MICROSOFT RELEASES ANDROID PORTING PACKAGE FOR WINDOWS PHONE 7 DEVS

Microsoft's App Guy has quite a job on his baby-soft hands: to boost Windows Phone 7's numerically-challenged Marketplace by encouraging developers to port apps across from other platforms. The little fellow helped iPhone devs out a couple of months ago with an API mapping tool to makes it easier to translate iPhone APIs to WP7 code. Now he's extended the mapping tool to work with Android APIs too, and backed it up with a 90-page white paper and a promise to get more involved in developer forums.

APPLE DROPS JAILBREAK DETECTION API

Apple has quietly dropped the API used to detect jailbroken phones just six months after introducing it in iOS. Apple gave no explanation for their action. The API was mainly used by enterprise specialists to make sure their networks weren't being compromised.

Sybase VP of engineering Joe Owen seems to think that they dropped it because it's nearly impossible to keep such an API hackproof:

"It's an interesting concept - asking the OS to tell you if it has been compromised," Owen says. "Because a smart attacker might first change that very part of the OS. Jailbreaks often get better and better at disguising the fact that anything has been compromised."

This doesn't mean that jailbreakers are free and clear. Most companies create their own solutions for keeping their networks safe and detecting jailbroken devices. [NetworkWorld via Gizmodo]

ROUNDUP: FACEBOOK MEDIA EVENT

Facebook held a media event today in NYC and there was not a Facebook phone in sight.  Instead Facebook unveiled their mobile platform.  The new platform will have 3 parts: single sign on, location API and deals.

Users can now use one login for all their sites, meaning, log into Facebook, and then Facebook will handle your "logging in" to other sites through their APIs. There's also deals, which takes advantage of your Facebook single sign on for authentication, as well as location APIs. Users can see where their friends are, write and publish checkins, and search for relevant places. [Gizmodo]