Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he’ll explore where our industry is and where it’s going — on both micro and macro levels — with the unique wit and insight only he can provide.
My friend and colleague Harry McCracken recently bought a brand new Droid from Motorola. He says it’s a “loaf of day old bread.” He’s right. The Droid and Android 2.0 were introduced with much fanfare in December, but have already been eclipsed by Android 2.1 running on Google’s Nexus One, and there are some serious ramifications for being behind. For example, Google recently touted the latest mobile version of Google Earth, which is a cool app that you won’t be able to use unless you’re running 2.1. Sure, Google says “Google Earth will be available in Android Market on most devices that have Android 2.1 or later versions,” but that’s most, not every. And what does Google mean when it says “as devices like the Droid get updated…” to 2.1? When will they get updated? Is it any wonder that some Android users are starting to get pangs of buyers remorse?
When Android was announced, I wrote that if “Google can deliver, the impact could be huge,” but I caveated a major issue: Google would need to prevent the market from fragmenting and allow it to succeed where other mobile and desktop Linux implementations had failed. Linux fragmentation remains one of the many reasons the open-source OS has failed to capture a meaningful share of the PC desktop market, and Android is rapidly following a similar path by fragmenting into different versions with different core feature sets, different users experiences and run different applications.
Continue reading Entelligence: Will Android fragmentation destroy the platform?
Entelligence: Will Android fragmentation destroy the platform? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Mar 2010 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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You know, Tux always seemed so harmless… little did we know that he is actually a Che Guevara-type figure who’s been traveling around the world, fighting the good fight on any number of fronts. First,
Cuba announces its national Linux variant, Nova, and now? Red Star is
North Korea’s very own Linux-based operating system, featuring a
desktop very similar to
Windows — but for the red star that replaces the Start button. It first came to light when Mikhail, a Russian blogger living in Pyongyang, picked up a copy for $5 near Kim Il-sung University. The install disk apparently features a quote from Kim Jong-il about the importance of an operating system “compatible with Korean traditions,” and the system requirements are a Pentium III 800MHz with 256MB RAM and 3GB
hard drive space (North Korea’s version of Minesweeper must take up a lot of room). Of course, this bad boy has Firefox — except here it’s called My Country, and it will only connect you to something called “My Country BBS,” a
web portal on North Korea’s own (restricted) version of the
Internet. Where will the plucky penguin turn up next? We don’t know, but we bet it’ll be one hell of a ride.
North Korea’s Red Star OS takes the ‘open’ out of ‘open source’ originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Electric motorcycles are getting more and more common, and while we don’t think they’ll ever quite capture the rush of an internal-combustion engine threatening to fly into bits as it screams toward red-line, they are starting to offer their own… unique charms. This model is a Norwegian prototype, based on a Honda chassis that had its tail chopped and motor stripped, replaced by stacks of Nickel-Metal batteries, then wrapped in some custom bodywork. The bike sports a touchscreen dash powered by Ubuntu that offers both stats about the bike (speed, temperature, etc.) as well as GPS navigation and, presumably, on the go games of Tux Racer. It’s a one-off built by Green School Motorcycles and Akershus University College, and there’s plenty more information about it in a video at the source link below — if you speak Norwegian.
[Thanks, dsbilling]
Electric Green School motorcycle shows its rebel nature by running Linux originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Mar 2010 09:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Netgear announced two new network storage solutions, the ReadyNAS 3100 and ReadyNAS 4200, for Small- and Medium-sized Businesses (SMBs). The 3100 is a 1U 4-bay (4 SATA channels) rack-mountable storage platform that provides up to 8TB of capacity while the 4200 is a 2U 12-bay (12 SATA channels) rack-mountable storage platform with up to 24TB and two redundant drives in a single system.
These two ReadyNAS servers are VMware-ready and runs the Linux-based ReadyNAS RAIDiator operating system. They have an unified architecture with support for both NAS and iSCSI SAN applications. The ReadyNAS 4200 is powered by Intel Quad core processor and equipped with 10 Gigabit Ethernet network connectivity. =
Netgear’s ReadyNAS 3100 and 4200 start at $3800 and $10,000 respectively.
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Hey, if you’re in the market for a beauty of a thin and light, and you mean business, you’re in luck today. Dell’s Latitude 13 laptop marketed for the business type (with a preinstalled Citrix client, simplified virtualization options and so on) is now available on the Dell site. With three customizing options — base, economy, and productivity packages — with a choice of Celeron M or Core 2 Solo CPUs, Linux, Vista, or Windows 7 OSs, up to 2GB of SD-RAM, and a 160GB hard drive. The starting price of one of these bad boys is $559. Hit up the source link to check it out.
Dell’s Latitude 13 business laptop now available, looking businessy originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Mar 2010 13:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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