Google just won a major court battle with software giant Oracle over Google’s use of elements of Oracle’s Java programming language. If Google had lost, it could have held major ramifications for the ways in which almost all software is developed. Oh, and Google would have had to cough up $9 billion in damages.
At this point, there are tons of apps that let us know when our trains are running late. But apps aren’t nearly as pretty as an LED light strip set up to blink when something’s wrong with your commute.
Voice control has been the trend in phones for a while now, but it's not content to just stay there. The newest Chrome Beta is introducing a Web Speech API, which means a talk-y future is on the horizon, hopefully.
9 to 5 Mac reports that Apple has included facial recognition software and APIs into iOS5. While Apple doesn't plan on making an app of their own, developers can jump on it and turn out Kinect-ish apps after tinkering with it. [9 to 5 Mac]
AirPlay arrived this week, perhaps not quite as ass-kickingly as we had hoped. Here's a clip of Air Video, the excellent stream-any-video-you-want-to-your-iPad app rigged up to beam video to an Apple TV. Basically, this is how AirPlay should work.
I was pretty pumped about the prospect of multitouch music apps before the iPad's release, but iOS 3.x didn't give developers too many audio options to work with. iOS 4.2, however, will, so we're gonna get sweet stuff like this.
Windows Phone 7 is only three days old, but leaked documents from Microsoft supposedly showing developer requirements have turned up thanks to XDA-Developers, suggesting WP7 will use both Silverlight and XNA—which makes sense, given the Xbox 360 integration.
