News

Apps For Good Competition   Wednesday 07 November

Microsoft has launched a competition with prizes of up to $15,000 for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 apps that have a positive impact on the world around them.

Opera 12.10 With Extension APIs   Wednesday 07 November

Opera Software has released Opera 12.10. This latest version of the desktop browser is a recommended upgrade for all Opera 12.x and previous users as it fixes security issues in the browser.

Rust 0.4 Full Integration of Borrowed Pointers   Tuesday 06 November

A new version of Mozilla’s programming language Rust has been released with the aim of stabilizing the language syntax.

Kinect Fusion Coming to the SDK   Tuesday 06 November

Kinect Fusion is a program that creates a full 3D model of your surroundings as you scan it with a hand-held Kinect. Now there is news that it will be included in the next version of the SDK.

Android Turns 5 - Let Birthday Celebrations Begin   Tuesday 06 November

It is 5 years since the Open Handset Alliance announced the Android platform and, despite all the problems of fragmentation, Android's 75% of the market vindicates Google's decision to make Android an open platform.

Free Microsoft E-book On Windows 8 Apps And More   Tuesday 06 November

Book publishing as an arm of marketing has a long history and usually the end user is the winner. In this case we have some free programming ebooks from Microsoft for you to download.

Java Is Top Attack Target   Monday 05 November

Kaspersky has just released its analysis of security threats in Q3 2012 and top of the list is Java. This isn't encouraging given the recent bad press the language system has received.

The W3C Speech API - A Google Initiative   Monday 05 November

A Web Speech API Specification has recently been published together with a call for Final Specification Commitments from members of the W3C Speech API Community Group. 

UNIVAC Predicts US Election - On This Day 60 Years Ago   Sunday 04 November

On November 4, 1952 UNIVAC became an overnight TV star when it correctly predicted the outcome of the US presidential elections, proving the pundits wrong. The headlines the next day read "Machine Makes Monkey Out of Man".

The Inconvenient QR Clock   Sunday 04 November

Here's a clock that generates QR codes on the fly in order to display the current time in a form that a smartphone can read - but a human can't. What's the point of that?

Korean Household Robot Prepares Salad   Saturday 03 November

How close are we to having household robots capable of the basic domestic chores that would make them really useful? The latest in Korean robotics technology suggests we are getting there - but slowly.

Cash and AWS Credits For Winning Startups   Saturday 03 November

There's still a month in which to enter Amazon's 6th AWS Global Start-Up Challenge. This year there are four Grand Prizes to be won plus AWS credits for all entrants who submit a qualified entry.

Flying Neural Net Avoids Obstacles   Saturday 03 November

Quadrotors do some impressive things, but so far they haven't managed the trick of flying free and avoiding obstacles. Now we have a quadrotor that can do just this and using only a standard video camera.

Data Analytics for Weathering Storms   Saturday 03 November

IBM and its partners are working to make sure the lights stay on when storms hit. Big Blue is using predictive analytics and hyper-local weather predictions to help electricity companies keep supplies working, no matter how bad the storms are.

Android Reaches New Record Level   Friday 02 November

The Android OS was on three out of every four smartphones shipped in the third quarter of 2012. Its 91.5% year-over-year growth was nearly double the overall market growth rate.

Hackers Target SQL Injection   Friday 02 November

An analysis of hacker forums has found that SQL injection is currently the most discussed topic among forum members.

Remote Web Console For Firefox For Android   Thursday 01 November

If Firefox has one advantage over Chrome it is in its support of developer tools. Now, to add to the remote debugger, we have a remote Web Console.

DARPA Robotics Challenge   Thursday 01 November

The DARPA Robotics Challenge is intended to push the boundaries of what robots can do. Even if you don't want to compete, you can try your own solution using the GFE simulator which is now available for download.

VR Lets Rat & Man Play Together   Thursday 01 November

This is one use of VR that you might think was an elaborate hoax or something from a novel. The idea is to let man and animals, a rat in this case, operate on more equal terms.

F# 3.0 - Worth A Try   Thursday 01 November

Microsoft released F# Tools for Visual Studio Express for Web, making F# 3.0 components freely available. Since then Microsoft has updated both the Try F# website and the F# Language Specification.

Professional Programmer

JavaScript Is Basic's Offspring   Friday 02 November

JavaScript is often described as the most misunderstood of programming languages but why is this? Part of the reason is that JavaScript is Basic's heir to everything it once owned.

The Core

Creating Web Apps - The Device Orientation API   Monday 05 November

Knowing which way is up is often useful. The HTML Device Orientation API now provides a standard way for your apps to find out which way they are pointing - and the good news is that it really is almost standard.

eBooks

Building a Java GUI - Containers   Wednesday 07 November

In this chapter of Modern Java we get to grips with the idea of a container that is used to host components to build a user interface. We also find out how the Swing GUI Builder generates code to make it all much easier.