SEATTLE – In a reversal of sorts, some people are keen to load webOS on their Android devices, now that Hewlett-Packard has announced plans to make the software open source.

HP said earlier Friday that it will make the code behind webOS available under an open-source license. It said the company would be an active participant and investor in the project.

Developers and other webOS enthusiasts are now excited about the possibility of loading webOS onto their Android phones.

“I’m sure this is a little ways off but it would be great if this means we can essentially put webOS on the devices of our choosing. i.e. Droid 2 with webOS,” one person wrote on the PreCentral Forum.

“I’d love to see webOS on my Nexus S,” another wrote on the XDA Developers forum.

That marks a reversal from earlier this year, when people were scrambling to buy HP’s discounted webOS TouchPad tablets with the plan of running Android on them. After HP discontinued its webOS-based phones and tablets, it cut the price of the TouchPad to $99. The TouchPads sold out quickly as people realized it was one of the lowest-cost tablets with quality hardware available. But since buyers feared that HP would abandon webOS, they bought the tablets intending to load Android on them, hoping developers would do the heavy lifting to enable that. One website even offered a bounty to the developer who could port the software first.

While some of the talk Friday mentioned tablets, most is about porting webOS to Android phones. It’s unclear how long such a project might take. HP must first make the webOS code available, and it hasn’t said yet when it will do that. When it does, developers will need to spend time making it work on hardware designed for Android.

But some people expect that work to start soon. “The xda devs will be hard at work soon, bank on that… i see great things coming here. can you imagine running webos on [an Evo 4G] or the galaxy nexus?” one person wrote on the PreCentral forum. XDA is a forum where developers work together on mobile software projects.

SAN FRANCISCO – New phones and tablets with Android 4.0, a.k.a. Ice Cream Sandwich, are just around the corner, and carriers are also announcing which current models will be upgradable, most likely in early 2012. Many of the new features and updates will be great for business users.
Before updating, here’s what you should be thinking about to make the transition to Ice Cream Sandwich safe and painless.

System Updates

Updating the operating system on any device is a process with multiple opportunities for failure:

• • The download of the update could be corrupted, resulting in a failed update.
  • The update process could be interrupted by power, networking, or disk issues, leaving your device unusable.
  • The update could contain bugs that make your device unusable, and could result in data loss or corruption.

If any of these happen, you may need to wipe your device and start from scratch, which could result in the loss of business data, and delays in getting work done. While the odds of problems ruining your day are slim, you can take these steps to reduce the damage, make it easier to recover from, and perhaps prevent the problems in the first place.

1. Clean Up Your Apps

A good way to start is by taking a look at your current setup. We all find great non-business related apps that are soon forgotten after installing them. Go to Settings, Applications, Manage Applications, and removeanyoftheapps you aren’t using or don’t need. This will not only reduce the potential for incompatibility, but also free up more space for the update and the future apps you may want to add.
2. Update Your Apps

If you don’t allow your apps to update automatically, you should manually run the Android Market app and use the “My Apps” setting to check for updates, especially to mission-critical apps. Often apps are updated in response to reported bugs caused by a new version of an operating system. Having those updates installed first will help eliminate any potential problems down the road.

3. Back Up Your Apps

Google’s App Store will remember which apps you’ve purchased or installed for free, and will allow you to install them again (see My Library, Apps in the Android Market), but it doesn’t keep an up-to-date list of the apps currently installed. For this, use an app like AppBrain, which works with an associated website to keep track of your app installing activity, and can save a list of your apps making it easier to restore them should the need arise.
4. Back Up Your Data

You should always have backups of any business data. Much of your data, like contacts, calendar entries, and email, is backed up to the cloud automatically. Other data, especially from third-party apps, may not be–and could be lost should your update go bad. Check your apps for options to sync to the cloud, or export to your SD card. Then, back up your SD card to your computer.

5. Make Your Device Happy

When update day arrives, make your device as comfortable as possible. Be sure your battery is well charged, and keep the device plugged in during the update to avoid an interruption caused by lack of power. Enable Wi-Fi, and be connected to a network so that any attempts by the OS to “phone home”, register, or otherwise finish the process are possible.

