Google's Andy Rubin tells Android critics to chill

Android pioneer Andy Rubin has a message for developers carping about Android fragmentation: Calm down.

Posting on Google's Android Developers blog, Rubin said that Android owed much of its success to the fact that it could be modified by device manufacturers and thus isn't a "one size fits all" platform along the lines of Apple's iPhone operating system.

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ANALYSIS: Android 3.0: Five key features

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Android pioneer Andy Rubin has a message for developers carping about Android fragmentation: Calm down.

Posting on Google's Android Developers blog, Rubin said that Android owed much of its success to the fact that it could be modified by device manufacturers and thus isn't a "one size fits all" platform along the lines of Apple's iPhone operating system.

ANALYSIS: Android 3.0: Five key features

"What amazes me is that the even though the quantity and breadth of Android products being built has grown tremendously, it's clear that quality and consistency continue to be top priorities," wrote Rubin, the former Android CEO who became Google's vice president of engineering when the company purchased Android in 2005. "Miraculously, we are seeing the platform take on new use cases, features and form factors as it's being introduced in new categories and regions while still remaining consistent and compatible for third-party applications."

Fragmentation of the Android platform has become an increasingly important issue for developers in recent months as Google has released multiple versions of the platform that get pushed out to different devices at different times. A recent survey conducted by the Baird wealth management firm found developers are having difficulty with this since they don't know if their apps will work optimally on different Android versions that are even further modified by manufacturers. For example, a developer who created an application designed to utilize Near-Field Communications (NFC) would not be able to run it on Android devices that have not been equipped with the Android 2.3 ("Gingerbread") platform released late last year.

Rubin's remarks on Android fragmentation came just a week after Business Week ran an article saying that Google had started to crack down on mobile carriers and device manufacturers that were modifying Android in ways that Google disliked. According to the article, which relied on interviews with "about a dozen executives working at key companies in the Android ecosystem," Google told companies they would now have to approve changes made to the platform directly with Google if they wanted to get "early access to Google's most up-to-date software."

Fragmentation issues aren't the only complaint about Google's recent Android actions, as some developers have also expressed frustration that Google has yet to release the source code for the new Android 3.0 ("Honeycomb") version of the platform that has been designed specifically for tablet computers. Rubin assured developers that Google planned to release the source code in the near future and emphasized that delays in opening up Honeycomb to the public were not due to a change in the company's attitude toward open-source platforms.

"The Android team is still hard at work to bring all the new Honeycomb features to phones," Rubin wrote. "As soon as this work is completed, we'll publish the code. This temporary delay does not represent a change in strategy. We remain firmly committed to providing Android as an open source platform across many device types."

Honeycomb got its first public showing in February when it debuted on Motorola's Xoom tablet. Initial reviews of the operating system expressed disappointment at the lack of tablet-specific Android applications available on the market.

Report: Apple Sold 2.6 Million iPad 2s in March

Apple sold up to 2.6 million iPad 2s in its first month, according to upstream touch panel suppliers quoted by Taiwanese newspaper DigiTimes.

The report suggests Apple could have sold more if it had not been constrained by the supply of cover lenses for touch-panel modules.

The same unnamed sources gave Digitimes a "conservative" estimate of about 4.3 million iPad 2s sold per month for the rest of the year if suppliers can keep up.

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And then, interestingly, the report goes on to say: "Taiwan-based TPK Touch Solutions and G-Tech Optoelectronics are eagerly expanding their capacities for cover lenses currently." Other Taiwanese suppliers, like HannStar Display, Chunghwa Picture Tubes (CPT), and Wintek, are also reportedly planning to increase cover lens output.

According to iSuppli, supplies of the iPad 2's touch-screen overlay glass is one of five critical components that may have been affected by the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake. ISuppli speculates the overlay is currently supplied by Asahi Glass.

Apple hasn't released official figures on iPad 2 sales, but is expected to do so during its Q2 earnings call scheduled for April 20. In a pre-earthquake report, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster predicted that Apple will reach sales of 1 million iPad 2s before the 28 days it took the first-generation iPad. During its first sales weekend, the wait time for an iPad 2 went up to five weeks. The tablet also reportedly sold out within a day of its overseas launch.

