Toshiba To Launch New Android Tablet Soon

Toshiba will soon launch an Android 3.0 Honeycomb tablet named "Thrive". The tablet was being advertised for pre-order at JR.com, but that advertisement has suddenly and inexplicably been pulled down at the time of filing this report. You can still view the Google Cache copy of the page over here. The price quoted was US$579, which is about Rs 26,200 - not bad for what is on offer.

Powered by a 1 GHz Dual core Tegra 2 processor, this 10.1-inch tablet sports a capacitive multitouch screen with pixel dimensions of 1280x800. This screen features Toshiba Adaptive Display technology, which adjusts the brightness and contrast to suit the surrounding lighting conditions; practically allowing you to use this tablet even in sunny weather.Adobe Flash support with hardware acceleration is present for an enriching web-browsing experience.

Along with a 5 Megapixel primary camera featuring Auto-focus, Digital zoom, and 720p video capture at the back, there is also a 2 Megapixel HD camera at the front for video calling. The HDMI output lets you hook up this tablet to yourHDTV and watch movies on the big screen in 1080p (Full HD) resolution. Thanks to the Tablet's Resolution+technology incorporated in this device, even Standard Definition (SD) video content is upscaled neatly with no details lost.

The tablet features, a GPS, an accelerometer and a digital compass helping pinpoint its exact location and motion. Even the battery is user-replaceable, which is something every consumer wants, but no tablet manufacturer obliges. This allows you to carry a second battery pack and replace the battery on-the-go if the tablet runs out of juice. Connectivity is taken care of by Wi-Fi (with hotspot capability), USB 2.0 (with one full and one mini-USB port) andBluetooth. No mention is made of GSM connectivity, so that probably won't be available in this version at least. An SDmemory card slot is also provided to augment the 32 GB internal on-board memory.

Toshiba has been delaying the launch of this tablet, and may further delay it to the third quarter of this calendar year. The launch date is therefore not clear. We must note that Toshiba has already launched the Portege 12-inch tablet in India, so we expect this to follow suit soon enough.

Google Maps for Android Adds Check-ins for Place Pages

Google is looking to make it easier for Android phone users to check in, as well as rate and review places they visit in their travels.

Google Maps 5.5 for Android now lets users check into places on a Place page with Latitude, or add a rating or review by clickingthese new buttons.

The idea is to make it easier for users to engage with the app, and generate input and content about the businesses Google is helping to market on Maps and Place pages. Google also hopes to boost the social quotient of Google Places with these features. 

Google has more than 200 million users of its Google Maps for mobile application across many platforms and smartphones and tablets worldwide.

The company has been steadily upgrading the Android version of Google Maps, which gets a new version ever month or so. Google Maps 5.4 rolled out May 4 with incremental upgrades, while Maps 5.3 launched April 5 with Google Latitude location history.  

With Maps 5.5, users may also edit their home and/or work address for the Latitude app so that if their home or work address changes, they may edit these addresses within Latitude.

Finally, transit directions for the 440 cities charted in Google Maps for Android have been redesigned. Each page now includes a list of future scheduled departures for different lines, every line serving the station, and links to stations nearby.

Google this week also moved to make its Places local business listing service more personal for users. Places will now show recommendations, based on theHotpot engine, from people who share similar tastes to other users.

For this "People like you" feature, Hotpot automatically compares the places a user has rated against the places rated by other Google Places users, and identifies people who share similar tastes.

Users need only go to Google Places and click on people's nicknames to see their full set of recommendations.

The move accounts for the fact that while users can usually count on recommendations from trusted family and friends on Places, not every friend or family member shares the same places or tastes.

 

mSpot for Android adds Radio Spotter

(Credit: mSpot)

(Credit: mSpot)

(Credit: mSpot)

Starting today, users of the mSpot app for Android get to enjoy Radio Spotter Beta, a new release that adds streaming radio to the app's usual cloud music service. Previously, mSpot was all about uploading, storing, and playing music that you already own. But now, with Radio Spotter Beta, users can mix in some spontaneity and variety via Internet Radio stations, mSpot Stations, Personal Stations (based on a song or artist of your choosing), or the innovative Suggested Stations. The mSpot app is able to make its suggestions based on the music you've been listening to, as opposed to all of the music you have stored.

