News

Shortage of Java Developers?   Wednesday 25 July

Although Java is probably the most popular programming language, hiring managers find that position for Java devs are the hardest to fill, closely followed by mobile developer and .NET developer.

A New DNA Sequence Search - Compressive Genomics   Wednesday 25 July

With the improvements in sequencing technology we are rapidly approaching bioinformatic overload.  Biologists need new methods to store and access the huge wave of data that is about to hit the subject and one solution might be to use compression

PhoneGap 2.0 Released   Wednesday 25 July

Version 2.0 of the open source framework for developing cross-platform mobile applications, PhoneGap has been released, bringing with better integration, command line tooling and enhanced documentation.

edX Expands and Announces New Courses   Tuesday 24 July

UC Berkeley has joined edX, the online learning initiative founded by Harvard University and MIT, and details are available of six new courses for Fall 2012.

Apps for BlackBerry Dev Alpha Can Roll Out   Tuesday 24 July

RIM has updated the BlackBerry Dev Alpha software so you can now submit your BlackBerry 10 apps into BlackBerry App World. While the perilous state of RIM and BlackBerry might make you wonder if this is worth doing, it would mean you’re working towards earning the $10,000 RIM has promised every developer who builds a "certified" app for the platform.

Dictionary API Available   Tuesday 24 July

Merriam-Webster, publisher of several dictionaries and thesauruses, has launched a Developer Center and is making available an API that is free for non-commercial use.

The Singularity is Near - Update: Movie Now Available   Tuesday 24 July

Ray Kurzweil's bestseller "The Singularity Is Near" has been made into a movie and its available now.

Windows 8 Apps Pricing   Monday 23 July

Microsoft has been encouraging developers to contribute apps to the Windows store. Now it has announced details of its price tiers, with a starting price of $1.49, which is higher than the $0.99 of Google Play, Amazon and the iTunes store.

Chirp - A New Way To Send Data   Monday 23 July

We are used to QR codes and similar ways of exchanging data between mobiles, but what about chirping like a bird. The idea has been taken up and realized by a new company and you can download the app now.

Coursera Expands Partner Network   Monday 23 July

Coursera recently announced twelve new partnering universities. Although its course catalog has expanded, computer science courses still predominate.

Saving the O'Reilly Animals   Sunday 22 July

Developers are used to the idea that the covers of O'Reilly programming books feature animals. Indeed some classics, such as the camel book, are referred to by their animal. Now O'Reilly wants us to help endangered species.

Free Robonaut 2 Simulator   Sunday 22 July

Robonaut 2 is now helping astronauts on the International Space Station. However, earth-bound roboticists can download a virtual version and put it through its paces.

Eliminate Potholes With a Free App   Saturday 21 July

The city of Boston and the insurers Liberty Mutual have invested $45,000 in Street Bump, an Android and iPhone App that detects and maps the damaging holes in the road that require attention. The code is to be made available so that others can develop this technology.

A Robot Learns His Colors   Saturday 21 July

Flash is a robot with a surprising amount of personality, without getting anywhere near the uncanny valley. Watch as he shows of how he can learn to name colors and generally join in with humans.

Napa - Build Apps in the Cloud   Saturday 21 July

In the hype about the public preview of Office 2013 being released, the news of a new development environment for Office and SharePoint has taken something of a back seat.

Which HTML5? - WHATWG and W3C Split   Friday 20 July

The two organizations currently responsible for the development of HTML have decided on a degree of separation and this means that in the future there will be two versions of HTML5 - the snapshot and the living standard.

Entity Framework Open-Sourced - Good or Bad?   Friday 20 July

Entity Framework, a database mapping tool that can be used while developing apps using the .NET Framework, has joined the list of projects that Microsoft has made open source on CodePlex.  Is this good or bad news for users of EF and .NET in general?

Dell's Developer Laptop   Friday 20 July

Dell has announced that it plans to deliver an official developer laptop based on the Dell XPS 13 with Ubuntu 12.04 preloaded in Fall 2012.

Microsoft Silverlight Blog Abandons Silverlight   Thursday 19 July

It has been three months since there was a post on the Microsoft Silverlight blog - until today. However, if you were expecting a post about Silverlight think again. The blog is all about Metro style apps - not a word of Silverlight. It's as if a blog about dogs suddenly started writing about cats.

Poison Attacks Against Machine Learning   Thursday 19 July

With AI systems becoming more common, we have to start worrying about security. A network intrusion may be all the more serious if it is a neural net that is affected. New results indicate that it may be easier than we thought to provide data to a learning program that causes it to learn the wrong things.

Expanding Access to Google+ Page APIs   Thursday 19 July

Until now, access to the third party management tools for Google+ Pages has been restricted to just six partners. Now Google is inviting "hundreds" of others into this circle.

Jigsaw Shelved Until Java 9   Thursday 19 July

Oracle is dropping Jigsaw from Java 8 in order to meet the scheduled release date of September 2013.

Professional Programmer

MOOCs Fail Students With Dark Age Methods   Friday 20 July

The sudden rise of the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) has been a shock for many in the education industry - no more so than to programmers engaged in creating educational software.

eBooks

WinRT JavaScript - Toast Notification   Wednesday 25 July

Metro doesn't allow you very many ways to interact with the user when your app wants to, so you need to master the few at your disposal - toast popups in particular. Fortunately they aren't difficult and follow the same pattern as the other notifications - badges, and tiles.

History

UK Micros of the 1980s   Tuesday 24 July

Something special happened in the UK at the start of the 1980s and it  altered the  face of computing as we know it. You  may  be  of  the opinion that all that ever happened in the past was Apple and IBM, but not so, not in the UK at least.