Over the past six months, the folks at OpenSignalMaps have been keeping tabs on the devices that have been downloading their network monitoring app, and so far they’ve recorded downloads onto 681,900 separate Android devices in 195 countries. Now they’ve taken all that data and splayed it out for all to see, and it highlights rather nicely how big a headache fragmentation can be for developers.

For the most part, the results are as you’d expect — runaway hits like Samsung’s Galaxy S II was the most represented device among the 3,997 distinct models they spotted, and Samsung Android devices were far and away the most widely used. What really gets me is how many other devices and brands fill up the rest of that list. Seriously, if you haven’t yet, go look at it. Mouse-over some of the smaller blocks, see if there are any brands or devices that ring a bell.

It’s pretty crazy to see just how many players are in the field, and nothing against OpenSignalMaps — their app is actually pretty damned useful — but it’s not an immediate must-download for every user.

That there are gobs of Android devices floating around out there isn’t exactly a shocker, but data like this really drives home the issue. With so many devices running so many versions of Android with who knows many carrier- and manufacturer-mandated tweaks onboard, how is a developer supposed to make sure that all of their users gets a consistent experience? They can’t, unless they’re willing to test like crazy.

Google chairman Eric Schmidt famously downplayed the term “fragmentation” at this year’s CES, suggesting instead that people call it “differentiation.” It’s hard not to agree with sentiment on some level — after all, one of Android’s key strengths is how easily it fits into different niches and price points. But according to him, as long as every Android user is able to use the same apps, there’s no problem here.

That strikes me as a rather shortsighted way of looking at it. Downloading and installing apps is one thing, but what I think really counts — the user experience — can still vary from hardware configuration to hardware configuration. Not a day goes by without new Android hardware (or rumors of new Android hardware) making the rounds — hell, just an hour or so ago, the Wall Street Journal reported that Google will soon be filling out the new Devices section in the Google Play Store with new, unlocked “Nexus” hardware thanks to cooperation from up to five hardware manufacturers.

That’s why developers like Animoca have invested what I can only imagine is a sizable amount of money and effort testing their apps with something like 400 Android devices before pushing them out into the world. And of course, fragmentation isn’t just a hardware issue — the OSM post points out that the two most used versions of Android now only account for 75% of the devices they surveyed, down from 90% last year, yet another issue for developers to grapple with.

Does every developer need to go through a process that outlandish? Certainly not — OpenSignalMaps seems to test on a tiny fraction of that, and smaller developers can cover most of their bases with a handful of carefully chosen devices. At the end of the day though, despite the sheer amount of choice and flexibility that Android has provided users, those developers still have a choice to make — do they want to strive for perfection, or do they want to keep their sanity?

A gennaio Google aveva diffuso un teaser video che annunciava l’uscita, programmata per febbraio, di un gioco in webGL basato su Google Maps e destinato ad essere rilasciato in esclusiva su Google+. A febbraio, però, non successe nulla. Ora, dopo quasi tre mesi di silenzio, Google ha ufficialmente lanciato Cube, disponibile gratuitamente a questo indirizzo.

Otto diversi livelli ambientati tra Tokyo, New York e Parigi, otto sfide da completare nel minor tempo possibile che hanno per protagonista il cursore blu che ormai tutti conosciamo: lo scopo è quello di raggiungere alcuni punti di determinate città del Mondo e allo stesso tempo scoprire le caratteristiche principali di Google Maps, dal traffico in tempo reale ai punti di interesse che indicano monumenti e stazioni della metropolitana, fino alle mappe che permettono di muoversi all’interno degli edifici.

Cube, divertente passatempo che vi porterà via non più di 10 minuti, è disponibile all’indirizzo www.playmapscube.com. Fateci sapere in quanto tempo riuscite a completarlo.

Via | Engadget

Cube: finalmente disponibile il gioco basato su Google Maps é stato pubblicato su Downloadblog.it alle 17:30 di sabato 28 aprile 2012.

Wappwolf and ifttt are a bit like the chocolate and peanut butter in Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Separate, they’re pretty good. Together, though, is when the magic happens.

For folks new to the services, Wappwolf is an application that performs actions when you drop a file into your Dropbox. ifttt, on the other hand, can interact with websites and services and then do things like send an email or save a file in Dropbox.