With services like Pandora and Slacker each offering their own combinations of socially-programmed radio, curated radio, and an on-demand catalog, mSpot is adding yet another unique option to the mix. We like that it combines the guaranteed enjoyment of your own personal music catalog (stored in the cloud) with the potential discovery that streaming radio offers. And the suggested stations are a nice touch.

Radio Spotter Beta is available for download now in the Android Marketplace. Versions for desktop as well as other mobile platforms are expected to roll out sometime later this year. We'll keep our ears open.

Access your files anywhere with Mozy Android app

Hot on the heels of its iOS counterpart, online backup service Mozy just released an app for Android. That's a major perk for anyone already using the service to archive their data.

Mozy, of course, is the quiet desktop tool that automatically copies your critical files to the cloud. I've been a user for years, and just this week I had to take advantage of it after a sudden system failure. Worked like a charm.

The app, which is free, enables you to access your files on the run. You can, for example, retrieve Word and Excel documents, view photos, and even play MP3s and certain kinds of videos.

Mozy also lets you share files via e-mail, or download them directly to your phone or tablet. (To access these options, you simply tap and hold any file. Unfortunately, you can't do likewise with folders.)

Mozy for Android is virtually identical in form and function to Mozy for iPhone, so I recommend reading Lance Whitney's coverage of the latter if you want to learn more.

I do share his opinion that navigation could be better; drilling down through a folder structure is a less-than-ideal way to find the file(s) you want. At least there's a search option. (Lance noted that it didn't work with entire data sets, only individual folders, but in my tests that wasn't the case: you can indeed search from the top level.)

If you're already using a service like Dropbox or SugarSync to access files on the go, I'm not sure there's much point in switching to Mozy. But if you're a Mozy user, it's a no-brainer: grab this app. (If you're not a Mozy user, I can't recommend it highly enough--especially the free 2GB MozyHome account.)

RIM to Support Apple and Android Phones

In a tactical ploy to increase their market share and point out the flaws in Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS systems, Blackberry makers RIM have announced that it will offering businesses security management tools to supports its rival OS’s as well as its own.

Spectators say that the increased usage of non-Blackberry phones in business environments has forced Blackberry into accommodating rival smart phones in its BlackBerry Enterprise Server rather than loosing business to third parties such as Zenprise which manages all OS’s.

One executive for a pharmaceutical company boasting the use of around 15,000 Blackberry’s thinks the move could benefit Blackberry, saying “by extending support to other devices, RIM will expose the limitations of some of the other platforms.”

Many are seeing the move as Blackberry finally accepting its dwindling presence in the Smartphone market but reiterate that the move can only be a good move for the company.

Google fixing Android security flaw

Google is rolling out a fix that addresses a security flaw found in over 90 percent of Android phones.

Last Friday, German researchersfrom Ulm University found a flaw in the Android platform for versions

 2.3.3 and earlier that made it possible for a hacker to access and edit a user’s Google contacts and calendar on open WiFi networks.

About 99.7 percent of Android users were still running earlier versions of the platform, the researchers said.

For users running these earlier versions, the services use an unencrypted http connection to request an authentication token from Google. In later versions of Android, the services use a secure https connection to request an authentication token from Google.

The company issued a statement Wednesday saying, "Today we're starting to roll out a fix which addresses a potential security flaw that could, under certain circumstances, allow a third party access to data available in calendar and contacts. This fix requires no action from users and will roll out globally over the next few days."

Researchers also found that synchronization with Picasa, Google’s photo album service, is not encrypted. Google is still investigating this issue.

TuneWiki for Android gets overhauled

(Credit: Screenshot by Joshua Goldman/CNET)

TuneWiki was already a favorite music player for Android, mainly for its timed, subtitled lyrics (available translated into more than 40 languages), displayed while keeping the album art on screen and not navigating away from the player controls. The application got a major update today, getting a new interface and enhanced social-networking and music-discovery features.

The interface is now broken into three sections: My Music, Discover, and Connected. My Music is exactly what it sounds like, the music living on your device. Discover houses all the social-networking options. Tapping the Map button, for example, brings up a Song Map to see what people near you or around the world are listening to with TuneWiki. Find someone with similar tastes and you can choose to follow them, making them a Muse. You can also add people from your Facebook and Twitter networks as Muses. Whatever a Muse listens to ends up in your Songbox where you're able to preview and purchase tracks. You can also discover more music from an artist by seeing the songs you own as well as those you don't, with the option to immediately sample, buy, or watch a music video for those songs.

