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News

• Google releases full Android 3.0 SDK

  Google has made available the full SDK for the Android 3.0 mobile platform, featuring a UI redesigned for tablets and more connectivity options.

• Adobe adds mobile, marketing to its CQ5 CMS

  Adobe today is announcing version 5.4 of its Adobe WEM (Web Experience Management) suite of content and campaign management tools. Based on the CQ5 content management system acquired from Day last year, Adobe WEM adds a capability to automatically reformat Web pages using Adobe's Device Central technology when displayed on various mobile devices and to handle marketing campaign management across websites, social networking, and other customer conduits. The suite also integrates the user traffic and engagement tracking from Omniture SiteCatalyst, the Web tracking suite that Adobe also bought last year.

• The iPad data dilemma: Where cloud storage can help

  Tablet computing is a decade-old technology, but one that lay buried since users rejected Microsoft's "heavy OS" approach a while back. A year ago, Apple's iPad resurrected the tablet computing concept, delivering a lightweight sheet of computational glass with a pleasant, responsive user interface and a blizzard of applications. Users love it, and now a barrage of wannabe tablets are flooding the marketplace. All do reasonably well at the four applications users access most: Web, email, books, and media. And the half million or so apps in the collective app stores of Apple, Android, and BlackBerry would seem to fill every conceivable mobile need.

• Microsoft, RIM look to entice mobile developers

  Microsoft and RIM are making moves to assist application developers building for the vendors' respective handheld platforms, with Microsoft updating developer tools for Windows Phone and RIM upgrading a simulator for the upcoming RIM PlayBook tablet.

• Mobile developers challenged to boost privacy

  Branches of the American Civil Liberties Union and other organizations are launching on Friday the 2011 Develop for Privacy Challenge, a competition for mobile application developers to address privacy concerns about mobile phones and other portable devices.

• Box.net moves cloud storage further into business collaboration

  The beauty of the cloud is that it makes it easy for people to get technology in place when they need it. The ugliness of the cloud is that it lets employees bring in technology that the business is unaware of, potentially exposing confidential information or worse. Cloud storage provider Box.net is trying to square that circle with a new version of its Box.net service, which begins rolling out today. The rollout to the company's 5 million customers should be complete in 30 days.

• Khronos upgrades standard audio and multimedia APIs

  Khronos Group released on Tuesday upgrades to its OpenSL ES specification for high-performance, low-latency audio and its OpenMax AL specification for multimedia applications on mobile and embedded devices.

• The right office apps for the iPhone at work

  With Apple's iOS 4 supporting corporate security requirements, companies are increasingly saying an explicit yes to iPhone use. Certainly an iPad makes more sense as a lightweight laptop replacement (see InfoWorld's picks for the best iPad office apps), but there are many times you can't easily pull out a laptop or iPad but can use a smartphone. Just as companies typically install a suite of productivity apps (nearly always Microsoft Office), what should the iPhone equivalent be?

• Android, iPhone users outpace BlackBerry, Symbian users in data usage

  It's no surprise that iPhone and Android users are using more data today than the iPhone users of two years ago (when there were no popular Android devices). But a recent report from Arieso, a British firm that provides cellular carriers software to optimize their network performance, does contain surprises, and it reveals how much people are using data services on their cellular devices.

• First look: Chrome OS beta's Achilles' heel is its reliance on the Web

  Computers and their software today are too complicated, and users are increasingly looking at iPads and cloud-based services such as Google Docs to handle the basics that most of us stick to: document editing, photo management, emailing, Web browsing, and the like. Running Office on a PC or Mac is beyond overkill for most people. Google proposes we do away with the PC altogether, at least part of the time, and replace it with Google's cloud-based laptop -- an appliance in which the Chrome browser serves as operating system. With the Chrome OS, all actions occur in the browser and the cloud.

• Samsung's Galaxy Tab makes a strong case for buying an iPad

  Competing with Apple on quality, elegance, and innovation is nearly always a losing battle. By comparison, most products feel awkward and substandard. And so it is with the Samsung Galaxy Tab, a 7-inch, Android 2.2-powered touch-based slate device.

• RIM accepting PlayBook apps for BlackBerry App World

  Research in Motion (RIM) is now accepting applications for its upcoming BlackBerry PlayBook tablet computer into the company's BlackBerry App World application store, RIM said on Tuesday.

• Inside Google's new Chrome OS 'Chromebook'

  It's been a year since Google first said it would deliver a browser-only operating system for laptops called Chrome OS. Today, Google previewed the real thing at a time the iPad slate concept has already gained remarkable traction by businesses and users alike. (InfoWorld.com is covering this event live. Return to this story to get the latest updates.)

• Google Android upgrade offers improvements in UI and rich multimedia

  Google is unveiling on Monday an upgrade to its mobile platform, Android 2.3, which features refinements to the UI as well as capabilities for rich multimedia, mobile payments, and faster text input.

• Battery power, wireless spectrum hold back mobile computing

  Innovations in mobile computing will continue apace in coming years, but battery power and wireless spectrum could become critical obstacles, according to mobile executives speaking Tuesday evening at a gathering in Silicon Valley.