Not many people have breached Apple’s ecosystem without brutally jailbreaking it – though some have indeed come close. And now, we see some coming close enough to be mentioned. Two projects that are currently trying to emulate the iOS environment (one of them promises the apps too, on other platforms like Windows Phone and Android, and probably as a payback, the iOS platform itself!).The first project we came across is a solo attempt by a programmer from Wales, who goes by the name Christina B and calls her project ‘Magenta’ (incidentally, she’s also part of a local band called ‘Magenta’). She is trying to achieve binary compatibility between her code and the iPhone OS 5.0 by using Darwin, Apple’s very own open source operating system (!),...

Have you ever come across little kids working in a tea stall, and notice they can’t even read the menu on the board? Have you ever thought “I’ll do something for the poor people”, but weren’t able to decide how? Does working for an NGO seem the only option to do social work?For everyone who thought software and social problems don’t go in tandem, the Google Developer Group, New Delhi is setting a precedent. All you developers building apps for smartphones and monetising it, pause for a moment and take a look at this! What if you can “Code for a Cause”?The Google Developer Group, New Delhi is organising a hackathon titled, “H-A-C-K 2012 ‘Code for a Cause’” on 16th and 17th June 2012 at the India Habitat...

The amazing open source cloud storage software ownCloud has recently released a new major version that brings a number of new features. There are a large number of cloud storage apps available today, however they are all closed, proprietary systems that each need their own client, and work with only their own hosting. With ownCloud you can actually own you data as you can host it anywhere, on any hosting service that offers PHP and MySQL support. There are even dedicated ownCloud hosting services available now days, much like there is Wordpress or Drupal hosting.It can perhaps be best compared with Google Drive, which forms a base service with a number of included apps, but can be extended with other applications which can use it as storage. With ownCloud you get an image gallery app, a...