Finally paid android apps are coming to HK

Hello,

We're writing to inform you about some changes to Android Market that require your attention.

Effective today, developers from 20 additional countries (Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland and Taiwan) can now sell paid apps on Android Market. Over the next 2 weeks, users from 18 new countries (Argentina, Brazil, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Sweden, and Taiwan) will be able to purchase paid apps from Android Market.

Please see the related post at Android Developer Blog here:
http://android-developers.blogspot.com/

We encourage you to visit the Android Market developer console at http://market.android.com/publish to make the necessary adjustments.

Thanks, and we look forward to continue working with you on Android Market.

Sincerely,
The Android Market Team

Google, Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA  94043

Why is Android users turning away

Was talking to my friend, who is another Android user, and realized that he is unhappy with his current device. So I've asked him to list down few points what makes him turn to others.

Desmond:  HTC Magic 32A (Singapore)

Pulled towards iPhone or Blackberry

Push
1 Performance dropping even with < 20 apps installed
2 Browser doesn't work for SSL pages
3 Flashing of ROM is not straight forward, lots of steps and talk about SPL and Backup ROM and the actual ROM and you cannot get the Backup ROM in w/o modifying the SPL which needs rooting - Chicken and Egg problem
4 Messaging application starts lagging after maybe 1 day after reboot, letters don't come up instantly after typing -> Lag
5 Video app is slow and cannot resume playing has the circle loading icon still placed in the centre of the video
6 Lag of 3.5 mm jack
7 Slow startup for camera
8 1 Miss call always shows as 2 missed calls
9 YouTube apps works on and off, displaying the same video can work at times and yet show cannot be displayed.

and 10 Messaging goes to Email when pressed 4 out of 10 times
11 Have to press Back button 5 times just to go back to messaging main screen

RAID Size Calculator

Had just written a small Android app that does a simple task of calculating the usable size of different RAID types. Supports RAID 0, 1, 5, 6 and 10. Download it from market by following this QRcode.

Google Chrome 4.0 Beta for Linux Arrives

Just in time for holidays, the wonderful developers at Google announced a few minutes ago that the Chrome browser for Linux is finally in a beta state and has been added on the official Chrome website for download! The actual version is Google Chrome 4.0.249.30 and it comes with binary packages for Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora and openSUSE operating systems. Both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures are supported at this time, as well as a preinstalled repository (at least on the Ubuntu platform) for easy updates.

Just like the popular Windows version, Google Chrome Beta for Linux is extremely fast, stable, extensible and last but not least, very secure! Did we forgot to mention that it has support for HTML5? Yes, that's right... it has! Moreover, the new Google Chrome will work very well on both GNOME and KDE desktop environments.


Linux Softpedia on Google Chrome 4 Beta - Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) 64-bit

You can grab the new beta version of Google Chrome for the aforementioned Linux systems by accessing the download page at the end of the article or by going to its official website. Whichever method you choose, please remember that you need to uninstall any existing package of the Google Chrome web browser before installing this new version.

Google Chrome is a revolutionary web browser that makes surfing the Internet more efficient and ergonomic by placing modules on each new opened tab. Instead of showing a blank page, Google Chrome offers you eight thumbnails, displaying the most visited websites, a history search bar and even the last ten closed tabs. Another breathtaking feature of Google Chrome is its amazing speed, from the moment you open it until it is closed.

The Google Chrome interface is simple and clean, allowing websites to benefit from the increased screen space. The tab bar is placed on top of the multi-functional main address bar. Why multi-functional? Because you can not only direct Chrome to a certain address, but also perform history or Internet searches.

Download Google Chrome 4.0.249.30 Beta right now from Softpedia. Oh, and don't forget to check out our brand new Google Chrome Extensions category for the latest add-on!

Fedora Switching From CVS To Git

Posted by Michael Larabel on December 09, 2009

Package source control for Fedora has relied upon CVS since the inception of this Red Hat Linux distribution, but it's soon going to switch over to using Git instead. At the FUDCon event this week in Toronto, Red Hat's Jesse Keating has laid out these plans to stop using CVS and switch over to Git for its benefits: distributed management, it's faster than CVS, better patch management, and many upstream projects using this revision control system.

To ease in this transition, Jesse will be creating a helper script to conceal some of the complexities of Git while designing this script around the needs of Fedora and its contributors. The time-line for transitioning from CVS to Git for its source is that it will go live shortly after the release of Fedora 13, but could be delayed until after Fedora 14. Either way though, Red Hat should have Fedora's source running on Git in 2010.

More information on this move can be found in this blog post by Jesse Keating where he also links to his FUDCon slides on the topic.

Google Chrome for Mac and Linux: They're Here

The wait's been long, sometimes hard, but it's finally here: The first Chrome beta for Mac and Linux. It's missing all kinds of stuff, like a bookmark manager. But damn if it isn't fast. Oh, the fun don't stop there.
Alsooooo, the Chrome Extensions page is now open, so you can easily grab add-ons for the latest Chrome beta on Windows, just like Firefox. (So excited for these to take off.)
Finally, Google Bookmark Sync is also live—it stores your bookmarks in your Google account, so you can access them on any computer, though for now, Chrome's the only browser getting the seamless syncing love. [Google, Google via SAI, Lifehacker]

Send an email to matt buchanan, the author of this post, at matt@gizmodo.com.

Are we ready for the cloud? ... and Google Chrome OS?

After watching some videos of Chrome OS on youtube, I started to wonder, how much impact will Google's Chrome OS bring and are we ready to move on to the cloud? I do agree the benefits of cloud computing and believe this will be the future trend. But in the first place, who is going to make the first move? With cloud services rising, how many organizations will make use of these services?

Let's take Chrome OS as an example. It's slick, lightweight, fast, etc, but it depends heavily on an internet connection, which means that you, most probably, got to have an unlimited mobile data plan before you can make full use of it. Okay, now let's assume that data plan is going to be very cheap that its not a matter to you. Next question is security. Since most of us use our laptops for work, mostly. How many will put their daily work on Google, or use Google Docs for their office documents? Yes, I hate organizations that still stick to using Micro$oft office for documents/spreadsheets/presentations. However, it may be against the organization's policy for employees to put documents on the public cloud, as almost all of them contains sensitive or confidential data. It depends greatly on how much trust that organization is willing to give Google.

During my days in college, I often make use of Google Docs for writing lab and project reports. I find that its very convenient and collaboration support is very useful when you are working on the reports with few other teammates. However, after entering the working industry, I've realized many organizations are hesitant to moving data onto cloud.

So, this comes to my mind that if we can build an private cloud in an organization, and custom made Chrome OS so that it will automatically connects to the organization's private cloud. All documents data are kept at the organization's own cloud, managed by their own IT departments. By this, the organization can also prevents their information leak since Google Chrome OS is not going to have an hard disk, which means sensitive documents cannot be downloaded and stored offline. Will this way make it a better and easier way to adapt to cloud?