Software developers can breathe a massive sigh of relief — a jury found today that Google’s implementation of 37 Java APIs in Android qualified as fair use. However, Oracle attorneys have already indicated that they will appeal the decision. “Today’s verdict that Android makes fair use of Java APIs represents a win for the Android ecosystem, […]
News delivery startup Blendle, which is applying a marketplace model to journalism offering pay-per-article reads from a range of different publishers, has launched iOS and Android apps in the US, expanding how US users get to consume their chosen content. While it started with a website it already had apps in Europe but says the US app is a […]
Alibaba has advanced its reach on mobile after it acquired one of China’s most prominent Android app stores, Wandoujia, in an undisclosed acquisition. The deal was announced in Chinese only, and media in the country pegged it at around $200 million. (Alibaba declined to comment on that price when we asked.) That’s a significant amount, for sure, but […]
Now on Tap was one of the marquee features of Android Marshmallow when Google first announced this update to its mobile operating system last year (which is now already being eclipsed by the next version: Android Nougat). It allows you to quickly find more relevant information and context about what’s currently on your phone’s or tablet’s […]
Cracking encryption is a topic of perpetual fascination. Congress has made several efforts to legislate it. The FBI tried to force Apple to do it. New messaging apps constantly debut with claims about strong encryption, and controversy bubbles when they neglect it. So when a researcher discovered a flaw in Android’s full disk encryption scheme last […]
Dell will no longer sell or upgrade its Android tablet line and will instead focus on Windows devices. The news broke last week but I suspect the holiday – and the collective yawn that was the Dell Venue line – put a damper on its spread. The company will instead focus on 2-in-1 Windows machines, […]
Silent Circle, the maker of encrypted messaging apps and a security hardened Android smartphone, called Blackphone, has discontinued its warrant canary. Attempting to reach the page where it was previously hosted results in the following notification: Warrant canaries became popular in the wake of the 2013 Snowden disclosures revealing the extent of government surveillance programs, as a […]
If you didn’t already know the jury’s decision in Oracle’s long-running lawsuit against Google, you wouldn’t have been able to guess it from looking at either company’s legal team yesterday. Moments after the verdict was read, both sets of high-powered intellectual property lawyers huddled up and spoke softly, without any outward signs that Oracle had […]
Hi! That new macOS X Sierra thing is almost out! There are so many new cool features. You can talk to your computer in humanish language. You can pay for stuff with your iPhone because if you have a Mac and an Android phone what are you doing with your life? There’s a thing that your […]
Another brick in the wall for the mobile ad-blocking wars: Yandex has opened up its Android browser to third-party ad blocking extensions. The browser already had Yandex’s own ad-blocking tech built in but the Russian tech giant is now releasing an API for developers of content filtering software to further expand the capabilities for browser users to […]