Hasta La Gadget!

New images have landed online that suggest that an enhanced version of the Motorola Atrix 4G could be on the horizon for AT&T.

Originally posted at Android Atlas

Aliyun, a new mobile OS by Alibaba Group, should be available in English later this year. Image: Penn Olson

Android, iOS …. they’re so mainstream now. And Windows Phone 7, webOS and Symbian could use another competitor on the market, right?

Of course, I’m being a bit (OK, more than a bit) sarcastic, but there is a new player entering the mobile OS battlefield: Aliyun, from e-commerce and cloud computing group Alibaba.

In a press release Thursday, Alibaba Cloud Computing announced the development of a cloud-based mobile OS dubbed “Aliyun OS.” It’ll debut later this month in China on a new smartphone, the K-Touch Cloud-Smart Phone W700. (Hopefully that’s less of a mouthful in Chinese.)

Aliyun is Linux-based, so it will be able to handle both Android apps and web apps — a combination Alibaba is calling “cloud apps,” meant to provide a more “internet-like” experience on the handset.

“Introducing cloud apps to mobile devices not only brings a whole new user experience, but also greater ease for third-party mobile software developers who will be able to use Internet technology such as HTML5 and JavaScript to reduce the complexity in the app development process,” Wang Jian, president of Alibaba Cloud Computing, says in the release.

A cloud-based OS would be very convenient for users who own multiple mobile and computing devices. Apple iOS users remain tethered and limited with their syncing options, but iCloud aims to start remedying that, allowing users to sync music, apps, files, messages and photos (among others) across multiple Apple devices. HP’s webOS cleverly allows users to flick information back and forth between HP devices, like their smartphones and tablet. Android conveniently offers over-the-air updates for users of its mobile devices, so they don’t need to plug in to get the latest version of the operating system.

The Aliyun operating system will include a number of cloud-based features including e-mail, GPS and navigational tools, internet search and weather updates. Aliyun OS users won’t need to download or install apps on their mobile devices, as it will sync and store back-up data with Alibaba Cloud Computing’s remote servers; their information and software will also be accessible and updatable across all their mobile devices and computers.

The idea of Alibaba’s cloud-based OS seems very user friendly in concept. Not needing to download apps? Automatic syncing across multiple devices? Users get 100 GB of storage initially as well, “with plans to expand according to user needs.” With something like this, you could simplify your life and ditch the Dropboxes of the world.

I don’t know how I feel about a more internet-like experience on a mobile device (isn’t everything shifting to a more native-app-based user experience? There’s a reason companies and websites are investing in apps, rather than in simply developing their mobile websites), but from the screen shot above, Alibaba’s home screen at least doesn’t look too different in design from its more established mobile OS competitors.

The company plans to integrate the OS with larger-screen phones and (not surprisingly) tablets over the next few months, and hopes to have an English-language version of Aliyun available by the end of the year.

Image Credit: Penn Olson

Team, we’re getting very close to iPhone 5 time. You can smell it by the rumors. In fact! Just now 9to5Mac posted a picture of what they say might be the next iPhone. Only one way to be sure: ENHANCE! More »

These guys aren’t Purdue University professors, they’re DJs. That thing on the left? It isn’t a high-mobility gallium-arsenide molecular beam epitaxy system, it’s their decks. It creates an ultra-pure material so perfectly latticed that it traps electrons between its layers and stops them bouncing around like drunken fools at the high school prom. By squeezing them ever so tightly, it lulls the particles into an “exotic” slow dance, at which point they become “aware” of each other and start performing correlated motions that are essential for quantum computing. That’s a still a long way off, but if one day we find ourselves affixing gallium arsenide swabs to our quantum motherboards, we’ll raise our lighters in the air. Informative PR after the break.

Continue reading Ultra-pure material lets electrons discover each other on the quantum dance floor

Ultra-pure material lets electrons discover each other on the quantum dance floor originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Jul 2011 16:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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English Supreme Court sides with the prop designer who created the original Stormtrooper helmet, who sells replicas for a few grand a pop in the U.K. Copyright in the U.S., however, gets upheld.