News

Azure brand alive and well   Wednesday 09 May

A rumor that Microsoft was dropping the "Azure" branding for its cloud service quickly spread yesterday. But it was a based on a back-end adminstrative action and a growing expectation that Microsoft cannot be relied upon for stability.

FileMaker 12 for iPad and iPhone   Wednesday 09 May

FileMaker has moved into the iPhone market with its latest version. The free FileMaker 12 apps for iPad and iPhone were downloaded more than 100,000 times in the first week after release.

MagPi - A Raspberry Pi Magazine   Tuesday 08 May

You may want to groan at the title, but a community magazine for the Raspberry Pi is just what is needed. But is one for sorrow?

Google v Oracle Verdict In - But Future Still Unclear   Tuesday 08 May

The jury has made a decision in the Oracle v Google trial, but it isn't a particularly helpful verdict. It agreed that Google had infringed Oracle's copyright, but essentially only in using nine lines of one function.

Microsoft's New Research Center into Social Data   Tuesday 08 May

Microsoft Research New York City is opening with fifteen researchers most of whom are joining Microsoft from Yahoo Research.

BigQuery Now Open to All   Monday 07 May

After a period of limited-availability testing, BigQuery, a cloud-based service from Google for analyzing very large sets of data, is now publicly available.

New LibreOffice Certification Program   Monday 07 May

The Document Foundation has announced a Developer Certification Program to foster the provision of professional services around LibreOffice.

Casablanca: C++ in the Cloud   Monday 07 May

Casablanca, a set of C++ libraries intended to support cloud-based client-server communication in native code using an asynchronous design, can be considered a cloud SDK for C++.

Making Mayhem   Sunday 06 May

Channel 9 has added a series of videos to introduce Mayhem, the recently open-sourced Windows Scripting tool, to developers. A contest to promote the use of Mayhem has now been extended until June 30th.

Joomla Magazine May 2012 - Upgrade to 2.5   Sunday 06 May

As well as celebrating its worldwide community, this month's Joomla Magazine has help for users of 1.5 who want to make the move to the current stable version, 2.5.

Kinect 3D Full Body "Hologram"   Saturday 05 May

There is a "star trek" quality about this invention. You can have a conference call with a 3D full body image of the remote person that looks as if they have just beamed to your location.

How Much Do Apps Earn?   Saturday 05 May

In a survey last month, 80% of developers admitted they don't earn enough money from building apps to support an independent business and 59% of apps don't generate enough revenue to break even on development costs.

Windows 8 Kills Windows Live   Saturday 05 May

Microsoft is ditching the Windows Live brand. In Windows 8 cloud services will simply be referred to by their names and instead of a Windows Live ID, users will log on with their Microsoft Accounts.

Mono Ports Android to C#   Friday 04 May

Would Google have been better off adopting C# as the basis for the Android operating system's development language and .NET for its runtime? The Mono team decided to find out with a little experiment. They did a conversion.

International Day Against DRM   Friday 04 May

May 4, is the International Day Against DRM, on which the Free Software Foundation campaign invites us to celebrate DRM-free media and boycott DRM.

Scriptkitty Dreams - Rights for Programmers!   Friday 04 May

We don't do kitten videos - but in this case we throw an exception to the wind. This one has a serious intent for programmers everywhere. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is known for many things - but kitten videos don't rank high in its achievements, until today.

Windows Phone Developer Summit   Friday 04 May

Microsoft has started to send out "Save the Date" invites for a two-day Windows Phone Summit to take place in San Francisco on June 21-22, 2012.

JavaFX Runs on Raspberry Pi   Thursday 03 May

JavaFX is the latest GUI framework for Java and most people agree that it's very impressive. The tiny and low cost Raspberry Pi is still in the process of proving what it can do, but it seems running JavaFX is on the list.

New Institute for Computer Science   Thursday 03 May

The University of California, Berkeley has been chosen for a new center for computer science funded by the Simons Foundation.

Blackberry Promises $10,000 for an App   Thursday 03 May

RIM rolled out the BlackBerry 10 at BlackBerry World in Orlando on Tuesday. But the big news for devs came on Wednesday - a guaranteed income of $10k for apps developed for the new platform. Is RIM really that desperate or that confident?

Google App Scripts Improved   Thursday 03 May

Following close on the heels of the Google Drive API, Google is adding script automation to Apps Script, the scripting language for Google Docs.

Harvard and MIT Join Forces in edX   Wednesday 02 May

Even more free online courses will hit the world wide web this fall thanks to a joint venture by Harvard and MIT.

Professional Programmer

Why Do We Tolerate IE? Just Say No   Friday 04 May

Microsoft's Internet Explorer is still the Number One web browser - but only in terms of its market share. Over the years it has caused more problems for web programmers and web page designer than any other browser.
Why do we put up with it?

eBooks

WinRT JavaScript - WinControls   Wednesday 09 May

If you are building an HTML5 app specifically for Windows 8 there is a lot to be gained in functionality by using the Windows extensions and giving your app the full Metro style. Microsoft's custom controls are  easy to use once you know how they work.

Babbage's Bag

Binary Arithmetic   Monday 07 May

What could be simpler than binary arithmetic? It’s just two-fingered counting and, once you know how it works, it seems natural for a computer to use it. But decimal is so built into our hands that it took quite a long time before we realized that two fingers were enough.