tequila bomb

Google removed a number of malicious applications from the Android Market last week.

In addition to preventing further infection by removing the malicious applications from the Android Market, Google will also be using its remote kill switch to forcibly uninstall the application from infected handsets. The company is also pushing out an update to the Android Market that can reverse the exploit, thus preventing the attackers from using it to cause further damage. Google has already started to send out e-mails to affected users in order to explain the situation.

Although Google can deploy software to undo the damage caused by the malware, the underlying vulnerability that the attackers exploited can’t be closed so easily. Google says that the bug is fixed in Android 2.2.2 and later, but there are still a large number of users at risk because their handsets runs a previous version of the operating system. Google is making a patch available, but it’s going to be up to the carriers and handset makers to make sure that the patch gets deployed. In light of the mobile industry’s poor track record updating Android phones, it’s possible that this flaw will continue to be exploitable on a considerable number of handsets.

Another problem with Google’s “Open” approach to their smartphone OS.

We’ll see just how much service providers care about their customers’ security versus control over, and monetization of user features, in the coming days.

Join the free music service that gives you easy access to your music collection across the web and on smartphones. Upload your music to the mspot cloud and start listening anywhere.

Your first 2GB of music storage, that you can access from anywhere on Android, iOS or Windows via its dedicated app, is free.

All Things Digital, in an interview with CEO Daren Tsui, note that mSpot does not have a “licensing agreement” with the music companies for this service. Here is the exchange…

This is roughly the same idea that both Apple and Google have discussed with the music industry for much of 2010, but neither of those two heavyweights has the licenses it needs to launch. How can mSpot pull it off?

Good question. The answer is that mSpot CEO Daren Tsui argues that he doesn’t need a license, for a variety of reasons.

I’ll spare you the technical details, but common sense supports his position–why shouldn’t you be able to move your music from one machine to another? And the law, via the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, may be on his side as well.

I presume nonetheless that the record labels are getting (or intend to receive) a cut of the $3.99 / 40GB packages.

We work closely with all four of the major music labels (Sony, EMI, Warner and Universal), as well as major studios (Universal Studios Home Entertainment, The Walt Disney Studios, Image Entertainment, Lionsgate, Paramount Pictures and Screen Media Ventures) and broadcast companies (including ABC, CBS, ClearChannel, Fox Sports, NPR).

Overall it’s a neat idea. With similar package pricing to the backup service Mozy.

But I have to wonder how long the studios are going to be happy with promise of the kick back they may eventually get from the “premium” package. And how mSpot will support that as well as increasing bandwidth usage, and lawyers fees?

And how this will all play out with any iTunes Cloud service coming from Apple in the future…

We are aware that a number of our fans have had trouble running the game on their devices. For example, some older and lower performance Android devices are experiencing severe performance issues.

We are preparing a new solution for the next update, but for the time being, the Android devices listed below are not officially supported by Angry Birds:

• Droid Eris
• HTC Dream
• HTC Hero
• HTC Magic/G2/Sapphire/Mytouch 3G
• HTC Tattoo
• HTC Wildfire
• Huawei Ideos/U8150
• LG Ally/Aloha/VS740
• LG GW620/Eve
• Motorola Backflip/MB300
• Motorola Cliq/Dext
• Samsung Acclaim
• Samsung Moment/M900
• Samsung Spica/i5700
• Samsung Transform
• Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 mini
• T-Mobile G1

Furthermore, devices running Android platform version below 1.6 or custom ROMs are not officially supported.

What a mess. I’ve looked at the Android ecosystem several times. And each time I did, despite being offered good money and incentives to put software on that platform, I decided that the chances of dealing with all the various flavours of hardware in an elegant way was minimal. So I declined.

To be totally open handed about this, even with just iOS, iPhone OS and the various flavours of hardware in Apple’s mobile eco-system right now, it is a non-trivial task for small developers to support all the possible permutations of hardware and OS.

Android is suffering from the same problem that Microsoft has always had with Windows and the myriad flavours of PC hardware they must support.

A year ago, the idea of being able to run Android on the iPhone was damn near laughable. Surely, no hacker was good enough to pull off that feat!

Then this happened, and our minds were blown wide open.

7 months later, the project has progressed enough that just about anyone can do it — in fact, you don’t even need a computer.

