Fire Away! Angry Birds invade RIM's PlayBook

Some great news if you happen to own RIM's PlayBook and love Angry Birds, Rovio has finally made all three of the games (Angry Birds, Angry Birds Rio and Angry Birds Seasons) available for the PlayBook. They are expensive in comparison to the versions in other platforms (US $4.99). Angry Birds has been insanely popular, possibly the game of the year on mobile devices (500 million downloads, that's a lot of beat up pigs!). Angry Birds is reportedly fluid and ported perfectly on the PlayBook.

Samsung Galaxy S and Galaxy Tab aren't getting Ice Cream Sandwich because of bloatware

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

Owners of Samsung's Galaxy S and original 7-inch Galaxy Tab devices will not be able to upgrade to the latest and unified Android OS 4.0 codenamed Ice Cream Sandwich. The reason for this isn't the hardware but limitations brought about by Samsung's own TouchWiz overlay and country specific carrier apps.

This came to light when Samsung revealed its ICS rollout that included the Galaxy S II, its LTE versions, the Galaxy Note, the Galaxy R and  the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus to the Galaxy Tab 10.1. The update is slated to arrive first on both the Galaxy S II and Note in Q1 2012.

According to a blog post, the adding ICS on these Galaxy Tab and the Samsung Galaxy S isn't possible because of lack of space taken up by TouchWiz elements (Touch Wiz / Samsung Widgets / video calls, etc.) as well as third party carrier apps that are country specific such as mobile TV and music apps. There isn't enough RAM and ROM to run both ICS, TouchWiz and the sundry carrier apps.

The Google Nexus S, which has similar hardware, runs ICS just fine but it runs just the ICS software without any extraneous applications.

ICS can still run on these devices but through unlicensed ROMs which require rooting and hacking around the system to eliminate tbe bloatware and overlays. This is not advised, however, since it is not officially supported and device specific issues are unlikely to be fixed. 

Samsung sold 10 million of these smartphones under the  Epic 4G, Vibrant, Captivate, Fascinate, and Mesmerize monickers with various carriers globally. It is unfortunate that the smartphones have the specs to run ICS (1GHz ARM Hummingbird processors,  512MB RAM) but is limited by add-on software.

Google's Chrome now most popular browser, overtakes Internet Explorer

Google's Chrome 15 is now the most dominant browser beating out long-time leader Internet Explorer.  StatCounter suggests that Chrome 15 recently reached a total global market share of 23.6% compared to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 market share of 23.5%. Internet Explorer still has the largest global market share if you combine all versions of the browser. Internet Explorer is the defaul browser on all Windows PCs and many users tend to stick to the browser already on their machines.

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netTALK Duo now available in Canada, $69.95 for a year of unlimited North American calls

netTALK.COM, Inc.  a telecommunications and consumer electronics company offering a variety of innovative, easy-to-use products designed to help consumers save money on phone calls and more, announced today that the netTALK DUO telephone adapter and digital phone service is now available from coast-to-coast across Canada.

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