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Microsoft Should Be Broken Up, Vanity Fair Writer Says

Microsoft has lost its way, says Kirk Eichenwald, who talked about his Vanity Fair piece on CBS This Morning. [Read more]

Read more at CNET News

KDE Issues Statement Regarding Future Use Of Qt

The KDE development community has issued a statement concerning future use of the Qt tool-kit within the KDE desktop environment…

 

Read more at Phoronix

Microsoft’s Surface Tablet Suffers from Low Yields, Report Says

According to Digitimes, Microsoft is working with a “second-tier” chassis supplier that’s having some trouble producing chassis at a rate to which Microsoft would be pleased. [Read more]

Read more at CNET News

Facebook’s App Center Goes International: Open To English-Speaking Countries; Translation Tool Added

facebook app center

Last week we got a little clue that Facebook was gearing up to take its App Center to markets outside the U.S., when it began to appear in the UK. As of today, it’s official: Facebook has now extended the App Center to Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom, with Brazil, France, Germany, Russia, Spain, Taiwan, and Turkey coming in following weeks. And in a nod to making the platform more accessible to developers from around the world, it’s also introducing a translation tool.

The App Center was first launched in June in the U.S. as a way to help discover new apps, with personalized recommendations, and for people to get apps specifically for mobile devices. Quickly ramping up the service to cover Facebook’s users outside of the U.S. is a crucial step. Users outside of the U.S. and Canada make up more than 80 percent of Facebook’s user base; it will help it increase time spent on the site by all users; and it will also make the App Center a more attractive marketplace for those developers hungry for a wider audience for their apps.

The development will mean that Facebook users in these markets will now get an App Center bookmark on the left side of their home page on Facebook.com and in the Facebook apps for iPhone, iPad, and Android.

Facebook also used the announcement for some updated details on how well the App Center has performed since launching: “millions” of people have used it to find new apps. Games developer Kixeye says that average revenues per user on War Commander and Battle Pirates are higher for those downloading through the App Center; Disney reports that users of Marvel: Avengers Alliance are also more “engaged” when they download via the App Center.

The move to make the storefront more international is not just a reflection of Facebook’s user base, but also of the developers feeding into it: Diamond Dash comes from Wooga in Germany and Bubble Witch Saga from King.com in the UK. Halfbrick, Rovio, Soundcloud, Spotify and Deezer are also popular app publishers from outside the U.S.

To date, Facebook says that 230 million people are playing games on Facebook every month; more than 130 games have more than 1 million monthly active users. There is also increasing traffic from iOS and Android apps into Facebook’s platform: 7 of the top 10 grossing iOS games, and 6 of the top 10 Android games, have integrated into Facebook, the company says.

Read more at TechCrunch

Google Scraps But Shares Web-Based Collaborative Coding Tool

Collide, which lets multiple programmers tap into a software development project, is open-source software now that Google has cast off. One project member hopes it’ll inspire related projects. [Read more]

Read more at CNET News

The Higgs Boson: Another Feather in Linux’s Cap

It’s not exactly any secret that Linux dominates the world of high-performance computing, so perhaps it should go without saying that last week’s exciting Higgs Boson announcement would involve Linux in some not-insignificant way. The reality, however, turns out to be far greater than marginal significance. In fact, “Linux Played a Crucial Role in Discovery of ‘Higgs boson'” is the headline of a story calling attention to the real role Linux played, and it’s an inspiring tale.

 
 
Read more at LinuxInsider

Samsung Galaxy Tab Doesn’t Copy Apple Designs, UK Court Rules

It’s a win for Samsung Electronics, which hasn’t fared so well in the legal arena lately. The decision affects three Galaxy Tab models. [Read more]

Read more at CNET News

64-bit ARM Support for Linux AArch64

ARM developers are working on patches that will extend the Linux kernel to provide support for ARM’s AArch64 64-bit architecture

Read more at The H

E17 Developers Set Sights on an Official Release

Signs are that a stable official release of the E17 desktop environment could finally be on its way to provide a lightweight desktop environment for Linux users; an E17 Release Manager blog has appeared to coordinate testing

Read more at The H

Jolla Aims to Revitalise MeeGo

Former Nokia employees have founded Jolla Ltd to continue the development of MeeGo and to design and market MeeGo smartphones with their own custom UI

Read more at The H