The last section, Connected, is for accessing streaming radio apps such as Shoutcast, music videos, on-demand services like Rhapsody and TuneWiki's Lyric Legend game, which requires you to tap word-filled orbs in time with a song. There's lyric support for streaming audio and video, too.

Asphalt 6 by Gameloft now available on the Android Market.

It seems Gameloft is truly impressed with how Google is improving the Android Market, so much so that when we reported on Modern Combat 2: Black Pegasus hitting the market, the rumor was that the next game would be Asphalt 6. Well that has come true as well as it is now available on the market.

Asphalt 6 is probably Gameloft's best racing game they have released so far and one of the top ones for Android in general when it comes to racing games. The best part about it all though aside from being able to receive updates through the Android Market is that if your device can play the game, then you'll see if available. If not then you won't thanks to the markets new feature that allows developers to exclude devices.

As with Modern Combat 2: Black Pegasus, Asphalt 6 is available for a slightly higher price than what you would pay for on the Gameloft web-based store. Coming in at $6.99, the price is still worth it if you want a really solid 3D racing game for your Android device. In our review we gave Asphalt 6 a 4/5 rating and with a few tweaks to the game it could easily get a 5/5 score. If you've been waiting for this game but have been holding out due to it not being on the market, now you can go get it!

So what will be the next game from Gameloft to be released onto the Android Market? We don't know just yet but we are going to find out!

Developer Website: Gameloft

Android Market Link: Asphalt 6

Adobe releases Flash Player 10.3 update for Android

Adobe releases the 10.3 update for Flash Player, bringing a range of fixes, optimizations and new features to Windows, Mac OS, Linux and Android platforms.

Adobe has released the latest update for Flash Player, version 10.3. The update works with all Flash-enabled platforms, including Windows, Mac OS, Linux and Android, with support for the most recent 3.1 update to Honeycomb. You can nab the download on the web at Adobe.com or through Android Market on your mobile device.

The latest Flash update is all about squashing bugs and making things work more smoothly. On the Android side, that means NEON optimizations for OMAP4-based devices (pretty much just the BlackBerry PlayBook for now), various fixes for the Samsung Galaxy S, HTC EVO and someMotorola devices and some optimizations for Android 3.0+. All of the fixes are detailed on Adobe’s Android patch notespage. There are a variety of fixes on the non-mobile side as well, along with a handful of new features.

In addition to some new developer tools for measuring video and acoustic echo cancellation, there are also now new controls for managing local storage that have been integrated directly into your browser’s privacy settings, with support for Mozilla Firefox 4, Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 and higher, Google Chrome 11 and “a future release ofApple Safari.” The update also adds a dedicated Flash Player Settings Manager to Control Panels/System Preferences on Windows, Mac and Linux computers, and auto-updated notifications for Mac OS

Netflix streaming now on few Android phones

Today, Netflix and Android scored more points in humanity's ongoing quest to be able to watch absolutely anything, anywhere, anytime--so long as you're using the right phone. Yes, the long-awaited Netflix app for Android finally showed up to the party today in the Android Market, but it apparently doesn't get along with everyone in attendance. In fact, Netflix says the app--which enables users to watch streaming movies--only runs on the following phones:

• HTC Incredible with Android 2.2 
• HTC Nexus One with Android 2.2, 2.3 
• HTC Evo 4G with Android 2.2 
• HTC G2 with Android 2.2 
• Samsung Nexus S with Android 2.3.

There's also word that it won't work on the forthcoming Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablets, which Google handed out to Google I/O attendees earlier this week. Major party foul. But for those with one of the phones on the list, download the app and Netflix promises much of the same functionality as the iOS version, like being able to resume watching a movie or show where you left off on your TV or computer.

Netflix was in the rare camp of apps that became available on Windows Phone 7 before Android, something Roma De from Netflix's product team blames on the much maligned phenomenon of Android fragmentation. In a post on the company blog, Roma De described some of the "challenges" they faced with Android:

"One of these challenges is the lack of standard streaming playback features that the Netflix application can use to gain broad penetration across all available Android phones. In the absence of standardization, we have to test each individual handset and launch only on those that can support playback."

Roma De added that Netflix is "aggressively qualifying phones" and hopes to have a much larger roster of compatible phones in the coming months. Hopefully that means Honeycomb tablets, too.