OStatic

On October 24th, as Lisa reported, a serious vulnerability was discovered in the Google Android powered G1 mobile phone.

Though security researchers classified the flaw in the Android browser as serious, Google assured users that the risk wasn't necessarily as dire as it seemed, due to the way the Android operating system restricts each application to its own area.

CNet News reporter Stephen Shankland says his G1 was patched on Saturday through a quick system update.

With the growing importance of the mobile web and applications that run on the device that we used to call a cell phone, open source users and developers are facing some fundamental choices. Just as open source software is not the mainstream offering for desktop computers, open source phones are the exception rather than the rule. But if you dig a bit, and you're willing to spend money or time, even your phone can be an open device.

When Nokia announced that it was launching the Symbian Foundation to great fanfare, it had within its grasp that rarest of opportunities to move swiftly and become the dominant open source mobile platform. Alas, just one and a half years later, they have seemingly ceded that position to Android. Instead of recognizing the threat from Android and making strategic changes to counter, they instead criticized Google's closed-door development of Android before releasing a line of code themselves. When criticizing competitors, it helps to have your own house in order first.

?In October, the Symbian Foundation released the Symbian kernel sources to the world, and the rest of the world (read: developers) collectively responded, Great. Where's my Android phone? I've often lauded Google for its ability to fuse the marketing, PR and developer benefits of open source projects into one seemless operation. It would seem that Symbian could stand to learn a few things. The question is, is it too late?

I am always tickled when I can write about (and introduce others to) open source applications that solve, quickly and easily, the very real problems that frequently arise when technology manufacturers (or providers) assume that customers use their devices in completely homogenous settings.

So today, it seems, is my lucky day -- today Funambol unleashes version 8 of its nifty open source mobile cloud push and sync software that enables a wide variety of mobile phones (including iPhones, Blackberry, Android, Symbian and Windows Mobile devices) to share and sync information with a number of email clients, POP and IMAP mail servers, PIMs, and social networks. And while it's great to wax poetic about the subtle joy that can be had just by syncing your smartphone that wasn't designed to communicate with another software company's email and calendaring application, I'm fortunate enough to be able to share the experience with ten readers in the form of membership invites.

First, though, the important part: What's new in Funambol v8?

When I heard that Funambol was rolling out an open source mobile cloud sync service for mobile VoIP users, I'll be honest -- I wasn't thinking about the open code, or about how much easier it would make contacting people worldwide over a diverse array of devices. I immediately thought of my dad.

He could very well be just like your dad, or mom, or you. He likes gadgets, and if the gadgets beep, flash, or vibrate at a random enough interval to make my mom grind her teeth or clutch her ears, he likes them even more. However, he's got two things working against him -- he's not blessed in the patience department (like my mom, it would seem) and he's got arthritic hands to the point of immobility. As such, his work-issued Blackberry wasn't nearly as useful as his old Palm Pilot when it came to being an electronic memory. It was merely a phone he couldn't dial all that easily.

He was delighted when I showed him Skype, and was flattered when all these young women he didn't know kept calling. The novelty gave way to annoyance when he realized he must know some people on Skype, but finding and connecting with them took patience.

New mVoIP users start with a blank address book, and many mVoIP services can't sync existing contact information from cell phones or other address books. Funambol's mVoIP enables service providers to allow syncing from address books and social networks -- so that an address change made anywhere (say, a contact's Facebook profile or the Funambol web portal) updates all associated devices.

Earlier this week, the Qt Labs at Nokia announced a new project, QtMobility. QtMobility's primary goal is to offer a new set of Qt API development tools for mobile device applications.

While this will certainly make life easier for developers working with the Qt framework on specific Nokia devices, one of the best (and intentional) fringe benefits is that the new API tools are cross-platform. A single application, then, can be built and maintained for any supported Qt platform -- regardless of the mobile device model or manufacturer.