Lilbits (7-06-2013): Open laptop development, and is Tizen dead?

There are plenty of ways to run open source software on an existing laptop. But hardware hacker Bunnie Huang wants to go further and develop a truly open laptop that’s not only Linux-friendly, but which uses entirely open hardware designs that are available for anyone to modify and use.

Huang’s been working on the open laptop project since last year, and this week offered a bit of a progress update on the Novena laptop. It’s a pretty geeky device at this point which is going to have a lot of features that most people will never need.

But for hardware hackers and open computing enthusiasts, it’s a project worth keeping an eye on — even if you might never be able to afford the final product (it’s expected to cost thousands of dollars).

Here’s a roundup of tech news from around the web.

• Update on Bunnie Huang’s open laptop
  About half a year in, Bunnie Huang is providing an update on his open laptop project. It won’t be cheap, but it’ll be a solid device that can handle high resolution displays, and the board will also be usable as the basis for a router or other open, hackable device. It won’t be cheap. Huang says to think of it more like an “heirloom laptop” meant to last for years. [Hacker news/bunnie:studios]
• Astrid task manager for Android closes shop August 5th
  A few months after Yahoo acquired Android task manager Astrid, the service is set to shut down. This is what happens in acqui-hires, where a company is more interested in the people or technology it’s purchasing than the service itself. Astrid’ll let you export your data for use in other apps. [reddit]
• CyanogenMod to let you send/receive texts with Google Voice in the stock SMS app
  Soon you may be able to use a Google Voice number and account with the stock SMS app and other third party apps in CyanogenMod (and eventually other custom ROMs) [+Koush]
• Google Glass software teardown reveals upcoming app store, media players, more
  Google recently pushed out a software update for Google Glass. While the biggest visible change is the new web browser, the code hints at other items that could show up in future updates. [SlashGear]
• Is Tizen dead?
  Leaker, analyst, and tech pundit Eldar Murtazin recently suggested that Tizen is pretty much dead, and we’d be lucky to see a single Samsung Tizen device this year. Intel says that’s not true. But what would you expect one of Tizen’s primary backers to say? [Tizen Experts]

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