Firefox 6 breaks out ahead of schedule, gets official August 16th

It looks like the sly fox is ready to make its worldwide debut a few days early. In typical Mozilla fashion, a complete build of Firefox 6 is now unofficially available for your downloading pleasure, three days ahead of schedule. If you're looking for a major facelift to the desktop edition, you won't find one here -- most of the new features aren't cosmetic. Perhaps most visibly, you'll find the domain name of the page you're parked on highlighted in the address bar. On the Android side, version 6 makes much bigger promises, like a "fresh visual style in Chrome Gingerbread," enhanced image scaling, and, perhaps most importantly, it's "faster and uses less memory." We've downloaded the desktop version of the browser ourselves, and we've found the release quite snappy. If you're not afraid of a little pre-release downloading, you can catch the (desktop) fox at the source links below. And as per usual, please let us know how it's treating you.

Swarm robots attack your bookshelf, win AAAI Oscar

What's more frightening than a swarm of robots? An award-winning swarm of robots trained to raid your library -- that's what. This SciFi-worthy outfit of mechanized literature swindlers, known as the "Swarmanoid," landed themselves the Best Video Award at this week's AAAI (Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence) conference in San Francisco. The video in question features the mixed bag of eye-bots, hand-bots and foot-bots in an Oceans 11-style bookcase heist. Of course, there are probably easier ways to reach the top shelf (e.g. a ladder), but none that get us thinking about the end times quite like this

Google acquiring Motorola Mobility

Happy Monday to you, and happy Monday to Motorola Mobility, which Google has announced is about to become its next acquisition. This comes hot on the heels of a $56 million Q2 net loss for Moto -- and CEO Sanjay Jha's less than subtle hints about going fishing for Android-related patent royalties. Now, at a price of $40 per share for a total of about $12.5 billion, Big G will be making Moto a "dedicated Android partner" to "supercharge the Android ecosystem" and "enhance competition in mobile computing."

Larry Page had this to say about the deal:

Motorola Mobility's total commitment to Android has created a natural fit for our two companies. Together, we will create amazing user experiences that supercharge the entire Android ecosystem for the benefit of consumers, partners and developers. I look forward to welcoming Motorolans to our family of Googlers.

What happens next? While this will of course strengthen the ties between hardware and software, Google is pledging to continue offering Android as an open platform -- Moto will license it and others will be able to as ever. Additionally, Google will continue to operate its new toy as a separate business and not morph it into an in-house hardware wing. But, one has to wonder what this means for companies like Samsung, which partnered closely with Google on the Nexus S, and of course HTC, which released the Nexus One and the iconic G1. And then there's the big question: just where does Moto Blur fit into this equation?

How would you change T-Mobile's G-Slate?

Splurged on a T-Mobile G-Slate, did you? Here's your opportunity to voice your opinion to LG (and anyone else who'll listen). Sporting an unorthodox aspect ratio and an affinity for a carrier that may not exist on its own by this time next year, it's certainly one of the odder slate options on the market. Combine that with the inability to buy a WiFi-only model, and you've got yourself firmly into niche territory. That said, we're confident that LG moved quite a few of these, and chances are that some of those buyers are reading these words right now. If that's you, we're interested to hear how you'd do things differently the next go 'round. Are you a fan of the form factor? Pining for a matte panel? Would you have preferred a WWAN-less variant? Is the UI everything you'd hoped for... and more? Go on and drop your thoughts in comments below -- mama always encouraged the art of getting things off your chest.

Gingerbread Build For Evo4G Now Rooted

A few weeks back the Sprint Evo4G received the update to themuch anticipated Gingerbread build. This update brought devices up to Google’slatest software, but also re-locked rooted devices. This new lock was notrootable till today. The Revolutionary team managed to add devices using thenew Hboot 2.16.0001 system to their unlocking software.
For any Evo4G users out there wanting to get their phonesback to the rooted world of bliss, follow the source link and read thedirections.

