News

WP8 SDK - It's OK!   Wednesday 31 October

Microsoft has made the WP8 SDK available to everyone. The only question is why was it held back for so long? On a first look there seems to be nothing that needed to be kept secret and nothing to be ashamed of. SO why the wait? It's a mystery.

Google Web Toolkit 2.5   Wednesday 31 October

Google Web Toolkit 2.5 Final has been released. It features new optimizations but its two major enhancements, Super Dev Mode and the Elemental Library both have the status of "experimental".

New Version of Xamarin.Mobile for WP8   Wednesday 31 October

In keeping with its policy of same-day releases when new device operating systems are available, Xamarin has released a new version of Xamarin.Mobile that is compatible with Windows Phone 8. It has also announced a developer contest.

Cloudera Impala - Real-Time Query on Hadoop   Tuesday 30 October

Cloudera has announced Implala, a real-time query engine for Apache Hadoop, which will work with data stored in a Hadoop Distributed File System, HDFS; and in HBase, the non-relational distributed database.

Contre Jour - A Touch Demo Game For IE10?   Tuesday 30 October

Contre Jour is a touch-based game that has been developed to show off IE10. The only problem is that, as it uses mostly HTML5 standards-based technologies, it shows off how good other browsers are as well!

Tablet Market Slows Giving Android an Advantage   Tuesday 30 October

Global tablet shipments reached 25 million units in the third quarter of 2012 with Apple iOS losing market share to Android.

One More Day To Go To WP8 SDK   Monday 29 October

For reasons that don't seem to make much sense, the Windows Phone 8 SDK will be made available to everyone, but not until a day after the launch of the phone.

update: The SDK is now available for download to MSDN subscribers and to the public.

Mozilla's Vision for Web Literacy   Monday 29 October

The Mozilla Foundation has posted a white paper on web literacies that outlines a vision for the web in which not only is  the web accessible to all, but  everyone should have the ability to contribute to it.

Robot Swarms Get Their Own Drones   Sunday 28 October

How can a swarm of robots get a global picture of its environment? Easy it simply sends up a drone. We are used to thinking of drones as being used for surveillance by humans operating on the ground, but what is good for humans is good for robots too.

One Day To Go To Windows Phone 8 SDK?   Sunday 28 October

Windows Phone 8 launches on October 29th. This time it really is a cliff hanger. What has Microsoft been holding back to increase the excitement and justify not releasing the SDK? Is there anyone still paying attention or has every reasonable developer left the Microsoft IDE and switched out the lights?

Apple 1 in Online Auction   Sunday 28 October

A fully functioning Apple 1, complete with peripherals and BASIC on cassette tape, is coming up for sale in a live online auction to be held in November.

A Bare Metal Raspberry Pi Course   Saturday 27 October

Although this short course is billed as "Baking Pi - Operating System Development" it is more realistically about bare metal programming in ARM assembly language. That is, programming without the help of an OS.

The Mobile Industry - A Snapshot   Saturday 27 October

This infographic from Vision Mobile presents some interesting statistics relating to the first half of 2012, including the number of handsets shipped and the number of apps available.

A GNU Protest Against Windows 8   Saturday 27 October

The Free Software Foundation, in the form of a GNU, crashed the Windows 8 launch event in an effort to persuade Windows users not to upgrade to Windows 8 but move to GNU/Linux instead.

Network Coding Speeds Up Wireless by 1000%   Friday 26 October

Adding some error correction to a standard TCP wireless connection can speed things up by 1000%. But isn't your ordinary error correcting code this is new. In a demonstration by a team led by MIT's Muriel Medard, the throughput of a phone connection went from 0.5Mbps to 13.5Mbp.

Android VM Moves To JellyBean   Friday 26 October

If you have missed the fact that there is a VM version of Android ready for you to run, then you will be even more pleased that it has now reached version 4.1, aka JellyBean.

NetAdvantage Ultimate 2012   Friday 26 October

The latest development tools collection from Infragistics has been released. with support for Touch and business intelligence capabilities.

TouchDevelop Web App Preview   Thursday 25 October

A browser-based version of the TouchDevelop App for Windows Phone is now available in preview, giving developers the opportunity to work on their apps on any device they want to use.

Bossa Nova Robotics Announces mObi   Thursday 25 October

Bossa Nova is a company committed to bringing you a home robot in the very near future. Its latest model was announced at Robotbusiness. There's an SDK and you can start thinking up uses for it right now.

Amazon Unveils AWS Conference Sessions   Thursday 25 October

Amazon has updated the details about the sessions at its AWS re: Invent conference. While much of the material is aimed at general businesses, there are some goodies on offer for developers.  

Professional Programmer

Perl 6 and Parrot - In Conversation with Moritz Lenz   Wednesday 31 October

The development of Perl 6 using the Parrot VM is a case study in language development. Even if you are not about to start work on your own language right now, this interview with Moritz Lenz who is working on the Rakudo Perl 6 compiler is a fascinating view of another world.

The Disastrous Fragmentation Of Web Apps   Friday 26 October

Web apps are a great idea. You write an app once and it works on everything - where have we heard that idea before? However things aren't quite working out as expected. There are huge splits appearing in the fabric of HTML5 and the web app.

Babbage's Bag

The Essence Of Programming   Monday 29 October

We often state that program is just a list of instructions, but this does not do justice to the complexity of this apparently simple idea. A the idea of a program exists outside of any particular programming language, but we only get to see and experience it when it has been expressed. This makes it hard to separate the fundamental ideas from language features.