News

Changes to AWS Marketplace and a New Partner Program   Wednesday 25 April

Amazon is re-organizing the AWS Marketplace to make it easier for users to find the products on offer and has announced a beta version of Amazon Web Services Partner Program.

Google Drive API - an Opportunity?   Wednesday 25 April

The big news is that Google has released its cloud storage product - one of the worse kept secrets of recent days. However, Google Drive also comes with an API and this brings opportunities to build cloud storage apps.

Firefox 12 Delivers Improved Developer Tools   Wednesday 25 April

Mozilla has launched Firefox 12 which features a simpler update process and improvements to all of the buillt-in developer tools.

Faster Apache CouchDB   Tuesday 24 April

Apache has announced the release of CouchDB 1.2.0. It brings lots of improvements, some of which mean apps written for older versions of CouchDB will no longer work.

Mozilla Gladius Game Engine Reaches V0.1   Tuesday 24 April

If JavaScript is going to be used to implement online games it needs more than just WebGL's 3D graphics to build on - it needs a game engine. So, Mozilla is hard at work creating Gladius.

AT&T Voice Recognition API Available in June   Tuesday 24 April

AT&T is giving developers the tools to build apps and services that use your voice to communicate with smartphones, televisions and other digital devices.

ZX Spectrum Turns 30   Monday 23 April

The ZX Spectrum was the games computer  that took the UK by storm and introduced BASIC to an entire generation of kids, many of whom went on to become programmers. Today marks 30 years since its launch on April 23rd, 1982.

Travelling Salesman - A Movie About P=NP   Monday 23 April

We all know that the P=NP question is truly fascinating, but now it is about to be released as a movie. Can they be serious? Yes, a proof of P=NP would change the world as we know it.

Liberated Pixel Cup   Sunday 22 April

A game-making contest has been announced jointly by a OpenGameArt.org, the Free Software Foundation, and the Creative Commons. As you can guess from the organizations involved this is about creating "free-as-in-freedom" software.

FireHero - Arduino and Guitar Play with Fire   Sunday 22 April

This is more than an air guitar - it's a fire guitar and it's the most dangerous, but most impressive, Arduino project we have encountered to date.

The Artificial Life of the App Store - the Best Strategy to Succeed   Sunday 22 April

How does the Apple App Store actually work? What is the best strategy to employ if you want to get some users and makes some money? There are some pointers on how it all works from an unusual source - artificial life.

More Spring Cleaning from Google   Sunday 22 April

Google has announced major changes to its deprecation policies and has announced the official deprecation of several more APIs

Larry Page says - Android Not Critical for Google   Saturday 21 April

How central is Android to Google? Is it thinkable that it could be dumped along with so many closed APIs and services as part of a Google spring clean?

Linus Torvalds - Laureate for the 2012 Milllenium Technology Prize   Saturday 21 April

Linus Torvalds is one of two laureates for a valuable and prestigious prize that recognizes technological innovation that assist and enrich people's everyday lives today as well as in the future.

Frogger - With Real Cars   Saturday 21 April

A re-creation of the classic Frogger comes with a difference - it uses real cars driving down 5th Avenue, but the frog is still virtual.

Open Source XNA for Windows 8 Metro   Friday 20 April

The MonoGame team has been working on a port of its open source version of XNA to the Windows 8 Metro environment. For XNA programmers this is important, and it highlights the fact that Microsoft is making no effort at all in this direction.

jQuery Mobile 1.1   Friday 20 April

jQuery Mobile 1.1 has been released with changes to make it faster and smoother.

The Physical Travelling Salesman Challenge   Friday 20 April

You probably know that the travelling salesman problem is one of the classics of computer science theory. Now we have a new challenge - the Physical Travelling Salesman Problem and anyone can join in.

Windows Phone Translation-As-You-Go   Thursday 19 April

Microsoft has updated its Bing Translator app for Windows Phone giving it a real edge in terms of translate-as-you go.

Up and Running with LocalDB   Thursday 19 April

Microsoft has released a video to help developers get started with a version of SQL Server Express aimed specifically at developers.

Balloon and Kite Imagery in Google Earth   Thursday 19 April

You can now see high resolution images taken using kites and balloons within Google Earth. What is more, you can take your own using a low cost kit and contribute to the project.

Professional Programmer

Getting to know SQL Server 2012 and Sharepoint   Tuesday 24 April

If you’re using SQL Server 2012 for data analysis, you have several new options available to use. The ones that have gained most headlines are Power View for displaying data in web apps and PowerPivot for data cube analysis in desktop apps, but there are deeper changes that will probably prove more useful for developers.

Gems Amongst Ruby Books   Friday 20 April

Ruby, and its best known framework Rails, seems to attract the sort of book that other languages and frameworks would be pleased to have. Here we pick IProgrammer's top  recommendations.

The Core

JavaScript Data Structures - the Array object   Monday 23 April

When JavaScript was first introduced to the world it didn't have a dedicated Array data structure. Here we look at the Array object which is easy to use, but it can cause some confusion if you forget that every data structure in JavaScript is also an object, or more importantly an associative array.