Android blitzkrieg: Phones and now TV

Android 3.2 is out, even when phones are in 2.3. However Android is smashing iPhone and any Microsoft wish to have a share.

Watch out, cause Android is turning its Sauron's eye on TV!!

http://code.google.com/intl/es-AR/tv/

Some year ago, Sun tried to push Java as a development tool in blu-ray, but with this, Java wont be the only option.

And the 99 USD tablet is here

After HP's tablet only held one month i the market, HP decided to take it out from the market arguing webOS has to be reevaluated.

In a surprising move, price droped from 499 to 99, and its a sold out!!!

Is it viable to load this tablets with Android????

Will this be a hackers toy and HP will watch carefully for community tries???

Last week was a turn point too because of Google buy of Motorola mobility.

Creativity scared by patent lawsuits

Its a shame! This patent-all attitude will lead us to stop software publishing because of the fear of being lawsiuted in USA. Just ridiculous!

Check the note.

"I just patent the idea of problem solving". Yeah, Sure.

The top at any price

It's as easy as when ladies take their purses and say "let's go shopping".

Google acquisitions history ;)

The latest in the duel:

March 6, 2010. Google Inc. has acquired a company called DocVerse who provides tools that make its possible for people to use the Internet to work together on documents formatted in one of Microsoft's word processing, spreadsheet or presentation programs.

November 23, 2010. CPTN Holdings LLC, a consortium of technology companies organised by Microsoft, is purchasing 882 Novell patents for $450 million cash.

December, 2010. Google (GOOG) announced two new acquisitions in separate blog posts Friday: It has bought speech-synthesis software maker Phonetic Arts and video-distribution technology firm Widevine Technologies.

April, 2011. Google announced it has made its second deal via its subsidiary Google Energy, and the search engine giant plans to buy 100 MW of power from a wind farm that’s under construction in Oklahoma. See whitepaper.

May 10, 2011. Microsoft announced that it was buying Skype for $8.5 B

Just for the record, Google reportedly offered about $6 billion for e-commerce coupon site Groupon.

And new targets are Twitter, Palm and who knows.

A monkey in the chess game

48 hours before I post a help note to save Mono, an interesting article appeared when I was making some Android dev notes.

It seems that Microsoft is the real taker behing Novell adquisition, and Novell is a strategic source of intellectual property related to Unix.

MMMMM. No good news. Maybe its time to evaluate a new alternative for Android development, considering Oracle is pressing Google in the Java front and now this.

Weird.

Don't shock the monkey

When Android appeared, Java wasn´t my target development platform.

I been working with .Net for so long that the first thing I been waiting is .Net for Android, and Mono has it (http://mono-android.net/).

Because of my workload, I ain´t have the time to get my hands dirty, but today I received a newsletter with a RED WARNING: Novell is gone and Mono... don´t know.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/is-mono-dead-is-novell-dying/8821
http://www.infoworld.com/d/application-development/uncertain-future-open-source-net-047

I believe its time for Microsoft to get involved if they really want .Net technology spreads. Otherwise we are missing the train.

I seriouslly hope that Miguel de Icaza saves MONO, either is with MS help or Mono claims its independence.

Offimatic suites

MS Office is nice but expensive.

Alternatives (multiplatform):

+ OpenOffice (3.1.X stable; 3.2 crashes with DOCX files (no fix yet); 3.3 in RC phase) download

+ LibreOffice (OO fork in Beta stage; nobody is certain about Oracle intentions) download

Only for Linux:

KOffice
GnomeOffice

For Mac:

NeoOffice