TapLogger works by using a device's motion sensors to record subtle real-time changes of orientation as a user enters numbers to release a phone's screenlock, dial a phone number, or provide a social security number during a call to a health-insurance service center. By logging the precise changes along three dimensions—azimuth, pitch, and roll—the trojan makes educated guesses about the touchscreen regions that were tapped to generate the orientation changes. TapLogger then maps those regions to the user interface of the screenlock or dial pad of a specific Android phone.

If Oracle wins the case, software developers everywhere -- especially open source developers -- will suffer, not just Google. Here's the background you need to understand the implications.

To protect the patent, CSIRO has been suing companies which have been using the technology without a licence.

The Minister for Science and Research, Senator Chris Evans, announced that CSIRO will receive more than $220m after settling the latest round of litigation against AT&T, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile USA.

Garlach44 is one of the first Italian companies to provide and distribute Notebook, Desktop and Server with no proprietary Operating Systems

From the satisfying click of its keys to its no-nonsense layout and solid steel underpinnings, IBM's 24-year-old Model M is the standard by which all other keyboards must be judged.

The Cotton Candy is a USB stick sized compute device allows users a single, secure point of access to all personal cloud services and apps through their favorite operating system, while delivering a consistent experience on any screen. The device will serve as a companion to smartphones, tablets, and notebook PC and Macs, as well add smart capabilities to existing displays, TVs, set top boxes and other media that supports USB mass storage.

Originally developed for the American army by Dr Hannaford and Jacob Rosen of the University of California, Santa Cruz, as a prototype for robotic surgery on the battlefield, the Raven is compact, light and cheap (relatively speaking) at around $250,000. More importantly for academics, it is also the first surgical robot to use open-source software. Its Linux-based operating system lets anyone modify and improve the original code, creating a way for researchers to experiment and collaborate.

Although the press release dubs the new platform "Open Web Device," many Mozilla watchers know it better as Boot To Gecko (B2G), a lightweight Linux-based system that uses Gecko as its primary (if not sole) application framework. B2G has been in development since July 2011, but it has advanced significantly since we last examined it in mid-August.

Last week, I promised you an outline of the webOS governance model. Today, we’re publishing that model and announcing the leaders of the Project Management Committees. As you will see below, we’ve based the model on the Apache Way.

It took a bit of extra futzing around to get it working under Linux (Fedora 14 in my case), but I got there in the end. Amazingly it supports all my devices (TV, PVR, DVD, RX) despite some of them being ancient and obscure.

It's not clear just how complicit Apple is in Digitude's business, but EFF staff attorney Julie Samuels told TechCrunch that if Apple was deliberately aiding Digitude's patent trolling, "it would be horrifying." And even if Apple were somehow coerced into settling with Digitude, Samuels doubts that "Apple didn't have any other options."

Admittedly, this is a different vision than webOS had for themselves. That was more akin to a closed-loop system, more like Apple in many ways, and now we're going to an open system. So we will keep the core group together, there will be leadership as there has been, and HP will continue to invest in this. The exact organizational structure we do not know yet — we've looked at Mozilla, Hadoop, Red Hat, and we want to think through that. Many of those models have been successful, we may come up with an alternative model on how we want to organize this. But there will be a dedicated team of resources to this, with the first backer being HP.

HP will make the underlying code of webOS available under an open source license. Developers, partners, HP engineers and other hardware manufacturers can deliver ongoing enhancements and new versions into the marketplace.

The nearly weightless $24 gadget, which will officially launch in about six weeks, automatically creates a social network of relevant people carrying the same nearby. It compares your profile, in which you’ve explained what characteristics you are looking for, with that of others. When two devices make a mutually satisfying match, they alert their owners via SMS message or mobile app, ranking the strength of the match and delivering whatever contact information the device owners have allowed in their privacy settings.

The ColorHug is a small accessory that measures displayed colors very accurately. It is held on your display and plugged into a spare USB port on the computer for the duration of the calibration.

The South Korean manufacturer sought evidence that Apple had "contractually obliged" Australian carriers Telstra, Vodafone and Optus to provide greater subsidies for the iPhone than for competing smartphones.

Those subsidies, it alleged, improved the attractiveness of all four generations of the iPhone released locally since 2008.

