Developed by Swedish firm Pixelbite and released just a few days ago by EA and Polarbit, Reckless Racing is a game we’ve been following since it was known as “Deliverace” early this year — and honestly, there was a spell where we’d gone so long without having heard anything about it that we’d kind of assumed the awesome-looking project had been canceled. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case — it’s now available on iPhone, iPad, and Android — so we decided to take it for a quick spin. After all, top-down racers haven’t really made much noise since the heady days of R.C. Pro-Am and perennial arcade favorite Ivan “Ironman” Stewart’s Super Off Road… and after playing Reckless Racing for just a few minutes, we’re not sure why that is.
We were just handed this image with very little detail other than the fact that we’re looking at “a future LG high end Android phone for Verizon,” but we can deduce a few things: one, and perhaps most notably, you can just barely make out an LTE logo toward the bottom of the back. That likely makes this one of the six-odd LTE phones Verizon has publicly said are slated for the first half of next year. Secondly, it’s got an HD camera of some sort — probably indicating either 720p or 1080p capture — and finally, it appears to have a huge, mirrored display and possibly a front-facing cam in the upper right. Looks like there’s also a WiFi logo on back (of course), but can anyone make out the other two logos there? And more importantly, can anyone wait for this to launch?
Update: It’s been proposed that one of the logos might be for DLNA, since LG’s a major DLNA player — most recently with its PlayTo service on the LG Optimus 7.
What do we know about the picture above? Not much more than meets the eye — this alleged HTC Knight is for Sprint and navigates Android using capacitive touchscreen keys. We do get a little more detail from the source of the image, who gave XDA-developers an XML file that mentions users should not “slide screen in/out” during activation. That certainly suggests that we’re looking at a slider, but not necessarily a physical QWERTY keyboard — after all, a very similar-looking HTC device recently appeared sporting a slide-out speaker bar.
Cupcake, donut, eclair, froyo. That’s not just a list of Android iterations, it’s also an inventory of all the giant decorations (along with a large green robot) that cover the GooglePlex lawn. And today marks the introduction of a large gingerbread man. Historically, such tasty statues have been in honor of its related milestone’s completion, so we’re wagering that Android 3.0 (or is it 2.3?) will be officially unveiled in the very short future. Run, run, as fast as you can to the video after the break.
Don’t worry, we’re as confused as you are about this whole Android thing. We keep getting little hints about the future of Google’s mobile operating systems–names like Honeycomb, Gingerbread, Ice Cream. If the alphabetical thing holds up, then it ought to go in exactly that order.
The question is what the number release on the next major upgrade will be. Many have suggested that Gingerbread will actually be version 3.0 of Android. New comments from an anonymous Google engineer on the Android forums, on the other hand, seem to that 2.3 is actually the next big release in the pipes.
The engineer replied to user concerns about enterprise Wi-Fi problems after updgrading to Froyo, writing, “Yes, Android 2.3 is a “marjor release,” and this patch will be available then.”
No word on whether 2.3 will be the mythical Gingerbread, however.
Amazon has good news for Kindle owners that it wanted to share with them first. A post from the Kindle team on Amazon’s Kindle Community forum says that 14-day lending will come to the Kindle sometime this year.
There is a catch: “Each book can be lent once for a loan period of 14-days and the lender cannot read the book during the loan period.” If you’re familiar with Barnes & Noble’s lending feature on the Nook, this isn’t a surprise. “Additionally, not all e-books will be lendable – this is solely up to the publisher or rights holder, who determines which titles are enabled for lending.” Again, to borrow some jargon, this is a known issue.
Books will be lendable both to Kindle owners and users of Kindle apps, which is nice: even if you don’t have your own Kindle, you can borrow an e-book from someone who does.
The Kindle team also revealed that Kindle app users will soon also be able to read Kindle magazines and newspapers through the app. Periodicals had been a Kindle-only feature. Support for newspapers and magazines is coming to iOS “in the coming weeks” and Android and other app platforms “down the road.”
Since there’s so much news about Kindle’s e-reading competition lately, I guess Amazon just wanted to let Kindle users know that the company still loved them — and more importantly, that it’s going to keep giving them reasons to love the Kindle.
Who knew a support thread on corporate WiFi login issues would lead to anything we’d care about? Cut to Google code’s Android forums, where an anonymous Google engineer confirms that this problem will be patched in the “next major release” of Android, specifically version 2.3. So… does this mean Android 2.3 is the oft-discussed (and close on the horizon) Gingerbread? Not necessarily — while possible, there isn’t any indication to that effect, and logic doesn’t arbitrarily equate the two. After all, recall that Eclair was both 2.0 and 2.1, so there would be some historical precedence to this 0.1 leap being nothing more than sprinkles on frozen yogurt.
It’s good for governments to find more ways to connect with their citizens, including the web. As the web goes mobile, open government should too. But governments shouldn’t develop apps for some mobile platforms and not others.
That’s Kevin Curry and Brownell Chalstrom’s problem with Texas.gov’s new iPhone app. The state of Texas recently overhauled its website for the desktop, but doesn’t have a mobile version. It also doesn’t have applications for Android, Blackberry or any other mobile platform.
This heated up discussion at the recent Govfresh Gov 2.0 conference in Manor, Texas. Curry, founder of the open government unconference City Camp, said that by limiting access to one platform and one device — and an expensive device, at that — Texas is empowering the already empowered, rather than broadening access for everyone.
Given the potential use cases and the sheer number of citizens whose only net-capable devices are mobile phones, mobile access to government data is definitely important. The trouble is when governments pick winners and losers, developing a presence on iPhone but not Android, or Facebook but not MySpace.
It’s not only the numbers of iPhone or Facebook users that attract governments. It’s the prestige. According to O’Reilly Radar’s government 2.0 reporter Alex Howard, “government technology shops, judging by their output, have become afflicted with a kind of ’shiny app syndrome,’ given that an app is a substantive accomplishment that can be trotted out for officials and the public.”
Brownell Chalstrom, a Manor Govfresh delegate, says that governments looking to develop for mobile should first look to create open websites using rich web standards like HTML5 and CSS3, and only then look to develop applications for platforms limited to users of an individual device or service. Open standards for open government, if you will.
“The goals that public officials pursue when they create new .gov websites or applications should be based upon civic good,” Howard writes. “If that civic good is to be rendered to a population increasingly connected to one another through smartphones, tablets and cellphones, truly open governments will employ methods that provide access to all citizens, not just the privileged few.”
If it’s running Android it has a root, and if it has a root some modder will find it. The Sony Google TV is most certainly running a flavor of Google’s little OS and so it too is just waiting to be cracked open. While that hasn’t happened yet, Android Forums and xda-developers member Apeman has managed to get us one step closer. He’s enabled the recovery mode on his device by holding the power button down while plugging it in, presenting a tantalizing “System Update with USB” menu option. What lovely things will this unlock? You’ll have to wait to see — just like us.
Tired of wading through dissertations in hopes of grokking a hacked-up method of overclocking your Droid X and / or Droid 2? Clearly, you aren’t alone. Unstable Apps has just released a $0.99 gem that enables one-tap overclocking on the aforementioned phones, with DX/D2 Overclocker giving users the option to run at low voltage, stock voltage or two higher-than-recommended voltages. Of course, given just how simple it is to potentially ruin your handset, we’d highly encourage using common sense and rational judgment when pushing the proverbial envelope. You know, the kind of judgment that convinces you to sing Bell Biv DeVoe’s Poison in a karaoke bar full of your closest colleagues.
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