Appearing almost simultaneously alongside the Galaxy Note 10.1’s launch itinerary, Samsung has offered up source code for both Korean iterations of the stylus-friendly slab. Ensuring custom ROM devs have very early access to the source should mean we’re likely to see other software iterations (minus TouchWiz, perhaps) sooner rather than later. Developers can delve into the coding goodness below.
The Raspberry Pi is already considered a hacker’s paradise. However, that assumes that owners have all the software they need to start in the first place. Adafruit wants to give the process a little nudge through its Raspberry Pi Educational Linux Distro. The software includes a customized distribution of Raspbian, Occidentalis, that either turns on or optimizes SSHD access, Bonjour networking, WiFi adapter support and other hack-friendly tools. The build further rolls in Hexxeh’s firmware and a big, pre-built 4GB SD card image. Before you start frantically clicking the download link, be aware that the “educational” title doesn’t refer to a neophyte’s playground — Adafruit still assumes you know enough about Linux and Raspberry Pi units to be productive (or dangerous). Anyone who was already intrigued by the Raspberry Pi by itself, though, might appreciate what happens when it’s tossed into a fruit salad.
Google+ lead Vic Gundotra has defended his decision to postpone an API for the social network, sneaking in a quick slap at Facebook by saying Google is “actually respectful of developers who build on our platform.” The delay in releasing a full Google+ API for third-party coders has prompted anger from some – Gundotra says that he was booed by the audience at SXSW when he said it was not ready – but the Senior VP argues that delivering one half-baked and “then later changing the rules of the game” isn’t in anybody’s best interests, citing recent criticisms of Facebook.
Those complaints, made in an open letter to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg by developer Dalton Caldwell, followed a meeting in which he was told that a product he was developing based on the social network would, rather than being warmly welcomed as previously indicated, instead be considered treading on Facebook’s toes thanks to the new App Center. Caldwell claims he was pressured to sell his work to Facebook or risk seeing it crushed by Facebook’s own system:
“The meeting took an odd turn when the individuals in the room explained that the product I was building was competitive with your recently-announced Facebook App Center product. Your executives explained to me that they would hate to have to compete with the “interesting product” I had built, and that since I am a “nice guy with a good reputation” that they wanted to acquire my company to help build App Center … Your team doesn’t seem to understand that being “good negotiators” vs implying that you will destroy someone’s business built on your “open platform” are not the same thing” Dalton Caldwell
That situation, Gundotra writes – on Google+, of course – is what Google hopes to avoid. “I’m not interested in screwing over developers” he said, “when we open an API, we want developers to feel confident that the innovations they build are going to be long lasting. Releasing an API, and then later changing the rules of the game isn’t fun for anyone, especially developers who’ve spent their life’s energies building on the platform.”
Currently, only select partners have access to Google+ data. The company announced a deal with Flipboard in recent months, that allows users of the news-browsing app to log into their Google+ account and see shared content from there in their stream. Google has also been improving integration between the social site and its own products, including YouTube and Gmail, with the promise of broader availability when it’s ready and not before.
“So I’m sorry that we haven’t released a wide open write API for those of you who want one. We’re being careful because we want to be different. You know, actually respectful of developers who build on our platform. It’s novel. I know” Vic Gundotra, Google
Microsoft just isn’t getting much Windows 8 love from the game community, full stop. Following Blizzard and Valve anxieties, Minecraft developer Notch (the man on the left) is himself cautious about the shift to the Windows Store and the seeming discouragement of third-party outlets. Despite sharing an affinity with Microsoft for square-shaped worlds, he sees any further lockdown of Windows 8 as potentially “very very bad” for indie game developers and overall competition in the gaming business. Not that Notch is singling out the OS for concern: he’s also maintaining his resistance to Valve’s Steam and doesn’t want the Portal creator to “rent games” instead of selling titles that buyers can keep forever. While Notch isn’t adverse to producing games for closed systems when it’s the only choice, he’s joining a growing chorus of those worried that openness is on the endangered list.
Google has tweaked the developer policy for the Play Store with an eye on reducing intrusive advertising, spoof apps and clarifying subscription cancellations. Apps that pass themselves off as others, or are “confusingly similar” will now be pulled, so say goodbye to those thousand instances of Angry Byrdz. Adverts that pop up in your notifications window, like Airpush and KDDI’s au one now make their way onto the verboten list. It’s also clarifying that when users cancel their subscriptions, they won’t be refunded for the current billing period, but will continue to receive what they’d paid for until the term expires. Developers now have 30 days to comply with the changes, after which point apps that are found to be in violation will be pulled by Mountain View’s overlords.
In a sign that’s certainly not good for the upcoming software release, the founder of the developer group behind the user interface improvements that’ll be found on BlackBerry 10 has left RIM. Hampus Jakobsson has made his exit from the company with little more than a tweet this week, noting that he leaves BlackBerry 10 in the capable hands of TAT (The Astonishing Tribe) and RIM. At the moment it seems that Jakobsson will pursue other projects in the startup realm of software.
