News

Firefox 17 Available In Beta   Wednesday 19 September

Firefox 17 has recently entered the Aurora channel and comes a number of  improvements to the built-in web developer tools.

 More Features for Azure Active Directory   Wednesday 19 September

Three new features have been added to the developer preview of Windows Azure Active Directory.

 Windows Store Expands Boundaries   Wednesday 19 September

Microsoft has opened up the Windows Store to app submissions from developers in 120 ‘markets’ before the general availability of Windows 8 on October 26.

Package Manager Library Open Sourced   Tuesday 18 September

Microsoft has open sourced npm.net, its .NET library for the Node.js package manager. This will enable developers to take advantage of work done by Microsoft for the WebMatrix team.

 Genealogy of Relational Databases   Tuesday 18 September

How many relational databases have there been? How many are now extinct? How are they related to one another? These questions are all answered in a single chart.

 Strong Uptake of Java 7   Tuesday 18 September

In the first year since its release Java 7 has achieved a global share of around 79% with Japan and Germany showing the greatest levels of adoption.

Google Open Sources Java To Objective-C Translator   Monday 17 September

Why would anyone want to translate Java to Objective-C? Because Java is the language of Android and Objective-C is the language of iOS.

First Draft Of Web Cryptography API   Monday 17 September

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C),  the body responsible for web standards, has published a working draft of an API designed to improve the security of web apps.

Amazon RDS Adds Data Pump Support   Monday 17 September

Users of Amazon RDS for Oracle can now make use of Oracle’s Data Pump facility to move data rapidly between Oracle databases.

Latest on the Smartphone Landscape   Sunday 16 September

There has been a significant increase in the number of U.S. mobile subscribers who own a smartphone, with young adults and teenagers responsible for most of this growth.

Nao Learns to Draw   Sunday 16 September

Thanks to the skills of a developer, the cute Nao robot is acquiring new skills that enhances his abilities to entertain and amuse the children and take on the role of playmate.

Microsoft's Logo Evolution   Sunday 16 September

Microsoft's recent logo change, the first for 25 years,  has prompted a look back at the changing style of computing.

Search For Next EDU Gurus   Friday 14 September

Google and Khan Academy have teamed up with a contest to discover new educational YouTube talent.

The XY Traveling Salesman Problem Solved   Friday 14 September

The traveling salesman problem is important because it is NP complete.If you can find a fast way to solve it, you have proved P=NP and changed the face of computation.

Intel pushes HTML5 for Cross Platform Development   Friday 14 September

Intel is planning tools for developing for HTML5 so you can write code for multiple environments.

Google Launches Course Builder   Friday 14 September

Do you want to create your own MOOC? Google has provided a free, open-source, tool to help would-be course creators to realize their ideas.

Eclipse 4.2 Under Fire   Friday 14 September

Eclipse users continue to raise concerns about the poor performance of Eclipse 4.2 compared to the earlier Eclipse 3.8.

PostgreSQL 9.2 Released   Thursday 13 September

The PostgreSQL project has announced the release of PostgreSQL 9.2 with improved scalability and developer flexibility.

More Online Educational Platforms   Thursday 13 September

Stanford University has announced two new online educational platforms bringing the number of Stanford courses available online this Fall to a total of 16.

Visual Studio Express 2012   Thursday 13 September

With the launch of the full Visual Studio we also have a collection of other announcements. VS Express 2012 can now be used to develop desktop apps for Windows 8, but the story isn't quite as simple as it seems.

Professional Programmer

How Google Took Over My Digital Life   Friday 14 September

I'm not a conspiracy theorist but Google does seem to have a plan that seems to be working. Without really noticing it Google seems to have infiltrated my digital life, including development, without me having to make a conscious decision about anything much.

The Core

jQuery, Promises & Deferred   Monday 17 September

Promises are the way that JavaScript deals with tasks that take a long time to complete and it is important to understand how they work. jQuery implements and makes use of promises, but for reasons of compatibility does it in a way that might confuse things. As long as you approach it correctly, jQuery is a perfectly standard implementation of the promise object.

Babbage's Bag

How Error Correcting Codes Work   Wednesday 19 September

Error correcting codes are essential to computing and all sorts of communications. At first they seem a bit like magic. How can you possibly not only detect an error but correct it as well? How do they work? In fact it turns out to be very easy to understand their deeper principles.