Open Source Archive

  • HTC slaps phone firmware site with cease and desist letter

    HTC slaps phone firmware site with cease and desist letter

    Posted on June 17, 2010 | No Comments
    You might be familiar with firmware impresario Conflipper by now, a man who's earned a reputation tearing apart ROMs -- often for unreleased devices -- and pulling out the juicy bits for everyone to see. Turns out the dude runs a site called Shipped ROMs with... yes, you guessed it, a bunch of shipped ROMs for a wide variety of phones on it, and it seems HTC's legal cats in Taiwan have taken issue, saying they've got "very strong reasons to believe that the HTC Intellectual Property was illegally obtained by fraudulent means" in a strongly-worded cease and desist letter sent to him earlier today. We reached out to HTC's US branch for comment and got back the following:
    "While HTC tries to take a hands off [approach] about the modder / ROM chef community, this site's sole purpose [is] to make HTC's content available for download from a source other than HTC. That content is not just the open source parts and kernels of Android but all of the software that HTC itself has developed. This is a clear violation of our copyrights and HTC needs to defend itself in these cases."
    In other words, these guys are just really against hosting official ROMs on unofficial servers. Anyone can dump a ROM from a phone and flesh it out, so we can't imagine there's any competitive concern -- and no first-party site makes so many firmware builds available for so many devices in such a concise, well-organized way as Shipped ROMs is doing. Ultimately, it's HTC's property -- it seems like they're probably in the legal right here -- but the unsavory PR effect with some of the company's staunchest enthusiasts makes the endeavor more trouble than it's worth, we'd argue. Tread carefully, HTC.

    HTC slaps phone firmware site with cease and desist letter originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 Jun 2010 21:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

    Permalink | Email this | Comments

    Full Story

  • Protect your iDevice from theft. Sorta

    Protect your iDevice from theft. Sorta

    Posted on June 12, 2010 | No Comments
    So you're at the coffee shop, and you've walked over to the counter to order another half-frap-double shot raspberry no fat mocha, and left your iPad (or iPod) plugged into your laptop. Suddenly, that skeevy looking fellow who was sitting two tables away makes a grab for your iPad, and runs for the door! You don't see him because you were looking away, but you still know your kit has been boosted! How do you know? Well, you had the PadLock installed.

    Full Story

  • Google ditching Windows because of Chinese hackers?

    Google ditching Windows because of Chinese hackers?

    Posted on June 1, 2010 | No Comments
    "See you in hell, Windows." That's Google talking, according to a report in the Financial Times. (Not an exact quote, mind you.) The company is taking several steps to phase out the use of Microsoft's operating system following the well-publicized China hacking situation. New employees are given the option of using a Mac or a Linux-based PC, and others are simply being switched over to Mac or Linux when the time is right. It's not an official Google policy, but rather something that's just being done.

    Full Story

  • SIGVerse simulates cooperation between humans and robots in virtual space

    SIGVerse simulates cooperation between humans and robots in virtual space

    Posted on May 4, 2010 | No Comments
    Japan's National Institute of Informatics (NII) has developed SIGVerse, a piece of software that makes it possible to simulate how human beings and "intelligent" robots cooperate in a virtual space. The goal is to assess how robots can be "trained" to better work together with humans one day - without actually having to build robot prototypes in real life.

    Full Story

  • Insert smiley emoticons hands-free with Auto Smiley

    Insert smiley emoticons hands-free with Auto Smiley

    Posted on March 23, 2010 | No Comments
    What would you do with the openFrameworks and an hour to kill? Would you create an application to detect when you're smiling and automatically insert ":)" into whatever program is currently running? Theo Watson did, and called it Auto Smiley! :) He released it as open source! :) We can't possibly have enough smiley icons embedded into our emails and IMs can we? :) I mean, we all spend all day every day smiling maniacally, right? :) :) :)

    Full Story

  • Skyfire acquires Kolbysoft, developers of the popular Steel browser for Android

    Skyfire acquires Kolbysoft, developers of the popular Steel browser for Android

    Posted on February 11, 2010 | No Comments
    Considering how many times I’ve written about it, it probably goes without saying that I’m a fan of Skyfire. By way of server-side magic (read: proxied data compression), it’s still the only smartphone browser that can reliably play both Flash and Silverlight content. Its only fault? It’s only available for Windows Mobile and Symbian S60. The [...]

    Full Story

  • Symbian goes open source, releases code to developers

    Symbian goes open source, releases code to developers

    Posted on February 4, 2010 | No Comments
    After so many years of hoping and wishing, developers can start getting excited about coding for the Symbian platform. Sure, it’s taken a while and some might be looking forward to Maemo 6 later this year far more than a newer version of Symbian, but opening up the source code to the world’s largest operating [...]

    Full Story

  • Those about to rock, we encourage you to recompile your Linux kernel

    Those about to rock, we encourage you to recompile your Linux kernel

    Posted on January 19, 2010 | No Comments
    This crazy guitar is actually an open source MIDI system using a sexy touchscreen with multi-touch and reactive fretboard. The result? Let's just say while you probably won't get much cherry pie playing this thing, the guys at Information Society will definitely invite you into their trailer at the Iowa State Fair this year.