Let’s take a look at a several ways to combine the services for maximum effect:

For example, Wappwolf can watch Dropbox and convert files to Kindle format and then send them to your Kindle. You could use this to save company documents for later reading on your ebook.

ifttt might watch Instagram or Flickr for photos, and save them to your Dropbox when they appear. You could use that to make sure you never miss a polar bear picture again.

Separately, they’re pretty handy. Together, you can do some really interesting things.

(If you haven’t tried Wappwolf or ifttt before, don’t worry. They’re dead easy to use. See the How to use Wappwolf Automator page, and/or the About ifttt page.)

1. Send a Text Message When Files Are Saved to Dropbox

Say you share a Dropbox folder with co-workers, and you want to be notified when there’s a new file in the shared folder. ifttt only has triggers for new files in the public folder for Dropbox, while Wappwolf can take action based on pretty much any folder you give it access to.

Start with Wappwolf and create an action for the appropriate folder. Choose the “email it” action and set up an email to go to trigger@ifttt.com (be sure to set up your email address with ifttt). Set the Subject to #Dropbox Notify, and the body to the filename (or whatever you like). You can add whatever you like to the body, but you probably want to uncheck the “Add file as attachment” box.

Next, go to ifttt and choose the Email channel. Choose “Send ifttt an email tagged and use #Dropbox as the tag. Create the trigger and then go choose your action channel, in this case SMS. Choose “Send me a text message,” and complete the task. Now when a file is saved in the Dropbox folder, you should get a text message.

Don’t care for text messages? You could also use ifttt to send Boxcar notifications if you prefer that app to texts.

2. From Google Reader to Kindle

iPads are great for reading, especially with the Reeder app. But for reading longer text, nothing beats the Kindle. What we’ll do here is save an article from Google Reader to a PDF, then convert that and send it to your Kindle. This one should be very easy, because ifttt already has a recipe for it, so you’re halfway there. Just visit the recipe and create the task.

Next, head over to Wappwolf and pick the folder you specified, then tell Wappwolf to “Send it to your Kindle.” Add the action, save, and you’re ready to go.

3. Copy Files from ifttt to FTP Servers, Box or SkyDrive

ifttt supports saving files to Dropbox, but it doesn’t support the breadth of services that Wappwolf does. If you want to copy files over to Microsoft SkyDrive, Box, or upload them to an FTP server, you’ll need to combine ifttt and Wappwolf.

Create any action in ifttt that saves a file to Dropbox in ifttt, then select the folder you’re saving to in Dropbox to create the Wappwolf action for saving to the appropriate service.

Of course, you’re not limited merely to uploading files from one service to the other. Wappwolf lets you combine actions, so you can save a file to Dropbox, use Wappwolf actions on the file, and then upload it to its destination.

4. Process Files via Email

Wappwolf works on files only when they’re saved to Dropbox. Usually that’s not a problem, since Dropbox clients are available on just about every popular platform. But what if you want to use Wappwolf with files coming in via email? No problem. You can use ifttt to save to a Dropbox folder, then create the appropriate Wappwolf action.

This might be useful if you want, for instance, to email yourself a file using a chron job on a server. Just attach the file to the email, mail it to ifttt and have it saved to Dropbox, then use Wappwolf to perform whatever actions you like.

Patience Is a Virtue

Note that some patience is required in setting up tasks with Wappwolf and ifttt. It can take a few minutes for each service to perform its tasks. For example, the chain required to save a file to PDF via Google Reader and ifttt, then convert and send to Kindle, then for Amazon to ready it for the Kindle took about five to seven minutes. That’s not a long time, but it’s slower than some folks might be used to with most modern Web services.

Have any cool tips that you want to share with the rest of the ReadWriteWeb audience? We’d love to hear about any cool hacks that use ifttt and/or Wappwolf. Share and enjoy!

One publisher does not a trend make, but Macmillan imprint and science-fiction house Tor/Forge’s decision to abandon DRM this July may be a sign of things to come. Tor/Forge is dropping DRM because its customers, and authors, have been asking for DRM-free titles. The game isn't won yet, but it's a safe bet that Tor/Forge won't be the first to abandon Digital Rights Management for e-books and other publications. 

