fragmentation

Fragment Design keeps your photo equipment under wraps

Fashion trendsetter Hiroshi Fujiwara and his company Fragment Design are typically known for releasing limited-edition fashion collaborations, but lately it seems like the company is looking more frequently at tech accessories.

Case in point: back in April 2009, Fragment teamed up with Incase for the second round of an exclusive iPhone case. Well, it must have done well, because HighSnobiety got an exclusive look at the latest venture, a soft wrap for photo equipment and other tech accessories.

According to HighSnobiety, the wrap is made of a soft, thick material that simply folds over to protect your technical equipment from damage on-the-go. Conveniently, the wrap only comes in one size, with the added benefit of universal fit for your most delicate gadgets.

It's hard to tell from the picture, but it sort of looks like RoadWired R.A.P.S.! Advanced Protection System Wraps designed to swathe phones, cameras, or whatever else in a big neoprene blanket. The Fragment Design Soft Wrap will be available soon, although no prices have been announced.

More pics after the jump.… Read more

Good scan, no cleaning

Although its scans are effective, this bug cleaner is a real let down. Any problems found will have to be removed manually or with another program.

PC Bug Cleaner has a simple, functional interface that's easy for anyone to understand. Three action tabs offer all the options you'll need. The scan tab lets users choose which sections of the Registry to check for errors. A quick visit to the "select all" button is the easiest and safest option. Although it's not as fast as other scanners, this program is effective in its search. Users are … Read more

Rejoin hard drive fragments

Join your hard drive fragments together into a tight bunch with this freeware. Auslogics Disk Defrag's interface couldn't be any cleaner or easier to use.

Choose a hard drive from an easy-to-read pull-down menu, and Disk Defrag instantly displays the drive's size, and used and free space. The program even displays a pie graph for visual learners. One click starts the defragmentation process. The program's defrag process screen displays another handy visual. A sector map makes it easy to see how much of the drive is fragmented, allocated, or free. As the program churns away, the … Read more

Will Google fracture or unify mobile Linux?

Forgive me if I appear a little skeptical here about Google's Open Handset Alliance. By my count, it's the fifth consortium so far to attempt to craft something useful for mobile phones out of Linux and open-source software.

OHA has by far the highest profile, it's got the most persuasive list of members, and its timing is the best. What's not yet clear is whether the "Android" work of Google and its allies will unify or further fragment work in the area.

Rallying programmers behind a unified effort could help determine whether this effort will accomplish more than the Linux Phone Standard (Lips) Forum, the Open Source Developer Labs' Mobile Linux Initiative, the Consumer Electronics Linux Forum (CELF), and most recently, the LiMo Foundation begun in 2006. Related efforts one step removed include Intel's Moblin and, Nokia's Maemo, and any number of other open-source projects.

Just as with PCs, somebody has to write a "stack" of software spanning from basic operating system functions all the way through communication utilities, user interfaces and Web browsers. Unlike PCs so far, though, the mobile phone market has suffered from a profusion of incompatible software foundations, despite some efforts to use Linux and Java to bring some common ground.