Tech Roundup: Jun 29, 2012

Microsoft had two big events in the last two weeks. After a spate of endless rumours about a tablet in the works, the company took the wraps off by unveiling the 10.6-inch Surface tablet. Available in two options, one will have Windows 8 powered by Intel Ivy Bridge chipsets, while the other will run on Windows 8 RT for ARM chips. Despite no information on the pricing and battery life, critics have been quite upbeat about the announcement as a whole, terming it as a new chapter for the company.

Microsoft Surface

But what really differentiates this from its direct Apple counterpart (the iPad) is the unique Touch and Type Keyboard covers. The tablet is also expected to get further competition from its Windows OS OEMs as well. In this process, the giant table-based touch screen devices have been rebranded to PixelSense from its earlier name Surface to avoid confusion.

Barely days after the Surface tablet announcement, Microsoft announced the next step in its fledgling mobile operating system, Windows Phone. While Windows Phone 7.5 Mango may not have set things on fire due to lack of content and compelling features, the next upgrade called Windows Phone 8 aka Apollo marks a major shift and might be a great turnaround if executed well.

Built on the NT Kernel (the core of the operating system that directly interacts with the hardware), the revamped OS shares the same kernel, file system, media foundation, device drivers, and parts of the security model from Windows 8. While this might seem like overkill for a phone operating system, the core elements of the Windows NT architecture will allow Windows Phone 8 to support multi-core processors, device encryption, removable storage with microSD cards, and a whole host of improvements for IT pros and businesses (The Verge).

This can act as a big boost to cover paucity of apps in the Marketplace, as the developers, who build apps for Windows 8, need only minimal changes to get their app running on Windows Phone 8. To sum up, Apollo brings a slew of improvements, ranging from NFC support, VOIP integration, new start screen with resizeable tiles, mobile wallet, full SD card support and Internet Explorer 10. Interestingly, Nokia Maps will be the official map service on Windows Phone 8.

If the Windows Phone Summit proved exciting for all the above reasons, the company's announcement that none of the existing phones will qualify for the Apollo upgrade made for a big bummer. While this news was expected (or rather rumoured, ever since The Verge announced it way back in April) and a trifle hard to digest for existing Windows Phone users (that includes me, by the way!), Microsoft has plans to rollout a separate upgrade to Windows 7.8, which will bring in some of the user interface changes while the rest will simply require new hardware.

With Nokia, HTC, Samsung and Huawei set to be the main OEMS for Windows Phone 8 based devices, the position of Nokia seems all the more precarious at present. With no upgrade path to Apollo, nobody would be knowingly ready to buy a Lumia 900 (or any Lumia phone for that matter), however attractive and stylish it may look. The Finnish giant, in the meanwhile, has announced a few updates to their Lumia phones, including improvements to camera (through Camera Extras app), in addition to rolling out Windows Phone Tango.

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Moving on, Facebook, slowly recovering from its post-IPO slump, has once again hit headlines for many reasons. Notwithstanding its acquisition of a facial recognition firm, Face.com, it is said to be working on a location-aware mobile ad product that will give companies real-time data about its users' whereabouts. Besides that, its ads have begun showing up on Zynga.com, well-known for its Farmville game (remember those game requests from your friends?), in what can be termed as the first instance of its ads showing up outside the social network.

But one of the biggest moves that has drawn flak is its silent push of '@facebook.com' email address in the Contact Info (the push began in April, so it seems). This Facebook email address is made default leaving out your other contact addresses, but users can still edit and switch back to the address they want. While it may be a 'lame' way to force users to switch to a Facebook email address (which obviously none would be using), but according to me, it improves user privacy to a certain extent by not showing your personal email address.

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In what can be termed as a potentially dangerous situation, researchers at the University of Texas took control of a flying drone used for military operations by hacking into its GPS system. The team used "spoofing" - a technique where the drone mistakes the signal from hackers for the one sent from GPS satellites. It is widely believed that the same method may have been used to bring down a US drone in Iran in 2011.

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The ongoing patent war between the largest smartphone manufacturers, Samsung and Apple, seem to have no respite of late. Weeks back, Apple tried to block the US launch of Samsung Galaxy S III but failed owing to a scheduling conflict and while it might have lost a chance with Motorola, after Federal Judge Richard Posner dismissed the patent infringement claims in its entirety, it has succeeded in giving a double whammy to Samsung.

First, it managed to win a preliminary injunction against Galaxy Tab 10.1, now pretty much outdated in terms of technology, in the US after Judge Lucy Koh agreed to Apple’s claims that Samsung blatantly ripped off its iPad design for the tablet. Most recently (that would be today), Judge Koh has granted Apple’s request to ban Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus temporarily. Yes, you heard right! This is the first time a pure-bred Android smartphone is under the radar for patent infringement and the core Android feature being targeted this time involves a unified search feature via a common search interface (patent number 8,086,604).

The timing could not more worse for Google, when it has just unveiled Jelly Bean, the latest iteration of Android. Well, I must say, Apple is turning out to be a real patent bully and is turning desperate to stymie its competitors’ products. That these lawsuits might seem ridiculous doesn’t seem to be the point for Apple, but hey, they have truckloads of cash to burn and this is the way they are choosing to burn it.

