Google buys Flexycore, creator of a “10x speed boost” app for Android
French site L'Expansion is
reporting that Google has completed a year-long acquisition of the
company Flexycore. Flexycore's most prominent product is "droidbooster,"
an app that claimed to make an Android device run "ten times faster."
While that claim might strain the bounds of belief, the company was
reputable enough to have a profile on the ARM partner site, and its
founder is the former head of R&D for Texas Instruments.
The supposed 10x speed boost came from generating heavily optimized
ARM binaries from Android's normal Dalvik code. Droidbooster also
claimed to increase battery life, presumably because a sped-up device
would spend less time processing and more time in a low-power state.
While Flexycore's website is down, its YouTube account still works,
which means we can watch a demo!
One thing you'll notice from the video is that it is extremely old. It shows the droidbooster tech running on a Froyo-equipped Nexus One. Indeed, FlexyCore doesn't seem to have done anything
on the Internet for the last two years. The company actively promoted
its product, releasing 11 videos in a one-year span, and then just
stopped. The lack of recent activity makes it unclear if Flexycore has
continued development outside the public eye.
The most pressing question is this: does a speed boost that worked in
2010 on Android 2.2 still function today? FlexyCore was obviously
working on something significant—Google felt the company was worth
purchasing for $23.1 million.
Sometimes what we hide is more important than what we reveal. Especially, documents with sensitive information, some things are supposed to be ‘for some eyes only’. Such scenarios are quite common, even for the more un-secretive among us. You want to show someone a letter composed in MS Word, but want to keep some of the content private; or it’s an official letter with some part of it having critical data. As important as these two are, the most common use could involve a normal printing job. Many a time we have to print different versions of a document, one copy for one set of eyes and others for other sets. Rather than creating multiple copies and therefore multiple printing jobs, what if we could just do it from the same document? That too, without the hassle of repeated cut and paste. We can, with a simple feature in MS Word – it’s just called Hidden and let me show you how to use it to hide text in Microsoft Word 2007. It’s a simple single click process. Open the docum...
Have you heard about Boom? Boom is a relatively new startup that’s aiming to build something pretty crazy. They’re not building an app… or a social network… or even some new gadget for the Kickstarter crowd. Boom wants to build planes. Really, really, really fast planes. Specifically, they’re trying to design and build a supersonic passenger plane that goes 2.2x the speed of sound. If all goes to plan, they’ll be able to shuttle people from New York to London in 3.5 hours, and SF to Tokyo in 4.5. Sound crazy? I wouldn’t disagree. It’s worth noting that the company is in the very early days for something as intensive, massive, and hugely expensive as designing and producing a passenger aircraft. They’re still working on their first prototype, and hope to fly it by late next year. But it’s also worth noting that the team behind the plane has some serious talent in its blood: the company’s 11 employees have collectively contributed to over 30 aircrafts — having worked on thin...
Japanese calligraphy is an artistic writing style of the Japanese language. Its Chinese origins can be traced back to the twenty-eighth century BCE. Calligraphy found its way into Japanese culture in 600 CE and is known as the karayo tradition. For Westerners, calligraphy is forever fascinating. However, it takes years to learn how to properly draw the signs. Two basic principles must be known to understand Japanese writing: there are different writing styles and different alphabets. Kaisho for example, is a writing style most commonly used in print media. Tensho on the other hand is used in signatures. Other writing styles are Reisho, Gyosho and Sousho. The alphabets include Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana. Katakana is used for writing foreign words. It can also serve to highlight words, in analogy to capital letters as we know them from the Roman / Latin alphabet (Romaji in Japanese). Each Kanji character has a meaning of its own, while Hiragana or Katakana characters merely repres...