[Google Chrome Blog] An even more secure Flash Player for our Windows users

[Google Chrome Blog] An even more secure Flash Player for our Windows users

One of the great things about the web is that you can hop from page to page watching videos, playing games, or checking email without installing additional software that may pose a security risk to your computer. On the Chrome team, we’ve made it our mission to build a browser that helps protect you every step of the way, defending against pages that try to install malware or steal information without your knowledge.

Some of the most important things keeping you safe in Chrome are Safe Browsing, auto-updates, and sandboxing. Our goal is to improve each of these features, staying ahead of the bad guys to help keep you safe online.

With last week’s Chrome Stable update, we took a major step forward in security by bringing an even deeper level of sandbox protection to Adobe Flash Player on Windows. Since 2010, we’ve been working with Adobe to sandbox the Flash Player plug-in to protect users against common malware. Now, thanks to a new plug-in architecture, Flash on Windows is inside a sandbox that’s as strong as Chrome’s native sandbox, and dramatically more robust than anything else available. And for the first time ever, Windows XP users have a sandboxed Flash, making them much safer online.

Chrome OS has had this deeper Flash sandboxing from the beginning, Linux has had it since Chrome’s last stable release, and Mac support is on the way. Ultimately, this means a safer experience for you as you browse the web. We take the security of Chrome extremely seriously, so we’re excited to be delivering these enhanced protections, and we’ve enjoyed collaborating with Adobe on this effort.

Posted by Viet-Trung Luu, Software Engineer and Protector of the Realm Interwebz

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[Chromium OS Blog] The road to safer, more stable, and flashier Flash

[Chromium OS Blog] The road to safer, more stable, and flashier Flash

A little more than two years ago, engineers on the Chrome team began a very ambitious project. In coordination with Adobe, we started porting Flash from the aging NPAPI architecture to our sandboxed PPAPI platform. Withlast week’s Chrome Stable release, we were finally able to ship PPAPI Flash to all Windows Chrome users, so they can now experience dramatically improved security and stability as well as improved performance down the line.

To appreciate just what a big step forward this is, it helps to understand a bit more about the history and architecture of NPAPI plug-ins. At its core, NPAPI is a thin layer of glue between the web browser and a native application. In the early days of the Web this provided a tremendous advantage, because it allowed third-party plug-ins to evolve rapidly and implement new capabilities, moving the whole web forward.

Unfortunately, as the web evolved, the past benefits of NPAPI became liabilities. The thinness allowed legacy browser and OS behavior to bleed through and crystallize to the point that it hamstrung future improvements. As browsers add compelling features like sandboxing, GPU acceleration, and a multi-process architecture, the legacy of NPAPI severely impedes or outright prevents us from extending those improvements to any pages with plug-in content.

By porting Flash to PPAPI we’ve been able to achieve what was previously impossible with NPAPI for the 99.9% of Chrome users that rely on Flash. Windows Flash is now inside a sandbox that’s as strong as Chrome’s native sandbox, and dramatically more robust than anything else available. And for the first time ever, Windows XP users (specifically, over 100 million Chrome users) have a sandboxed Flash—which is critical given the absence of OS support for security features like ASLR and integrity levels.

Beyond the security benefits, PPAPI has allowed us to move plug-ins forward in numerous other ways. By eliminating the complexity and legacy code associated with NPAPI, we’ve reduced Flash crashes by about 20%. We can also composite Flash content on the GPU, allowing faster rendering and smooth scrolling (with more improvements to come). And because PPAPI doesn’t let the OS bleed through, it’s the only way to use all Flash features on any site in Windows 8 Metro mode.

Moving forward, we’re finishing off the PPAPI Flash port for Mac OS X and hope to ship it soon. And Linux users have already been benefiting from PPAPI Flash since Chrome 20, along with Chrome OS users who have been running it for almost a year. Soon all Chrome users will have access to the improved security, stability, and performance of PPAPI Flash.

