A burst of 8 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team
Unofficial: Samsung GS4 unit sales hit 20 million, press release due to come out soon Android Beat
Stefan Constantinescu:
The Korean website iNews24 is reporting that Samsung will soon be holding a press conference to announce that GS4 unit sales have surpassed 20m unit sales. Considering that the device started shipping in late April, that would mean it’s taken roughly two months to hit this milestone. For the sake of comparison, it took the GS3 100 days to hit the same figure.
I predicted that Samsung would announce 20 million GS4 sales in mid-June. That didn’t happen. Then I thought they’d announce the 20m sales figures on their event in London on June 20th, but that didn’t happen either.
When the GS4 hit 10 million units sold, it was at a growth rate of 2x the GS3. With this new figure, it’s more like 1.6x, which is still impressive, but not as impressive as analysts are expecting.
See also The Next Web report on the same topic for more figures.
9 Mind-Blowing Canvas Demos David Walsh
The /canvas/ element has been a revelation for the visual experts among our ranks. Canvas provides the means for incredible and efficient animations with the added bonus of no Flash; these developers can flash their awesome JavaScript skills instead. Here are nine unbelievable canvas demos that will make your jaw drop!
Unless you’re using a smartphone, in which case results may vary.
Falcon Pro updates to v2.0.4 outside of the Play Store, now supports a way to blatantly skirt Twitter’s token limit Android Police
The saga continues:
updates will now launch through the website getfalcon.pro, starting with v2.0.4. Also in the post was a hint about an “experiment” that would allow users who haven’t acquired a valid token to still use the app with all of their accounts. A short time later, instructions to unlock the new feature were posted by Fernando González. As one might expect, the workaround allows users to create their own API key with Twitter and insert it into Falcon Pro. If you find yourself limited by the notorious token count, update your copy of the app and follow these steps:
…which shows that Twitter’s process to let anyone be a developer might get screwed too. This probably won’t be viable for anyone involved – Twitter, Falcon Pro, or users. Someone’s going to lose out, and it’s Twitter which controls the API.
In smartphones and tablets, multicore is not necessarily the way to go Smartbear
The scalability that worked well in the PC (mostly) and better in the server market doesnt work so great in a smartphone, because the nature of the development environment is completely different animal.
This was originally pointed out in a white paper (PDF) by ST-Ericsson, which notes that on the PC multicore never really caught on for a variety of reasons, and they apply even less on the smartphone.
The reason why software developers don’t parallelize their code, wrote the paper’s authors, is that “For most of the PC applications it is simply not necessary or not economical to do so, with the exception of some niche markets for which performance is a compelling differentiating feature, such as for some multimedia applications, CAD and some specific professional areas.”
…”Two cores make sense, four is experimental, eight is loony,” said Cameron Laird, vice president of boutique Web consultancy Phase It and frequent author on HTML5 development (including several articles here at SmartBear). He expects that smartphones will eventually be able to utilize two cores.
Doug Engelbart, visionary I, Cringely
To most people who recognize his name Doug Engelbart was the inventor of the computer mouse but he was much, much more than that. In addition to the mouse and the accompanying chord keyboard, Doug invented computer time sharing, network computing, graphical computing, the graphical user interface and (with apologies to Ted Nelson) hypertext links. And he invented all these things — if by inventing we mean envisioning how they would work and work together to create the computing environments we know today — while driving to work one day in 1950.
Doug had a vision of modern computing back in the day when many computers were still mechanical and user interfaces did not even exist. He saw in a flash not only the way we do things today but also the long list of tasks that had to be completed to get from there to here. Now that’s vision.
Links to lots of great video. (Thanks @Sputnikkers for the link.)
Apple of discord Securelist
Nadezhda Demidova:
cybercriminals are aiming to steal Apple ID data which provides access to users’ personal information stored in iCloud (e.g., photographs, contacts, documents, email, etc.) as well as to the purchases made in the company’s iTunes Store. Many malicious users go further and try to the steal bank card details used to pay for those purchases.
The scammers make use of phishing sites that imitate the official apple.com site. Since the beginning of 2012 until the present time this has resulted in a significant increase in the number of web antivirus detections triggered by users of our products attempting to visit such sites. During that period we have seen on average around 200,000 detections per day. By contrast, in 2011 the figure stood at around 1,000 detections per day.
The opening of iTunes Stores in 52 countries including Russia led to a colossal spike – 939,000 detections per day.
Spain telecoms regulator sees more pain for operators in 2013 Reuters
Mobile is set for another tough year, with Orange, Yoigo (owned by TeliaSonera) and virtual operators, which rent network capacity from established operators, catching up with market leaders Telefonica and Vodafone who are losing clients.
Mobile revenue dropped 16% in 2012 to 9.5bn euros as consumers cut spending, switched to cheaper deals or ditched their mobiles altogether. Last year was the first time that the number of cellphone lines in Spain shrank, dropping by 1.9m connections.
Internet-based instant messaging services like WhatsApp, which are free after a small initial payment, are proving even more of a challenge for operators this year, Lorenzo said, as clients shun more expensive text messages.
It’s quite shocking if the number of mobile connections fell. No clue whether that’s people dumping a second (business?) mobile, or their primary mobile. One suspects the former, but more data welcomed.
Acer Iconia W3 review PC Pro
Barry Collins:
Microsoft distributed thousands of Iconia W3s to developers at its recent Build conference to showcase Windows 8.1’s compact tablet credentials. If the Iconia W3 is the best it can do, it really is time to reach for the white flag.
The Iconia is a lumpen slab of cheap-feeling plastic and glass. At 500g, it’s significantly heavier than all of the compact tablets in this month’s Lab, bar the ruggedised Panasonic Toughpad JT-B1. It’s larger than all of them, too, thanks to a needlessly thick bezel and an extra plastic lip at the bottom, used to house the Windows button.
All that could have been forgiven – perhaps – if the screen was scintillating, but it’s far from it. The 800 x 1,280 display has that old-school, mottled touchscreen effect that makes it look as if it’s been sprayed with a fine mist. Colours are washed out, largely because the screen doesn’t span the entire SRGB gamut, although the maximum brightness of 329cd/m2 is acceptable.
Yours for £330 for the basic 64GB model with an 8.1in screen. (The equivalent spec iPad mini is £429, 1024×768, weighing 308g. But would you need a 64GB iPad as you might a Windows device?)
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