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‘open source’ Stories

BrailleTouch app brings blind typing to the touchscreen

, Feb 20th 2012 Discuss [1]

In an app coming to the market relatively soon for both iPhone and Android, Georgia Tech researchers have reduced the price of realistically typing Braille on a smartphone from $1700 plus the cost of the phone to essentially free. The $1700 is a basic figure which spoken by Post Doctorate Fellow Mario Romero of the School of Interactive Computing working on the project and mentioning how much a smartphone-connected Braille keyboard costs on average. What the app BrailleTouch will be doing is offering the same functionality with a set of simple gestures and 6 buttons on-screen that allow for accurate and simple typing of Braille characters. Read The Full Story

CyanogenMod Android team ask for community cash support

, Feb 18th 2012 Discuss [8]

You won't see this sentence very often: CyanogenMod is asking for money. As you may well know, the Android community uses the modification to Android known as CyanogenMod more than any other custom ROM, hands down. And today they're asking that you help them out with their otherwise free service by donating some cash to help support the purchase of "a couple of solid, stable Xeon-class servers with large amounts of RAM and fast disks." They're currently using PayPal, which is unfortunate for the apparent mobs of users boycotting the service at the moment (there's a lot of overlap with the modding community) but you've got other options as well. Read The Full Story

HP CEO: We’re not done with WebOS yet

, Feb 15th 2012 Discuss [7]

At HP’s Global Partner Conference in Las Vegas, hardly a word was spoken on their WebOS efforts in 2011. And it’s not hard to see why: the few phones and single TouchPad tablet that sprang from the acquisition of Palm bombed so badly that the only wat to recoup losses was a massive fire sale. But surprisingly, HP’s new CEO Meg Whitman didn’t seem phased: at her keynote this morning, she reiterated HP’s commitment to the WebOS platform.

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Open webOS Iris browser released: 40k Enyo downloads to-date

, Feb 14th 2012 Discuss [3]

HP’s open-sourcing of webOS continues today, with the release of the underlying Isis web browser along with a governance model and more of the Enyo components developers will need to create their own webOS devices and apps. Enyo has already been downloaded 40,000 times in the three weeks since its release, the team says, and now there’s the Isis Project, “a fast, standards-compliant web browser engine,” to go along with it.

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Spark Linux tablet given video rundown

, Feb 10th 2012 Discuss [5]

The device you will soon be looking at is a $256 7-inch tablet running on a basic mobile version of Linux, and its name is Spark. The software user interface goes by the name Plasma Active and has been in the works for some months, ramping up to this point at which this tablet can bring the lovely functionality to the market with what we hope is a beta version of the Spark tablet. You'll find that the software experience looks familiar if you're used to using a Linux environment on your computer now, but that the tablet itself isn't all that impressive when it comes to hardware. Read The Full Story

$25 Raspberry Pi packs 2x iPhone 4S GPU performance, roasts Tegra 2

, Jan 25th 2012 Discuss [9]

Forget teaching kids how to program; the $25 Raspberry Pi computer might just be the home entertainment STB and compact gaming console we've been waiting for. The low-cost computer - and its $35 sibling - should deliver double the graphical performance of the iPhone 4S, according to executive director (and Broadcom SoC architect) Eben Upton, telling Digital Foundry that not only does the BCM2835 GPU at the heart of the Raspberry Pi roast Apple's latest smartphone, but it thoroughly whups NVIDIA's Tegra 2. Read The Full Story

Raspberry Pi $35 PC gets unofficial Apple AirPlay support

, Jan 20th 2012 Discuss [0]

$35 computer project Raspberry Pi continues to amaze, with a new demonstration showing the education-focussed palmsized desktop using Apple's AirPlay to stream video from an iPad to a TV. The side-project of one of the developers working at Raspberry Pi, the setup consists of a specially coded AirPlay app for the tiny PC itself and an unmodified Apple tablet. Read The Full Story

Google blames rogue contractors for OpenStreetMap sabotage

, Jan 18th 2012 Discuss [0]

Google has blamed rogue contractors for sabotage of the OpenStreetMap project, claiming those responsible for the inaccuracy-introducing edits spotted from its own IP addresses are no longer employed. Tweaks to maps in New York, London and other locations - such as incorrectly reversing the direction of a one-way street - were traced back to IPs used by Google India earlier this month, amid suggestions that Google was purposefully trying to undermine its open-source mapping rival. Not so, claims Google. "The two people who made these changes were contractors acting on their own behalf while on the Google network" the company told us in a statement. Read The Full Story

HP appoints webOS and cloud tsar

, Jan 18th 2012 Discuss [0]

HP has appointed a new chief strategy officer, with Bill Veghte taking on the challenge to "lead HP's cloud and webOS open source initiatives." Veghte, currently EVP of HP Software - a role he will continue to fulfill - will be charged with "keeping HP on the cutting edge of innovation", though webOS fans will likely be more interested in how the exec handles the open-sourcing of the ex-Palm platform. Read The Full Story

Tizen UI leaks ahead of Samsung I9500 debut

, Jan 9th 2012 Discuss [4]

Open-source smartphone OS Tizen rose like a scorched pigeon from the ashes of MeeGo last September, but its taken until now for the first screenshots of the platform to emerge. A cluster of shots were shared with SamMobile, showing a UI that’s markedly similar to pre-ICS Android and even Samsung’s bada. That may be no coincidence, however, since Samsung is one of the leads in the Tizen project, and may be bringing the first Tizen-based device, the Samsung I9500, to market imminently.

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Sluggish code and HP power plays blamed for webOS’ failure

, Jan 2nd 2012 Discuss [4]

Angry ex-webOS team members have blamed poor code decisions by software-naive execs for the platform's demise, as well as power struggles amid the OS' adoption by HP. Jon Rubinstein - at the time CEO of Palm - opted for WebKit as the underlying engine on which webOS apps would run, something Paul Mercer, former senior director of software at Palm, tells the NYTimes was a huge mistake. "We just weren’t able to execute such an ambitious and breakthrough design" the ex-software chief argued, suggesting that WebKit simply wasn't up to running applications at the same speed as users experienced on, say, the iPhone. Read The Full Story

Raspberry Pi sub-$35 computer hits eBay for over $2,300

, Jan 2nd 2012 Discuss [1]

Sales of the Raspberry Pi computer have begun, albeit on a small scale, with ten of the first $35 boards being allotted to eBay where initial bidding has already exceeded £1,500 ($2,325). Powered by an ARM11 700MHz chip capable of running Quake III, general sales will begin in around a month according to the Raspberry Pi foundation, meaning early-adopters are willing to pay a hefty mark-up to grab one of the initial dev units. Read The Full Story
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