white house - Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

Mar

Now We're Getting Somewhere: U.S. Senator Introduces Bill To Allow Carrier Unlocking Phones For Interoperability Purposes

Posted by Eric Ravenscraft in Legal, News

Two days ago, the White House announced its support for carrier unlocking handsets. The administration promised an FCC/NTIA investigation as well as a willingness to "work with Congress" on legislation to fix the problem. So, we can probably count on the President's support of the new Wireless Device Independence Act, introduced last night by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR). The bill, which is only three pages long, has a simple goal: amend the DMCA such that it explicitly allows the unlocking of cell phones, obviating the need for a tri-yearly exemption.

The following language would be added to the DMCA's section on anti-circumvention policies:

SEC.

Mar

White House Officially Responds To Cell Phone Unlock Petition: "We Agree"

Posted by Eric Ravenscraft in News

We've been waiting on this for a couple weeks now and the White House has finally come through with its response to the cell phone unlock petition. The short version, for the tl;dr crowd is simple: "The White House agrees." Citing not just smartphones but tablets as well, the Executive branch of the U.S. government states, in no uncertain terms, that there should be no reason that carriers should block a customer from switching carriers once contractual obligations are fulfilled.

The White House also pointed out that it kind of already supported this (sorta) by way of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), which is itself an agency of the Department of Commerce under the Executive branch.

Feb

Now That The President Has To Respond To The Phone Unlock Petition, Let's Talk About What He (And You) Can Actually Do

Posted by Eric Ravenscraft in Editorials, Features, News

In October of 2012, the Library of Congress elected not to renew DMCA exemptions that explicitly allow end users to unlock their cell phones at will, thus ending a six year tradition. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move. The quest to do something about it began almost immediately. And by "almost immediately" I mean "nearly three months later and at almost the very last minute."

Still, regardless of when the outrage gained steam, the fact is it did. Quite a bit of steam, in fact. Despite the White House raising the bar for online petitions to 100,000 signatures (after the previous bar of 25,000 resulted in an entertaining, if frivolous response about why the President won't build a Death Star), you did it!

Sep

White House App Gets Overhauled, Now Supports Tablets, Includes Search And Live Video Functions

Posted by Eric Ravenscraft in Applications, News

Hey, did you guys know there's an election coming soon? I know, it's been a pretty low-profile thing, but it's true. Of course, we want to be a well-informed electorate, right? One source of information that should probably be watched to achieve that goal is the White House. Today, the administration of the most powerful office in the country revealed a newly-designed app that will allow mobile users to watch live presidential events, search its stable of blog posts, videos, and press releases, and in a forward-thinking move, makes all this content available on tablets.

In a rather surprising move from the political arena as a whole (though not unheard of, given the current President's affinity for modern technology), the White House app is actually extremely well designed.