7 hard-to-find add-ons for Internet Explorer 9

These handy add-ons do everything from automatic spell-checking to easy image cropping and resizing

Hard-to-find IE9 enhancers
Microsoft's just released IE9 offers many improvements, particularly in the area of security. On the other hand, none of the new features blew us away. One unfortunate thing about Internet Explorer is that it has never had the robust community of developers that you find with Firefox or Chrome. Nevertheless, we searched far and wide and did find seven useful add-ons for IE9.

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Xmarks
This is the first add-on we'd suggest plugging into IE9, if you haven't already been using it. Xmarks keeps your list of bookmarks (or, as Microsoft prefers to call them: "favorites") automatically synchronized across the Web browsers you use on other computers -- and this service is cross-compatible. Xmarks also has versions for Firefox and Chrome, which means it can download and update your bookmarks on any of these three browsers, keeping the list among them identical.

Xmarks requires that you sign up for a user account, but the basic version of the service is free.

Speckie
Speckie provides a feature that Microsoft's developers failed to put into IE9, which has been in Chrome for a long while now and which users have come to find very helpful when composing their Webmails, reader comment rants, and Facebook status updates: an automatic spell-checker, which flags your writing for possible mistakes as you type. You can look up the spelling of a word by right-clicking on it to search for it on Wikipedia or Merriam Webster, and change the spell-check dictionary to another language within this right-click context menu, too.

ZoomInto
ZoomInto enables you to zoom in on almost any image on a Web page. This add-on can be handy if you want to download a large picture displayed on a page but want to crop it first. When you mouse-over an image, a magnifying glass icon appears on the upper-left of it. Click this icon (or you can also right-click on the image in question, and choose ZoomInto from the context menu) and a new smaller browser window pops open showing you the image and tools to crop it or magnify it. You can save the altered image to your local hard drive, or print or email it to someone.

Mouse Gestures
This add-on gives IE9 a mouse-gesture user interface, which lets you use the mouse (or touchpad) to "draw" shapes or perform other motions with it to control functions of the Web browser. For example, you activate mouse-gesture control (by clicking on the right mouse button) and move the mouse in a circular motion to make the Web browser load up your designated start page. Mouse Gestures comes with a default set of pre-programmed gestures that control various aspects of IE9, and you can customize these or program your own.

WOT
WOT (for Web of Trust) is a service where a community of users rate Web sites, and the ratings (separated into the categories "trustworthiness," "vendor reliability," "privacy," and "child safety") for the current site you are visiting are readily accessed by clicking the WOT icon. The WOT add-on will also alert you if you click a link to a site that a majority of the community has deemed as possibly unsafe, yet still letting you pass through to it if you are willing to take the chance.

Enterra Download Manager
IE9's download manager is much better than IE8's, but you can still install a better one. There are several alternative download managers for IE, but we have come to like Enterra's. Its download status window is set along the bottom of the IE browser page, listing the URL from where a file is downloading, its file name, size, download progress, elapsed time, time remaining, download speed -- in other words, all the stats to keep those of us who love to watch such details (and all of them neatly laid out) while we wait for our downloads to complete. Enterra Download Manager also lets you download from FTP servers.

Advanced IE History Bar
This really handy add-on gives you a side panel set to the left side of the IE 9 browser window which lists the history of sites you've visited. You can sort the list by URL, title, date visited and number of times you've viewed the link. There's also a search box to help you find that specific link to the page you regret not having bookmarked.

8 radical ways to cut data center power costs I

Today's data center managers are struggling to juggle the business demands of a more competitive marketplace with budget limitations imposed by a soft economy. They seek ways to reduce opex (operating expenses), and one of the fastest growing -- and often biggest -- data center operation expenses is power, consumed largely by servers and coolers.

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Alas, some of the most effective energy-saving techniques require considerable upfront investment, with paybacks measured in years. But some oft-overlooked techniques cost next to nothing -- they're bypassed because they seem impractical or too radical. The eight power savings approaches here have all been tried and tested in actual data center environments, with demonstrated effectiveness. Some you can put to work immediately with little investment; others may require capital expenditures but offer faster payback than traditional IT capex (capital expenses) ROI.

