SISAREA

digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/tech_news/Editorial_Waiter_there_s_a_Nazi_theme_in_my_Android_Market’; Earlier tonight our friend Michael Gartenberg tweeted that when he went to the Android Market to search for the word “Jewish,” a number of Nazi and Hitler themes turned up. Of course, we had to take a look for ourselves, and sure enough, the search for a fairly innocuous word related to a religion and culture turns up skins which are disgustingly, hatefully pro-Nazism and pro-Hitler. That’s a problem, no matter how you look at this.

In the past, we’ve railed against Apple for its confusing, unfair, and often absurd App Store policies, particularly when it comes to the policing of applications based on content, not code. Steve Jobs has made a point during press conferences to say that the Android Market allows porn apps — which of course set off a furious debate. Sadly, what Jobs should have pointed out was that the Market allows something far more insidious and damaging than even the hardest-core pornography — apps that spread hate and propagate the views of a movement that is pretty much universally reviled.

Continue reading Editorial: Waiter, there’s a Nazi theme in my Android Market (updated)

Editorial: Waiter, there’s a Nazi theme in my Android Market (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 13 Aug 2010 11:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Twitter (1), (2)  | Email this | Comments

So, there’s two ways to look at this. One would be to gawk at the fact that ESPN, the worldwide leader in sports broadcasting, is using iPads and Xbox 360 consoles — common devices that are widely available to mere mortals — to drive content to millions of consumers. Another would be to gawk at the fact that ESPN has somehow managed to keep its finger on the pulse of innovation, despite being swallowed by Disney and being a part of one of the planet’s most monolithic corporations. Thankfully for you, we’re going to cover both angles here. Our eyes were opened after stepping foot in the company’s Bristol headquarters and really getting a feel for how the company views technology and its integration into programming, and it led us to a philosophical conclusion about how corporations should (but oftentimes aren’t) be taking advantage of what’s readily available. Ready to get schooled? Head on past the break.

Continue reading Editorial: ESPN bypasses corporate red tape with iPad and Xbox 360, wannabe innovators should take note

Editorial: ESPN bypasses corporate red tape with iPad and Xbox 360, wannabe innovators should take note originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 12 Jun 2010 11:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Google’s Dan Morrill, open source and compatibility program manager in the Android team, just penned a lengthy diatribe against the very concept of fragmentation on the official Android Developers Blog, basically saying it doesn’t exist. Actually, the language is a little more colorful:

“Because it means everything, it actually means nothing, so the term is useless. Stories on ‘fragmentation’ are dramatic and they drive traffic to pundits’ blogs, but they have little to do with reality. ‘Fragmentation’ is a bogeyman, a red herring, a story you tell to frighten junior developers. Yawn.”

Sure, as Android goes, the term “fragmentation” has meant moderately different things in different contexts over the past couple years — fair enough. But the fact remains that releasing six major revisions of any platform within the span of 19 months (four of which are in heavy user circulation) is unprecedented and potentially unsettling to manufacturers and consumers alike. Your average Joe isn’t going to understand why, for example, his HTC Hero that he bought a few months back can’t use the Buzz widget or some of the cooler features in Google Maps, and Google hasn’t done a very good job of explaining or justifying it, other than by blocking incompatible apps and updates from being visible in the Market.

Continue reading Google: Android fragmentation ‘is a boogeyman, a red herring’

Google: Android fragmentation ‘is a boogeyman, a red herring’ originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Jun 2010 17:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Android Developers Blog, San Jose Mercury News  | Email this | Comments

Google made a big splash into the home entertainment world yesterday with the announcement of Google TV — particularly because it’s partnered up with some major names like Sony, Intel, Logitech, Best Buy and Dish Network. That’s a lot of industry momentum behind a platform that’s trying to achieve what many believe to be impossible: marry the television to the internet. Will Google finally be the one to pull it off? To be honest, the Engadget staff is nowhere near agreement on this, so we’re just going to let everyone speak for themselves — read on!

Continue reading Editorial: Engadget on Google TV

Editorial: Engadget on Google TV originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 21 May 2010 20:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Laura June has been an Editor at Engadget since October of 2008. The views expressed in this editorial are her own, cobbled together by hand, with love, in the United States of America, for a fair wage.

digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/tech_news/Editorial_from_Engadget_Thoughts_on_Foxconn’; I’m not an economist, and in fact, I’ve never been very good with money or math. I’m not a manufacturer either — the only things I make with my own hands are quilts and cakes. I know, however, from these experiences, that the best products take time, and are made with care from the best available materials.

It’s obvious, by now — or it should be — that something’s going on at Foxconn (headquarter in Tucheng, Taiwan), the owners of massive factories in China which most famously assembles Apple products (though it’s also responsible for many, many others). There have been several suicide attempts this year — at least eight (up from two last year) of them successful (though it’s been pointed out that the number is pretty much on par with the rest of China) — and over the past few days we’ve seen what can only be called a shocking expose by a worker who went undercover there. It’s clear, from this report and others (such as last month’s National Labor Committee report on the KYE factory in Dongguan City) that most of the people who assemble our gadgets do so under conditions we, in America would never tolerate, and for a wage that is paltry, to say the least. I’m hesitant to pass judgment en masse on how an entire country or a specific factory does business, and I don’t have the knowledge or expertise to do so. So I’m not going to.

