News

Amazon Coins for Kindle Fire Apps   Wednesday 06 February

In an attempt to encourage developers to sell their apps through the Amazon Appstore, Amazon has announced a new virtual currency for buying Kindle Fire games or apps and making in-app purchases.

Library of Number Crunching Routines for Java   Wednesday 06 February

Java developers now have access to a well known set of mathematical and statistical routines with the release of the NAG Library  for Java .

First Contact - Firefox & Chrome WebRTC   Tuesday 05 February

Firefox and Chrome now work together via WebRTC. To prove it the development teams had a chat using nothing but their browsers and without a server or a plugin to be seen.

Social Media Trends - Google+ Is Number Two   Tuesday 05 February

Facebook is used by 51% of global Internet users, Google + is rapidly closing the gap, but it is Twitter that saw the greatest percentage increase in users during 2012. How do these trends fit together?

Oracle Fights Back On Java Security   Tuesday 05 February

Oracle has released a Critical Patch Update for Java SE over  two weeks ahead of schedule, in order to deliver security fixes for over 50 vulnerabilities.

JavaScript to be the Default Language for Gnome   Monday 04 February

As another sign that JavaScript is taking over the world, the Gnome team seem to have decided that it is to be the default language for developing user facing applications. It sort of makes sense.

Micron Patent Could Upset Apple   Monday 04 February

The US Patent Office has granted Micron a patent covering a "system and method for controlling user access to an electronic device" . Could this be enough to overthrow Apple's slide-to-unlock patent claims?

Interactive Pixel Art   Sunday 03 February

Pixel art is very retro, but a Kickstarter project promises to bring it up-to-date with a Bluetooth connected LED display.

Hardware Mines Bitcoins Faster   Sunday 03 February

New hardware makes Bitcoins easier to mine, but are the ultimate winners the makers of the custom chips?

Kindle Fire Top Android Tablet   Sunday 03 February

Amazon's Kindle Fire accounts for a third of Android tablets on a global basis, even though it is available in only a handful of countries outside the United States.

Cumberbatch to Play Turing?   Saturday 02 February

Benedict Cumberbatch may take on the role of Alan Turing in "The Imitation Game", a screenplay by Graham Moore that is the basis of a much-anticipated film.

Computer Science In English Baccalaureate   Saturday 02 February

Computer Science has been added to the list of core academic subjects that are included in the English Baccalaureate, a key performance measure for  English schools.

Microsoft Confirms XNA is Dead but DirectX is OK   Saturday 02 February

The recent email to MVPs seemed to be saying that XNA was to be phased out and, more surprisingly, so was DirectX. Now Microsoft has attempted to clarify the position.

Help For Testing With Modern.IE   Friday 01 February

Microsoft has released a free set of virtual tools to help you ensure your sites "work beautifully across Internet Explorer". Modern.IE is a website that includes the tools, guidance and other resources.

NetBeans 7.3 Release Candidate   Friday 01 February

Release Candidate 1 of version 7.3 of NetBeans, the free open source IDE for Java, and also for PHP, C/C++ and other languages, is now available for download.

Microsoft Phases Out XNA and DirectX?   Thursday 31 January

It is reported that Microsoft has sent an email to DirectX/XNA MVPs which informs them that they are no longer needed because XNA and DirectX are no longer evolving. What does this mean? If you don't need MVPs then presumably you anticipate nothing to support in the future.

Visual Studio To Get Git   Thursday 31 January

Microsoft’s developer tools are adding support for decentralized source code version control using Git. Both Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server are to support Git.

Berners-Lee - Teach Young Children To Code!   Thursday 31 January

From a programming point of view the World Economic Forum in Davos is of little interest but Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the web, has raised the issue of teaching younger children to program.

Microsoft App Store Now Gives Crash Details   Thursday 31 January

Getting your app into the Windows Store increases the chances of profitability, but until now it’s not been possible to work out what’s gone wrong if an app fails certification.

The Core

Getting Started With JQuery - Manipulating The DOM   Saturday 02 February

jQuery provides you with methods for working with the DOM in ways powerful enough to allow you to create custom controls that extend what you can incorporate into an HTML page.  

eBooks

Java Data Types - Numeric Data   Wednesday 06 February

After looking at some of the advanced ideas of classes and objects we need to return to some simpler topics to make our understanding complete. We need to look more closely at data and, to get things moving, numeric data. 

Babbage's Bag

The Programmer's Guide to Fractals   Tuesday 05 February

Fractals encompass interesting pure maths and computing - and they are very pretty to look at. It is almost a rite of passage that every programmer has to face - write some sort of fractal viewer!