[ Unlearn the untrue and outdated data center practices in Logan G. Harbough's "10 power-saving myths debunked." | Use server virtualization to get highly reliable failover at a fraction of the usual cost. Find out how in InfoWorld's High Availability Virtualization Deep Dive PDF special report. ]
Server Virtualization Deep Dive

The holy grail of data center energy efficiency metrics is the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUI) rating, in which lower numbers are better and 1.0 is an ideal objective. PUI compares total data center electrical consumption to the amount converted into useful computing tasks. A not-uncommon value of 2.0 means two watts coming into the data center falls to one watt by the time it reaches a server -- the loss is power turned into heat, which in turn requires power to get rid of via traditional data center cooling systems.

As with all simple metrics, you must take PUI for what it is: a measure of electrical efficiency. It doesn't consider other energy sources, such as ambient environmental, geothermal, or hydrogen fuel cells, many of which can be exploited to lower total power costs. The techniques that follow may or may not lower your measurable PUI, but you can evaluate their effectiveness more simply by checking your monthly utility bill. That's where it'll really matter anyhow.

You won't find solar, wind, or hydrogen power in the bag of tricks presented here. These alternative energy sources require considerable investment in advanced technologies, which delays cost savings too much for the current financial crisis. By contrast, none of the following eight techniques requires any technology more complex than fans, ducts, and tubing.

The eight methods are:

1. Crank up the heat
2. Power down servers that aren't in use
3. Use "free" outside-air cooling
4. Use data center heat to warm office spaces
5. Use SSDs for highly active read-only data sets
6. Use direct current in the data center
7. Bury heat in the earth
8. Move heat to the sea via pipes

Radical energy savings method 1: Crank up the heat
The simplest path to power savings is one you can implement this afternoon: Turn up the data center thermostat. Conventional wisdom calls for data center temperatures of 68 degrees Fahrenheit or below, the logic being that these temperatures extend equipment life and give you more time to react in the event of a cooling system failure.

Experience does show that server component failures, particularly for hard disks, do increase with higher operating temperatures. But in recent years, IT economics crossed an important threshold: Server operating costs now generally exceed acquisition costs. This may make hardware preservation a lower priority than cutting operating costs.

At last year's GreenNet conference, Google energy czar Bill Weihl cited Google's experience with raising data center temperatures, stating that 80 degrees Fahrenheit can be safely used as a new setpoint, provided a simple prerequisite is met in your data center: separating hot- and cold-air flows as much as possible, using curtains or solid barriers if needed.

Although 80 degrees Fahrenheit is a "safe" temperature upgrade, Microsoft's experience shows you could go higher. Its Dublin, Ireland, data center operates in "chiller-less" mode, using free outside-air cooling, with server inlet temperatures as high as 95 degrees Fahrenheit. But note there is a point of diminishing returns as you raise the temperature, owing to the higher server fan velocities needed that themselves increase power consumption.

IBM's New Software Platform To Help Create Intelligent Products

IBM's New Software Platform To Help Create Intelligent Products
IBM's new software platform and related services will help manufacturers create more intelligent products at low cost.

To help manufacturers and designers create products that enable people to live and work in a smarter manner, IBM has launched a new software platform.

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To help manufacturers and designers create products that enable people to live and work in a smarter manner, IBM has launched a new software platform. The software, with related services, will provide capabilities that support collaboration, and help reduce the cost and risk of bringing more intelligent, instrumented and interconnected products to market, the company claims.

It will provide a fully integrated software delivery platform that addresses requirements, design, development and management -- across electrical, mechanical and software technologies.

The platforms and services launched include:

* IBM Rational Team Webtop -- the integrated user front-end to increase communication and productivity

* IBM Rational DOORS -- that enables an expanded set of stakeholders to review, analyse and modify requirements

* IBM Rational Change and IBM Rational Synergy -- that help companies improve application quality

* IBM Rational Team Concert -- that provides new levels of scalability and security to enable collaborative and agile development among distributed product teams, and

* IBM Rational Rhapsody -- that helps identify and correct potential design flaws as early as possible.