It makes sense that Samsung's source code request was granted — it's how you evaluate patent infringement claims when you're dealing with this type of technology. Apple apparently began handing over the iPhone 4S source code yesterday, and while disputes over whether Apple's code production is adequate will surely be raised by Samsung in the future, it seems that this particular discovery argument has been resolved in Samsung's favor without too much fanfare.

As we expected, though, the more controversial issue was over whether Samsung was entitled to the agreements between Apple and the regional telcos.

Visual navigation is performed using onboard cameras to observe the overhead marker system located above the test area. This replicates how spacecraft would use points in the solar system to determine their orientation.

The perfectly-balanced model satellites, which rotate around a pivot point with mechanical properties similar to real satellites, are placed on the table and glide across it on roller bearings almost without friction to mimic the zero-gravity properties of space. Each model has eight propellers to control movement, a set of inertia sensors and additional cameras to be ‘spatially aware’ and to ‘see’ each other. The model’s skeletal robot frame also allows various forms of hardware to be fitted and experimented with.

To quote their TV commercial: "The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all."

This device does not kindle that fire -- it extinguishes it, with more of the same digital restrictions.

Cell phones are great for communication in a virtual manner, but lack expressiveness in personal surroundings. Many people try to give their phones a personal touch by customizing them. Amarino is a toolkit to connect Android-driven mobile devices with Arduino microcontrollers via Bluetooth. The toolkit provides easy access to internal phone events which can be further processed on the Arduino open-source prototyping platform. Started as a project at MIT Media Lab at the High-Low Tech group, this toolkit seeks to empower people to externalize their phone events to creatively demonstrate them on wearables, living spaces, or other tangibles.

We can tolerate non-free phone network firmware provided new versions of it won't be loaded, it can't take control of the main computer, and it can only communicate when and as the free operating system chooses to let it communicate. In other words, it has to be equivalent to circuitry, and that circuitry must not be malicious. There is no obstacle to building an Android phone which has these characteristics, but we don't know of any.

The Australian Government has released a set of draft documents detailing new TV and computer recycling regulations that it says will see up to 80% of computer products recycled by 2021-22.

The draft regulations are a part of the Federal Government’s Product Stewardship Act 2011 that came into effect in August this year with the aim of managing the health, environmental and safety impacts of products sold in Australia.

A slew of manufacturers like HTC and Samsung reportedly have been trying to acquire the WebOS platform to expand their mobile market reach.

"We have given it thought and we have discussed it internally, but we will not do it on impulse," HTC chairpwerson Cher Wang said.

But the real star of the event was a liquid-nitrogen / liquid-helium setup that allowed AMD’s overclocking team to push a pre-release AMD FX-8150 processor to well over 8GHz, setting a world record for modern processor frequency in the process.

Released as open source, with a focus on bringing software and standards freedom to the market and not just to HP, WebOS could become the darling of both the mobile and open source worlds. It could be the stalking horse waiting to benefit from Android's misfortune.

I'd encourage HP to set it free and disrupt the mobile market even more than Android. The question is whether HP has the courage to live the koan, trading control for influence, rather than keeping this potentially world-changing platform under tight control. Time will tell.

While Google’s approach may be a disingenuous use of the word open — as Hewitt says, Google is doing “bare minimum to meet the definition of open” — there is another problem: the phone carriers.

“The problem is the wireless carriers first and Google second,” says Perens, “because Google enables the carriers to close the Android platform from the user’s perspective.” In other words, while you might be able to copy and paste the code from Rubins’ tweet and take a look at Android yourself, what arrives with actual phone is every bit as tightly controlled as iOS.

The study offers some sobering results on the rapid growth of malware on mobile devices, particularly the Android. The number of malware samples on mobile devices has doubled in the past two years, Daswani says.

In the study, Dasient analyzed the live behavior of Android apps to determine their security posture. Of the 10,000 applications evaluated, more than 800 were found to be leaking personal data, Daswani says.

In addition, the researchers found that 11 of the applications were sending potentially unwanted SMS messages out to smartphones -- the mobile version of spam, Daswani says.

B2G, as it’s being called, aims to clean up mobile fragmentation with a standards-based web technologies OS which will of course be open-source. While work on the platform doesn’t seem to have progressed too far yet, they plan on publishing source code as it’s developed, so devs can add to it and help them out.