HTC Ruby Specs Leaked

We've heard of the HTC Ruby before, but now we have a littlemore details on the possible future T-Mobile 4G device. The device that mightcome with beats audio is now being rumored to have a dual-core processor. Mostnew premium HTC devices are apparently going down the dual-core pathway, andthis is one of them. TMONews is reporting this phone will have HTC’s 1.5Ghzdual core processor, a 4.3” qHD display, and a dedicated camera and videobuttons (not an all in one) for the 8 megapixel member in the back. For thosethat are fans of video calling; the phone will have a 2 megapixel front facingcamera. The other less exciting news isthat this device will have 1GB of RAM and Bluetooth 3.0 for fast data transfer.
There you go folks. T-Mobile now has this bad boy on itsraider, the future Nexus Prime, along with the Galaxy S II… What does thecompetition have on us?

Photon 4G Bootloader Unlocked- The Bionic Could Be Next after it is Released

The Photon 4G’s bootloader has just been unlocked. What this could possibly mean, is that the DROID3, and even the Bionic have a chance of an unlocking. We need all the hard working developers we can get with an expected Bionic announcement sometime soon.

T-Mobile preps Samsung Gravity TXT for August 24th launch

While the smartphone is everybody's darling, T-Mobile and Samsung are hoping the Samsung Gravity TXT might garner some love, too. This landscape QWERTY slide features a 2.4-inch display, 2 megapixel camera, and Social Buzz -- via a dedicated key -- which integrates all your social sites into one app. The pic above seems to have the new feature phone shipping August 24th at $139.99 off-contract or $39.99

Introduction:

You first need to register to use the app

Remember Skyfire, the browser that converts Flash videos to an iOS compatible format? The same exact one that was pulled from the App Store as it enjoyed such huge popularity that its servers couldn't take it? Well, in the last couple of days we've been playing with Skyfire VideoQ ($3.99 on the App Store), a neat little app by the same company that offers similar functionality but not tied with a particular browser – it will play back a Flash video whenever you encounter one on the web. Why do you need it? How about playing back The Daily Show or that South Park episode that you missed on your iOS device?

The idea is pretty simple: whenever you stumble upon a video you can't play - you just email the link to it to video@skyfire.com, go back to Skyfire VideoQ hit the refresh button and it appears in an iOS compatible version. Voila! A killer app? For your average Flash-hungry iOS user – yes, but there are a couple of caveats we have to mention before giving our heart-felt recommendation.

Interface and Functionality:

Skyfire VideoQ is designed for both iPhone and iPad running iOS 4.0 or higher. While its main function is to deliver you that one video you want to see online, it also serves to help you discover new videos. That's why when you fire up the app you're greeted with four tabs, but first you need to register by sending an email with your Device ID. 

The first tab, your queue, lists all the videos you've requested by email. The screen fits four of them at a time, but you can flick up or down and remove some of them. Tapping on a particular video doesn't automatically play it – actually it splits the screen with the requested video in the upper part and all the videos the app could pull from that website displayed in the bottom half. To go into full screen mode you simply put your device in landscape mode – an elegant and intuitive solution.

After watching a couple of videos, though, you realize that the VideoQ service has a couple of notable downsides. First of all, all footage is converted on Skyfire's servers to a compatible format, but that means that quality gets degraded – we found the picture to be pixelized, while audio was muffled. We found buffering to also take quite a while, often 30 seconds or more.

In addition, you can't fast forward through videos – that's right there's no timeline at all for you to navigate when watching something. Your settings are limited to the bare minimum – pause and play. You can't even stretch the video to fill the screen, which is a disappointment. But VideoQ has this major benefit of bringing you any Flash video (the app claims to support over 200,000 websites, and it did play most of what we threw at it). You can also share a video via email or open the webpage where it stems from in Safari (the video won't play, though).

Back to the main menu, second on the list comes the Hot videos tab. The tab gives you “hot” videos judged by what Skyfire users watch, but in reality you end up with a pretty chaotic selection of videos ranging from the aforementioned Jon Stewart's Daily Show to anime. The next tab, Channels, is a bit less random as you can specify your channels of interest like Technology or Humor for example, but again you can't add websites to those collections, so you have to make do with what the app creators have provided (which is not that bad admittedly, just limited). Finally, you've also got the Settings tab with FAQs and a couple of other informational/sharing features.

Conclusion:

So finally, is Skyfire VideoQ worth it? For $3.99 you can get Flash videos on your iOS device without the hurdles of using a particular browser and while the quality leaves a lot to be desired, this feature alone would lure most of you into a purchase. In addition, you can also use the app to bring together all of your favorite videos into one place. The app also has a basic catalog of popular websites streaming video, which is a welcome addition. 

