New Technology Reviews!.: open-source

Google to shut down several products

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<img alt="Google logo" class="size-full wp-image-76091 aligncenter" height="98" mce_src="http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/9792/26googlelogo.jpg" src="http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/9792/26googlelogo.jpg" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; clear: both; color: #444444; display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 640px;" title="Google logo" width="234" />One thing great about Google is that it knows its failures from its successes and that it knows how to put them down instead of keeping them around. Well Google has recently announced the shutting down of a handful of services that failed to take off or just weren’t very useful at all. Some of them will be closed down for good, while others might be turned into features of other products. Here’s what’s going and don’t be surprised if you’ve never even heard of them in the first place:</div>
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Code Search, a site for helping people search for open source code will be shut down on January 15<span class="Apple-style-span" mce_name="sup" mce_style="vertical-align: super;" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; line-height: 1.5; vertical-align: super;">th</span> 2012; Google Buzz, the company’s own version of Twitter will be shut down in a couple of weeks; Jaiku, another Twitter-like service will be shutting down January 15<span class="Apple-style-span" mce_name="sup" mce_style="vertical-align: super;" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; line-height: 1.5; vertical-align: super;">th</span> 2012; iGoogle’s social features will be removed January 15<span class="Apple-style-span" mce_name="sup" mce_style="vertical-align: super;" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; line-height: 1.5; vertical-align: super;">th</span> 2012 and the University Research Program for Google Search will be shut down on January 15<span class="Apple-style-span" mce_name="sup" mce_style="vertical-align: super;" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; line-height: 1.5; vertical-align: super;">th</span> 2012 as well.</div>
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If you were users of any of these services, well I guess it’s time to bid farewell to them some time in the near future.</div>
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Google to shut down several products

One thing great about Google is that it knows its failures from its successes and that it knows how to put them down instead of keeping ...

Samsung Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch kernel source up now

Samsung Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch kernel source up now

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Android Web Browser Goes Open Source, Chrome Incoming?

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<img alt="" class="aligncenter" height="215" mce_src="http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/4395/918749478540x359.jpg" src="http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/4395/918749478540x359.jpg" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; clear: both; color: #444444; display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 640px;" title="918749478" width="324" />Google’s Andrei Popescu this week sent out a letter regarding Android’s current stock web browser, a system built on WebKit, saying that first of all they at Google apologize for the confusion the thus-far incomplete Android port that exists today in WebKit TOT has caused. Upstreaming the Android port of WebKit has for a while been a goal of the folks working on the project at Google, and what they’ve got to report today is that they will be removing the existing incomplete Android port and replacing this with an effort that includes a webkit.org build bot compiling Chromium’s DRT for Android using the Android NDK, SDK, and toolchain.</div>
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So what in the world does all that mean, you might be asking? First of all you’ve got to know that Popescu also noted the following:</div>
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The Android Browser has come to share more and more code<br style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; line-height: 1.5;" />with Chrome (both WebKit and Chromium). This approach has a number of<br style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; line-height: 1.5;" />advantages for the WebKit community:</div>
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1. Android WebKit no longer requires a separate build system because<br style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; line-height: 1.5;" />we are able to reuse Chromium’s gyp system for building.<br style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; line-height: 1.5;" />2. Android no longer requires a separate set of WebCore clients,<br style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; line-height: 1.5;" />platform abstractions, and embedder APIs because Android shares much<br style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; line-height: 1.5;" />of this code with the Chromium port.<br style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; line-height: 1.5;" />3. The Android layout tests results more closely match chromium-linux<br style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; line-height: 1.5;" />and more expected results can be shared.</div>
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What all of this means is that by bringing the Android web browser code into the Chromium project and therefor making it open source, WebKit developers no longer have to work with two totally different systems. As the Android version of stock web browsing and Chrome web browsing become more and more similar, we can (hopefully) expect a much more optimized experience overall. At the moment, as you may already be aware, Firefox generally turns up better browsing speeds than Webkit, though should “Chrome” come to Android, we may have different results popping up.</div>
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If at all, we can expect a Chrome browser for Android inside 2012, more than likely.</div>
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Android Web Browser Goes Open Source, Chrome Incoming?

Google’s Andrei Popescu this week sent out a letter regarding Android’s current stock web browser, a system built on WebKit, saying that...