Posted by Justin Schuh, Software Engineer and Boring Security Guy

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[Chromium OS Blog] The evolution of Chrome packaged apps

[Chromium OS Blog] The evolution of Chrome packaged apps

Just over a month ago, at Google I/O, we announced significant changes to Chrome’s packaged application platform. These changes are intended to allow apps to break out of the browser, work offline by default, and enabzle richer, more immersive experiences.

Check out our overview video for a quick intro to the new platform.

With the latest version of Chrome in the developer channel, you can build, load, debug and test your apps without command-line flags, although you may need to enable experimental APIs in some cases. Because we’re still in developer preview mode, the Chrome Web Store doesn’t yet accept uploads of these new packaged apps. We’ll enable web store support later this year, and when we flip that switch, users will be able to discover and download your apps directly from the store.

In order to get started building apps, visit our developer documentation at developer.chrome.com/apps and check out our growing list of sample applications on Github (thanks for the pull requests; keep them coming). If you’d like to reach us while you’re building apps, you can join us on the #chromium-apps Freenode IRC channel, join the chromium-apps group or report an issue.

We’re also starting a regular weekly hangout every Tuesday at 9:30am (Pacific Time). Our first one will take place on Tuesday, August 14th. You can add a reminder to your calendar and then tune in at Google Developers Live. And be sure to add +Google Chrome Developers to your circles to keep up on the latest from the Chrome team.

Posted by Mike Tsao, Evolved Software Engineer 

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How Madden can be made a simulator viably

How Madden can be made a simulator viably

One of the biggest reasons why EA seem reluctant to really go all out and make Madden (or an off shoot franchise) a simulation focused experience is because of the mass market appeal factor - the average gamer wants realism, but not at the expense of fun and pick-up-and-play ability. In this sense, I've always thought of Madden as the NFL gaming equivalent of Call of Duty - it's meant to sell, and that's that.

And you know, despite making that parallel to CoD, it never really clicked in my head until recently that the same way the FPS genre handles simulations could possibly work for NFL gaming.

What do I mean? Well, there are shooters out there which focus on realism as the primary concern. It takes a lot more work to do this and the games are not as popular as CoD. But they exist, and the reason for this is some of these games are actually aimed at professionals - that's right, military people, contractors, security firms, etc. One such game is ARMA on the PC.

Can you see where I'm going here? What if there is a market out there to make a football game which everyone from NFL teams down to junior league teams could use to develop strategies? Run scenarios? Collect data and determine probabilities? It would have to be pretty well made, but I think it could be done to a high enough degree that it would have a place in the ever progressing world of football, and could eventually develop into a serious tool in time. EA would probably have to do it as they have the resources and the baseline in Madden to get a head start, and could market it still with the Madden name, although I guess anyone could really do it without NFL licensing.

It would probably be for PC for data collection and control/editing purposes, but it could be treated as "software" more so than a game - so if you're a professional team, the license cost could be in the thousands, just like Adobe's software is for professional designers etc. It would still be available for normal gamers though, and sold at normal game prices - just like ARMA is.

Personally, this is why I believe EA is criticized. They have the resources to try and do something like this and I truly believe this is a seriously viable option going forward. Chalk it up as a future building project which could develop very nice long term returns - perhaps the NFL isn't quite willing to adopt such a thing just yet as a whole but I would bet anything there are a few teams who would jump on this and get in early. Who knows, NFL teams may even start to directly invest in it.

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Minding the gap: Bridging Computing Science and Business Studies with an Interdisciplinary Innovation Challenge

Minding the gap: Bridging Computing Science and Business Studies with an Interdisciplinary Innovation Challenge

For today’s information technology organization, working in teams across functional and even organizational boundaries has become an integral part of every project. When asked about these projects, practitioners regularly report on how grave differences between business professionals and tech- nology teams have negatively affected project performance. The serious gap between how the two sides think, talk and work is systemic already in the training and education of both Business and Computer Science students at the univer- sity level. This paper describes the design of a competitive SFU Innovation Challenge which aims to bridge that gap by tasking interdisciplinary groups to create iPhone application prototypes and related business innovation roadmaps. This document then summarizes the objectives of the SFU Inno- vation Challenge, and reports on the difficulties and posi- tive results that materialized when students combined their technological problem- solving techniques and managerial strategies for effectively confronting real-world problems.