Sure, you have to send an email and switch to VideoQ from the browser, then wait a while for the video to buffer, but those are the realities of iOS. And whatever Steve Jobs says about Flash, having access to those videos is something we would all appreciate.

Pros:

+ Plays Flash videos,

+ Comes with a catalog of channels and videos.

Cons:

- Video quality gets degraded,

- Buffering is slow.

Will developer anger at the Amazon Appstore kill the Amazon tablet before it's launched?

The Amazon Appstore has become the whipping boy of developers recently because of missing features, troubling practices, and an ecosystem that is designed more to benefit Amazon than the developers. The Amazon Appstore launched in March, and last month the troubles for developers got to the point where some began to leave. The first story to get circulated around was from developer Bithack, which pulled its physics game, Apparatus, from the Appstore because of a number of problems with the way Amazon ran its store. Now, just a couple days ago developer Shifty Jelly pulled its Pocket Casts app from the Amazon Appstore and posted a scathing review of the service. 

Developer issues

Both Bithack and Shifty Jelly have a number of issues which overlap. First up on both of the lists of complaints was the lengthy review process. Unlike the Android Market, which gets its own flak for being something of a wild west where anyone and anything goes, the Amazon Appstore has a slow approval process for both new apps and updates. Developers cite a 2 week long review process, and Bithack had to go through an extra week after its app was declined and had to be resubmitted. In a unified ecosystem like iOS, something like this wouldn't be a problem, but because submissions are instant in the Android Market, it means that there will often be a newer, updated version of an app in the Android Market as compared to Amazon. Many times, this may not cause much of a problem, but there have been some big troubles. For example, when UberMedia was tagged by Twitter for TOS violations, Twidroyd became unusable. The update was pushed to the Android Market immediately once the issues were fixed, but the Amazon Appstore was left with an unusable Twidroyd app being downloaded by unknowing users. 

Another big issue is simply a lack of communication. First of all, users cannot contact developers directly from the Amazon Appstore, users can only leave reviews on an app. Sometimes, this may not be an issue as developers can monitor comments and reply to users, but that is an awkward solution at best, and doesn't guarantee that users will see the replies. Originally, international developers like Bithack had no way to respond to user complaints, because you needed to have purchased the app in order to comment, which it couldn't do because the Appstore is US-only. Of course, a way to directly communicate with developers would help because another issue with Amazon is there are also no error reports, so developers again must rely on comments in order to identify bugs. There is a "Leave Feedback" option in the Appstore app itself which supposedly will eventually get to the developers, but it is buried a bit and is just underneath a "Contact Customer Support" option, and so is hardly easy to pick out as the way to contact a developer.

The biggest issue is simply a matter of control. With the Android Market, developers have control because Google is mostly hands-off unless issues of malware or other security problems arise. In the Amazon Appstore, developers have very little control. We have known for a while that Amazon reserves the right to set the price of an app as it sees fit, regardless of what the developer wants. But beyond that, according to Shifty Jelly, Amazon will also rewrite an app's description. With Pocket Casts, Amazon apparently changed the description that the app could "refresh 100 podcasts in the time it takes other apps to do 1" to being able to "add 100 podcasts". 

Also, there is still no way for developers to set device compatibility rules for their apps, or even offer multiple APKs like the Android Market. So, users can purchase and download an app only to find out that it is incompatible. Even when writing this, I was allowed to purchase and download Samurai II: Vengeance (a game only compatible with Tegra 2 devices) on my Nexus One. And, this leads to the last big complaint with Amazon, which is that there is no easy way to get a refund on a purchased app. You can contact Amazon Customer service, and usually get a refund, but the process is certainly not that transparent.

Overall, the Appstore is designed to be interconnected with Amazon, and link customers through to other Amazon sections to buy more things there. Amazon uses the free app of the day as a way to bring people in, but it doesn't exactly care whether users stay in the Appstore as long as customers are in the Amazon ecosystem. This leads to developers not getting paid when their apps are downloaded thousands of times in the free app promotion. But, this has also fostered a culture within users where people stop in for the free app, which devs don't get paid for, then leave without buying anything else. The Appstore has become more of a free app repository than full-fledged store.

