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InfoQ

On September 1st, the Official Google Blog reported that two Android-based Nexus phones have been transported to the ISS in the last manned Space Shuttle mission ST-135. Researchers want to investigate how robots can help humans experiment and live in space more efficiently.

The phones enable the robots respectively satellites called SPHERES to add services& that otherwise astronauts would have to provide such as gathering sensor data or capturing video. This is remarkable, because commodity software and hardware are beginning to become building blocks of system architectures formerly comprising only proprietary constituents….

What began more than two decades ago is still in the focus of NASA. In particular, Terry Fong, Director of the Intelligent Robotics Group, is investigating the use of cutting-edge technologies in robots which support men in space. For this reason, the group has equipped the three SPHERES on the ISS with Samsung’s Android-based Nexus S handsets. Each SPHERE satellite comprises functionality for power, propulsion, computing, and navigation. Using an extension port the Android phones have been attached to the SPHERE in order to extend this functionality.

PJ sez: So I guess Apple and Microsoft should probably sue NASA or something. Snort.

vruz: it’ll be cool if they try to issue a search warrant in space.

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It’s kind of amazing to consider that in just three short years, Google (NSDQ: GOOG) found its answer to critics fond of the “one-trick pony” slur with Android, currently the world’s most popular mobile operating system and the vehicle for Google’s ambitions in mobile advertising and application development. But now that Android is on top of the world it is faced with the greatest crisis of its short life as barbarians armed with patents mill at the gates.

Forbes this week revisited an amazing anecdote from Gary Reback, the attorney best known for hunting down Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) in the 1990s and harassing Google at present, from his days at Sun as a young attorney. When confronted by lawyers from IBM seeking licenses for patents that Sun believed didn’t apply to any of its products, an IBM lawyer referenced its horde of around 10,000 patents and supposedly said: “Do you really want us to go back to Armonk [IBM headquarters in New York] and find seven patents you do infringe? Or do you want to make this easy and just pay us $20 million?” Sun paid.

Following Google’s inability to secure perhaps the biggest block of mobile patents ever put up for auction last week, the Android partners who have been key to its success are going to start seeing the mobile-computing equivalent of IBM—Microsoft—more and more frequently. Even before the Nortel patents were put in play Microsoft had launched a mobile strategy aimed at convincing Android partners that Android wasn’t really free: there was a patent-licensing toll that just hadn’t yet been collected.

But now that Microsoft, Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), Sony (NYSE: SNE), Research in Motion (NSDQ: RIMM), Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC), and EMC control the 6,000 patents auctioned off by Nortel for $4.5 billion, Google is scrambling to figure out what to do next. The company declined multiple interview requests about the aftermath of the auction and the plan going forward, but a few interesting details emerged this week regarding the auction and its impact on Android.

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—via delivr:

We’ve been noticing a push by Microsoft Tag that alleges that MS Tags are better than QR Codes is specific ways. The rationale provided is disingenuous at best and results in misinformation as people are researching 2D Barcode options.

WSJ

Microsoft confirmed Thursday its Windows cash machine is under threat. So what else is new?

Uncertainty about the PC market’s growth prospects, and what that means for Windows in particular, arguably has been baked into Microsoft’s stock price for years. From 2001 to 2010, Microsoft’s net income rose 155% on 147% higher revenue. Yet as of Thursday’s close of $26.71, Microsoft shares over the past decade had generated a total return, including dividends, of negative 0.2%, according to FactSet Research Systems.

[…]

There also is the threat from Google: Laptops running the search firm’s Chrome operating system are expected to hit the market midyear. Assuming Microsoft can limit the speed of such incursions, it would have a better chance of changing investor sentiment if the company was managed in a more disciplined way.

Spending 14%-15% of revenue on research and development, which Microsoft has done for years, looks extravagant given Microsoft’s new product history. Apple, for example, spends less than 3%. Not only has it been beaten by rivals on many of the digital world’s new developments in recent years, some of its new products, like Windows Vista or the Zune music player, have been duds.