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2005 Methodological Approach for Mobile Studies

2005 Methodological Approach for Mobile Studies

Studies about mobility and mobile interaction help researchers and practitioners in the social sciences to make sense of emergent working and living practices in an increasingly mobilised world. This paper aims to present a reflective analysis of the recommended methodological approaches for mobile studies based on three case studies. Following mobile workers across the different dimensions of time and space is a major challenge researchers have to face. The paper discusses these challenges, and highlights areas of interest for researchers interested in the study of mobility and mobile interact

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System Architecture

System Architecture

Different applications and disconnected databases, leading to redundancy, increased costs, and overall organizational dysfunction. To rebuild and simplify IT systems, use a common layer of middle-ware that connected the company\’s electronic brain (IT) to its physical body (Operations). Sitting on top of the old transaction systems, the middle-ware carried key operational data from one application to another; Customer, Vessel and Flight schedules, contracted rate between customers and service providers, Documentation, Third party integration, Billing, Accounting and Customer visibility portal. With this replace older system where necessary, without disrupting the underling IT.

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2005 Methodological Approach for Mobile Studies

2005 Methodological Approach for Mobile Studies

Studies about mobility and mobile interaction help researchers and practitioners in the social sciences to make sense of emergent working and living practices in an increasingly mobilised world. This paper aims to present a reflective analysis of the recommended methodological approaches for mobile studies based on three case studies. Following mobile workers across the different dimensions of time and space is a major challenge researchers have to face. The paper discusses these challenges, and highlights areas of interest for researchers interested in the study of mobility and mobile interaction.

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Free TV Show Idea: The Obsessive Compulsive Time Traveler

Free TV Show Idea: The Obsessive Compulsive Time Traveler

I was reading a story about a guy whose been obsessed for 50 years with building a time machine to warn his dad not to smoke.
Someone brought up the point that if the guy was one day successful, wouldn't his father have not died?
So that gave me the idea for a new TV show: The Obsessive Compulsive Time Traveler.
It's about a guy who travels back in time to make sure previous events still happen correctly, because he's afraid if he doesn't things will go wrong and the present will be wrecked. He's not right in the head, plus he's got a time machine, like a combination of Monk and Voyagers!.
It practically writes itself. Every week he get himself into hilarious new predicaments where he has to fix the history he just broke. Plus you can learn about history and stuff ("To learn more about Sam Houston, visit your local library."). All I ask is the producer thank me when they win their Emmy.

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"Agile is treating the symptoms, not the disease"

"Agile is treating the symptoms, not the disease"

Where is this decade's Access?It may seem like a snarky and trolling question, but think about it for a moment: for a decade or so, I was brought into project after project that was designed to essentially rebuild/rearchitect the Access database created by one of the department's more tech-savvy employees into something that could scale beyond just the department.
(Actually, in about half of them, the goal wasn't even to scale it up, it was just to put it on the web. It was only in the subsequent meetings and discussions that the issues of scale came up, and if my memory is accurate, I was the one who raised those issues, not the customer. I wonder now, looking back at it, if that was pure gold-plating on my part.)
Others, including many people I care about (Rod Paddock, Markus Eggers, Ken Levy, Cathi Gero, for starters) made a healthy living off of building "line of business" applications in FoxPro, which Microsoft has now officially shut down. For those who did Office applications, Visual Basic for Applications has now been officially deprecated in favor of VSTO (Visual Studio Tools for Office), a set of libraries that are available for use by any .NET application language, and of course classic Visual Basic itself has been "brought into the fold" by making it a fully-fledged object-oriented language complete with XML literals and LINQ query capabilities.
Which means, if somebody working for a small school district in western Pennsylvania wants to build a simple application for tracking students' attendance (rather than tracking it on paper anymore), what do they do?

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CouchDB on your TV

CouchDB on your TV

After initially getting rejected for sound issues, Google Ads has finally approved our awesome Couchio commercial.
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GoogleAds Commercial Version
So we've aired this commercial 11 times so far, 5 times during Robot Chicken, twice duringAqua Teen Hunger Force, once during Tim and Eric's Awesome Show, Great Job! and 3 times on VH1.
It has gone to a total of 321,253 impressions, which means 321,253 people have seen Chris running like a lunatic around the streets of Oakland, singing the CouchDB praises.
This has cost us a total of $709.57!