SAN FRANCISCO – An Asian boy approaches a man clad in black leather at an outdoor café in Chinatown. He whispers something in the man’s ear. The man grabs his warrior of the future motorcycle helmet and speeds down the streets of San Francisco in pursuit of an armored car caravan. Explosions. Fireballs. Shuriken fly. Back at his lair, the marauder exposes the convoy’s precious cargo: the Droid Razr. A title appears on the screen: Too Powerful to Fall into the Wrong Hands.
That’s one of the more dramatic commercials for Motorola’s hot new Android phone, and while not many Android users have the chiseled good looks or cool clothes of the ad’s action hero, they do like living on the edge — at least unintentionally — when it comes to security, according to the crew at Websense Labs.
“While iPhone users are busy listening to music and watching videos, Android users are surfing through some of the most dangerous areas of the Web,” Websense Labs reports in a recent company blog.

The security firm bases that conclusion on data gathered from the Websense ThreatSeeker Network, composed of 50 million real-time data collecting systems that parse one billion pieces of content daily.

“Android users are more likely to visit sites with real security risks and sites known to have a high probability of leading to real security risks,” the researchers write. “And you can see them surfing through sites on the fringe of criminal activity (Hacking, Illegal or Questionable).”

An analysis of ThreatSeeker data by Websense, shows that Android users visit malicious websites six times more than other mobile users, illegal or questionable sites four times more than other users, and hacking sites nearly eight times more than others.

Not only do Android users have dangerous web surfing habits, but they like to court peril when downloading apps, too, the researchers contended. “While iPhone users almost exclusively get their apps from Apple (with its formal approval process), Android users clearly have no problem downloading apps from a wide spectrum of completely unsanctioned marketplaces,” they note.
Malware Volume Mounts

Criticism like that of the Android ecosystem has been flowing steadily from security firms this year, especially as they see sharp increases in malware directed at the platform. Although Google, the custodian of the open source mobile operating system, has largely shrugged off those knocks, one Google manager just couldn’t take it anymore and recently lashed back at the malware fighters.
“Virus companies are playing on your fears to try to sell you BS protection software for Android, RIM, and iOS,” Google Open-Source Programs Manager DiBona charges. “They are charlatans and scammers. If you work for a company selling virus protection for Android, RIM, or iOS you should be ashamed of yourself.”
Needless to say, the security firms questioned the Google manager’s expertise in security matters. “What he [DiBona] is missing is that mobile security tools (like ours) do much more than just antivirus,” argues Mikko Hypponen, the chief research officer at antivirus firm F-Secure. “[A]ntitheft, remote lock, backup, parental control, Web filter — these features are the main reason why people buy mobile security products. They get antivirus as a bonus.”
Other White Hats were less diplomatic toward Dibona. “Am I ashamed of myself?” asks Trend Micro Director of Security Research and Communication Rik Ferguson in a company blog. “Not at all. I’d prefer to offer protection against a growing threat to personal and business security than to bury my head in the sand and defend my stance with wild accusation.”

SAN FRANCISCO – Smartphones and tablets are becoming the PCs of our time, and there are two major players in the game. Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android dominate smartphones, with RIM and Microsoft being niche players.

It all feels very familiar, harking back to the Mac vs. PC battle–and analyst Jack Brown suggests the outcome will be the same, with Android dominating by 2014. What can you learn from the past when choosing, using, and managing mobile platforms in the workplace?
Mac vs. PC

In the early days of personal computers in the 1980s, Apple developed the Mac, which allowed the average person to use a computer. It was easy to use, and much better for graphics work than anything else available, so software companies wrote for it, and publishers and graphic artists used it exclusively.

Microsoft released Windows not long after Apple’s introduction of the Mac, and as it improved, more software became available for the PC. Until there was parity, you could get most of the popular software on either Mac or PC. Since there was more competition in the PC market due to Windows being available through multiple hardware vendors, prices dropped, and sales grew.

Today, Microsoft owns the personal computer market, with Apple dominating only a few niches that tend to focus on creative arts like publishing, music and video. Finding your favorite software on the Mac is a challenge since coding for both platforms can be expensive, and most businesses release their software on the more dominant Windows platform.

iOS vs. Android

Many consider Apple’s iPhone, released in 2007, to be the first real smartphone, making it easy for the average person to have the power of a computer in their pocket. As the slogan suggests, “There’s an app for that,” meaning you could do almost anything with these elegant and easy-to-use devices. People flocked to the iPhone, developers wrote apps for iOS, and the competition took note.