Amazon's side of the story

After the ordeal with Bithack, Android Police talked to Aaron Rubenson, director of the Amazon Appstore for Android, and the day before Shifty Jelly posted about its issues, Venture Beat also talked with Rubenson. From these two interviews, we've been able to gather Amazon's reasoning for some of the issues developers have. 

The basic tenet of Amazon seems to be "unify, curate, and discovery." As far as communication, Rubenson stated that Amazon wants a unified experience across the site, which is why all feedback goes through Amazon, and there are no links directly to the developer. This unification idea is also supposedly behind the way refunds are handled, although the logic gets a little fuzzier. The idea is that Amazon wants to be the one providing the service, and not just be a listing platform for developers. There is no return window like the Android Market, because Amazon doesn't want to hurt developers. This is a very Apple-ish approach, but obviously it does have its own flaws. As mentioned, it makes the refund process far more opaque, and one could argue that a bad review from a customer forced to keep the app could be more damaging than having a return window.

The review policy and length falls under the idea of curation. This should be one of the biggest benefits of the Amazon system. The Android Market has hundreds of thousands of apps, but that includes thousands and thousands of instances of spam, copyright infringement, clones, and just flat out useless apps. Amazon wants to have a curated experience to avoid all of those issues. Again, this is a very Apple-ish idea, and could work well, but it may still be a bit too soon to judge. The Appstore has already grown to around 14,000 apps, most of which are games, and aside from the issues with updated versions mentioned before, the curation has worked well. Curation is also the main reason for the app review process, because while Amazon does use it to weed out spam, it is also used as a testing period to supposedly combat any potential compatibility issues. Amazon also claims there are warnings when purchasing an incompatible app, but I certainly didn't see any.

Curation is of course the main piece of discovery, which is another benefit of the Appstore. Google has redesigned the Market a number of times, and introduced the Web Store in efforts to help people discover new apps. Of course, even with the review process in the Apple App Store there are similar troubles with discovery simply because of the sheer number of apps. Discovery is much better on Amazon right now mainly due to the small number of apps. Discovery seems to also be behind the ideas of rewording app descriptions and changing the price, but it seems like there must be other ways to feature an app aside from cutting the price without developer consent.

The future of the Amazon tablet

There are certainly a number of issues with the Amazon Appstore, and there is also plenty of time to try sorting out some of the issues before the release of the rumored-but-certainly-real Amazon tablet. Because this will be an Amazon branded tablet, that means there will not be any Google Apps. As per Google's TOS, if you remove one Google App (the Market), you can't have any of them (Gmail, Maps, GTalk, etc.) This means that Amazon will have to find ways to populate those features through partnerships, proprietary apps, or its Appstore. Amazon could potentially have both the Android Market and its own Appstore on the device, but that would create confusion for users, which is something Amazon wants to avoid. Additionally, in order to have the Android Market on a 2.x device, there are much more strict rules for having certain features like: camera, GPS, and mobile data. As of right now, the Appstore simply doesn't have enough in it to cover all of the use cases of a tablet. Given that the Appstore has grown from about 4,000 apps at launch to 14,000 today, it seems reasonable that it will have at least 25,000 by the time the Amazon tablet launches. But, given the proportion of games, will that even be enough?

As with many cases, success of the Amazon tablet seems to be highly dependent on how you frame the aims of the tablet. Many people in the tech world want to frame the Amazon tablet as an iPad-killer, but what exactly needs to happen for it to "kill" the iPad? Will sales be enough, or will features be a big part of the equation?

My feeling is that the Amazon tablet will be an extension of the Kindle. At heart, it will be an e-reader, but an e-reader with benefits. Amazon has learned from the Nook Color. Consumers want a full screen e-reader with apps and extra features, but Amazon doesn't want to foster the rooting community that has sprung up around the Nook Color. Amazon, like Apple, wants to control the experience, and this means giving consumers what they want, but it also means likely alienating the more tech savvy crowd. However, given that the Amazon tablet will be based on Android 2.x, the tech savvy crowd was already most likely alienated.

