Mark Lyndersay

Mark Lyndersay has taken time out of his very hectic schedule to answer a few questions for us here at TechTing.net. Mr. Lyndersay has been writing about technology on an almost constant basis since 1995 (I’ve been reading him since about that time), being published in the Trinidad Guardian and Trinidad Express newspapers. His musings, as well as much of his photographic work can be found at his website. Read on for a peak into the mind of Mark Lyndersay.

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RIM has announced that it’s BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet, to be released on April 19th, will have support for Android and BlackBerry Java apps in addition to it’s native BlackBerry Tablet OS apps. This will be available when RIM launches two “app players” that provide an application run-time environment for BlackBerry Java apps and Android v2.3 apps. The “app players” will run in a sandboxed environment on the PlayBook. App developers will be able to publish their apps in the BlackBerry App World they  will also need to “repackage, code sign and submit their BlackBerry Java and Android apps to BlackBerry App World.” The app players themselves will also be available for download from App World.

RIM also announced that the Native C/C++ will be added to the PlayBook SDK allowing developers to take advantage of the platform hardware themselves.

With potential access to 200,000 Android apps, does this new addition to the PlayBook feature set make it more attractive to you?

Relevant Links:

• RIM Press Release announcing Andorid and BlackBerry Java Support

Amazon has launched it’s own application marketplace for the Android platform. This will compete directly with Google’s Android Market. The appstore has been launched with exclusive access to Angry Birds Rio, which will be available free of charge for a limited time. In addition, Amazon will feature a new paid app available for free every 24 hours. This sounds like a pretty good way to encourage users to try the store out.

In order to use the Amazon appstore, users will need to download it to their mobile device. To do so, you can visit the appstore’s website and enter an email address or phone number to which you will be sent a download link. Alternatively, you can find direct download links if you search hard enough. As the appstore is not available in Android Market, users will be not be able install it unless they allow the installation of non-Market application by selecting the “Unknown sources” option in the device’s application settings. Amazon makes light of this requirement, which will likely scare some users, in an introductory video by saying, “Remember, it’s just Amazon”. Not sleazy-like at all…

Amazon Likes Geography

Currently, the appstore is only working in the Unites States, but they will eventually roll it out to more countries. In countries which are unsupported (TT included), users are unable to even download free apps. This is in contrast to the native Market which provides access to free apps, provided that you meet the geographical requirements set by the app developer. Utilizing HotSpot Shield to “pretend” that we were in the US proved to be an exercise in futility, so don’t even bother.

Relevant Links:

• Amazon appstore
• Amazon appstore introductory video

Yes yes, I know… More browser news.  Google Chrome 11 has just hit beta and with it comes a number of additional features. Chief among these is support for HTML5 Speech Input API. Support for the API allows web developers to trivially add support for voice input and commands; apps using the API will be able to transcribe speech to text. If you’ve used Google Voice Search on a mobile phone, you know what we’re talking about. With native support in the browser, this will all be accomplished without the need for plugins like Flash. Applause.

The other major new feature is new support for hardware (GPU) accelerated 3D CSS which could open up a new outlet of creativity for web designers. On the other hand, there is almost certainly going to be some abuse of this, but we’ll just not click “Like”.

Lastly, with the new beta comes the official reveal of Chrome’s new logo. What was a heavily stylized Ask Simon looking thing is now, well, flat. Google states that the design development process was a iterative and a group effort. In other words, design by committee, and it shows.Simple is what they wanted and simple is what they got.

If you’d like to try out the Chrome beta, you’ll need to switch to Chrome’s beta channel. Head on over there and try it out.

Relevant Links:

• Google Chrome Blog
• Google Chrome  (BETA) download
• HTML5 Speech Input Demo

Samsung is offering proof positive the competition is indeed a GOOD thing with the formal announcement of their new Android 3.0 Honeycomb based tablets. Initially unveiled on Feb 13th 2011, the Tab 10.1 featured a thickness of 10.9mm. However, Apple’s iPad 2 put the first, unreleased, iteration of the Tab 10.1 to shame and Samsung has responded with a redesign which brings the thickness down to an iPad 2 beating 8.6mm. The Tab 8.9 shares the 8.6mm specification. In addition to the thinness of the devices, there’s also the matter of weight. The Tab 10.1 comes in at 595g and the Tab 8.9 at 470g, figures which compare quite well to Apple’s 601g weight (in WiFi only configuration).

In case you couldn’t figure it out, the Tab 10.1 and 8.9 sport 10.1″ and 8.9″ LCD displays, respectively. The tablets will be powered by 1GHz dual core processors, which will likely be a mix of NVIDIA Tegra 2 and Samsung Exynos SoCs.

Pricing for the devices has been set for WiFi-only configurations so far :

• Tab 10.1 16 GB – US$499
• Tab 10.1 32 GB – US$599
• Tab 8.9 16 GB – US$469
• Tab 8.9 32 GB – US$569

Without a doubt, the iPad 2 has forced tablet makers to rethink their positions and I suspect that we will be hearing something soon from first out-the-gate Motorola and their Xoom tablet’s positioning and pricing.

Images and details of the previous Tab 10.1 can be found here.

More pictures and detail specs after the jump… (more…)

Firefox 4, after an incredibly long gestation period, has been released to the public. We’ve covered the major new features before, but here’s a recap:

• Thoroughly redesigned user interface and presentation. Firefox 4 takes a few pages from the Chrome playbook (and others) by streamlining the user interface and menus.
• Firefox Sync to allow you to access your Firefox history, bookmarks, tabs and passwords across your devices.
• Significantly improved JavaScript performance.
• HTML5 and CSS3 support.
• Hardware (GPU) acceleration.

Benchmarks and user impressions after the jump…  (more…)