dev

The newly-minted Chrome 18 beta expands the scope of hardware acceleration in the browser to older computers, but it's still not available to all. Meanwhile, Chrome 19 dev goes bleeding edge with JavaScript.

Released today, Google Chrome 18 beta for Windows, Mac, and Chrome Frame improves 2D Canvas support and introduces a software rasterizer. The new features are not yet available on Chrome 18 beta for Linux.

Basically, this means that games and animations based in the HTML5 Canvas tag ought to run faster and appear smoother. Google noted in its blog post announcing the changes that this was … Read more

Contrary to popular opinion, BlackBerry users have actually avidly embraced smartphone apps.

That was the key message during today's DevCon Europe event hosted by Research In Motion. Alec Saunders, head of RIM's developer relations, has been the key evangelist in the cause of drumming up interest in BlackBerry's platform at a time when it faces many questions about its growth prospects and ability to compete against the likes of Android and iOS.

Saunders provided the headline stat for the day: 6 million apps downloaded from BlackBerry's App World each day, or nearly 150 million a month, … Read more

Whether or not the masses actually jailbreak their iPhones, it seems as though users are willing to support the work that the jailbreak community is doing, feeding the Chronic-Dev Team with more than 10 million crash reports in a single week after the release of the Chronic-Dev Crash Reporter application.

The app was created for Mac and Windows and, once installed, allows the Chronic-Dev Team to access the crash reports from your iOS devices before they are sent to Apple. Once accessed, they are sent instead to a server run by the Chronic-Dev Team and analyzed.

That data is then … Read more

Despite the overwhelming success of Apple's "walled garden" approach to the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch, many users still wish to part ways with the benefits of control in favor of the unbridled technology (good and bad) available when jailbreaking iOS. If you are one of those users, you can actually become an integral part of the jailbreaking community.

Jailbreaking your iOS device largely depends on finding exploits in the iOS code that hackers can use to take control of the operating system and install applications and functions not approved by Apple. Those exploits can be found … Read more

Research In Motion is expanding its series of developers conferences to European programmers.

The first DevCon Europe, as it's called, is set for Amsterdam on February 7 and 8, 2012.

The BlackBerry maker has been slowly increasing its outreach to developers, launching DevCon Asia this year. (The 2012 show will take place in Bangkok.) Meanwhile, the San Francisco area will see its fifth such conclave this fall.

RIM's quickening pace for wooing developers with dedicated shows makes us wonder how much the troubled mobile-device maker hopes that developer interest will increase its mainstream appeal. Android and iOS have … Read more

The software hole involved in a popular method for jailbreaking Apple's iOS devices has reportedly been patched by the company as part of iOS 5, the free system software update that's due out later this year.

Digging through the beta version of iOS 5, which Apple made available to developers earlier this month, the iPhone Dev-Team--a group of hackers that targets Apple devices and is not to be confused with Apple's group that designs the iOS software--has discovered a change that threatens to close a loophole the group has long exploited.

"Those of you who have been jailbreaking for a while have probably heard us periodically warn you to 'save your blobs' for each firmware.... Saving your blobs for a given firmware on your specific device allows you to restore *that* device to *that* firmware even after Apple has stopped signing it," the group wrote on its blog yesterday. "That's all about to change."

The group says Apple has implemented a system that checks for a uniquely generated chunk of data each time the phone is restored. The problem there is that only Apple has the keys to unlock that code to let the phone boot up successfully. The end result is that jailbreaking methods that took advantage of that vulnerability could be endangered if that same system is employed in the final version of the software.

The iPhone-Dev Team notes that "there may still be ways to combat this" but that it's not showing its cards just yet, since it might give Apple time to make a fix ahead of a general release. "They've stepped up their game!" the group said of Apple's security efforts.

Apple's iPhone and other iOS devices continue to be hot targets for hackers. Ahead of the release of the App Store, one of the most popular reasons to jailbreak an iOS device was to be able to install third-party software. Even after the launch of the App Store, places like third-party app repository Cydia became destinations for developers who couldn't get their applications through Apple's approval process. Another popular reason was to unlock the iPhone so that it would work on other carriers, an option Apple now offers to U.S. buyers at a hefty price premium.

iOS 5 is due out this fall. Last week Apple released a second beta of the software to developers so they could use it to test their applications for compatibility with the OS and its new features. The first beta of the software was allegedly jailbroken by a member of the iPhone-Dev Team in less than 24 hours.… Read more

Microsoft Word is the king of word processing programs, but the market for less expensive, nonproprietary alternatives is burgeoning. DevVicky Word 2010 is a free word processing program that mimics a lot of Microsoft Word's features, but it has several drawbacks that kept us from taking it seriously among the non-Microsoft competition.

The program's interface is attractive and has the usual layout of a word processing program, with the typical toolbars across the top. Since it hews pretty closely to convention, it's not difficult to figure out how to use it; the program has most of the … Read more

Apple's new beta version of iOS 5 has been jailbroken for the second time this week, now opening the door for users to jailbreak their iOS 5 devices using the latest version of the popular Redsn0w tool.

In a blog post today about the new jailbreak, the iPhone-dev Team, a group of hackers that target Apple devices, announced that it has released a tethered redsn0w jailbreak for iOS 5.

As with the group's first jailbreak of iOS 5 earlier this week, the redsn0w jailbreak will let users install Cydia, which allows them to use apps unapproved and unsanctioned … Read more

Be careful venting your frustrations with modern technology when using the latest version of Google Chrome, released today. Chrome 11 (download for Windows | Mac | Linux) comes with the ability to convert your speech to text, which could prove to be a big boon to people who have difficulty with keyboards as well as providing on the go translations when used with Google Translate.

The new feature, based in HTML5, requires a microphone icon embedded in the Web page. Click the icon and then speak into your computer's mic. The input records as text, and the browser automatically inserts the … Read more