Just saw a commercial for CouchDB. Seriously. I'm at a loss for words. #couchdb #couchio@jrgarcia

Someday CouchDB will actually be inside your TV, you can watch CouchDB while watching your CouchDB TV from your couch.Yo dawg.

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WARNING: CouchDB 1.0.0 Data Loss bug

WARNING: CouchDB 1.0.0 Data Loss bug

Update August 13, 2010. A data recovery tool now available: http://wiki.couchone.com/page/repair-tool
if you are running CouchDB 1.0.0 with the default delayed commit setting, you are subject to serious data loss on restart. See this page for instructions how to force all outstanding commits and configure your server at runtime to run in the safer full commit mode: http://couchdb.apache.org/notice/1.0.1.html
The page also includes details of the bug and a postmortem.
0.11.1 and earlier are unaffected. Servers with delayed commits turned off are unaffected. 1.0.1 will be coming shortly that fixes the problem in all configurations.
DO NOT COMPACT THE DATABASE! Compaction throws away any lost updates permanently.
Data recovery is coming. The CouchDB core contributors are working on a utility to reliably recover lost updates, so no data is lost as long the database file is not compacted.

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CouchOne + Membase = Couchbase

CouchOne + Membase = Couchbase

I've got some news I'm extremely excited to finally announce: a merger between CouchOne and Membase!
A little background, I met James Phillips, the co-founder of Membase, for the first time in December. I'd heard a little about Membase up to that point, but I was most impressed with some of their high profile users. For example, Membase is a key part of Zynga, where giving millions of users a fast, low latency experience is critical.
Membase has been targeting large scale mission critical apps, being able to scale out quickly and support millions of users, and getting impressive traction. They'd been going after a very specific pain point, a completely different part of the market than what we were targeting. They've focused on performance and scalability and exploiting all the power and memory available on modern servers. Simple, Fast, Elastic.
At CouchOne we've been focusing on very different problems: mobile, sync and offline use cases. We make it easy to build applications that travel with you, allowing you access to your important data no matter the network conditions. Slow and unreliable connectivity means many businesses can't rely on the cloud for mission critical apps, all their data is gone when their network is down. But with Couch powered apps on your phone, tablet, putting data directly on the machines at the edge of the network, you have your apps and data with you at all times and safely backed up to the cloud.
Couchbase!
What James had is the vision to see the great fit between the two companies. While independently we were both doing very well, we both have a lot of growing to do yet. And amazingly, the direction Membase needed to grow, we were already doing very well. And in the direction we needed to grow, Membase was already doing very well. Not only were the part of the stack we were focusing different and complementary, but the way we built out our teams was different and complementary. I'm not sure we could have planned it any better, and we didn't plan it at all!
And so I'm thrilled to announce Couchbase, a merging of both our companies and our technology!
Technologically, we'll be joining the products together to create a high volume, low latency, elastic clustered Couchbase server system. A Couch that's Simple, Fast, Elastic with all the reliability and power of CouchDB. We'll also continue to support the Membase API, for both backwards compatibility and it's performance advantages over HTTP. We will be the only solution out there that can scale to Zynga sized workloads and down to phones and tablets and everything in between, supporting millions of users and keeping everything in sync.
For existing CouchDB users, we will fully support CouchDB's HTTP API with all its associated benefits: seamless integration with other HTTP based infrastructure, a universally supported, human-readable protocol and direct-browser access just to name a few.
Together as Couchbase, we'll have the fastest, most scalable (both scale up and scale down) NoSQL solution. We will become the standard storage for mobile devices, and the standard server technology for syncing them all together. Our unified solution will dramatically simplify your technology stack and maintenance for building fast responsive apps that scale to millions of users, and also scaling down to phones so people can work and play even when not connected to the network.
My role at Couchbase will be CTO, overseeing the technical direction of the company. Dustin Sallings will be the chief architect. Bob Weiderhold will be CEO and co-founder James Phillips will continue to be product-oriented maniac :) CouchOne co-founders Chris Anderson and Jan Lehnardt will take roles to lead our mobile efforts and to work with our developers and community.
What's in it for you?
It's all upside! In the short-term we'll be able to provide a much better developer and support experience for both for CouchOne and Membase technologies, and move the development speed ahead much faster. The long term benefits are that CouchDB users will acquire the high performance, high scale easy-fast-elastic capabilities of Membase, while Membase users will acquire CouchDB's indexing features (map/reduce views, lucene, R-Tree GeoCouch), replication, reliability, and an easy path to mobile.
This is hot stuff! 2011 is the year of Couchbase!