The Department of Justice’s suit against Apple, et al, over e-books has restarted the discussion about the usefulness of DRM versus its unintended consequences. Specifically, by embracing DRM, e-book publishers have unwittingly helped provide Amazon with far more power over the nascent e-book market than is healthy for anyone (except Amazon). Since Amazon's DRM works only with Kindle readers, all of the DRM-encumbered e-books purchased through Amazon effectively lock readers into the Kindle platform.

Tor/Forge is primarily a publisher of science fiction and fantasy titles. Because it serves a slightly geekier and DRM-averse audience than many other publishers, it makes sense for Tor/Forge to be one of the first anti-DRM publishers out of the gate. As the company noted in its blog, “[DRM] prevents [readers] from using legitimately-purchased ebooks in perfectly legal ways, like moving them from one kind of e-reader to another.”

Note that Tor/Forge isn’t the first publisher to go DRM-less. Tech publisher O’Reilly has been selling its e-books DRM-free for years. Carina Press (a digital imprint from Harlequin) doesn’t use DRM either.

But Tor/Forge is one of the first, if not the first, to have embraced DRM and thought better of it later. And it’s part of the Big Six book publishers.

The decision is coming from way up top the publishing chain. Tor/Forge is under the Macmillan umbrella, and as Charlie Stross writes in his thoughts on the move, "the final decision to drop DRM on ebooks from Tor/Forge was taken by John Sargent, CEO of Macmillan, who ultimately has to account for his actions to the shareholders."

What About Infringement?

Going DRM-free can help solve the problem of lock-in to a single provider, but what about infringement? DRM’s effect on piracy may be a red herring. As publishers already know, DRM isn’t really that effective at stopping e-books from showing up on torrent networks, etc. The DRM on e-books can be cracked, easily. It’s a pain in the posterior for consumers, but less than a speed bump for someone intent on distributing e-books.

John Scalzi, an author who has a number of books published by Tor, will see his Redshirts e-book go DRM-free from day one. Scalzi says that he’s not concerned, and that Tor has been busy fighting online misappropriation for some time:

As an author, I haven’t seen any particular advantage to DRM-laden eBooks; DRM hasn’t stopped my books from being out there on the dark side of the Internet. Meanwhile, the people who do spend money to support me and my writing have been penalized for playing by the rules. The books of mine they have bought have been chained to a single eReader, which means if that eReader becomes obsolete or the retailer goes under (or otherwise arbitrarily changes their user agreement), my readers risk losing the works of mine they’ve bought. I don’t like that. So the idea that my readers will, after July, “buy once, keep anywhere,” makes me happy. I had been planning to ask Tor whether or not it would be feasible to offer my e-books without DRM; now I won’t have to have that conversation.

Salvation for Independent Bookstores?

E-books have also been less than a blessing for independent bookstores. Here in St. Louis, the indie stores have formed an alliance to try to bolster sales in the face of the e-book trend and competition from Amazon. But the writing is on the wall – customers want e-books more, and real books less. That’s a problem for indies right now.

If publishers abandon DRM, though, e-books might actually benefit independent bookstores. Stross writes, “Right now, there is a window of opportunity for smaller resellers: Amazon’s inclusion of masses of self-published material in the Kindle store has made it impossible for heavy consumers to browse it effectively. Smaller bookstores may be able to gain a strategic edge by curating their content, providing quality control on reviews, and other tactics we can’t predict at this time.”

That's not a sure thing – as Stross admits – but it gives indies at least some shot at fighting against the Big Three (Apple, Amazon and Barnes & Noble) than they have now.

The Big Question

The big question is whether Apple and Barnes & Noble are going to embrace DRM-free e-books. Amazon already allows publishers to go DRM-free if they wish.

Offering e-books in DRM-free formats may be a selling point, just as dropping DRM from digital audio was a few years ago. It took Apple quite awhile to get on board, but it did eventually.

It's early, but the tea leaves seem to indicate that more and more e-book publishers are souring on DRM. It may take time for DRM to disappear, but it's got very little to recommend it. Let me know if you think e-book DRM has a future.

Social reading site Findings.com won't disclose its number of users or rate of growth – but after just six months of going live, the site is bustling with far more snippets – or marginalia, as co-founder John Borthwick calls it. A recent redesign of the site focuses more heavily on the visual frontend, showcasing a user's library of titles and the opportunity to "refound" marginalia, which is just like a re-blog or a re-tweet. The more visually oriented frontend is both a pleasure to click through and peruse. The entire site is focused on books, and one can almost feel the thick text through the glass screen. Findings.com is marginalia, exposed. The future of reading is here.

