A Correlation Between Computers and Phone Apps

December 18, 2010 By Leave a Comment

As phones get smarter and jam packed with technology, it will be easier for hackers to get your information. Phones today have a hard drive, they have a keyboard and a monitor and a connection to the internet. These are little computers sitting in your hand. Some phones today run windows operating systems and other operating systems that are just as common. Those systems are not going to protect you; In fact they will probably be your downfall. When these systems get used in a wide spread way, they fall into the hands of criminals.

The IPhone is one of the most widely used smart for today. This phone can be cracked and there are tutorials on how to do it on the net. Cracked is different than hacked, because it’s the person who owns the phone doing it to them self. It just takes one more step to hack into somebody’s phone and that is motive. Right now it’s not going to be a big issue, because what are they going to take from you, people’s phone numbers or your list of music? While our phones continue to do more work for us the more complicated phone coding will become. The more code that there is on a phone the easier it will be to download and hide a virus.

Hopefully they have started to think about virus protection for phones, because the way things are going that’s what we will need. Our phones do have something that most computers do not (but will soon) that is Bluetooth capabilities. The ability to link one device to another in a matter of seconds, with no wires and little effort will become a security problem. This technology is advancing as well, but they keep the best feature on it and that is being able to turn it off.

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Use Open Source Software on iPhone With These Apps

September 21, 2010 By Leave a Comment
He Is Rich!!! showing off the $999.99 iPhone a...
Image by wellohorld via Flickr
Even though the most avid Linux fans will go out of their way to support open source software powered technology, sometimes others are just too darn cool. One such device is Apple’s iPhone. While competitors are starting to give iPhone a run for its money, it is still ahead of the game its load of apps, sleek design and smooth performance. But unlike the comparable Android, which runs an operating system off the Linux kernel, the iPhone’s operating system is closed. However, this fact doesn’t mean it is completely exempt from the reach of open source software. There are actually some pretty useful and fun open apps available for the iPhone.

The greatest attribute of smartphones like the iPhone is their ability to keep users connected over many different mediums. The open Internet Relay Chat Colloquy, which is popular on Mac computers, is also mobile. It keeps tracks of all conversations and alerts you when certain words are mentioned all while you’re on the go. While it isn’t free, it’s worth it to stay in the thick of things. Bloggers don’t have to be near a computer to keep the world informed of their latest exploits when they have the WordPress app. Users can publish posts and manage their pages from wherever the mood strikes them. And to keep all your connections together, there is Funambol that will sync your contacts with email clients and other systems.

There are also open software apps that let you have a lot of fun with your iPhone. Both useful and in some ways borderline comedic is the wikiHow app. Yes, finding out how to wrap a wound during an accident all with a touch of the screen is extremely helpful, but if you’re looking up how to survive a nuclear blast on your iPhone it just may be too late. The iPhone is also great for gaming with it’s touch sensitive screen, so have fun with legendary first-person shooters Doom and Wolfenstein.

And for the intrepid Linux lover, you can always just hack it on there.

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Moore’s Law: Technology’s Rapid Growth

June 28, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Palm TX
Image via Wikipedia

It is becoming increasingly difficult to stay on top of all the developments in the technology industry. Technology experts have to monitor developments on a daily basis to keep their edge. Moore’s law describes this, rapid growth, nature of technology. Moore’s law states that the number of transistors that can reside on a circuit doubles almost every two years. This trend has held true historically and many do not seeing it stopping in the near future.

The capabilities of electronic devices have increased at such an exponential rate that, what was once the “top of the line” or “cutting edge” is old news after only a year. The history of the Palm Pilot, which was one of the first handheld electronic devices, provides an excellent illustration of Moore’s law.

In 1996, Palm Computing released the Pilot. It had 128KB to 512KB of memory, a 160 x 160 pixel screen and could only display shades of gray. Just a year later Palm released the 2nd generation Pilot that had 1MB of memory. In 1998 the Palm 3 was released the supported memory cards and flash ROM which held 2MBs of memory. In 2000, Palm released a handheld with a color screen. By the early 2000s Palm had integrated Palm PDAs into phones. With this new phone integration the Palm Treo took off in popularity. The Treo had various iterations until 2009 when Palm released the Pre. The Pre was their answer to the Apple iPhone (a subject for another article). The Pre had a touch screen, ran on the fast 3G network, and had 8GBs of internal memory.

In just over 10 years Palm’s products exponentially increased in capabilities while decreasing its form factor. Memory went from 128KB to 8GB (1GB is equal to 1048576KBs), screens went from gray to full color and PDA functionality was integrated with phone and Internet. The devices of 1996 looked like technology from the stone ages just a few years later.

With Moore’s Law still going strong innovators need to work hard to keep up.

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Apple OSX

May 24, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Photograph showing Apple Newton hand held comp...
Image via Wikipedia

If Windows has an upper hand on Apple, it is the large market share is has that has held steady for years. Historically Microsoft Windows has held over 90 percent market share over its competitors. Apple, although the second most popular operating system (as of 2010), has hovered in the single digit percentage for market share.

This market dominance is often held as the reason why Windows is the superior choice. Despite the many benefits of Apple’s OS, its user base pales in comparision to Windows. This trend continued through the early years of Apple, as it found it a challenge to even capture 5 percent of the market. As of July 2010 Apple’s operating system has reached close to 10 percent market share in the United States.

Apple’s operating system was initially released to the public in 1984 with its Macintosh computers under the name of System Software. This OS popularized the modern day graphical user interface. Apple released many iterations of its operating system and eventually released its Mac OSX operating system in 2002.

Mac OSX was different from Apple’s previous classic operating systems in that it was based off of the Unix platform. Much of the programming behind of OSX was developed at NeXT – a company that Steve Jobs had started after leaving Apple. OSX contained a few new features that the previous operating systems had, while performing in a more stable environment.

Benefits often cited for using Mac OSX include: Stability and reliability, ease of use and fairly low rate of virus’ and spyware. The drawbacks that are often referred to are: Not nearly as much software is developed for Apples, incompatibility (cannot use Mac software on non-Apple computers) and price of hardware.

Despite the drawbacks the popularity of Apple has increased since the early 2000s. The gains in popularity of Apple’s operating system could be attributed to the popularity of the iPod. Prices for Apple products were adjusted to be more consumer friendly. Their development of other revolutionary products such as the iPhone and iPad has also helped accelerate its sales.

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