Hasta La Gadget!

Musicians who’ve had some degree of practice will know the lack of sophistication involved in getting an instrument in tune and on time: a light-up tuning box and a swinging metronome may be their only real resources. Affinity Blue knows that mobile apps allow better, and recently unveiled Tunable as a one-stop shop for more exacting performers. The Android and iOS release provides a live graph that shows where the sweet spot is for pitch, and how closely the music has followed along for the past few seconds — a boon for brass players, vocalists and others who need to sustain a note for more than a moment. There’s also a simple tone generator and a customizable metronome that’s easily seen from a distance. While it’s $1 to try Tunable, that might be a pittance for anyone who’d rather spend time mastering a riff than rehashing the basics.

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets

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Via: Fast Company

Source: Affinity Blue

GALAX, Va. — Nearly 100 vehicles crashed Sunday along a mountainous, foggy stretch of interstate near the Virginia-North Carolina border, killing three people and injuring 25 others.

Police said traffic along Interstate 77 in southwest Virginia backed up for about 8 miles in the southbound lanes after the accidents. Authorities closed the northbound lanes so that fire trucks, ambulances and police could get to the series of chain-reaction wrecks.

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Android is the dominant force in the mobile operating system landscape. And now more than ever, people are finding that the operating system is not only a strong competitor to iOS, but in some respects, might just be even better.

Now, I’m sure that Apple fans won’t want to hear such a thing. After all, for years, they’ve been supporting Apple’s iOS platform and to hear that Android could possibly come with features that surpass those of iOS is anathema to them. But perhaps it’s time that we all agree that, at the very least, Android and iOS are in a neck-and-neck battle for mobile operating system dominance.

But how did Android get here? The fact is, Android wasn’t even close to iOS in terms of featureset when it launched. But over the last several years, as more vendors brought the operating system to their devices, it gained on Apple. And now, it’s far and away the most dominant operating system in the land.

Although many reasons for Android’s dominance can be drawn, and many of those are valid, I just don’t think any of them are as important or as noteworthy as Google’s shepherding of the platform. Without Google, Android wouldn’t be what it is today.

“An industry created by startups is now dominated by major companies”

If we’ve learned anything of the technology industry over the last few years, it’s that big companies determine the fate of most products. Save for a few cool Kickstarter ideas, the vast majority of successful products today come from major companies. It’s unfortunate that an industry created by startups is now so dominated by major companies, but it’s the reality. And we must begrudgingly accept that.

If an unknown company trying to deliver a new operating system to mobile vendors had delivered Android to the marketplace, it’s unlikely that it would have succeeded. At its launch, few tech media outlets would have picked up the news because of the company’s lack of notoriety, and vendors would have been suspect of such a small firm. A perfect storm would have developed that would have scuttled Android from the outset.

“Success was practically guaranteed”

But with Google behind the operating system, everything is different. When a company of that size and importance in the industry delivers an operating system, people listen. And because of its clout, the company has the unique ability to sign deals with other major firms and get its operating system out to the wild in no time. Success was practically guaranteed when Google, not a small, unknown company, delivered Android.

Now, I’ll freely admit that there have been other major companies that have brought up mobile operating systems, including the company formerly known as Palm and Samsung. And those two companies watched their operating systems fall short. But that’s more about time and a desire to control the hardware-software complex than about winning the OS market. The same might be said for BlackBerry. But Google is different. And its success has proven that.

But, I want to pose this question to you: would Android be Android if not for Google? I’d agree that other major companies could have made it work, but do you think smaller firms would have, as well?

Let us know in the comments below.

Would Android Matter As Much Without Google? is written by Don Reisinger & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

YouTube and GoogleMaps are getting the ball rolling today. According to the release above, YouTube is not actually a video viewing and sharing site, but an 8-year contest to find the best video anyone can make. And GoogleMaps now has a treasure map layer. Nice, we see what you did there. [CNET] More »

A new Blackberry 10 roadmap, leaked by a mysterious Twitter account, shows that Blackberry has a few interesting devices heading our way. Of course, we have to take this information with a grain of salt, but nonetheless, it does show us an interesting new future for Blackberry. In the leaked roadmap, we see that Blackberry is planning on releasing a 10-inch tablet, a phablet, and another touchscreen device with a fully QWERTY keyboard.

Blackberry planned on releasing a 10-inch version of its Blackberry Playbook last year, but ended up cancelling the device due to poor sales of its 7-inch Blackberry Playbook device. Many Blackberry fanatics will be pleased to know that an even better, 10-inch tablet may be headed their way sometime in Q3/Q4 of this year. Instead of running the Playbook’s QNX operating system, it will run the more polished, Blackberry 10 OS.

The roadmap also shows that Blackberry intends on releasing another touchscreen device between Q4 of this year and Q1 of next year. The device may be a phablet because it looks much bigger than the Z10 and the Q10 on the roadmap. It’s speculated to be the Blackberry Aristo that was rumored before, which is said to have a display that’s 5-inches or larger.

The last device looks to have both a touchscreen display as well as a full-QWERTY keyboard. It resembles the Blackberry Q10, however it looks like it will have a much bigger display. It is also speculated to be a mid-ranged Curve device that’s part of the rumored Blackberry R-Series. Thorsten Heins, Blackberry’s CEO, confirmed that there will be plans for mid-ranged Blackberry 10 devices this year.

What’s strange about this roadmap is that recently, Martyn Mallick, VP for Global Alliances and Business Development for Blackberry, stated that Blackberry devices will come in 1 of 2 screen sizes this year. He may have believed that the Blackberry phablet and the touchscreen full-QWERTY phone would be coming next year however. Whatever the case may be, these devices will be able to fully utilize the 100,000 apps in the Blackberry World, 20% of which are Android ports. Be sure to check out our review of Blackberry’s first Blackberry 10 device, the Blackberry Z10.

[via Crackberry]

Mysterious Blackberry 10 roadmap leaks is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.