As the latest update to Android looms ever closer, we’ve got our eyes peeled for anything that may hint at what’s to come. While most of that information comes to us through leaks or hidden surprises, sometimes it will try to hide in plain sight. Over the last few weeks, an increasing number of code commits have been made to the android-3.10 branch of the kernel/common project.

As you might be able to guess from the names, kernel/common is the codebase from which every device kernel is eventually derived. The existence of a 3.10 branch in AOSP is pretty solid evidence to believe we will see a version of Android running on it soon. On top of all of this, there are architecture-specific commits for 3.10 in the kernel/tegra project, which points to development for the 2012 Nexus 7.

Age of the Smartwatch: The Designer Behind Lytro and Fitbit on Our Wearable Future

By

The Verge

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October 28, 2013

Gadi Amit of NewDealDesign

Wearable technology is an exploding market. A trickle of devices ranging from fitness trackers, to smartwatches, to identification tools are rapidly turning into a flood, with many more expected for 2014. What separates this category from so many other forms of technology is how personal it is — not only are wearables tools, they also act as ornaments or jewelry. Design plays a crucial role — if something is ugly, unattractive, or just uncomfortable, are most people likely to wear it everywhere they go?

Gadi Amit is the principal designer and one of the founders of NewDealDesign, an award-winning San Francisco firm that has designed a number of consumer products over the past decade. Most recently,…

Could We Soon See Chrome OS-based Tablets?

By

OStatic

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October 28, 2013

On a trip through a local Best Buy this weekend, I was struck by the number of Chromebooks (computers running Google’s Chrome OS platform) there were, and by the number of tablet devices for sale. In case you’ve missed the trend, traditional PC form factors and operating systems are facing big challenges. In fact, Chromebooks have been one of the few bright spots in the overall hardware market, along with tablets.

Now, there are reports emerging that we may soon see tablets running Chrome OS.

Survey Shows IT Decision Makers are Bullish on OpenStack

By

OStatic

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October 28, 2013

Are you still convinced that the OpenStack cloud computing platform is all hype? Well, according to a Red Hat-sponsored IDG survey, an overwhelming majority of enterprise IT decision makers say that OpenStack is part of their organization’s future cloud infrastructure plans. The 2013 Path to an OpenStack-Powered Cloud survey included 200 U.S. enterprise decision makers as respondents. Here are some of the key findings.

The survey found that 51 percent of organizations are on either their second or third implementation of a private cloud, using internally developed solutions or alternative offerings from various vendors. The survey results also showed that internal development of private clouds has left organizations with a host of challenges to address, including:

Testing openSUSE 13.1: Elegance Continues

By

Muktware

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October 28, 2013

The next version of openSUSE 13.1 will be announced in November and the release candidate is out for testing.

The post Testing openSUSE 13.1: elegance continues appeared first on Muktware.

Improvements Coming To Weston’s Wayland Back-End

By

Phoronix

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October 28, 2013

The Wayland back-end to the Weston compositor allows Weston to run inside an existing Wayland compositor, i.e. a nested Weston scenario or running Weston atop a completely different Wayland compositor. A set of 11 patches were published Sunday night for making the Wayland back-end more on par with the X11 back-end…

Kernel Prepatch 3.12-rc7

By

LWN

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October 28, 2013

The 3.12-rc7 prepatch is out. Linus says: “The KS week is over, and thus the seventh – and likely the last – rc for 3.12 is out, and I’m back on the normal Sunday schedule.” He also warned that upcoming travel is likely to tur the 3.13 merge window into a relatively messy affair.

Can a Toy Robot Teach Kids Computer Programming?

By

The Verge

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October 28, 2013

In late 2012, Vikas Gupta left his job as head of the consumer payments division at Google and set out to discover what he would do with the rest of his life. He’d recently had a daughter, and he knew his next venture would involve helping kids. Then he chanced across an article about Estonia, and how that country begins teaching programming to all children in first grade. He did a little research into the state of computer science education in America and was shocked to find how rare it was. So he set out to create a compelling way for children as young as four or five to start learning basic coding concepts.

The result was Play-i, a new startup building robots that it hopes will teach children about programming through play. The…