Much like Twitter or Tumblr, users on Findings.com can discover others who are reading similar books, and go right ahead and follow them. 

As with any site that focuses on blurbs, however, there is a fear that the experience of reading is becoming less about actual comprehension and more about finding super-sharable text. Findings.com takes that problem into account.

"The vision of what we want to create with Findings.com is social reading, and we feel that it's just at the beginning of its existence," Borthwick says. "The experience of reading is changing, and the book as an object is fragmented into its component parts. It is shared and then reorganized with a  different context – some of that is just about people surfing in and seeing a clip from a book, or wanting to identify themselves with it."

The identity piece is not a very meaningful interaction – but it could lead to a sort of following of the author. Of wanting to take a walk down the pathway of the author's mindscape. 

“This very lightweight aspect of taking a quote and resharing it is only a piece of the puzzle,” Borthwick says. “If that’s all that social reading is about, then the social creation of books is the social reading of books.”

Borthwick perused the site as we chatted, and found that nearly 70% of the marginalia – the bits of text clipped next to the book – came from e-books, and 30% came from articles around the Web.

The clips that come from an iPad are just seen as Web clips; any clips from Amazon Kindle clearly state "from Amazon Kindle." This is interesting, especially when one considers the fact that marginalia – those fascinating blurbs that seem to sum up an idea or concept in one fell swoop – can come from a longform essay, an e-book or anywhere around the Web. 

“We want people to explain why the marginalia they find is interesting,” says John Borthwick, co-founder of BetaWorks, which owns Findings.com. “We want more curation around so that people can really make it something that’s more personal.”

Lead image via Shutterstock.com.

A piece of current work-in-progress, I’m happy to showcase what I came up with. This is a textured panel and buttons to like and tag the picture.

Thinking about commenting button to place somewhere in there.

Oh yes, and magnified view for texture observation! :)

La Release Candidate di Windows 8 sta oramai prendendo forma e in Rete continuano a moltiplicarsi i rumor su questa versione, quasi definitiva, del prossimo sistema operativo Microsoft. Le ultime voci riguardano la denominazione dell’OS.

Come noto, Microsoft ha deciso di mettere da parte la classica nomenclatura informatica (Alpha, Beta, ecc.) e di sostituirla con degli appellativi personalizzati che nel caso di Windows 8 Developer Preview e Windows 8 Consumer Preview hanno reso più chiara l’utenza di destinazione delle varie build del sistema. La tradizione continuerà anche con la RC e, secondo il sito WinUnleaked che negli ultimi mesi si è dimostrato molto bene informato sui lavori del big di Redmond, il nome di questa versione darà Windows 8 Release Preview.

(…)
Continua a leggere Windows 8 RC si chiamerà Release Preview?, su Geekissimo

Windows 8 RC si chiamerà Release Preview?, pubblicato su Geekissimo il 11/04/2012

© naqern per Geekissimo, 2012. | Permalink | 7 commenti | Aggiungi su del.icio.us
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Post tags: Windows 8 Release Preview

Il Commodore 64, altrimenti noto anche come C64 e Cbm64, è, senza alcun dubbio, “il computer” per eccellenza, quello più venduto e conosciuto al mondo, macchina alla quale si deve anche lo stesso successo della Commodore Business Machines.

Accanto al nome del Commodore 64 ed accanto a quello della sua azienda produttrice appare però opportuno affiancare quello di Jack Tramiel, storico protagonista dell’industria tecnologica, inventore del computer passato alla storia ed artefice di numerosi altri successi nel campo dell’IT, che, purtroppo, si è spento questa domenica, l’8 aprile, all’età di 83 anni.

La storia della vita di Jack Tramiel è stata motlo avventurosa e ricca di avvenimenti di vario genere.

