News

ACTA Decisively Rejected by European Parliament   Wednesday 04 July

The European Parliament has rejected ACTA by a huge majority, giving a clear signal to the rest of the world that this treaty should not be ratified. ADTA isn't yet dead - but it has been stopped in its tracks.

Kasparov Versus Turing!   Wednesday 04 July

No the headline isn't an error. The well-known Russian Chess Grand Master took on Alan Turing's TurboChamp chess program at a recent live event at the University of Manchester's Turing 100 Celebration. What happened next...

iGoogle Going ... Gone   Wednesday 04 July

iGoogle is the latest casualty of Google's policy of clearing the decks, or rather the desks, of any unwanted, under-used or simply inconvenient (to Google) software.

Google Open Sources Bob Moog Google Doodle   Tuesday 03 July

Every now and again Google invents a doodle that deserves a life of its own. If you enjoyed the recent moog synthesizer doodle, the good news is that it has just been open sourced - so you can play and improve it as much as you like.

ACTA - Act Now   Tuesday 03 July

The final vote on ACTA (the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) is happening on Wednesday, July 4, 2012. The protest in Europe against ACTA has been very effective - but there needs to be a final and resounding "Say No to ACTA".

A New Computational Universe - Fredkin's SALT CA   Tuesday 03 July

Edward Fredkin believes that a final grand theory of everything would be computational - that the universe is a computer. Now we have an example of an extremely simple computational system - a Cellular Automata - that has particles that attract and repel, orbit and decay with a half-life law.

RoboCup 2012   Monday 02 July

RoboCup 2012 recently took place in Mexico City. The Humanoid league games may not yet have the status of the UEFA European Football Championship, which were taking place at the same time. Even so, robots are probably on course to take on human players within a few decades.

Eclipse Juno - A New Major Version   Monday 02 July

This year’s update of the Eclipse project has been released. Juno is Version 4.2 of the platform and is the first to be built on Eclipse 4. As such it brings several new features including a revamped interface.

IEEE Milestones for Whirlwind and SAGE   Monday 02 July

Whirlwind, the world’s first real-time digital computer, and SAGE first electronic air-defense system and a forerunner of today’s air-traffic-control systems and computer networks, both of which were developed at MIT,  have been recognised as IEEE Milestones

#BoycottApple on Google+   Sunday 01 July

There's a swelling protest on Google+ today in response to the ruling in the Apple v Samsung Galaxy Nexus lawsuit that banned Samsung from selling its Galaxy Nexus smartphone in the United States.

Apple v Samsung Galaxy Nexus: A Programmer Reads the Patents   Sunday 01 July

The court ruling banning the Samsung Galaxy Nexus was based on four patents. What powerful intellectual property is Apple wielding in its legal attempt to stay the number one?

Robot and Frank - An Upbeat Robot Movie?   Sunday 01 July

If you are tired of killer robots murdering humans for no real logical reason, then you might like Robot & Frank - but be warned the robot learns some pretty evil stuff.

Atari at 40 Celebrates Pong with Developer Challenge   Saturday 30 June

This week was Atari's 40th anniversary and the finalists in the Pong Developer Challenge to celebrate this milestone have been announced. You can now cast your votes for seven games inspired by Pong.

Zelda the Kitten and the iPad - Why iOS Programmers Earn More   Saturday 30 June

As we have often said - we don't do kitten movies on I Programmer - except when we do. You need to look at this one because it proves the superiority of iOS and why iOS apps earn more money. It's all a question of the target audience.

UnLoc - An App That Learns Where You Are Indoors   Friday 29 June

How can you find your way around in a big building? You can't use GPS because reception is bad. Why not simply use an app that picks up invisible landmarks to determine where you are.

Cell Internet Use Jumps   Friday 29 June

If you’re developing web apps, the need to optimize them for display on mobile devices becomes ever more important. A new survey of cell phone internet use shows that more than half of adult cell phone owners use their phone to go online.

Google Initiatives In Developer Education   Friday 29 June

Google has announced two new programs, Google Developers Academy and Google Developers University Consortium, to provide education resources to its developer community and to the academic community which uses its tools and developer platforms.

Google Announces Compute Engine - At Last An Alternative to Amazon AWS   Friday 29 June

Google's Compute Engine is the first credible alternative to Amazon's AWS. Until today the cloud was Amazon - now at last it's a two-horse race.

A Smoother Android - Jelly Bean (4.1) The Programmer's Take   Thursday 28 June

Decimal point upgrades are rarely worth writing about, and the latest upgrade to 4.1 (aka Jelly Bean) is a collection of fairly minor tweaks - the question is do they at last add up to something that can take on iOS?

Kyoto Prize for Ivan Sutherland   Thursday 28 June

Ivan Sutherland, widely considered to be the father of computer graphics, has been awarded the 2012 Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology by the Inamori Foundation

Google Fusion Tables API   Thursday 28 June

Google has announced the public availability of its new Fusion Tables API and at the same has begun a six-month deprecation period for the SQL API. So developers need to start to move over to Fusion Tables soon.

Professional Programmer

The State of Windows 8   Friday 29 June

We are getting close to the final version of Windows 8 and now we know a lot more, but not everything, about it. Now is a good time to consider this soon-to-be-historic move from the Windows we have been using to the technology shift heralded by Windows 8, and reflect on how we should respond to it.

eBooks

WinRT JavaScript - Working with Tiles & Badges   Monday 02 July

One of the most noticeable features of WinRT/Metro is the use of tiles. At the simplest level, a tile acts as little more than an icon for your app. Taken just a little further, however, and a live tile can be used communicate with the user. Exactly how all of this works can be a bit confusing, so let's find out about its fundamental principles.

Babbage's Bag

Cellular Automata - The How and Why   Wednesday 04 July

You may know about Cellular Automata, if not you may know John Conway's game of Life, but why is this whole subject so important and so interesting? We take a look at not only what a CA is, but why it is so important.