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Nexus 7 overclocked to 1.64 GHz, destroys benchmarks

Nexus 7 overclocked to 1.64 GHz, destroys benchmarks

Those awesome Android developers never let up when it comes to the cutting edge. Take the Nexus 7 for example. It rocks the NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor and packs plenty of power. Thanks to a few of our favorite developers and kernel builders we now have it overclocked to nearly 1.7 GHz, and destroying everything on the market in terms of benchmarks. More details to get started yourself below.


Now there’s tons of skilled kernel hackers out there in the world of Android. Franco, Faux, and of course my personal favorite Trinity — who goes by Morfic. While I can’t speak for all of them, we’ve been testing out Trinity Seven (Der Kernel by Morfic) on our Nexus 7 tablets and have been getting amazing results. As you can see above (and below) over 7,000 in Quadrant is nothing to laugh out. That is simply stunning. Not only that, but we get amazing battery life at the same time.

For those familiar with the hacking and modding community, you’ll need to be rooted to perform this type of task. Which I’m assuming most know how to do. After following the development by Morfic over at RootzWiki or XDA and cranking the Nexus 7 to 1.64 GHz on all four cores, it blasts out the competition in regards to benchmarks. We’ve seen Qualcomm’s new S4 Pro quad-core score well over 7,000 too, but it’s not yet available. The Nexus 7 is, and is only $199. Price/performance ratio has truly met its match.
We know you must be thinking that running at 1.64 GHz on all four cores must kill the battery. Yes that is true, but that is why the Trinity Kernel Toolbox lets you control that. Overclock when you’re gaming and want optimal results. Then underclock for everything else. Not only that, but standby usage (when it’s sitting on a desk) has been severely improved. So not only does Trinity kernel offer amazing performance, but you get amazing battery life too. Deep sleep mode means after even 12 hours of awake time you’ll still have plenty of battery left. Just look at the screenshot below. Obviously results will vary.
Running a completely vanilla AOSP version of Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean, rooted, and of course running the Trinity Seven kernel is how these results were achieved. All the details and information is provided at the via link below, or download these faster alpha builds from derkernel.com. The bigger picture here is what can we expect from NVIDIA’s recently rumored 1.7 GHz quad-core processor coming later this year. If developers can achieve this, so can they. When Qualcomm’s S4 Pro arrives later this year, and NVIDIA’s improved Tegra 3 quad-core does too, we expect some awesome competition. More details can be found at the RootzWiki link above, or XDA below.
  

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Google Maps live traffic alerts now support 130 new cities

Google Maps live traffic alerts now support 130 new cities

Today Google has unleashed another huge update for Google Maps. While this update isn’t on the app side that will need downloading, instead it is backend features that will enable their real-time live traffic status alerts and details to an additional 130 cities across the US. That is a huge update if you ask us, and they’ve even included Costa Rica, and Panama City too.


Today on the official Google LatLong Blog they’ve detailed what’s new, and who’s all being updated to enjoy this amazing feature. This is something we can all use in our daily life, and I’m so use to it it’s just second nature for me. Their live traffic features went live in 2008 but they haven’t issued many updates to the service. Today that has completely changed. Here’s a quick video:


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Now if you are headed to work, or traveling for a vacation Google Maps will now be able to help you with traffic alerts, status updates and more all in over 130 new cities across the United States. This same update also includes Colombia, the streets of Bogotá, San José, and arterial roads in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Users can now enjoy travel alerts, traffic updates, and even estimated time arrivals and travel times.
The U.S. aren’t the only lucky ones either. They’ve also either rolled out or expanded the same features to Brazil, Canada, China, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Russia, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom today as well. It looks like Apple chose the wrong time to bail on Google Maps. It now has even more features than ever and is getting better by the week. Remember to drive save, and keep those hands on the wheel!