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Going by all the recent reviews of the Wi-Fi only Google Nexus 7 tablet, it looks like they have finally nailed it! Joshua Topolsky of The Verge wrapped up the review stating that Google’s Nexus 7 isn’t just an excellent tablet for $200. It’s an excellent tablet, period. In fact, it’s the first Android tablet that I can confidently recommend to buyers — and not just because it’s got a low price tag (though that certainly helps). It’s a well-designed, powerful, and useful product, with lots of bells and whistles that makes it feel like a device that should be more expensive than it is. The only rues seem to be the poor tablet app selection, lack of (or rather poor) content in the Play Store and the limited storage options (available only in 8 and 16 gigs). But yeah, it’s a budget tablet aimed straight at the heart of Amazon Kindle Fire. And this time, it looks like they are bang on target!

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The Washington Post reports that the US and Israel cooperated to create the Flame malware — a computer espionage worm infecting thousands of systems throughout the Middle East — in order to attack Iran's nuclear weapons program. The confirmation, from anonymous Western officials, links Flame to the Stuxnet cyberweapon that the US and Israel used to target Iranian nuclear facilities in 2009. The Post reports that the effort involved the NSA, CIA, and Israeli military, and that it was developed at least five years ago under the classified code-name "Olympic Games." (The Verge, Jun 19, 2012)

Here's all the action from Google I/O 2012 for easy perusal:

• Releases Android 4.1, Jelly Bean, with richer notifications, Google Now and butter smooth UI; to be available later this July.
• Chrome becomes the default browser with Jelly Bean.
• Google, after failing to capture the iPad market, now aims to target the Amazon Fire by announcing its first tablet, Nexus 7, in partnership with Asus. Priced at $199 USD and available mid-July, it has a 7-inch, 1280 x 800 HD display, a quad-core Tegra 3 processor with 12-core GPU, and 1GB RAM. In addition, it also supports NFC and a 1.2 mega Pixel front-facing camera.
• Launches Nexus Q, a cloud streaming audio and video device to play Google Play content onto television sets.
• Announces Google Compute Engine, a cloud service for business.
• Releases Google Drive for iOS and Chrome OS.
• Gmail now has 425 million active users, logo completely redesigned.
• Google Docs now supports for offline editing.
• Chrome has 310 million active users, most popular browser in the world; Google Chrome for Android is no longer Beta, available for Android 4.0 devices.
• Chrome for iOS available for download, reaches the top slot of App Store charts.
• Announces 250 million Google+ users, 150 million monthly active users, on the eve of its 1st anniversary; outs tablet version of Google+ for Android, iPad support coming "soon".
• Google Maps for Android now supports saving maps for offline use.
• Google+ adds events support, integrates with Google Calendar.
• Flash won't be supported in Android 4.1, new installs to be disabled on August 15th.

In other news:

• Dell rumored to be planning Windows RT tablet for October.
• Ethiopia makes using VoIP services like Skype a criminal offense.
• Twitter's retweet counter no longer capped at ‘50+’, to display the actual count.
• Mozilla launches 'Junior' prototype, a browser alternative for iPad.
• LG to focus on smartphones, tablets take a backseat.
• New Gmail custom themes let you set your own background image.
• LG launches Quick Voice service in Korea, to challenge Siri and S Voice
• Samsung Galaxy SIII out now in the US.
• WikiStats provides a real-time look at what's trending on Wikipedia.
• Oracle CEO Larry Ellison buys Hawaiian island of Lanai, reportedly for $500-600 million.
• First BlackBerry 10 device to not have a hardware keyboard.
• Yahoo Mail rolls out Photos app to web client users, also available on mobile devices.
• Bing image search redesigned with larger thumbnails.
• Flipboard officially debuts on Android.
• Google shareholders approve stock split leaving power with co-founders.
• Microsoft starts compiling final Release to Manufacturing (RTM) versions of Windows 8.
• Bing Maps updated with 165TB of new high-resolution images.
• Instagram for iPhone and Android gets a major overhaul.
• Firefox 14 for Android now available with improved speeds, new HTML 5 capabilities, and Flash.
• Amazon reportedly preparing Kindle Fire successor, to be out on July 31st.
• Microsoft purchases social networking website Yammer for $1.2 billion.
• Facebook prepping 'blazing fast' native iOS app for summer release, reports New York Times.
• Apple prepping a major overhaul of its iTunes service, says Bloomberg.
• Beleaguered RIM to cut 5000 jobs this financial year.
• Microsoft details Windows 8 upgrade plans for XP, Vista and Windows 7 users.
• Yahoo! Announces its first digital radio service, iHeartRadio.
• Twitter for Windows Phone updated to support notifications.
• Twitter faces a major outage, blames it on a 'cascading bug' in the infrastructure.
• Oracle declines copyright infringement damages from Google, to appeal against the latest ruling that 37 Java API's weren't copyrightable.
• Microsoft renames ‘Windows Explorer’ to ‘File Explorer’ in Windows 8.
• China blocks Bloomberg and Businessweek websites after a news story, talking about multi-million dollar wealth of some of the Vice President’s relatives, was published Friday morning.
• RIM delays BlackBerry 10 launch to Q1 2013 after a disappointing quarter.

Tech Roundup is a weekly recurring feature on the latest trends in Technology.