Mozilla Is Talking Firefox OS, and the First Five Countries to Get It

By

-

April 17, 2013

As I noted yesterday, Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs (who will be leaving his CEO post this year) made very clear in comments at the All Things D: Dive Into Mobile conference that Mozilla has very ambitious plans for its new Firefox OS mobile operating system. Specifically, he sees it as an innovation-centric platform. As quoted by ABC News, Kovacs said, “We haven’t done a great job [on mobile browsing]. I’m expecting someone will do an Apple on the whole browsing experience.”

Some of the best reporting on Kovacs’ thoughts at the conference have come from All Things D. In particular, this post notes the first five countries that Firefox OS will debut in in June: Venezuela, Poland, Brazil, Portugal and Spain. That’s right, Firefox OS won’t even hit U.S. shores until 2014.

Microsoft’s Xbox Team Testing Smartwatch Prototypes with a Surface Connector

By

The Verge

-

April 17, 2013

Spotwatch_large

Microsoft is prototyping its own wrist-worn device. A reliable source familiar with Microsoft’s Xbox plans has revealed to The Verge that the company has been developing a wrist-worn device for just over a year. We understand that Microsoft had originally planned to release a “Joule” heart rate monitor accessory for the Xbox, but the company has since decided to focus on a smartwatch instead. The Wall Street Journalfirst reported on Microsoft’s plans earlier this week, citing unnamed supply chain sources who claim Microsoft has requested 1.5-inch displays from component manufacturers.

Microsoft’s smartwatch is said to be in the prototype phase, with teams who have worked on Xbox accessories and the Kinect sensor focused on the device….

Linux in 2013: ‘Freakishly Awesome’ – And Who Needs a Fork?

By

The Register

-

April 17, 2013

Features, performance, security, stability: pick, er, four

LCS2013 If there was a theme for Day One of the Linux Foundation’s seventh annual Linux Collaboration Summit, taking place this week in San Francisco, it was that the Linux community has moved way, way past wondering whether the open source OS will be successful and competitive.â€¦

Report from the Freedesktop Summit

By

KDE

-

April 17, 2013

Dot Categories:

Community and Events

During the week of 8 April 2013, developers from the KDE, GNOME, Unity and Razor-qt projects met at the SUSE offices in Nürnberg to improve collaboration between the projects by discussing specifications. A wide range of topics was covered.

Samsung: Galaxy S4 for U.S. has Four Cores, Not Eight

By

CNET

-

April 17, 2013

The smartphone maker confirms that its next flagship phone will feature a quad-core processor instead of its octa-core chip. [Read more]

Foxconn Must Pay Microsoft for EVERY Android Thing it Makes

By

The Register

-

April 17, 2013

New deal to earn dosh from Google’s labours

Microsoft will collect a royalty for every device built by Foxconn that runs Google operating systems Android or Chrome OS.…

Toshiba’s KIRAbook is a High-Resolution Windows 8 Competitor to the Retina MacBook

By

The Verge

-

April 17, 2013

Dsc06641_large

Toshiba has unveiled the KIRAbook, an ultrabook with a high-resolution display set for US release in May. The KIRAbook will arrive with a 13.3-inch 2560 x 1440 display, 256GB of solid-state storage, 8GB of RAM, and Windows 8 Home Premium. It’ll be the first ultrabook to rival the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro and the Chromebook Pixel in terms of pixel density, although at 221 PPI it falls short of the Pro’s 227 PPI and the Pixel’s 239 PPI displays. It’ll be available with full 10-point multitouch, but Toshiba says it’ll also offer models without touchscreens.

At launch, there will be three versions of the KIRAbook, but we only know the details of the two higher-end models right now. Both will arrive with touchscreens, but different…

Why Microsoft Won’t Make an iPhone Rival

By

CNET

-

April 17, 2013

Rather than creating a premium device to rival Apple and Samsung in the developed world, Microsoft plans to rely on partners to mine emerging markets with budget smartphones. [Read more]

Debian Base for First Pardus Community Edition

By

The H

-

April 17, 2013

The Turkish government, developer of the Pardus Linux distribution, has released the first version of the Pardus edition aimed at end users. The base of the distribution has switched from Gentoo to Debian

X.Org Servers Updated To Fix Security Flaw

By

Phoronix

-

April 17, 2013

Peter Hutterer has issued unscheduled updates to the X.Org Server 1.13 and 1.14 release series to address a new input security vulnerability on Linux…