All these platforms and services will allow manufacturers to bring out low-cost but intelligent products.

(For more on the platforms and tools keep watching this space!)

Week in Tweets: Apple Trashtalk Week

This week, top execs at Dell, HP, and Microsoft took turns bashing the Apple iPad. Dell said it was doomed to fail in the enterprise world; HP said its channel partners couldn't stand Apple's arrogance; Microsoft called tablets a "fad."

Microsoft also took another shot at Apple's increasingly unpopular attempt to trademark the phrase "app store." Eric Goldman, an intellectual property lawyer, told me Apple's case was weak and suggested the company divert all the money spent on its lawyers to re-establishing goodwill among its disgusted consumers.

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It's one thing for Apple's rivals to bash Apple, that comes with the job, but it's another thing entirely when the trashtalk derives from Apple's own consumers.

This week on Twitter, we came across some pretty angry sentiments from Apple fans. Many originated from outside the U.S., which makes sense given that Apple apparently sold out of iPad 2s a day after launching overseas (and domestically, analysts estimate Apple sold around half a million tablets during launch weekend). Others came from recent iPad 2 owners who dissatisfied with their new tablet.

In the run-up to the iPad 2's launch earlier this month, many in the tech community professed their love and anticipation over Apple's "magic" and "genius" and guidance into a "post-PC" world. We gave it an Editor's Choice award. We concluded you should get one. And based on the lines wrapping around Apple Stores that Friday, it looks like many of you did.

But this week, the gloves came off. Coincidence, or did we miss the memo about Apple Trashtalk Week?

iPhone Users Are About to Be Screwed Over

There has been a lot of talk about the addition of an NFC (near field communication) chip to the next-gen iPhone. This will allow the phone to be used as a swipe-it-yourself credit card. I consider this technology to be the most onerous ever.

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I first discussed the idea of your mobile phone becoming your credit card in the mid-1990s and was just biding my time before it came to pass. Bluetooth was invented in 1994 and gave rise to a lot of speculation regarding its usefulness. For a few years, all sorts of futuristic uses were imagined and a serious discussion of the so-called PAN (personal area network) began, but never went anywhere.
Apple iPhone

The PAN, spurred on by Bluetooth, would allow you to walk down the street and be told about sales, bargains, events and other nonsense from nearby stores and museums. You'd walk into Walmart and your name would be displayed a computerized sign to greet you as an old man pointed at the sign and then pointed at you in some creepy manner.

When you checked out, the Bluetooth device would take care of the payment accounting, and you'd never use cash again. This process could easily be mobile phone centric.

Over the years, through what I consider incompetent marketing, Bluetooth was relegated for use as a wireless earpiece technology and not much else. The PAN was dead as a doornail and my take on the phone as a credit card fell by the wayside. For the moment.

But good ideas can't be killed. But this "good idea" isn't about the convenience of paying with a phone swipe, but the idea of running your tab through the phone company. If you think your banker is a gouger with dubious fees and no-leeway, what do you think the phone company will be like? Yes, let AT&T handle all your money for you, and see how that works out in the end.

I'm immediately reminded of the online scams that took place during the modem era of communications. You'd be given a number to call, and it would actually be some sort of scam. The local number would connect to a BBS of some sort which would send a code back to the modem to turn off the speaker, so you couldn't hear the modem disconnect and then redial a number in Bulgaria or some obscure island. You'd then be connected to a phone service that charged $100/minute for the connection. After racking up thousands and thousand of dollars in phone costs, you'd get the bill from your phone company for $30,000.

You'd bitterly complain about the bill—these stories were all over the news during this era—but the phone companies said they couldn't do anything about the charges. The rates were protected by some U.S. treaty scammed together by the phone companies and signed into law. There was nothing they could do! So, you had to pay or lose your phone service and be sued in court.

This was unbelievable.

I've always been convinced this was test marketing to show the banks and everyone that the phone companies were the best collection agencies and should be in charge of your credit card and other transactions. After all, you can stall the bank, and what can they really do, anyway? You stall the phone company and you are disconnected from the world.

Do not let AT&T or Verizon or any phone company anywhere near your day-to-day financial transaction business!