Hasta La Gadget!

The farce that has been Sony Ericsson’s bungled, delayed, and deservedly maligned Android upgrade story for the Xperia X10 family is coming to a fittingly silly end. Questioned by Android Community on the possibility of a Froyo (Android 2.2) upgrade for its initial set of Android handsets, the SE team has just come out and admitted that there’ll be no future OS upgrades, at least in terms of Android iterations. The X10, X10 Mini and X10 Mini Pro are not being abandoned, not at all, but the only software enhancements you can look forward to will come directly from Sony Ericsson. The company hardly sees that as a bad thing, however, judging by a recent tweet announcing its belief that an SE-customized Eclair tastes better than Google’s untouched Froyo. We’d protest, but what’s the use?

Sony Ericsson: no OS updates for Xperia X10 beyond Android 2.1, it’s better than 2.2 anyway originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 Jan 2011 10:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Well it’s official boys and girls — Apple’s Mac App Store is live as of this morning, and available to use and abuse via a Snow Leopard update (version 10.6.6 to be exact). The OS X application market takes the company’s wildly successful iOS App Store to its logical conclusion, bringing an orderly, structured app buying experience to desktops and laptops across the globe. The Store will launch with over 1,000 titles, including Apple standards like the iLife suite broken out into separate parts (iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand) selling for $14.99 each, Pages, Keynote, and Numbers for $19.99 apiece, and the bank-breaking Aperture for $79.99. Of course there’ll also be third-party apps present at launch, including Autodesk Sketchbook Pro, Pixelmator, Cheetah 3D, and Flight Control HD (yes, a port of the iPad version).

The software itself will be a separate application that functions much like the App Store, providing update notifications and a universal installation process. That process, mind you, will be part of the requirements for getting your application into the store, along with Apple’s famous content policies — so we’re sure we’ll see some irate devs with painful rejection stories. Or maybe not. We know that the company is planning on getting lots of familiar developers into the Store, but we also know that some of what Apple is looking for may not gel with, say… Adobe’s installation procedures (or worse). Regardless, right now the number of apps available is small, but you can expect it to grow fast now that every Mac user will get a crack at this software. We’re going to be doing a much deeper dive on the experience and report back — until then, if you’re using it, let us know what you think in comments.

Apple’s Mac App Store goes live originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 Jan 2011 08:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on May 26, 2008 by CyberNet.

Over the years, we’ve seen Symantec’s reputation go down-hill as their Norton line of antivirus and security products has been labeled sluggish and bloated by those who use it. According to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, Symantec is hoping to change the future of security software by making it “less annoying” which could help improve their reputation and bring customers back. Their ideas sound good, and it certainly would be faster, but could present some problems.

The future of Norton security products will involve a new statistical method for finding malware instead of the current method which is more intense and is deeply involved with the operating system. The WSJ says, “security software works, in part, by hooking itself into a PC or system to look for unusual behavior that might be a hint that malware is lurking within. In coming releases of its consumer-security suite, Norton 360, Symantec plans to use a new statistical approach to finding malware that looks at factors like the number of total PCs a piece of software is installed on. If it’s installed on a lot of PCs, it’s probably safe; if it’s installed on just one computer, it’s probably not.“They are also hoping to reduce the amount of time it takes for the software to be installed.

Do you see any problems with the method they are working on, to make security software “less annoying”? The problem we see is that if a virus is wide-spread and installed on thousands of computers, which happens, it could provide a false sense of reassurance. It seems as though solely using a statistical approach could prove to be faster, but unfortunately, it could be less reliable. Ultimately Symantec hopes to make Norton both faster and more reliable, but from the sounds of it, Norton will only be faster unless there’s more to this approach than we’re aware of, or if they combine methods.

We do have to give Symantec some credit for breaking away from what’s familiar to try something new. Rowan Trollope who is the head of Symantec’s consumer business says his goal is to build “zero-impact” security software that won’t slow down computers. He says, “I’ve staked my career and reputation on this.” Hopefully it proves to be worth it…

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This article was written on July 23, 2010 by CyberNet.

Windows only
The Windows HOSTS file is a way for you to redirect a domain on your local machine to any IP address that you specify. There are a lot of reasons for doing this, such as a web developer testing a website locally or even making certain sites inaccessible by pointing them back to your machine (a common method used for ad blocking). The HOSTS file is not something most people work with each day, but if you are one of the few that are regularly making updates to it this is one tool you’ll love.

HostsMan Editor provides a GUI to managing what could ordinarily be an overwhelming file. Some people may have hundreds or thousands of entries in their HOSTS file, and that makes changing it quite a pain without a manager like this. On more than one occasion I’ve found myself creating duplicate entries, which can then cause confusion when trying to figure out why a change I’ve made isn’t necessarily taking affect (when duplicate entries exist it’s normally the last entry that is the accepted one).

With the help of this free and portable HOSTS file manager you can make things a little easier on yourself. You can backup/restore HOSTS files, make changes, validate entries, bulk update IP address references, enable/disable the HOSTS file, and more. You can even go a step further and subscribe to HOSTS files that others have created (such as ones for ad blocking), and have them automatically merged with your own HOSTS file. It’s a great app to keep in your back pocket for those times you have to update the HOSTS file.

HostsMan Editor Homepage (Windows only; Freeware)

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Trust us — no one on the Engadget staff wants to know what their blood pressure is right about now. For those trapped in the hurricane that is CES, there’s probably no better product to have laying around than this… but only if you’re looking to confirm your suspicions about being in a high-stress career. Withings, the company best known for its connected scales, has just revealed the planet’s first iPhone-connected blood pressure monitor, with an aim to make measuring vitals as easy as pie for iOS users. The idea is fairly simple: just plug the arm band into your iPad, iPod touch or iPhone, dial up the gratis app and start the process. All of the data is logged on the user’s secure online space, and there’s even a secure sharing feature that’ll beam your abnormally high rates right to your frightened physician. It’ll go on sale tomorrow around the globe, with the asking price set at $129 / €129.

Continue reading Withings fittingly debuts iPhone-connected blood pressure monitor at CES

Withings fittingly debuts iPhone-connected blood pressure monitor at CES originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Jan 2011 20:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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