Deep Tech

In the battle between native apps and Web sites, an Italian startup called Apps Builder wants to help those on the Web side defect to the enemy.

The company offers a subscription-based Web service that converts Web sites into mobile applications. Last month it added Windows Phone app support to its earlier options--iOS, Android, HTML-based Web apps, and Chrome Web apps. And it's seeing some significant usage of its service.

Specifically, the company just passed the milestone of 20,000 apps developed through Apps Builder, and those apps have been downloaded a million times from their various app stores, more

The dominance of Apple and Google mobile browsers is leading to a situation that's even worse for Web programming than the former dominance of Internet Explorer, a standards group leader warned today.

Daniel Glazman, co-chairman of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) group overseeing the formatting and effects standard called Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), said that programmers are overlooking other browsers when they use newer CSS features--even when those other browsers support the features.

The result is that those other browsers--Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Opera, chiefly--might have to essentially masquerade themselves as other browsers. When that happens, the "Open more

Photography enthusiasts have seen the light when it comes to shooting raw images, but plenty of them have yet to convert to Adobe Systems' DNG format for storing those images.

But Adobe could bring some new sheep into the Digital Negative fold with abilities arriving in Adobe's Lightroom 4 software and its Photoshop CS6 cousin. Adobe isn't evangelizing heavily, but it is offering new features that could convince people that DNG is a better alternative to the profusion of proprietary raw formats that higher-end cameras produce.

Three significant improvements are coming to DNG, two for speed and one more

Sigma has radically repriced its SD1 camera, saying manufacturing improvements let it lower the unusual SLR's cost by two-thirds to $3,300.

Sigma introduced the SD1 in 2011 with a premium price of $9,700--chiefly for its Foveon sensor, given that other specifications were ordinary. Although the sensor is small, about the size of those on mainstream SLRs from Nikon and Canon, it has the unusual ability to capture red, green, and blue light values for each pixel, not just a single color as with conventional sensors.

The Foveon design therefore can produce better detail, at least theoretically, more

A day after Google released its Chrome browser for Android, enthusiasts are finding the Easter eggs tucked away into the software.

One draws attention to the fact that the browser doesn't have the eight-tab limit of Apple's Safari on iOS. The browser shows a button showing the number of tabs; tapping the button takes a person to a page with all the tabs showing. But there's only room for two numeric digits in the button.

So what happens when you open your hundredth tab? The 99 turns to a smiley emoticon. Yes, I tried it, and yes, more

Nginx, a Russian startup that has succeeded where others have failed at challenging the dominant Apache software for housing Web sites, has begun trying to convert its popularity into actual money.

Nginx (pronounced "engine X") yesterday unveiled corporate support offerings for the product, a traditional business model for open-source software. It offers three grades--Essential, Advanced, and Premium--with three- and twelve-month contracts for services including installation, configuration, performance tuning, and maintenance.

"Subscribers to the Advanced and Premium options receive design, implementation and optimization assistance, as well as prioritized development. Premium subscribers will have access to an additional set of customization options," more

Nokia plans to cut 4,000 jobs as it moves manufacturing to Asia, the ailing mobile-phone company said today.

The cuts will take place this year at factories in Komarom, Hungary, Reynosa, Mexico and Salo, Finland, though the factories will continue some work.

"Shifting device assembly to Asia is targeted at improving our time to market. By working more closely with our suppliers, we believe that we will be able to introduce innovations into the market more quickly and ultimately be more competitive," Niklas Savander, Nokia's executive vice president of markets, said in a statement.

Asian countries such as more

The image sensor group that beleaguered photography company Eastman Kodak sold last November has been named Truesense Imaging.

Platinum Equity, which bought the Kodak image-sensor group shortly before Kodak filed for bankruptcy protection, announced the new name yesterday.

Getting a name is a cosmetic detail, but it's an important one for a former business group trying to set up shop as a business. The company sells image sensors for industrial and professional applications such as high-end medium-format cameras and video equipment with high frame rates.

"As an independent company, we now have a great opportunity to expand our leadership more

Microsoft has released a version of its OneNote for Android, continuing an expansion of the note-taking software beyond the company's own operating systems.

"Mobile versions of OneNote are currently available on Windows Phone, iPhone, iPad, and now Android," Microsoft's Michael Oldenburg said in a blog post today. "No matter which platform you prefer, OneNote Mobile lets you easily capture and access all of your notes and ideas on the go."

The software lets people take graphically rich notes with active items such as checkboxes. Using a SkyDrive account, people can sync notes across multiple devices.

The app is more