Until yesterday, Android developers had to build their applications to run inside Dalvik, the Java virtual machine upon which Google's mobile OS is built. While it is beneficial in embedded systems with limited processor power and RAM, it is limiting for developers who, for example, want to create CPU-intensive, but not RAM-intensive, applications such as more in-depth computations, simulations, or signal processing.

Now that has become possible with the Android Native Developers Kit, a companion to the SDK which gives developers a way to use the ARMv5TE machine instruction set, such as libc, the standard C library, libm, the standard math library, libz, the common ZLib compression library, the Java Native Interface (JNI), and liblog, which can send logCat messages to the kernel.

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Microsoft spokespersons have confirmed to Betanews, contrary to press reports earlier today, that at some point it does plan to provide European customers with a Windows 7E upgrade package -- a way to upgrade Vista installations to Windows 7, while enabling customers to leave out Internet Explorer 8. In all cases, that means uninstalling IE from Vista, which current builds of the Win7 upgrade are not capable of doing.

"As part of Microsoft's decision to offer Windows 7 without a browser in the [European Economic Area], we also had another hard decision to make: Offer both Full and Upgrade retail packaged product and delay the entry of Windows 7 into market, or not offer the Upgrade packaged product at launch," the spokesperson told Betanews. "At this time, we will not offer an Upgrade packaged product in Europe, but in a way that does not penalize our customers."

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British LCD TV maker Cello Electronics has populated the European budget TV market with devices sporting some atypical features, such as the TV with an iPod Dock, which are designed in China and manufactured by North England subcontractors.

Like Vizio in the United States, Cello has grown rapidly in the last four years because of its affordable, but feature-rich products.

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Offered in capacities up to 2 TB, HP's new SimpleSave External Hard Drive spares users from installing backup software. The four gadgets in the line-up each come with software that runs right off the drive, stated Mark Ostendorf, HP's business development manager for PC accessories, in a meeting with Betanews at Pepcom's Digital Experience press event in New York City.

When you plug the drive into a PC's USB port, SimpleSave starts to back up your data automatically. Following the first back-up, the gizmo automatically checks for file changes each time the PC is idle for five minutes, also performing incremental backups.

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HTC's Hero, finally formally introduced in London on Wednesday after months of rumors, was shown at Pepcom's Digital Experience event in New York City earlier this week, and Betanews got a peek.

Reps in the HTC booth focused on the phone's widget-based interface, known as HTC Sense. Up to now, HTC's G1 has been the only Android phone in commercial use. But HTC is also working on differentiating its Android devices from others that will spring up in the future, according to a rep.

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Yesterday, Microsoft announced it was giving PC manufacturers the option to offer buyers of new PCs with Windows Vista pre-installed, starting today, free upgrades to Windows 7 on October 22. Betanews asked the big five PC manufacturers directly, will you be offering free upgrades? This morning, global #1 manufacturer Hewlett-Packard is the first to respond with an emphatic "yes."

"The program will enable customers who purchase qualifying HP PCs to enjoy the benefits of a new Windows-based PC immediately, and receive a free upgrade to Windows 7 when it becomes available in October," reads HP's statement to Betanews. "Following general availability of Windows 7 on October 22, qualifying customers will receive the Windows 7 upgrade and an upgrade utility disk with a step-by-step guide for installation at their convenience."

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On a difficult day for many of us to be talking about high technology and protocols and gadgets, when we'd rather be singing and remembering how lucky we are to be alive and to have friends and people we love, Betanews would like to take a moment -- just one moment -- to ask for blessings for the memory of a lady who used her public platform to make one of the first true public demonstrations that domestic abuse is wrong, and that anyone being abused has the right to fight back, and fight hard. And for giving us the honor of helping her fight her last battle in spirit. Thank you, Farrah. We appreciate you.

The UK's new cyber-terrorism crackdown heads up What's Next this morning, but first, a look at the last 24 hours...

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TV critic Alan Sepinwall asked Thursday afternoon, of no one in particular on Twitter, if this was the biggest double-celebrity-death day since Jim Henson and Sammy Davis Jr. both exited (May 16, 1990). And for a generation it sure felt like the world, or one's youth anyway, was coming to an end.