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T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy Note and myTouch phones available today

T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy Note and myTouch phones available today

Today is a big day for the folks over at T-Mobile, as they’ve just launched a few brand new smartphones for the end of the summer. In case you haven’t been following along their version of the 5.3-inch Samsung Galaxy Noteis available starting today — although it isn’t cheap. They also have a pair of rather decent mid-range budget friendly phones too.


We are expecting Samsung to announce the new Galaxy Note 2 later this month at IFA 2012, but that isn’t stopping T-Mobile from launching the original. It’s been available for almost a year, but now those on T-Mobile can enjoy the 5.3-inch phablet and S-Pen stylus fun of the Galaxy Note. Don’t forget to check out our T-Mobile Note Review.
That isn’t all either. While the Note is a high end, expensive offering, T-Mobile also has the budget crowd covered today too. Starting today they’ll also be selling their latest version of the myTouch. This has been a budget product with T-Mobile for ages, but these new Huawei myTouch phones we’ve also reviewed, the myTouch and myTouch Q, both running Android 2.3 Gingerbread on a 4-inch screen can also be purchased today. They are the same price, only one has a keyboard for those heavy texters.

Available today right this minute is the Samsung Galaxy Note from T-Mobile for $249 after a $50 mail in rebate, or the myTouch and myTouch Q will run you $49 after the same $50 mail in rebate. The Galaxy Note might be late to the party but options are always a good thing, and T-Mobile knows that. Will you be picking one up today?

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Nikon Coolpix S800 set to be first Android smart camera

Nikon Coolpix S800 set to be first Android smart camera

Nikon is prepared to launch their first Android-powered smart camera according to recent leaks and rumors fromNikonrumors. This isn’t the first time we’ve heard rumors or ideas regarding an Android camera, but this could be the real deal. Reports are suggesting this will be the first of possibly many from Nikon.


Smartphones have pretty impressive cameras, so why do we need a smart camera? The first Android-powered camera from Nikon is set to be the Coolpix S800, and run on Android 2.3 Gingerbread. For now it will be a part of their mid-range point-and-shoot effort (no DSLR here) so the specs are quite average.
Like mentioned above, Android 2.3 Gingerbread is what we’re hearing but that hasn’t been confirmed. The camera will feature a 3.5-inch OLED display. Rumors also state Google Play will be supported, and that 3.5-inch screen can accommodate most Android apps. If I see people playing Angry Birds on their cameras, I might lose my mind.
Then the Coolpix S800 will reportedly come with a 25-250mm lens of unknown megapixels, along with built-in GPS and WiFi — just like all smartphones. I like the idea, but at the same time find this to be pointless and possibly just a fad. Earlier this year other manufacturers showed a similar interest, but we’ve not heard further reports on that. We could see Nikon make a formal announcement on or around August 22nd, so stay tuned.

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Motorola backtracks, no new phone coming Friday

Motorola backtracks, no new phone coming Friday

The little game Motorola started yesterday appears to be going south already. After announcing a mystery 4G LTE smartphone would be unveiled on Friday, they’ve now backtracked on that to clarify that it won’t be a “new” phone, but they will unveil something after all the clues are figured out. So those expecting to see a new device, sorry for the bad news.


Basically this isn’t about a new phone, instead it is about brand awareness. After having a nice little hidden square and asking everyone to “guess the smartphone,” we all figured it was a new device. Why would we guess on something we already know. Either way here’s what they had to say:

Let’s play a game, Guess the Smartphone. We’ll give a clue each day all week and make the big reveal on Friday. I have the power of 4G LTE. Which smartphone am I?

