racoma.com.phJ. Angelo Racoma on technology, economics, writing, problogging, and getting things done

For those who have rooted their Android Phones, here’s some bad news for you: You won’t be able to rent movies from Android Market.

The reason according to Google:

“You’ll receive this ‘Error 49′ message if you attempt to play a movie on a rooted device. Rooted devices are currently unsupported due to requirements related to copyright protection,”

Is Google actively pushing out people who’ve decided to hack their Android OS Phones into CyanogenMod and Replicant?

Nevertheless, knowing how hackers are such an innovative group, they’ll find a way to get around this problem and be able to rent and run movies from the Android Market in a couple of weeks.

Article from PC Mag | Image By Cyanogen (Steve Kondik) http://www.cyanogenmod.com and Android Developers http://developer.android.com/index.html (ZTE Blade) [see page for license], via Wikimedia Commons

Business is business. If you can take out a competitor by being the best at your line of business or services all the better. But what if the one who wanted you erased was already the best at what they do? This is the case of Facebook vs. Google.

Facebook admitted to hiring a PR Firm, Burson-Marsteller, to spread news about how Google’s “Social Circles” is violating privacy rights.

As several reports have detailed this week, two former journalists now employed by Burson — John Mercurio, late of Roll Call, CNN, and National Journal; and CNBC’s erstwhile Silicon Valley correspondent Jim Goldman — were making the rounds pitching this hooey to various outlets in an attempt to capitalize on Google’s increasing tangles with the feds, and intense public interest in online privacy.

Wow, talk about kicking a guy when he’s down. Facebook has already passed Google as being the most visited site of 2010 and they still want to depreciate its obscure GMail feature.

Both companies will survive this brouhaha, but for the meantime Facebook looks just like a bully.

Article via: Wired | Image By Facebook (facebook.com website) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Google just announced the Chromebook. A notebook with the Chrome Operating System in it. It allows the user to have no other program on it except the browser: Chrome.

If you aren’t familiar with it yet, it’s basically a netbook that uses only the cloud (in this case, Google’s web apps) as its Office Suite. The user can save his or her files to the cloud. Although it does have offline features for some of the critical web apps, you will still largely depend on being connected to the web to use the Chromebook.

Chromebooks will be made available on June 15 in the following countries:

• US
• UK
• France
• Germany
• Netherlands
• Italy
• Spain

Article via: Google Blog | Image via Chromebook site

It seems that Apple wasn’t the only one tracking locations but Google does so as well.

Google and other mobile ad metrics companies like Flurry and Mobclix is being sued for supposedly data location/device identification numbers harvesting and introducing a code that sends back metrics to them.

The complaint asserts that Android users have downloaded apps that include embedded information-harvesting code–APIs for gathering advertising and app usage metrics–that sends detailed information about users, including their locations and unique mobile identifiers, to mobile advertising companies.

All of the three defendants: Google, Mobclix, and Flurry gave no comment as the investigation is underway.

Article via Information Week | Image via Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain)

Apple has just kicked Google from the top.

The tech luxury company is now the world’s most valuable brand, according to the Millward Brown agency, making it worth $153 billion.

Peter Walshe, global brands director of Millward Brown, says Apple’s meticulous attention to detail, along with an increasing presence of its gadgets in corporate environments, have allowed it to behave differently from other consumer-electronics makers

This shows Apple’s dominance despite all the tracking controversy it had the last few weeks.

This should be embarrassing to Google that despite their Android powered handsets selling like hotcakes, the iPhone/iPad maker has beaten them in being the best brand for the year.

Article via: Yahoo! News | Image By es:Usuario:Eligna (Fuente de mi trabajo) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons