| HTC "China" OS homescreen sighted in leaked photo Sep 16th 2013, 06:21, by Juan Carlos Torres Everyone seems to be trying to woo the Chinese these market days, and HTC is definitely not going to let others beat it in that race. The Taiwanese manufacturer is reportedly developing a smartphone operating system just for China, and we maybe be getting an early glimpse of what it looks like in today’s leak. 
The Chinese market is big, fresh, and, for a lot of companies, ripe for the picking. But it is also a tough customer to please. The market is saturated with fiercely competing Android-based devices, and the Chinese government is a bit uneasy with too much reliance on the platform. And so HTC, who is seeking to enter the market in order to infuse fresh new profits into its coffers, will be trying to compete on a different level. Last we heard, the company is developing its own operating system to cater specifically to the Chinese market and appease government officials. The rumor is that the OS is already far into development, which could explain why there is already a photo of an HTC smartphone running the said system. Although some are calling it “Sense 5.5″, the flat aesthetic and Windows Phone-like tiling point to a more drastic divergence from the norm. If the rumors do hold, we might be getting a glimpse of the real HTC China OS before the year ends. SOURCE: Weibo
VIA: rbmen |  | Google Keep future features discovered in code excavation Sep 16th 2013, 05:40, by Juan Carlos Torres When Google announced its Google Keep note-taking app last March, it was nothing more than a handy digital post-it system. And though it was recently updated to include a few more features, users are clamoring for more, and it seems that they will indeed get more if this code examination is any indication. 
Google Keep already has the most basic note-taking features: text, audio clips, and images or photos from an Android device’s camera. In a recent update, it also gained the ability to set time- or location-based reminders. It stores its data on Google Drive, but that integration is just a one-way street. It seems, though, that Google is planning to expand the service and integrate it more with its online storage service. A dive into Google Keep’s code reveals placeholders for features not yet present in the current version. This include the ability to upload a file to Google Drive and add the file to a note as an attachment, previewing the file in Google Drive or an external application, or even adding videos from YouTube or Google Drive and view them right inside Google Keep. Of course, just because the code is there right now doesn’t mean the features will really make it in the unknown future, especially considering how often Google flip flops on its own products (remember Google Reader?). But if the features do manage to arrive in one piece, it will be interesting to see if Google Keep will be taking on Evernote or if it will remain a note-taking class of its own. VIA: The Next Web | | Omate TrueSmart smartwatch text input demystified Sep 16th 2013, 04:54, by Juan Carlos Torres It seems that there is no stopping wearable computers, especially smartwatches like Omate’s TrueSmart, from becoming the next big fad. But with any nascent technology, there are bound to be kinks to be ironed out and questions to be answered, such as one of the most prevalent question of all: how will smartwatches deal with text input? 
Samsung and Pebble provide a rather simple workaround, deciding to entirely disallow text input via a keyboard on the minuscule screen. Omate, however, has a two-pronged answer. The most basic answer is that Omate TrueSmart supports any and all Android keyboards, meaning that you have a full QWERTY on-screen keyboard at your disposal when you need it or when the app requires it. The more practical answer, however, is that by allowing any Android keyboard to be used, Omate has opened the doors to more specialized keyboards that do well on a device such as a smartwatch. An example of this is the Fleksy keyboard, which features an invisible mode that gets the keyboard out of the way of the screen real estate. Here’s a clip of Fleksy running on the Omate TrueSmart to get an idea how it works. Of course, there’s always voice dictation, which has improved quite well on Android. And while the TrueSmart does support Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, it will probably not be the easiest, not to mention most portable, thing to do, especially when your screen is only 1.54 inches. VIA: SlashGear | |
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