After all the leaks of Motorola’s upcoming DROID RAZR HD, everyone assumed (us included) that we’d be seeing that new smartphone. Today however Motorola has spoiled the fun and changed the tune. Either they’ve decided not to unveil a new smartphone, or they never were planning on it to begin with. Here is the hint from today:

I browse the Web, multitask and power through emails with my 1.5 GHz dual-core processor. And just a note, I’m in market in the U.S. from Motorola already.”

Yup, you guessed it. That would be the Motorola Atrix HD on AT&T — see our review. Motorola’s Atrix HD is a great smartphone on AT&T, especially for $99. Why they are running this little promotional guessing game this late after launch has us confused. Either way an update was in order. Sorry folks, we won’t be seeing the DROID RAZR HD on Friday. We’ll update when we know more on that device, because the Atrix HD is old news.

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Android climbs to 68.1% market share in Q2 2012

Android climbs to 68.1% market share in Q2 2012

The International Data Corporation has released its Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker results for Q2 2012, and things are looking great for the little green robot. IDC says that in all, 154 million smartphones were shipped in quarter 2 alone, and of those, 104.8 million were Android handsets. That gives Android a whopping 68.1% market share for quarter 2, and it appears that we have Samsung to thank for that.


That’s because 44% of all Android smartphones shipped in Q2 were manufactured by Samsung. True, that isn’t quite a majority percentage, but 44% is not a small portion by any means. In fact, that number is large enough for Samsung to be able to claim that it sold more smartphones than its seven biggest Android competitors combined. Obviously, the new Galaxy-branded devices introduced recently contributed greatly to this boost for Samsung, so don’t expect the company to lay off the Galaxy line anytime soon.
Android’s success is compared to the number of smartphones Apple managed to ship in quarter 2, which comes in at 26 million. That’s 16.9% market share for iOS, and even though Apple saw double-digit growth in the quarter, IDC points out that it isn’t managing to keep up with the overall market. This means that we may see Apple begin to slip before long, but it doesn’t have much to worry about at the moment – iOS and Android make up 85% of the smartphone market, and Apple’s numbers for the quarter were good enough to put it in a solid (if not distant) second place.
As is usually the case, Android’s growth in the quarter comes at the expense of BlackBerry and Symbian. Both were very popular mobile operating systems at one time, but in Q2, both slipped below 5% market share. Indeed, with BlackBerry sitting at 4.8% and Symbian sitting at 4.4%, things aren’t looking so good for either of them, and if Android keeps growing, they’re likely to lose even more market share.
So, Android is looking great and iOS is still pretty healthy, but everyone else is suffering at the end of quarter 2. Android is likely to keep on growing as time goes on and more and more people begin making the switch to smartphones, so keep it tuned here to Android Community for more news about the robot’s climb to the top!

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Google Now voice search heads to iPhone

Google Now voice search heads to iPhone

Google’s extremely impressive voice search feature, Google Now, that was revamped and released with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean is headed to iOS – wait what? Yup, you read that title right. Obviously the entire amazing feature set and “cards” of Google Now won’t be hitting the iPhone, but it comes close and is set to rival Siri on her own playing field.


Today over on the Google Blog they’ve announced that their voice search capabilities on iOS have been revamped to closer resemble those of which Android users now enjoy. Web voice search from Google on iOS has been available for some time, but not to this extend. Nor did it have the awesome speed and user interface of Google Now.
When Google showed off Google Now at Google IO it was rather amazing. The knowledge graph and vocal responses are great, but it won’t tell you a joke. Although I don’t really need it to. Here’s the official video released today from Google:


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To be clear this isn’t Google Now for iOS, this is a new and improved “enhanced voice search” for iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad. Simple things like “How’s the weather in San Fransisco,” or “will it rain today” all work like a charm on Android. While this isn’t available for iOS yet, Google states it is coming soon.
My two questions that I’m sure many of our Android readers also have is: Why would they offer that awesome and impressive feature on iOS too? The answer is very clear though. It doesn’t matter what OS, it’s all about Google Search — as that is their true bread and butter. My second question is when will this be available for all Android devices, not just Jelly Bean. If you want to see all the amazing things that Google Now can do, check out our impressive Google Now hands-on.

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