Continue reading Editorial: Thoughts on Foxconn

Editorial: Thoughts on Foxconn originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 21 May 2010 10:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

If you’ve been following our reports, you know that Microsoft’s Kin aren’t your average smartphones. They don’t have a big, bright screen, a particularly fast processor or a robust app store filled with thousands of third-party programs. They’re just a pair of interestingly-designed phones with high-res cameras, running a MOTOBLUR-like OS that aggregates your social networks into a neat stream, while smartly documenting every picture, video and status update in cloud storage for future reference. What does that juxtaposition mean for the cellphone market? Honestly, we can’t quite agree — so we’re going to let the roving, mobile minds at Engadget HQ speak for themselves.

Continue reading Editorial: Engadget on Microsoft Kin

Editorial: Engadget on Microsoft Kin originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 13 Apr 2010 19:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

It has been a project shrouded in mystery and speculation that sparked imaginations about just what Microsoft was doing. Its codename was Pink, referring to the premium mobile experience group, and yesterday Microsoft finally revealed its Pink story. It’s called Kin and it’s pretty impressive. At its heart, Kin is centered around two devices called Kin One and Kin Two. Both the hardware and software were designed by Microsoft, and while Kin is a Microsoft brand, Microsoft is still not getting into the phone business. Built in conjunction with carrier partner Verizon, Pink is an extension of the company’s mobile strategy, something that complements and co-exists with its larger ambitions with Windows Phone 7.

In many ways, Kin is the extension and spiritual descendant of the Sidekick (which was a product of Danger, founded by the father of Android, Andy Rubin, and later acquired by Microsoft). At its core, the Kin philosophy is guided by the proposition that one size device doesn’t fit all, and specific demographics have different mobile needs.

Continue reading Entelligence: Think Pink – First take on Microsoft’s Kin

Entelligence: Think Pink – First take on Microsoft’s Kin originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 13 Apr 2010 16:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

It’s no secret that Palm’s Hail Mary of 2009 — webOS and the launch of the Pre — hasn’t been the rousing success that the company so desperately needed. Profitability is a distant dream, Verizon isn’t giving the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus the marketing support they need to rise to the top, some analysts suggest that the cash in the bank is only enough to last for another year or so, and the choice of Sprint as a long-term exclusive launch partner continues to be a pesky monkey on the back. All of these realities have led Palm to become a near-constant source of takeover speculation in recent months. Name a company — any company — and odds are they’ve been caught up in a rumor at one point or another: Nokia, Dell, RIM, Microsoft, Google, Nintendo (yes, Nintendo), the list goes on. Of course, not all of these deals would make much strategic sense, and only one — if any — will ultimately happen.

For its part, Palm boss Jon Rubinstein is as adamant as ever that the company intends to remain independent and swing to profitability, and as best as we can tell, he’s still got financier Elevation Partners’ support in that quest. But let’s suspend reality for a moment and assume an acquisition does happen; who’d be the best fit? We like HTC — we like HTC a lot, in fact. Let’s take a look at why.

Continue reading Editorial: HTC and Palm should get hitched and make beautiful babies

Editorial: HTC and Palm should get hitched and make beautiful babies originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 09 Apr 2010 19:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/apple/Editorial_iPad_app_prices_are_out_of_control_and_will_kill’; Apple trained us well with the iPhone. All those $0.99 apps, $1.99 apps, and the occasional $4.99 (or so) app, padded by plentiful free apps, and we laid down / rolled over every time the App Store whistled. Sure, we admit it, after a few months of conditioning we even spent $9.99 on a couple apps, but boy did we do our homework on those ones! They had to be the best, they had to either be the “greatest game ever,” or a vital piece of productivity software we could never live without. But something, somewhere broke within and we were left powerless as the iPad at last made its way out of the box and popped open the App Store for the first time. These pricey apps (the average seems to be double the iPhone price) are dangerously expensive, and we’d like everybody involved to think twice before beating our wallet into submission with these $9.99 and $14.99 “snacks.” Follow with us after the break as we break this down, won’t you?

Continue reading Editorial: iPad app prices are out of control and will kill us all

Editorial: iPad app prices are out of control and will kill us all originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 05 Apr 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/apple/Palm_this_is_your_survival_guide’; Oh Palm. Just a little over a year ago your future seemed so bright, so renewed. You walked away from CES 2009 reborn, held aloft by a completely innovative new mobile operating system, a striking piece of hardware, and a feeling amongst the press and investors that you were back in the game and playing to win. Now, less than a year and a half later, you’ve nearly returned to the dark and desperate place you’d found yourself in at the end of 2008; a rapidly declining mindshare, the bottom falling out of your stock, and bad dips in phone sales. All of it is leaving you backed into a corner where the common perception now is that you’ve got to sell to survive at all. So what went wrong? How did such a promising launch lead to such a disappointing reality? And how can you wrestle your way back from the brink yet again? Is that even an option?

In 2007 the editors of Engadget penned an impassioned open letter to the company, pleading for many of the changes we eventually saw at Palm. This isn’t a follow-up, but it’s very much in the spirit. We’re going to take a look at the missteps that put the company in its current spot, and talk about what we think can pull it back out. Palm, it’s time for a little tough love… again.

Continue reading Palm: this is your survival guide

Palm: this is your survival guide originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 19 Mar 2010 17:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments