Hasta La Gadget!

Ever heard of estoppel? The term, sadly, does not denote a new German electronic bus service, but is rather a court-ordered way of telling companies “no backsies” on previously made public statements. It could also prove to be another nail in Oracle’s patent dispute coffin, should Google’s latest Wayback Machine defense hold up. Thanks to the internet’s never say die policy, a 2007 post, recently deleted by Oracle, from Sun Microsystem’s then CEO Jonathan Schwartz has surfaced, in which he enthusiastically endorsed Android’s Java base. The public statement falls in line with the aforementioned legal doctrine, potentially contradicting new owner Oracle’s patent infringement claims. Unfortunately for both parties, Judge William Alsup doesn’t seem to be too cool under the collar as he’s reportedly blasted each for “asking for the moon” and chiding them to “be more reasonable.” A final ruling in this case is still a ways off, but in the meantime you can head to the source to read Schwartz’s damning praise for yourself.

Sun CEO’s deleted blog post to help end Oracle vs Google patent dispute? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 Jul 2011 23:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Thought Google had a mountain-sized stack of your up close and personal online habits? Think again, because the omnipresent search king’s all-seeing eyes are nothing compared to the Chinese government, which recently enacted stricter regulations to identify free WiFi users. The government-issued monitoring software will cost the cafes and restaurants it targets $3,100, putting small business owners in a sticky situation — pay up, or shut down the free surfing. An informal survey conducted by the New York Times found not one owner willing to bow to the Republic’s pressure, citing the out-of-pocket cost and low number of actual users. It’s possible the move to clamp down on anonymous browsing was spurred by recent youth-embraced, social networking-backed uprisings, like the one in Cairo earlier this year. Seems a loophole in China’s net management policy allows “laptop- and iPad-owning colleges students and expatriates” — the very same group behind recent revolts — to go online undetected. It remains to be seen if the Communist Party will make this new measure widespread, or just restrict it to central Beijing. For their sake, we echo one owner’s hope that “official fervor [will]… soon die down.”

Chinese government to track users of free WiFi, small businesses react with service cutoffs originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 Jul 2011 16:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on June 02, 2008 by CyberNet.

Last week Google hosted a conference that was geared towards developers, and during the keynote they showed off some of the cool things that the Android mobile operating system was capable of doing. In it’s current state I would say that Android doesn’t appear to be quite as polished as the iPhone, but the functionality is definitely awesome. Here are a few things that I wanted to point out from the demonstration, which I’ve also included below:

• Slide to unlock patterns – With the iPhone you just need to swipe your finger across the screen to get started, but Google is looking to make the slide-to-unlock feature a little more robust. On the screen you’ll have 9 dots that you’ll be able to create a pattern with, and that pattern is what’s used to unlock your phone. We all love to connect the dots, right?
• Notifications – You can bring up a central page that contains all of your notifications (calendar events, new email, etc…). Having this all in one location is really smart.
• “Real” desktop – Android users will actually have a desktop that is reminiscent of their home computer’s desktop. You can create shortcuts for contacts or websites, and place them anywhere on the screen by dragging and dropping them.
• Street View uses compass – The Android devices will include an optimized version of Google Street View that looks pretty sweet. You can take your finger and spin the map around, or you can enable the compass view that will rotate the 3D imagery according to the direction you’re facing. Man, I can’t wait to see if/how Google plans to use the Street View with a GPS!

Here is the portion of the keynote presentation that demonstrates all of the stuff I mentioned above, and more.

The icing on the cake might be the fact that Google has now said that Android will be 100% open source! It will certainly be interesting to see what kind of Android variations we see people coming out with then.

Google I/O 2008 Conference
Thanks to Omar for the tip!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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If you shelled out 600 clams for an unlocked Nexus S, buyer’s remorse starts now: the subsidized AT&T version is out today. Available exclusively from Best Buy (and exclusively in black), the AT&T Nexus S will set you back only a paltry $99 with a two-year contract. Is the loss of color choice (and that whole “SIM-locked to AT&T” thing) worth the savings? We’ll leave that up to you and your (Google) wallet.

AT&T Google Nexus S on sale today, exclusive to Best Buy originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 24 Jul 2011 13:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What we have here, is a decidedly low-end Android tablet from the folks at MSI (possibly a member of the Enjoy family) flying through the FCC as fast as its single-core 1GHz Cortex A8 CPU and 512MB of RAM will carry it. Inside you’ll find Bluetooth and WiFi antennas, as well as enough room for a full-sized SD card, though oddly the user manual says this model (listed as MS-N0Y1) only supports sizes up to 8GB. Up front you’ll find a camera for video chatting, the requisite buttons for navigating the customized version of Gingerbread, and a 10-inch screen sporting a rather uninspiring 800×480 resolution. There’s a second camera around back, as well as the all important FCC tag. Check out the gallery below and hit up the source for the aforementioned user manual and a special treat — schematics for those Android pushing internals.

MSI tablet moseys on through the FCC, exposes its inner secrets originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 23 Jul 2011 16:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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