Programmer Puzzles

Self-Descriptive Arrays   Friday 23 November

Put on your thinking cap for another set of conundrums that will exercise your coding skills. This time Melvin Frammis introduces his junior partner Bugsy Cottman to some classic number puzzles that can be solved with arrays.

News

Q.bo Robot Available To Buy and Build   Wednesday 28 November

Q.bo, the open source standard robot that has been under development by TheCorpora Robotic Company, has now started shipping. It is available in kit form and in two fully assembled, Q.bo Evo, models.

VS2012 Update 1 available   Wednesday 28 November

The first update for Visual Studio 2012 can now be downloaded, with over 100 bug fixes along with new features.

PyPy - Faster Python Now On ARM   Tuesday 27 November

The beta version of PyPy 2.0 has been released, and adds support for ARM CPUs and CFFI compatibility.

Nashorn A New JVM JavaScript   Tuesday 27 November

Oracle has proposed a new OpenJDK project to create a fast and lightweight JavaScript engine running on the JVM. The Nashorn project, German for Rhino, is being voted on now.

Google Code-In 2012 Starts   Tuesday 27 November

The contest that is designed to give teens a chance of making a useful contribution to open source software has just started - and it's not just coding. There are other tasks to choose from.

Small Basic Grows Extensions   Monday 26 November

The latest extension to Microsoft's teaching language Small Basic is Version 2 of a set of Windows Forms controls that now includes a chart control.

New Center Probes AI Risks   Monday 26 November

A new UK research center has been set up to investigate the potential threat presented by developments in human technology, including Artificial Intelligence.

The Art of Programming From OpenLearning   Monday 26 November

The next free online presentation of Richard Buckland's UNSW Computing 1 - The Art of Programming starts December 3rd 2012.

JSFeat - JavaScript Image Processing Library   Sunday 25 November

Modern JavaScript is fast, fast enough to do real time image processing. JSFeat is a JavaScript library that implements some advanced image processing and the demos prove it does it in real time.

Toshiba's Four-Legged Friend   Sunday 25 November

Toshiba has developed a tetrapod robot capable of investigative exploration of the tsunami-devastated Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant which are is dangerous for humans to enter.

Robots On The Move   Saturday 24 November

What brings Knight Rider's KITT, Star Trek's Data and Asimov's Robby the Robot together, along with a complete team of Aldebaran Naos? The answer is an ad for General Electric.

Ingress, Google's Breakthrough Augmented Reality Game   Saturday 24 November

Ingress, Google's augmented reality multiplayer game is still in closed beta. Even so it is already becoming the most talked about, and perhaps even desired, AR app so far. But is it just a game or something more sinister?

Play Catch With Disney Research's Humanoid Robot   Friday 23 November

Disney Research has posted a YouTube video that provides a convincing display of a robot's ability to interact with humans playing catch. The robot even reacts appropriately to dropping the ball.

IBM's TrueNorth Simulates 530 Billion Neurons   Friday 23 November

IBM Research has broken new ground with a simulation of 530 billion neurons in a network modeled on the connectivity of a monkey brain - almost enough for a complete working brain.

Apple Patents Page Turning   Friday 23 November

Having asserted its ownership of revolutionary ideas such as rectangles with round corners and unlocking touch sensitive devices by touching the screen, Apple now has ownership of electronic page turning.

A Tour of Windows Phone Toolkit   Thursday 22 November

The Microsoft Windows Phone Toolkit team has announced the release of the Windows Phone 8 version of the Windows Phone Toolkit and provided an overview of its features.

Shumway - Mozilla's JavaScript Flash Player   Thursday 22 November

A new project from Mozilla aims to build a SWF Flash Player implementation in JavaScript that does not rely on native code and so provides an alternative way to process rich media without a plugin.

Thanksgiving Phones   Thursday 22 November

Just settling down for the perfect Thanksgiving dinner - then one by one each of the diners pull out their phone. What to do about it? The Joy of Tech has one possible solution for you.

Professional Programmer

HTML5 Books   Monday 26 November

There has been a flood of HTML5 books ever since it was first announced. We have trawled through the reviews on Programmer reviews to find the top-rated recommendations for beginners and experts.

History

From Baby to Mark I   Wednesday 28 November

The Manchester Baby was one of the first stored program computers. It used a CRT tube to store data and worked sequentially a bit at a time. It took about an hour to find a factor of a number but it was revolutionary and the first of the Manchester machines.