You can now install Android on your iPhone 2G or 3G via Cydia, as long as it is jail-broken (obviously) and running iOS 3.1.2+

If you want to do it manually, the old fashioned way, or the quick way via “Bootlace” and Cydia, then info on all that is all here.

So what are you waiting for? If your 2G doesn’t multi-task, or your 3G is crippled and slow, why not switch to Android.

Go for it. Experience “freedom” and “openness” on Google’s mobile OS.

Good luck with that!

UPDATE : Bootlace, the app that you install via Cydia to then be able to swap OSs and install Android, is a really solid app. I am playing with it all now on an iPhone 2G.

[L]ikely boasting Android 3.0 (aka Gingerbread), along with a custom Sony Marketplace which will allow you to purchase and download games designed for the new platform. The device … is sporting a 1GHz Qualcomm MSM8655 (a chip similar to the one found in the G2, but 200MHz faster), 512MB of RAM, 1GB of ROM, and the screen is in the range of 3.7 to 4.1 inches.

I hope Sony manage the software side of things for this better than they have on the PSP.

People who want physical buttons on a phone / gaming device will be very happy.

But how many will they sell outside of that demographic?

Recently, T-Mobile released the HTC G2, their latest Android handset, and it’s got a trick up its sleeves Apple’s iOS engineers must be dying for: a little wafer of silicon that makes the handset effectively jailbreak proof.

…

It’s too early to say if Android’s jailbreakers will find a way around this limitation, but the Dev Team would do well to pay attention anyway: this might be the next hurdle they have to deal with.

Firstly, it will be exploited.

Secondly, Apple like to sell hardware. They will always do all they can in software to maintain control. But I think it is very unlikely, in the current world we live in, that they would want to jeopardise the massive hardware sales they see in unofficial markets with a truly air-tight device.

Nokia’s executive vice president of mobile solutions, Anssi Vanjoki, let an interesting analogy go when speaking with the Financial Times today. When asked about the possibility of his company switching mobile operating systems from Symbian to Android, Mr. Vanjoki compared the prospective move to Finnish boys who “pee in their pants” during the winter months for warmth; the temporary relief acquired is soon followed by a larger issue.

So what would switching to Windows Phone 7 be akin to?

The news: Apple’s iPhone 4 did not reverse its slide in marketshare in the U.S., which dropped by 1.3 percent in the three months ending in July. Worse, the share of smartphones using rival Google’s Android operating system grew by five percentage points, according to ComScore data.

Andrew Nusca, writing for ZDNet quotes Tricia Duryee…

Interestingly, it’s not because Android is more widely available. In fact, Android is only available on 59 carriers vs. 154 for iPhone, but the issue is that Apple lacks deals with some of the world’s largest wireless carriers—Verizon Wireless (VZ, VOD), Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) Germany, NTT DoCoMo (NYSE: DCM) and China Mobile.

It has been far easier for Apple to bend the smaller carriers to its will, and establish hitherto unheard of concessions for a mobile phone manufacturer. Now they are being invited to those larger wireless carriers on their terms…

Of course, the real question isn’t how many carriers, but how many customers those carriers have. The numbers suggest that time is running out for Apple to keep consistent market share with its current deals, at least on a global average.

That means Apple is reaching a tipping point.

Exactly right. Apple know that too. Hence the shift to Qualcomm.

Pretty graphs showing mobile operating system market share in various territories.

Sure, Nokia (Symbian) is still the biggest segment in most European graphs, but RIM (Blackberry) and Apple (iOS) alternate for a firm second place in many of them, with Android gaining too.

Nokia is barely visible in the US though, with RIM, Apple and now Android all fighting for dominance.

Nokia is in big trouble, except in Spain, Italy and Germany where they still hold between 51.6% and 72.5% of the market.

Just how bad is Flash on Android?

What does this demonstrate? Simply that the idea that Apple could simply magically put Flash on the iPad (which runs a processor in the same class as the Nexus One) is fantasy. Ignoring the broader reasons for Apple wanting to keep Flash off its platform, it’s clear that Flash is simply too processor-intensive to work properly on mobile-class processors as currently specified.

Pretty bad. In fact, if you’re thinking video, utterly unusable.

From Technovia.

Of course, some of this saw this coming in May, and of course prior to that. Which is why some of us were in whole hearted agreement with Apple’s strategy for Flash.