Or one's Internet connection, as the relatively muted testimonials to Farrah Fawcett Thursday morning gave way to moment-by-moment coverage of Michael Jackson's end in the afternoon -- from the photos a tourist on a tour bus outside Mr. Jackson's rental home snapped of the ambulance call to the avalanche of tweets from more or less everyone with ears as events unfolded. And the publication of record this time was TMZ.com -- an appropriate end, perhaps, for an artist who lived his life not just in the tabloids but in some fantasy of The Future, a place we suspect doesn't have newspapers.

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It took almost half a year to get it done, but the Senate has confirmed the appointment of Julius Genachowski as the next head of the Federal Communications Commission. The Senate also confirmed Robert McDowell, the sole Republican member among those currently seated, to his second five-year term.

The FCC has been operating shorthanded for quite some time, with just three seated for five positions on the bipartisan-by-law commission. President Obama on Thursday nominated two candidates for those slots. For the remaining Republican position, the White House named Meredith Atwell Baker, who has served previously in the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration, or NTIA -- the very organization in charge of distributing those $40 upgrade coupons for consumers needing help with the digital-TV switch. Mignon Clyburn has been nominated for the Democratic position. A former newspaper editor and publisher, Ms. Clyburn is a longtime member of South Carolina's Public Service Commission. She is the daughter of Rep. James Clyburn.

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If you're wondering what Microsoft is doing producing a plug-in for Mozilla Firefox, then perhaps you haven't heard the complaints from Firefox users who are not only wondering how that Microsoft plug-in got there, but are puzzled as to how to get rid of it. Today, Firefox users are seeing an update for that plug-in in their Automatic Updates for Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7 RC.

Whenever Microsoft automatically installs a service with an Orwellian sounding title, automatically folks become skeptical. In this case, the .NET Framework Assistant is a device that allows a kind of security pre-authorization feature that Microsoft tried to make prettier with the marketing name ClickOnce -- which works in Internet Explorer -- to extend to Firefox.

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WiMAX operator Clearwire
has acquired the remaining WiMAX licenses from Oneida Communications for an undisclosed amount. Last year, Oneida sold the majority of its licenses to Sprint, but held onto an unspecified number, which now belong to Clearwire. The company did not divulge how many licenses each company obtained or which markets will benefit from the acquisitions.

In 2005, Oneida Communications Group was formed with the purposes of acquiring licenses in the 2.5 GHz spectrum, known as Broadband Radio Service (BRS) licenses, which are crucial to the implementation of point to multi-point WiMAX networks. That spectrum range has been found ideal for high-bandwidth, non-line of sight installations, and has been dominated by Sprint and Clearwire.

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Download Mozilla Firefox 3.5 Release Candidate 3 for Windows from Fileforum now.

Early Betanews tests indicate some noticeable changes in the performance profile of a Release Candidate for Mozilla Firefox 3.5 that was posted to the organization's servers this morning. Overall, performance has improved by 1.7% in RC3 over RC2, released Monday, although underneath the surface, there appear to be some big gains and some setbacks.

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Attn. Steve Ballmer (the real one, not the fake one):

Hi, Steve. I know you don't know me from Adam, but I've never been one to let a little thing like complete strangerhood stop me from sharing a thought or six. So here goes.

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Stockholm District Court Judge Tomas Norström, whose impartiality was called into question after his guilty judgment in the Pirate Bay trial, has been found bias-free by Swedish courts.

Judge Norström is a member of two Swedish copyright reform groups, the SFU and the SFIR, which include some highly outspoken members of the Anti-Piracy Bureau and IFPI. It was thought Norström's link to these individuals could be grounds for a bias against the Pirate Bay.

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CORRECTION FROM THE M.E.: Here's a correction Betanews is happy to make. Although information Angela Gunn and I received last month appeared to verify that the big blue ThinkVantage button that was one of IBM's original signature ThinkPad features would be discontinued starting with the T400s unveiled earlier this week, Betanews was told by Lenovo today that not only does the T400s include the ThinkVantage button, but that the feature is not being discontinued after all.

What's more, the feature will do what it has done in the past, including give users the ability to recover their systems starting with the single button click. Though there will be changes to the feature over time, Betanews was told that the plan now is for those changes not to be nearly as drastic as had been indicated last month.

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