Break it Down Blog

The badasses over at Unwired View have figured out how to install the Android OS dev image on the Nokia N810 running the Diablo (latest) firmware; effectively replacing the operating system with Android and allowing you to play around with it long before real Android phones and devices will hit the street.
The best part, it’s [...]

Uh-oh, Spaghettio’s! Looks like Sun is going to start closing up some of the open source portions of MySQL, namely the more advanced functionality and the backup solutions that are currently open sourced. Can you blame them? They paid a goddamn billion for MySQL, it’s not too surprising that they want to create some value-add [...]

Jumping out of the gate to a rocky start, Google’s Android was reported as being a “good start” but garnered plenty of complaints from folks that wanted to dive in head first and expected to fine a fully mature product.
Most of the complaints centered around the lack of public issue tracking and feedback loop for [...]

Nokia has agreed to purchase Trolltech (creators of the QT cross platform GUI Toolkit that KDE is based on, as well as the Qtopia cell phone platform) for $150 million.
This is an interesting move as all the hub-bub surrounding Google’s announcement of the Open Handset Alliance and the new cell platform, Android, was surprisingly devoid [...]

For the developers out there, Ars takes some time with the Android (gPhone) APIs to develop a quick Twitter application. Ryan points out that while was impressed with his app only requiring 130 lines of code to get off the ground, he found the tools available to make a nice looking UI were severely lacking. [...]

Brad Agdern sends in information about Sprint “soft launching” it’s XOHM (WiMax) service in the Chicago, Washington and Baltimore markets.
Unfortunately this doesn’t suddenly mean your Sprint phone will be running at WiMax speeds as support for XOHM requires new devices. Sprint has XOHM-enabled devices for the end of the year and dual-mode CDMA/XOHM phones next [...]

Greg Amerson sent along two very interesting reads (One, Two) about what the Google Android platform means to Sun and the OpenJDK.
At first glance Android looks like a harmlessly cool, Java-based mobile platform… so what’s the big deal? At closer glance it appears that Google has invented their own Java VM, the Dalvik VM to [...]

Looks like Google has released the Android SDK for mass consumption. What comes in the SDK is mostly expected, but still cool to see:

Linux Kernel
FreeType
OpenGL
SQL Lite
WebKit (as a web browser, anyone else surprised this wasn’t Firefox 3 platform?)
Custom Java Bytecode interpreter that is “highly specialized for the CPU”
Common Java API
Media File Support based on PacketVideo’s [...]

Engadget reports that HTC has let slip that they will be producing 2-3 Android-based phones (Originally rumored as the gPhone platform) next year.
For the folks out there familiar with HTC’s work, they do a lot (all?) of the T-Mobile branded smart phones, their existing TouchFLO interface and GPS integration all suggest that these Android-based phones [...]

InformationWeek is reporting that Google will announce it’s plans for the gPhone this Monday, possibly including collaborations with all the cell carriers previously mentioned (T-Mobile, Sprint, Verizon, etc.) as well as handset manufacturers.
Bring it on!
Update #1: Some prelim information before the official announcement:
USA Today has an advance story on Google’s plans to announce a new [...]

John Hering sent in news that Google is prepping it’s launch of OpenSocial Thursday.
The interesting think here is that OpenSocial isn’t another social networking service, but instead is a common set of APIs used to develop software against any social networking site participating in the OpenSocial community.
Think of this like OpenID, but instead of identification [...]

Holy mother-bitches… Chris Hunkele just sent in the scoop that it looks like Gmail is finally adding IMAP support. Something I’m almost certain they’ve had sitting in the wings for more than a year now, but with the release of gPhone looming, my guess this begins the beta of IMAP support while will eventually be [...]