Then Google released Android in 2008, and as hardware became available and units started selling, developers started releasing apps for it. Android could be licensed by any manufacturer, so many adopted it, and the variety of Android hardware spanned all price points. The Android Market matured and is on pace to overtake Apple’s App Store within months. And Android hardware outsells Apple‘s by a 2-to-1 margin, according to a recent Nielsen report.
Innovator vs. Mainstream Player

The two stories are similar, pitting the innovator Apple against a mainstream player–either Microsoft or Google–and a single-vendor system against a multi-vendor one. The innovative, single-vendor system sets the tone and gets early adopters, but the mainstream player with multiple vendors wins in the end due to lower costs and greater variety of options. In the tablet market, Apple currently dominates, with Android’s slow start to enter, yet analysts are predicting that in two to three years time, Apple will be the second-place contender.

The Lesson

So how does all of this affect small businesses using these platforms? In the past, many businesses started with Macs, supported a mixed environment of Macs and PCs for a while, and eventually went all-PC. The extra costs involved in managing two platforms on top of compatibility issues and software availability made the migration inevitable.
The same considerations apply now to businesses that must deal with mobile devices. Smartphones can do many tasks, but tablets are more capable for most business needs and are likely to play a part in most business strategies. Should you build your IT plan around iPads since they currently dominate the market? Or, do you wait a bit longer and design your plan around Android tablets, knowing they’re more likely to be the long-term platform in the end?

With today’s virtualization, remote access options, and cloud computing, compatibility is less of an issue, but managing hardware still is. In the end, waiting for Android tablets is the safe bet. The overall tablet market will be more mature, app and hardware availability will be better, and managing and integrating the devices in a business environment will be easier. It’s for these reasons that Android will become the standard for business, just like Windows did. What’s your take?

SAN FRANCISCO – Apple’s new voice input-based digital assistant, Siri for the iPhone 4S pits the iPhone against Android’s Voice Actions, a popular feature for Android phones running Android 2.2 (Froyo) or higher. Both Siri and Voice Actions promise to make your life easier by letting you speak–rather than type–your messages, web searches, notes, and navigation.

By Jared Newman
October 10, 2011
SAN FRANCISCO – When Apple launches iOS 5 next week, iPhone and iPad users will get a bunch of features that Android users already enjoy, including notifications, wireless syncing, and PC-free operation.

By John P. Mello Jr.
September 27, 2011

SAN FRANCISCO – Android smartphone users can take some commonsense precautions to protect their personal data from being stolen — important advice considering an app developer purports to know how to take the information in under 60 seconds.

Loredana Botezatu of BitDefender, a cybersecurity software maker, recommends:

– Never lose sight of your smartphone in public.

– Keep a close eye on what a person is doing with your phone if you lend it to someone.

– Install mobile anti-malware software on your phone.

– Don’t store job-related information on your phone unless it’s encrypted.

The advice comes as a gray hat app developer has released into the wild five tools purportedly for “study purposes” that can clean out all the data on an Android smartphone in less than a minute.

Based on information from virus researchers at BitDefender, here’s how the tools work.

When any of the apps is loaded on a victim’s phone, they can be activated remotely by a cyber thief. Once activated, it sends a five digit pass code to the phone’s intruder and secretly uploads the device’s contacts, messages, recent calls and browser history into the developer’s space in the Android Cloud. After copying the data from the phone, the apps uninstall themselves so a target won’t know they were even on their mobile.

To obtain data sucked from a phone, a Net crook need only travel to the developer’s cloud location, enter the five-digit code generated by their copy of the app and for $5 they can download all the data nicked by the sinister software.

In an ironic twist, the developer has posted a notice at their site informing users of the apps that if they don’t pay for the data they’ve stolen within 24 hours of the theft, all the information will be erased from the site “out of respect and for security reasons.” “[N]eedless to say…this statement is by no means to be trusted,” Botezatu cautioned.

