Google finally made its move into the mobile phone industry earlier this year with the release of Android, and open source operating system for mobile phones based on Linux operating system.

With the release of Android, Google have firmly shot down the rumors regarding the G Phone. Nevertheless Google’s Android platform promises great things for the future of mobile phone software.

Due to open nature of the platform, the development of software and applications for Android has only just begun.

To encourage developers to come up with unique and innovative ideas, Google are offering 10 million dollars in donations which is to be split amongst the best 50 applications.

The winners have already been announced so if you are interested in finding out who will be responsible for the new generation of Android applications, jump on over to Google to get the latest news.

For those of you who are interested in developing software for Android, the software development kit SDK, is available to download from Google. The SDK includes everything you need to start developing your own applications including, development and debugging tools, a set of libraries, a device emulator, documentation, sample projects, FAQs and a bunch of tutorials.

This great video clip shows how vulnerable Bluetooth devices really are. If you know anything about script and codes, you should be able to follow these directions and get hacking some Bluetoooth conversations.

After being overwhelmed with good feedback from their customers, Asus are now planning to embed a lightweight version of Linux dubbed ‘Splashtop’ into all of their motherboards.

DeviceVM, the company behind the distribution, announced on Wednesday that the hardware manufacturer would be putting Splashtop (which Asus calls “Express Gate”) into more than a million motherboards a month. Joe Hsieh, General Manager of Asus said,

“In response to great user feedback, our plan is to proliferate Express Gate across our entire motherboard-product portfolio, starting with over one million motherboards per month…….

“Consumers want to turn their PCs on and off like any other appliance, and Express Gate has made that possible.”

Splashtop/Express gate is an instant-on “secure web-surfing environment” which can be booted in seconds as an alternative to a full operating system. Applications incorporated into Splashtop include a Firefox-derived browser and the popular Skype internet telephone application.

Splashtop first appeared on high-end Asus motherboards in October last year and was later added to the more mainstream M3 motherboards series. Splashtop will now be extended through the entire range of Asus motherboards.

Four new motherboards carrying Splashtop/Express Gate will appear this quarter: the P5Q Deluxe, P5Q-WS, P5Q3 Deluxe and P5Q-E.

DeviceVM hopes to have “numerous Splashtop-enabled motherboards, desktops and laptops available internationally in 2008″, the company said.

Sun and the Texas Advanced Computing Center recently unveiled a new supercomputer dubbed ‘Ranger,’ that can process 500 teraflops or 500 trillion floating point instructions per second.

The 500 teraflops of power will enable Ranger to process simulations and computations beyond anything we have seen before. This ability will give way to scientific breakthroughs and economic growth in all areas of society from weather forecasting to astrophysics.

Sun Constellation Linux Cluster

System Name: Ranger
Host Name: ranger.tacc.utexas.edu
IP Address: 129.114.50.163
Operating System: Linux
Number of Nodes: 3,936
Number of Processing Cores: 62,976
Total Memory: 123TB
Peak Performance: 504TFlops
Total Disk: 1.73PB (shared); 31.4TB (local)

The Ranger is based on Sun’s Constellation System which ushers in the new era of “petascale” computing in which high performance supercomputers approach one petaflop (one quadrillion floating point instructions) per second.

Using petascale architecture reduces switching elements by a factor of 300, cabling by a factor of six, and system footprint by up to 20%.Director, Texas Advanced Computing Center, Jay Boisseau says,

“Without a doubt, Ranger is the most powerful general-purpose supercomputing system for research ever.”

At the heart of Ranger are 72 Sun Fire X4500 storage servers, each with 48 500GB drives, yielding 1.7 petabytes of raw storage capacity and125 terabytes (TB) of memory.

Ranger also links two Sun Datacenter Switch 3456s, the world’s fastest InfiniBand switch to achieve an aggregate bandwidth of up to 110 terabits.

The system’s ultra-dense unibody chassis saves about 500 lbs. per rack when compared with traditional chassis and rack combinations. It also gives you 50 percent more compute power than its nearest competitor from HP, and 71 percent more than an IBM rack.

Texas Advance Computing Center Ranger User Guide