "Silent Gary".

Finally, some coverage....

I was on my way to university this morning and was sitting reading my Metro, as I always do when a nice little smile appeared on my face. I was reading a lovely little story about a bank boss scamming £50,000 when something caught my eye...

I saw a large advert for a phone with a familiar looking bar along the top of the display... "That looks familiar.... hold on, that's Android!!!". It was the LG GW620...

For the first time since the G1 was released, I have finally seen an advert where the people plugging the phone actually mention the word ANDROID. "....a free app available on Android Market....."

Symbian moves to full open source

One of the world largest mobile phone operating system companies "Symbian" has finally moved to open source.

Speaking to the BBC Ian Fogg and analyst for Forrester research stated that:

"It's useful for them to say Symbian is now open - Google has done very well out of that"

This move makes the mobile phone OS market primarly open source, with companies like Android and now Symbian leading the way.

Lee Williams of Symbian also speaking to bbc.co.uk said

"It will increase rate of evolution and increase the rate of innovation of the platform"

This is a very interesting point as it clearly shows the advantage to business's in becoming open-source. I feel that many companies won't go open source because the research and investment that has gone into the development of their code is very valuable. It also comes from the old more traditional way of doing business. That is adding value to a product, and keeping that value under wraps so that competition can't compete.

Linear Droid version 0.8.5: Updates

Well I've been changing the blog around more. I've sorted out the Twitter feed so it works a little bit more smoothly, so be sure to follow us.

I've also removed the rating system, I couldn't figure out how to get it to sit where I wanted so I removed it, it didn't seem to be getting any attention anyway.

I've also added a, "About Us" page so you can all see the saddos behind this blog...apologise for the pictures.

Also we will hopefully be moving this Beta blog out of beta soon for Linear Droid 1.0, and we're hopefully going to be moving to a www.lineardroid.co.uk or something like that, with a much more powerful wordpress system. So that will be cool but it will all be the same old content great posts, humour...bad humour, and more.

But I will let everyone know if there are any changes.

CyanogenMOD 4.2.14.1

Well, we finally have a nice shiny new CM build for the Dream and Magic after Cyanogens little break from 4.x to work on 5.x for the Nexus One. I am sure most of you would agree that once you go root, you CRAVE updates... even tiny ones.

But I have got to admit, I had been using 4.2.9.1 since it came out... The last few updates had been really slow and Force Close-ey and anyone who emailed me for advice on how to speed it up (I run the 'customer support' for the cmupdater and CM ROMs) would just get the reply "go back to 4.2.9.1"

It looks like I can stop telling people to stick with 4.2.9.1 now as this latest build feels super-snappy. It is more responsive than the last 5 builds, at least, and even possibly more.

It has the lovely new Desk Clock/Alarm app from eclair as well as the great contact mod by Wysie...and a multitude of bugfixes and extras including the 'pushed out of memory bug' that was affecting things like ebuddy and the cmupdater, as well as the issue with the gmail app not getting 'tickled' properly.

I can finally say that the update-monkey on my back has been shut up for atleast a week.

Great work, as always, Cyanogen.

You can get the latest update via the cmupdater (as always)

Don't be evil Steve: Steve Jobs attacks Google in speech to employees

As you may have read in the blogosphere Steve Jobs CEO of Apple has made so very "interesting" comments regarding Android and Adobe.

In a speech at a conference that has been referred to as a town hall meeting with employees of Apple, Jobs stated that:

"On Google: We did not enter the search business, Jobs said. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them, he says. Someone else asks something on a different topic, but there’s no getting Jobs off this rant. I want to go back to that other question first and say one more thing, he says. This don’t be evil mantra: “It’s *******.” Audience roars" 

Has Steve Jobs cracked or is this a clearly executed attempt to say to Google "Its on!!!"

Firefox for Android, the ever changing world of mobile web browsing

Some exciting news that has been bouncing around the Android community is that the popular Browser development company "Mozzila" has begun development to "Androidise" their current browser "Firefox".

Android guys has reported that murmurings from the German Firefox community suggest that a fully functional version of the Browser could be available for Android within the next 6 months, with the beta available by February.

This is obviously very exciting news, and with Adobe saying that full Flash for Android will arrive in roughly the same time frame, web browsing on mobile devices is set to step up a notch.