So where does Android fit into all of it? Mozilla understands that it’s difficult creating a new platform from the ground up, so is taking some of Android’s code that lets it work on hardware, and will add a new UI and application stack pulled from Firefox’s cross-platform layout engine Gecko. Lest you think this is just another Android phone with custom UI over it, think again — Mozilla has boldly said they won’t be adopting the Java language used in Android, nor will they support native code programming.

Yes, you read that correctly. The developers of the extremely popular, semi-exclusive third-party keyboard app Swype have been carefully watching the situation that has unfolded regarding a recent (proposed and rejected) CyanogenMod change adding the ability to "spoof" phone information that certain apps collect as part of their permission sets. This can include (among other things) device information, identification parameters, and user/app usage statistics.

If you look at Android, [Google] have lots of partners. We have chipset partners, we have handset partners, we have carrier partners. They all want to use Android and they all want to have something special about themselves. So they want to use Android for that specialness. What that means is that one handset vendor probably doesn't want to interact too much with the other handset vendors because they are competitors. And Android gets caught in the middle of all of this. And the bigger question then becomes how you architect software that it's still useful around that kind of model.

Chances are, you know someone who has lost a laptop or smartphone, or had one stolen outright. Although preventing the theft itself would be the most satisfying outcome, there is little a software developer can do on that front (although one might consider proximity-monitoring over Bluetooth to be a step in the right direction). Full-disk encryption and password-protection for the BIOS are common strategies, but another approach — device tracking — has never enjoyed a high level of popularity in open source. The Prey project offers one open source device tracking solution, with a small range of options — including self-hosting or using the company's online monitoring service.

Sony convinced German authorities to raid Mr. Egorenkov's home and seize his personal computers and electronics. They also filed suit against him in Hamburg District Court (Docket no. 310 O 24/11) for 1M € (appr. $1.43M USD) in damages. The court ordered him to take down any copies of the "Hypervisor Bible".

Mr. Egorenkov refused to comply. Sony motioned for Mr. Egorenkov to be found in violation of court order, which a Hamburg judge affirmed. A defiant Mr. Egorenkov writes that Sony would have to kill him to keep him silent.

the ZeroTouch can be laid flat on a table, mounted on a computer screen or hung in the air; each for a completely unique purpose. When laid flat, it can be used as a drawing board, when mounted over a regular computer screen it can be used as a touchscreen device, and when hung in the air it can be used as a virtual canvas for painting.

To do its magic, the ZeroTouch has LEDs and infrared sensors (similar to the technology used in television remote controls) mounted around the periphery of the frame, which are then connected to a computer that crunches the constant stream of data coming in from the sensors; when a finger or other device is introduced into the invisible plane, the infrared signals sent from LEDs on one part of the frame are blocked from reaching the complementary sensors on the opposite side, which is then interpreted as a touch.

Nokia has unveiled what comes next in its Linux and Qt fronts.

The Nokia N9 is the ultimate Qt-powered mobile device. I find it a pleasure to watch and play with. Its polymer unibody chassis complemented by a strong and scratch-resistant curved glass makes it both solid and smooth in the hand. Multitasking is pushed forward with a combination of open tasks, events and apps. You navigate through these views with a simple gesture, a swipe of a finger.

There’s no sure-fire way to silence software modders, so you might as well work with them. That seems to be the idea Samsung had with a group of phone hackers.

Four members of the CyanogenMod software team on Monday received Galaxy S II smartphones in the mail, direct from the company at no charge.

“All four of us involved in the porting process for the first Galaxy S received a new phone,” CyanogenMod team member Kolja Dummann told Wired.com in an interview. “After the [Galaxy S II] launched in Europe, we just asked about getting some of those phones. Samsung agreed.”

The phones came with one simple directive — get CyanogenMod working on the phone.

If you're making a flicking gesture with a pen near your computer, watch out. Microsoft may own the rights to the gesture you're making. And if you like to draw letters of the alphabet using one penstroke per letter, you may one day find yourself paying a licensing fee to Xerox.

It sounds crazy, but tech companies have been patenting physical gestures for almost two decades now. In a world ruled by touchscreens, Kinect, and Guitar Hero, these businesses don't want people making certain gestures without paying for it. Find out which gestures you're making that may be infringing somebody's patents.