If you expect the Amazon tablet to be an Android experience, or even a full-fledged tablet, it feels like you're setting yourself up for disappointment. If you live outside of the US and want an Amazon tablet, you're likely to be very disappointed. If you expect the Amazon tablet to compete on features with the iPad (aside from handily beating the iBookstore), again that may lead to disappointment. However, if you expect an entertainment device, and more importantly a shopping device, that seems to be where the Amazon tablet is headed. It will most certainly have deep ties into the Amazon store, it will heavily feature the Kindle store and Kindle magazine selections, and there looks to be an impressive array of games available through the Appstore. There is a very good chance that the Amazon tablet, especially the 7" variant, will come in as one of the cheaper tablets on the market.

Amazon has already been toying with ad-supported Kindles, so it seems pretty likely that there would also be ad-supported variants of the Amazon tablet in order to get the 7" model down to the sub-$200 sweet spot. Amazon has the name recognition and Kindle following to quickly become one of the top tablet sellers if the price is low enough. The trouble is that those of us who truly care (maybe a bit too much) about the mobile world will almost undoubtedly be disappointed, because the Amazon tablet will more likely not be made for us. Compared to Honeycomb tablets that will be out this fall, and the rumored iPad HD, the Amazon tablet likely will come up short for many, but the price will sway people towards it. The features will be limited to keep cost down, and as well stocked as the games section may be in the Appstore, it seems unlikely to have the variety of apps and basic options we crave, especially with developers taking a backseat to Amazon's goals.

Control your home with your phone: are we there yet?

We remember reading a couple of years ago about Bill Gates's fully automated, yet cosy mansion, with its 40 miles of optical fiber, floor sensors that can track your location with up to six inches accuracy, and a hot tub, which can be set for the desired water temperature before you get home.

We were then just drooling, sad that we can't outfit our own cribs like that. Well, in a few short years, the field of home automation (HA) received a significant boost, the technology is within the reach of many, and now smartphone owners have the perfect tool to carry the control unit with them at all times.

Home automation can be divided into a few broad categories, depending on what you are trying to control – lighting, HVAC, appliances, security, entertainment or others, like sprinklers or a cat feeder. We won't be delving into the hundreds of brands and ways to adjust your home environment from afar, since there are currently more than 10 competing standards, but barely a thing you can get from Home Depot on the cheap and drive home to install yourself - we are just looking at how HA relays to your smartphone or tablet.

Puffin Web Browser review: Flash for the iPhone/iPad

Introduction:

Apple's ecosystem offers plenty of possibility, but when it comes to Flash support, iOS seems more like a golden cage rather than a place of free choice. Puffin Web Browser promises to set you free with Flash support on both the iPhone and iPad, but this promise comes with pitfalls. 

For a meager $0.99, this web browser brings Adobe Flash in almost all of its glory – heavy Flash websites, videos and banners (we just knew you'd care about seeing those) are now all viewable. 

Puffin is optimized to work with the iPhone, iPad and Android phones."

Interface and Performance:

The rest of its browser functionality is pretty standard, and that's why we'd rather focus on its performance. It's sluggish when loading pages, but its biggest drawback is navigating around them. Even though it supports pinch-to-zoom and double taps, those gestures are terribly laggy making zooming nearly impossible. These two combined render it pretty useless for casual surfing of the web in our opinion, so for that you'd better turn to any other browser. Then copy the URL of the page with Flash content you want to see and paste it in Puffin. 

How it handles Flash:

Puffin doesn't support Hulu and ABC's websites, but every other website we tried loaded. Those include shows like Jon Stewart's The Daily Show, South Park, sites like Jokes.com, but also major news outlets like BBC and sports events streamed on venues like NBA.com.  

Videos worked best when played in the full screen mode, much better than in alternative solutions. You could also watch them in page, but in that case framerates get really choppy, often to a slideshow rather than a video.

One word of caution - Flash games are not supported.

Flash video is best viewed in full screen mode.

Conclusion:

Let's make it clear – the Puffin Web Browser's main benefit is displaying Flash content. For all the rest it's pretty laggy, almost unusable. If you've looked at other Flash solutions like Skyfire, though, there's one other thing that you wouldn't expect to see – the price. Puffin is comparatively cheap with its $.99 price and availability for both iPhone and iPad, when compared to Skyfire's costly browser (currently $1.99) or the Skyfire VideoQ Flash solution (currently $2.99). Used only as Flash player though, it is better than these two.

At the same time, we find it hard to recommend. We hope we will see it improved with better performance and the functionality to be used as a stand alone browser with Flash support.