    Full Story

  • Interview: We talk to the lead developer of Plex Media Center for Mac OS X: It was doing Boxee-like stuff before Boxee was cool

    Interview: We talk to the lead developer of Plex Media Center for Mac OS X: It was doing Boxee-like stuff before Boxee was cool

    Posted on January 15, 2010 | No Comments
    As far as XBMC forks go, Boxee certainly appears to have the most heat. It has VC money pouring in, flashy deals with content providers, and you'll soon be able to buy a dedicated D-Link box to more easily use it on your TV. But Boxee isn't the only XBMC-based media center that's worth your time. It's not even the first XBMC fork to go out and make a name for itself. Plex, which is exclusive to Mac OS X, was Boxee before Boxee was cool. I recently talked to the lead developer, Elan Feingold, to get a better understand of what Plex is, what it does, and where it's going. Needless to say, if you're running Mac OS X, you ought to give it a shot. It's good.

    Full Story

  • GSM call encryption code cracked, published for the whole world to see

    GSM call encryption code cracked, published for the whole world to see

    Posted on December 29, 2009 | No Comments
    var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/security/GSM_call_encryption_code_cracked_published_for_the_world'; Did you know that the vast majority of calls carried out on the 3.5 billion GSM connections in the world today are protected by a 21-year old 64-bit encryption algorithm? You should now, given that the A5/1 privacy algorithm, devised in 1988, has been deciphered by German computer engineer Karsten Nohl and published as a torrent for fellow code cracking enthusiasts and less benevolent forces to exploit. Worryingly, Karsten and his crew of merry men obtained the binary codes by simple brute force -- they fed enough random strings of numbers in to effectively guess the password. The GSM Association -- which has had a 128-bit A5/3 key available since 2007, but found little takeup from operators -- has responded by having a whinge about Mr. Nohl's intentions and stating that operators could just modify the existing code to re-secure their networks. Right, only a modified 64-bit code is just as vulnerable to cracking as the one that just got cracked. It's important to note that simply having the code is not in itself enough to eavesdrop on a call, as the cracker would be faced with just a vast stream of digital communications -- but Karsten comes back to reassure us that intercepting software is already available in customizable open source varieties. So don't be like Tiger, keep your truly private conversations off the airwaves, at least for a while.

    GSM call encryption code cracked, published for the whole world to see originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 29 Dec 2009 04:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

    Permalink | Email this | Comments

    Full Story

  • DECAF, the anti-Microsoft COFEE, now available

    DECAF, the anti-Microsoft COFEE, now available

    Posted on December 15, 2009 | No Comments
    You sorta knew this was going to happen. Microsoft COFEE, a highly secretive forensics tool used by law enforcement, leaked onto the Internet several weeks ago. People far smarter than I got a hold of it, and have created what has been dubbed DECAF, an anti-COFEE set of tools that you can install to block the effects of COFEE.

    Full Story

  • AdMob Launches Beta Ads For Palm WebOS

    AdMob Launches Beta Ads For Palm WebOS

    Posted on December 3, 2009 | No Comments
    Though its had an application store of its own for many months now, Palm’s webOS has really yet to flourish as a development platform. As it currently stands, webOS’ App Catalog only offers up around 400 applications. This stunted growth is largely because Palm still considers the App Catalog “beta” – thus, they’re being rather [...]

    Full Story

  • You can install Chrome OS on your Dell Mini 10v right now

    You can install Chrome OS on your Dell Mini 10v right now

    Posted on November 28, 2009 | No Comments
    You can now run Chromium OS, the open source developmental version of Google Chrome OS, on your Dell Mini 10v. Don't have one? Neither do I, so don't feel too bad.

    Full Story

  • Samsung Moment review

    Samsung Moment review

    Posted on October 26, 2009 | No Comments

    Filed under: , , , , ,

    In the world of Android, it's not yet clear who's going to come out victorious -- QWERTY sliders or their keyboardless brethren -- but does there really need to be a winner? We say there's room for just about everyone in this open-source party, and Sprint is starting to round out its Android offerings by introducing the keyboard-equipped Samsung Moment to saddle up alongside the the HTC Hero that was released a few weeks ago. In the scheme of things, the platform is still extraordinarily young which means that virtually every new handset that's announced brings "firsts" to the table; in the Moment's case, it's both the first Android device with an 800MHz ARM11 core and the first Android QWERTY phone with an AMOLED display (you'd have to go back to another Sammy, the Galaxy, to find the first AMOLED Android phone regardless of input method).

    Being able to stuff Android, AMOLED, QWERTY, and 800MHz all into one sentence certainly sounds like a winning combination, but does the Moment deliver? Let's find out.

    Gallery: Samsung Moment review

    Continue reading Samsung Moment review

    Samsung Moment review originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

    Permalink | Email this | Comments

    Full Story

  • The Flurry Alarm Clock is a luddite’s Chumby

    The Flurry Alarm Clock is a luddite’s Chumby

    Posted on October 20, 2009 | No Comments
    You know the Chumby, right? It's that bedside clock/alarm/radio/YouTube & Flickr open source thingamabob. It's hella cool, but it's also kind of complicated for the non-techy and requires WiFi to work. I say blah to that! Really the only extra info you need to know in the morning besides the time is the weather anyway. That's where the Flurry Alarm Clock from Ambient Devices comes in.

    Full Story

« Older Entries