The usability crisis is upon us, once again. We suspect most of you thought it was over. After all, HCI certainly understands how to make things usable, so the emphasis has shifted to more engaging topics, such as exciting new applications, new technological developments, and the challenges of social networks and ubiquitous connection and communication. Well you are wrong.

In a recent column for Interactions (reference 2) Norman pointed out that the rush to develop gestural interfaces - "natural" they are sometimes called - well-tested and understood standards of interaction design were being overthrown, ignored, and violated. Yes, new technologies require new methods, but the refusal to follow well-tested, well-established principles leads to usability disaster.

What are we talking about? Let us explain.

My requirements are a little unusual because I insist on storing the music losslessly; also because I don’t want to send it all over the house a la Sonos. But they’re also simple; I just want to point at a recording or playlist or something streaming off the Net and say “play that right now” and have it play, right then.

Surely the days of “hav­ing a music col­lec­tion” are not over, and there will re­main a mar­ket (as in, yes, I’d pay for it) for some­thing that will just get out of the damn way and play the damn music.

It's really striking. During the least seven years, I used to be involved in a number of projects that tried to enable the user of mobile smartphones to have the full source code for (at least) the Linux kernel, and to be able to modify, tinker and re-program it any way they want. Now some of the vendors seem to be moving in the right direction.

The CEO of HTC has seemingly posted on Facebook that its phones will not be locked down from now on. "Today, I'm confirming we will no longer be locking the bootloaders on our devices. Thanks for your passion, support and patience."

CyanogenMod replaces that stock OS with a custom build, letting you make adjustments to your phone that the official version prevents. It opens the door to more sophisticated custom wallpaper, changing the graphic that appears when the phone boots up, or more significantly, tethering your laptop to your phone’s data connection. With CyanogenMod installed, you can even overclock your phone’s CPU, so you can wring every last drop of processing power from it.

“You can customize the hell out of it,” says Steve Kondik, founder of the CyanogenMod project.

The company’s Web site says that the new Commodore 64 is “a modern functional PC,” and that although the guts of the device have greatly improved, the exterior is “as close to the original in design as humanly possible.” Most people would not be able to visibly tell the old or new versions apart, it says.

Some may wonder why someone would want to purchase this type of computer when a world of iPads and laptops exists.

Mr. Altman says he sees two types of customers for the new computer.

“There are a lot of really young computer users who want to own a retro-looking computer,” he said. ”And of course there are those 30- to 40-year-olds who owned the original Commodore 64 and want the nostalgia of their first machine.”

Skype for Asterisk will not be available for sale or activation after July 26, 2011.

Skype for Asterisk was developed by Digium in cooperation with Skype. It includes proprietary software from Skype that allows Asterisk to join the Skype network as a native client. Skype has decided not to renew the agreement that permits us to package this proprietary software. Therefore Skype for Asterisk sales and activations will cease on July 26, 2011.

The FDroid Repository is an easily-installable catalogue of FOSS applications for the Android platform. The server contains the details of multiple versions of each application, and the Android client makes it easy to browse, install them onto your device, and keep track of updates.

According to Google, who gets to make the rules since it's their service, rooted devices are not supported by the Android Markets new movie rental service "due to requirements related to copyright protection". You'll even see a specific error message when you attempt to try -- "Failed to fetch license for [movie title] (error 49)".

So now people who root their phones, whether to get rid of the crap "open" that's forced down their throats, or to have a current version of Android, are punished and lumped in with folks who steal movies. Nice move, Google. That makes me want to buy more of your products and use more of your services, so I can be treated like a criminal just because I'm smart enough to get rid of CityID, or want a safe version of Android on my phone.

A few weeks ago Motorola asked their Facebook fans a question: What cool Android apps would you like to see next from developers?

One would expect the typical responses to include Netflix streaming, an improved Music player, enhancements or additions to Motoblur, or any number of other apps. Instead Motorola was inundated with responses that what they want most is an unlocked bootloader.

Being able to unlock the bootloader is the first step in rooting an Android-powered phone or tablet. Once rooted the smartphone can do lots of things that an off-the-shelf phone cannot, including over-clocking, under-volting, and even flashing an entirely new ROM on the phone. In short, it's the ability to do what you want with your phone.