This latest attack on Android phones is just one of many this year. In fact, the phones are seen as a ripe target for mobile miscreants. According to a report released by a cybersecurity software maker in August, attacks on Android by malware writers jumped 76 percent over the previous three months, making it the most assaulted mobile operating system on the planet.

Some of that malware has been devilishly clever. For example, a bad app called Soundminer listens to conversations on an Android phone and is able to recognize when a credit card is spoken. After identifying such a number, it snips it from the conversation it has been recording and sends it to a Web baddie.

While cyber sorties like these may give some smartphone buyers pause before picking up an Android mobile, some commentators believe the benefits of an open system like Android outweigh those of systems with less openness and less vulnerability to attack. “Threats are everywhere,” JR Raphael wrote in PC World. “The answer isn’t locking down the world; it’s taking basic precautions.”

“With freedom of choice comes a small level of responsibility — and whether we’re talking about the Web or talking about our smartphones, the tradeoff is almost always worth it in the end,” he added. ]]> http://pcworld.com.ph/android-users-advice-to-protect-your-phones/feed/ 0 http://pcworld.com.ph/android-an-expert-guide/ http://pcworld.com.ph/android-an-expert-guide/#comments Thu, 15 Sep 2011 23:00:34 +0000 Fei http://pcworld.com.ph/?p=12795

By Jeff Caruso
September 16, 2011
FRAMINGHAM – Google’s Android platform in a short time has become a force to be reckoned with in the smartphone world, and its success raises all sorts of questions for IT professionals.

Just a few years ago, Android didn’t exist; in the second quarter of this year, nearly 52 million Android-based phones shipped, representing 48% of the entire smartphone market, according to research firm Canalys.

The pace of Android’s growth has been so amazing that it has even been suggested that Microsoft is making more from licensing deals with Android phone makers than from its own Windows Phone.

IT folks will need to deal with this phenomenon at some level, whether they actually support Android-based devices for employees or simply try to integrate their business IT with the prevalent smartphones.

Whether you are an IT pro who has to integrate these mobile devices into your business network or you just want to know how to better use your Android, Network World has put together a guide that can help you become an Instant Expert.

In this new PDF for Insiders, we have collected the best expert advice from Network World and CIO.com for using Android devices in a business context — including securing those devices and getting the most out of them. It is full of tips for turning Android into a business phone, protecting the devices, making your battery last longer, using the Android Market and ultimately becoming a power user.

FRAMINGHAM – Whether you just upgraded your Android smartphone to another device, your organization is finally replacing that old Android with something newer and shinier or you’ve decided to trade devices with a friend, it’s a very smart idea to wipe any and all sensitive information from your smartphone before passing it off, not just to ensure that your personal data remains private, but to also make sure your device runs like new for its next owner.

The following four steps will guide you through the Android device-wipe process, and show you how to restore your Android to its factory settings.

But before the wipe, you should backup any personal data you wish to move over to your new device or your information will be lost. To back up your personal data to your PC, mount the device as a USB drive and save all data to a folder on your computer’s hard drive. You can also backup your personal information and application data on Google’s servers–more details on online backup below.

(Note: The process described below relates specifically to Android v2.3 [Gingerbread] handhelds, but the steps for erasing all data from any Android device are similar regardless of your software version. You should also backup any personal data you wish to move over to your new device, before wiping it, or your information will be lost. To back up your personal data to your PC, mount the device as a USB drive and save all data to a folder on your computer’s hard drive. You can also backup your application data online using Google’s servers.)

1) To initiate the Android device wipe process, first tap your Android Menu key to bring up a number of on-screen options.

2) Next, choose the Settings option within the on-screen menu, and on the following screen scroll down to and tap Privacy.

3) Within the Privacy Settings menu, tap the Factory Data Reset option, and on the following screen choose whether you want to wipe all data on your device, all data on your external microSD memory card or both, by filling in the appropriate check boxes. Then confirm the action by tapping Reset Phone.

4) You’ll be prompted one more time to confirm your Android device wipe on the Factory Data Reset screen, and if you’re sure you’re ready to erase your device, tap the Erase Everything button to complete the process.

(Note: The Android erase cycle may take 10 minutes or more to finish, depending on how much data is stored on your device and/or memory card.)