(…)
Continua a leggere Addio Jack Tramiel, l’inventore del Commodore 64, su Geekissimo

Addio Jack Tramiel, l’inventore del Commodore 64, pubblicato su Geekissimo il 11/04/2012

© @Bugeisha (Martina Oliva) per Geekissimo, 2012. | Permalink | 3 commenti | Aggiungi su del.icio.us
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Post tags: atari, commodore, commodore 64, informatica, Jack Tramiel, morte

Suppose you’re creating a super-sweet JavaScript library to improve text presentation—like, say, TypeButter—and you need to insert a bunch of elements that won’t accidentally pick up pre-existing CSS. That rules span right out the door, and anything else would be either a bad semantic match, likely to pick up CSS by mistake, or both.

Assuming you don’t want to spend the hours and lines of code necessary to push ahead with span and a whole lot of dynamic CSS rewriting, the obvious solution is to invent a new element and drop that into place. If you’re doing kerning, then a kern element makes a lot of sense, right? Right. And you can certainly do that in browsers today, as well as years back. Stuff in a new element, hit it up with some CSS, and you’re done.

Now, how does this fit with the HTML5 specification? Not at all well. HTML5 does not allow you to invent new elements and stuff them into your document willy-nilly. You can’t even do it with a prefix like x-kern, because hyphens aren’t valid characters for element names (unless I read the rules incorrectly, which is always possible).

No, here’s what you do instead:

1. Wrap your document, or at least the portion of it where you plan to use your custom markup, in an element element. That’s not a typo.
2. To your element element, add an extends attribute whose value is the HTML5 element you plan to extend. We’ll use span, but you can extend any element.
3. Now add a name attribute that names your custom “element” name, like x-kern.
4. Okay, you’re ready! Now anywhere you want to add a customized element, drop in the elements named by extends and then supply the name via an is attribute.

Did you follow all that? No? Okay, maybe this will make it a bit less unclear.

<element extends="span" name="x-kern">
<h1>
<span is="x-kern" style="…">A</span>
<span is="x-kern" style="…">u</span>
<span is="x-kern" style="…">t</span>
<span is="x-kern" style="…">u</span>
mn
</h1>
<p>...</p>
<p>...</p>
<p>...</p>
</element>

(Based on markup taken from the TypeButter demo page. I simplified the inline style attributes that TypeButter generates for purposes of clarity.)

So that’s how you create “custom elements” in HTML5 as of now. Which is to say, you don’t. All you’re doing is attaching a label to an existing element; you’re sort of customizing an existing element, not creating a customized element. That’s not going to help prevent CSS from being mistakenly applied to those elements.

Personally, I find this a really, really, really clumsy approach—so clumsy that I don’t think I could recommend its use. Given that browsers will accept, render, and style arbitrary elements, I’d pretty much say to just go ahead and do it. Do try to name your elements so they won’t run into problems later, such as prefixing them with an “x” or your username or something, but since browsers support it, may as well capitalize on their capabilities.

I’m not in the habit of saying that sort of thing lightly, either. While I’m not the wild-eyed standards-or-be-damned radical some people think I am, I have always striven to play within the rules when possible. Yes, there are always situations where you work counter to general best practices or even the rules, but I rarely do so lightly. As an example, my co-founders and I went to some effort to play nice when we created the principles for Microformats, segregating our semantics into attribute values—but only because Tantek, Matt, and I cared a lot about long-term stability and validation. We went as far as necessary to play nice, and not one millimeter further, and all the while we wished mightily for the ability to create custom attributes and elements.

Most people aren’t going to exert that much effort: they’re going to see that something works and never stop to question if what they’re doing is valid or has long-term stability. “If the browser let me do it, it must be okay” is the background assumption that runs through our profession, and why wouldn’t it? It’s an entirely understandable assumption to make.

We need something better. My personal preference would be to expand the “foreign elements” definition to encompass any unrecognized element, and let the parser deal with any structural problems like lack of well-formedness. Perhaps also expand the rules about element names to permit hyphens, so that we could do things like x-kern or emeyer-disambiguate or whatever. I could even see my way clear to defining an way to let an author list their customized elements. Say, something like <meta name="custom-elements" content="kern lead follow embiggen shrink"/>. I just made that up off the top of my head, so feel free to ignore the syntax if it’s too limiting. The general concept is what’s important.

The creation of customized elements isn’t a common use case, but it’s an incredibly valuable ability, and people are going to do it. They’re already doing it, in fact. It’s important to figure out how to make the process of doing so simpler and more elegant.