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Facebook launches new tools for mobile, including Open Graph

Facebook on Thursday announced three new products, including Open Graph for mobile, to boost its presence in the fast-growing smartphone and tablet markets.

The company said in a blog post and at its mobile developer conference in New York that along with making it easier to implement Open Graph on mobile, Facebook also is improving Facebook Login and is releasing a new SDK 3.5 for iOS.

In addition, Facebook also announced a new partner program to help developers integrate Facebook on a variety of mobile platforms. Some early partners include C# SDK for Windows 8 by Microsoft, Corona SDK … Read more

Google Map Maker arrives in U.K.

Google has brought its Map Maker tool to the United Kingdom, letting ordinary people contribute mapping data to the widely used Google Maps service.

The company announced the move today on its Lat-Long blog and at an event at the famed World War II code-breaking site of Bletchley Park.

That means the public could help endow online maps with the same level of detail that's in the superb Ordnance Survey maps -- which seemingly document every footpath, Roman road, and hamlet in Old Blighty.

Google Maps has become a major force in modern computing as Google combines information on … Read more

AndrOpen Office 0.9.2 Review

If you need to view OpenOffice, Microsoft Office, and other documents, this download can offer some help. AndrOpen Office plays on the familiar free Office suite, but it is purely a viewer so you won't be able to edit any of the multiple formats it supports for viewing.

Though the name plays on the free favorite, OpenOffice, it isn't made by the same people. It does seem to be made on the same skeleton of open source software, though. When you open AndrOpen Office, you're greeted by a mess of files that most users won't have … Read more

Blink-WebKit split endangers some browser features

CSS Variables, a handy technology to ease Web page programming, could be one casualty in Safari with Google moving its resources to its browser engine, Blink.

Google engineers wanted to "fork" the WebKit browser engine project that underlies both Safari and Chrome so they could accelerate the pace of Chrome development and adopt changes too extensive to fit into a single open-source project. Even though splitting Blink away from WebKit may make each browser engine more nimble, it also means it's harder to cooperate.

That's because common features must be developed and maintained by duplicate teams … Read more

WebKit fracture puts a pinch on open-source browser efforts

The WebKit browser engine is becoming a less flexible foundation for open-source projects with the departure of Google from the project this week and Apple's consequent paring back of the project.

WebKit is a broad project that includes participation from many interested parties -- not just Apple and Google, but also BlackBerry, Samsung, Amazon, Oracle, Adobe Systems, and the programmers involved with the KDE and Gnome user interfaces for Linux. Indeed, the open-source project began as KDE's KHTML engine for the Konqueror browser before Apple got involved.

Google's Chrome team left WebKit this week, forking the open-source … Read more

Mozilla Thunderbird for Mac Review

Working with multiple e-mail addresses and inboxes often requires a management client. Mozilla Thunderbird for Mac, despite its dated look, performs well as an open-source e-mail manager.

As an open-source project, this program is available as freeware with no restrictions or payments required. Download and installation occurred quickly and without any problems. After initial setup, which prompted us as to whether the program should be the default email client, Mozilla Thunderbird for Mac welcomed us with a well-designed main interface. Aesthetically, the graphics were dated and would have been appropriate for a program several years old, as opposed to a … Read more

Blink, Google's new Chrome browser engine, comes to life

Blink, Google's new fork of the WebKit browser engine, is alive.

Yesterday, Google announced the project, which splits its browser work from Apple's in the open-source WebKit project. Today, Blink is up and running.

The first updates -- including a new list of 36 Blink "owners" who have authority to approve changes -- are arriving.

"Chrome 28 will be the first blinking release," Chrome programmer Mike West said in a Hacker News comment. The current stable version of Chrome is version 26; new versions arrive about every six weeks.

"The repository seems to … Read more

Googlers exultant over launch of Blink browser engine

Today, Google launched Blink, its fork of the WebKit browser engine, and members of Google's Chrome team clearly are excited about their liberation.

With the fork, Google will concentrate its core browser development efforts on Blink, which will gradually diverge from the WebKit project on which it's based. You can read more about the context and history leading to Blink in CNET's coverage, or read the official Blink blog post and Blink FAQ for the party line.

But to get a feel for the emotion involved, check the commentary from the Chrome team members themselves. They're … Read more

Google parts ways with Apple over WebKit, launches Blink

A years-long marriage of convenience that linked Google and Apple browser technologies is ending in divorce.

In a move that Google says will technologically liberate both Chrome and Safari, the company has begun its own offshoot of the WebKit browser engine project called Blink. Initially it uses the same software code base that all WebKit-based browsers share, but over time it will diverge into a totally separate project, Google announced today.

The move marks the end of years of direct WebKit programming cooperation between the two rivals. WebKit is an open-source project, meaning that anyone can use and modify the … Read more