Little Big Tomatoes

On top of this, the company has also relaxed its own anti-moonlighting provisions for its employees. In common with many technology companies, most Microsoft employees are subject to terms in their contracts stating that any software they create on their own time is company property. The company recognizes that there are many developers within its ranks who would be interested in writing third-party applications for the phone if only their contracts permitted it—especially because every one of those employees will be given a Windows Phone 7 handset, a move sure to spur even greater interest in the platform. To address this, Microsoft employees will be allowed to retain ownership—and profit, if they choose to sell their applications—of any Windows Phone 7 software they write.

Wondering, how this will help the app situation for WP7. If I would be Steve Ballmer I would raise the appstore registration fee for employees.

via arstechnica.com

Popularity: 2% [?]

My favorite game for any mobile is Galcon. Galcon is now available on Android phones. Unfortunatelz I cannot buy it in Hungary. Screw you Google! anyway, here is the diary of porting the game to Android.

• Android Day 1: SDK, Eclipse IDE, and device activation
• Android Day 2: The NDK
• Android Day 3: Packaging, Assets, JNI, and OpenGL
• Android Day 4: Video cleanup, Input handling
• Android Day 5: Keyboard, Multiplayer / Networking
• Android Day 6: Save games, Audio, other Details
• Android Day 7: Leftovers
• Android Day 8: Bug fixin’
• Android Day 9: Taming the G1
• Android Day 10: Implementing License Server

The game is now also ported to Palm’s WebOS:

• Porting to Palm / WebOS

Popularity: 3% [?]

Just how much Jobs and Next can do for Apple probably cannot be fairly
judged for a year or two. Apple’s new operating system, based on Next
technology, is due in late 1997, but software products are chronically
late. For now, Apple seems intent on keeping Jobs focused on helping
Apple, and prevailed upon him to appear at its Macworld trade show on
Jan. 7. The $200 million he received for Next includes 1.5 million
Apple shares, which he cannot sell for at least a year. In the
meantime, much of Wall Street and Silicon Valley will be watching
closely, and without a trace of nostalgia. ”It’s very romantic going
back to your first love,” observes the industry analyst Esther Dyson,
”but it rarely works out.”

nytimes.com – Creating Jobs.

Popularity: 2% [?]

article from John Gruber on macworld.com

This is how the designers and engineers at Apple roll: They roll.

They take something small, simple, and painstakingly well considered. They ruthlessly cut features to derive the absolute minimum core product they can start with. They polish those features to a shiny intensity. At an anticipated media event, Apple reveals this core product as its Next Big Thing, and explains—no, wait, it simply shows—how painstakingly thoughtful and well designed this core product is. The company releases the product for sale.

Then everyone goes back to Cupertino and rolls. As in, they start with a few tightly packed snowballs and then roll them in more snow to pick up mass until they’ve got a snowman. That’s how Apple builds its platforms. It’s a slow and steady process of continuous iterative improvement—so slow, in fact, that the process is easy to overlook if you’re observing it in real time. Only in hindsight is it obvious just how remarkable Apple’s platform development process is.

This is how Apple rolls.

Popularity: 6% [?]

The web is a generally free place, but some sites and services want to make it annoying to navigate and enjoy. Stream any video you’d like, see the sites you need, and get at services you thought were down with these tips.

Tips to help you to watch streams, pages for us in the EU.

from Lifehacker.com

Popularity: 7% [?]

The Real Science Gap: It’s not insufficient schooling or a shortage of scientists. It’s a lack of job opportunities. Americans need the reasonable hope that spending their youth preparing to do science will provide a satisfactory career.

from The Real Science Gap

Popularity: 10% [?]

Voice search is both a convenient and often speedier way to access and find things on your smartphone.

Granted, a lot of voice recognition technology is still a bit rubbish – in the majority of cases it’s still an idea that’s developing.

However, the HTC Desire’s voice search is actually pretty good and for this reason, we’d strongly recommend that you give it a whirl.

So, to get voice search on your HTC Desire, follow these simple steps.

1. If you already have a file manager on your Desire, skip to step 3

2. If you do not already have a file manager, you must install one from the Android Market – we recommend ASTRO File Manager

3. Download VoiceSearch 2.1 by browsing to http://voicesearch.googlecode.com/files/VoiceSearch_2.1.apk in the Android Web browser

4. Browse to the location of the saved file using ASTRO File Manager, then tap on the file (file name: VoiceSearch_2.1.apk) and select Open App Manager

5. Once the file opens in App Manager, select Install

That’s it! You now have fully integrated voice search capabilities on your HTC Desire.

To utilize VoiceSearch, simply tap the search button from your home screen and then tap the new microphone icon that appears on the Quick Search Bar. The microphone icon should also be visible in the HTC search widget.

from askaboutgadgets.com.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Tips and tricks to extending the HTC EVO 4G and Incredible’s battery life (and what this says about Android)

• Get rid of the large HTC widgets like bookmarks and FriendStream
• Turn off widget animation
• Use a static background rather than a live background
• Turn off auto brightness, set screen backlight at 10%
• Decrease screen timeout from 1min to 15 seconds
• Keep WiFi, GPS, 4G off until it’s needed

I guess soon this will be a feature done by the manufacturer to have better battery figures, just as today’s Windows PCs are locked down security-wise.

Popularity: 9% [?]

This clever script will add your iPhone’s call logs to an iCal calendar of your choice, complete with a description and the caller’s name, if available. Able to be run and automated via a number of methods including the Terminal, an AppleScript, or even an Automator action, this script is a nice addition to the tool belts of business and power users who need various kinds of access to their call records.

iphonelogd project on google code.

via ArsTechnica.

Popularity: 6% [?]

I noticed that Apple has an HTML5 dev center showcasing the different possibilities of HTML5 for their mobile devices. When I tried to open one of the samples I received the following message

Launched Safari and tried to open the same page. The result is in the foreground.

It seems that Safari is not using CSS at all, just the HTML. I am not sure what the problem is here, but if anyone saw this before, please let me know the solutions.

Popularity: 7% [?]