Thus far we’ve seen no word from RIM or TAT on how they’ll be handling the situation, with some of the most recent news from the latter company being their meeting up with BlackBerry blogger Douglas Soltys back in 2011. Strangely enough, the Twitter @tatmobileui where Jakobsson let it be known that he’s headed out the door had an update not long after the first noting that they’d still be rocking and rolling through the future without an issue as Jakobsson “taught us everything he knows.”
It was all the way back in December of 2010 that RIM originally added The Astonishing Tribe to their team with word that the PlayBook would be amongst devices that would benefit in the end. Of course now it’s more likely that everything that TAT has done thus far for RIM will be integrated into the new operating system BlackBerry 10 instead. TAT was and is a mobile user interface design developer and their team has been working, of course, on BlackBerry for over a year now.
Back before they were integrated into RIM, the TAT team worked with Android primarily, with concepts such as the 2D to 3D maps app you’ll see in the video above this paragraph. They ramped up to quite a few projects, in fact, with not too many final products to speak of before they were folded into the world of BlackBerry. We’re still hoping for the best, on the other hand, even without Jakobsson onboard!
Leap Motion, the startup looking to bring motion-tracking 200x more accurate than Kinect to desktop and mobile, has revealed the gush of developer interest in the gadget, with early units expected to ship within months. Over 26,000 curious developers have applied for free Leap Motion units by last week, the company says, with prospective applications including gaming, robotics, and CAD software. “We’ve already seen developers propose exciting applications for the Leap that we hadn’t even imagined” CEO Michael Buckwald said of the process.
Developers from 143 countries have applied, with the bulk – 42-percent – coming from the US and almost a quarter from Canada. More than 1,5000 applications apparently come from researchers and students in colleges and universities, with Harvard, MIT and Stanford all getting name-checked.
Leap Motion 3D demo:
Leap hasn’t detailed any specific projects, presumably to allow the developers themselves to keep the element of surprise until launch, but does say that “use ideas from developers include translating sign language, driving a car or airplane, supporting physical rehabilitation and special needs, manipulating photos and videos, creating new art forms and thousands more.” The free developer units will begin shipping “in the next few months.”
Leap Motion 3D feature walkthrough:
Meanwhile, pre-orders for the consumer version continue to be accepted, with the original winter release window being narrowed down to February 2013 according to the order page. The Leap is priced at $69.99, though supplies are expected to be limited.
Leap’s system connects via USB, and musters a four cubic foot area above the desk where individual finger movements can be tracked to within 1/100th of a millimeter. Its magic, the company claims, is in how the algorithms track and process those movements, rather than the hardware itself which is relatively affordable compared to camera-based alternatives.
As much as the US Census Bureau has worked to embrace the digital space, its sea of data has been largely locked away from developers not keen on doing much of the heavy lifting. As of late last week, however, there’s now a public app programming interface (API) for quickly putting all of that knowledge to work. Both mobile and web apps can hook into either the complete 2010 census or the 2006-2010 American Community Survey, bringing in basic demographics as well as more complicated subjects such as commuting habits and education. The Bureau sees the API leading to not just a more informed public, but to smarter government as well — imagine a state government that knows the income levels by county through a custom smartphone app. Budding statistics hounds can request a key for API use right away, but if you’d rather just see what public access will mean in practice, you can check out an app gallery at the second source link below.
Microsoft has announced the dates for BUILD 2012, its next big developer conference, held at the Microsoft campus the week after Windows 8 goes on sale. Kicking off October 30 and running until November 2, BUILD 2012 will focus not only on the new desktop platform – and its ARM-focused Windows RT counterpart – but cover Windows Phone 8, Windows Azure, Server2012, and Visual Studio 2012, among other things.
There’ll also be some surprises in store, though Microsoft is playing its cards close to its chest. “This will be unlike anything we’ve held on our corporate campus in a long time” Microsoft’s Tim O’Brien teases. “Most of the speakers and participants are from our engineering teams, so a campus event puts you in the thick of things along with the engineers directly responsible for our products and the platform opportunities they represent. This one’s not to be missed.”
Registration for BUILD 2012 opens at 8AM Pacific on August 8 2012, at the BUILD site, when Microsoft says we can expect more details on keynotes, sessions and the like. SlashGear will be there to bring you all the news from the opening keynote, never fear.
Today Qualcomm has been showing off some of their technology including their new quad-core chipset, the APQ8064. And for those folks looking to get into the mobile powerhouse action right away they are now available. Qualcomm’s usual developer kit distributor BSQUARE have just posted them up for sale — starting at $1299.
Qualcomm’s new MDP (Mobile Development Platform) APQ8064 kit contains the same 10.1-inch display as we’ve seen on previous developer devices, as well as multiple ports, fingerprint scanners, 13 megapixel cameras and more. It even has 7 microphones on this thing. Running on Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich, their new quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM — once again those four processing cores.
Obviously this device is a developer product — especially for $1,299 — but it includes the tablet, a charging dock with two USB 2.0 ports, HDMI, and even Ethernet. One of the added benefits of the new APQ8064 platform is the Adreno 320 GPU (graphics processing unit) which should pack about 4 times the graphical punch than the previous version. We’ve quickly ran a few benchmarks and are seeing amazing results but that will be coming shortly. Developers can jump in starting right now for the low price of $1,299 at the link below.
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