News

The Life Of Pi - Yes It's Pi Day   Wednesday 13 March

The first three digits of Pi are 3.14 and so March 14th is Pi day. This year no expense is being spared to make sure that the world knows how fascinating this transcendental number is.

The Adventurous Developer’s Guide to JVM Languages   Wednesday 13 March

ZeroTurnaround, creators of the JRebel plug-in for the Java Virtual Machine, has brought out a 50-page report that explores Java 8 and some of the JVM languages.

AWS Elastic Beanstalk For Node.js   Wednesday 13 March

Node.js continues its bid for World domination with the news that AWS Elastic Beanstalk now supports Node.js applications.

Build Your Own Arduino Phone   Tuesday 12 March

A new Arduino add-on - the GSM Shield - makes it very easy to build a mobile phone. It is also data equipped for most of the world with a Telefonica SIM that is included in the package. What could you do with it?

Cross Platform PDF Development Library For .NET and Mono   Tuesday 12 March

XFINIUM.PDF is a .NET/Mono library for cross-platform PDF development with a wide range of capabilities, for both beginners and advanced developers.

Microsoft Not Open Sourcing Kinect Code   Tuesday 12 March

The need for this news item arises because the BBC has a story with the headline "Microsoft shares source code for Kinect gadget". This isn't the case - Microsoft has open sourced some samples that use the Kinect.

Windows 8 ModernMix - Runs Apps In A Window   Monday 11 March

A new Windows 8 app gives you control over the way Windows 8 apps are displayed on the Start screen, overcoming one of Win8’s more annoying drawbacks.

Google Doodle For Hitch Hiker's Guide   Monday 11 March

Today's Google Doodle celebrates the fact that today would have been Douglas Adam's 61st birthday. For any fans of Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy this isn't to be missed.

Facebook Is The Best Place To Work   Monday 11 March

Glassdoor has published the results of its annual Employees' Choice Awards. Facebook is at #1 making it the 2013 Best Place to Work, Google and LinkedIn are also in the top 15.

Dumb Robots V Smart Robots   Sunday 10 March

AirBurr is a dumb flying robot that manages to get from A to B as effectively as a smart robot. It does the trick by simply bouncing off objects, recovering and carrying on in the same general direction.

Mathematics of Planet Earth 2013 Photo Contest   Sunday 10 March

2013 has been designated The Year of Mathematics of Planet Earth and Springer has launched a photographic contest to celebrate the marvels of our planet and mathematics.

Get Ready For RoboCup 2013   Saturday 09 March

BotSport TV has produced a trailer to remind us that RoboCup 2013 will take place from June 26th to July 1st in Eindhoven, Netherlands. 

Google Helps Tell An Apple From Apple   Saturday 09 March

One of the big problems of working with language is that a word can mean more than one thing. For example, apple might mean a fruit or a computer company. Humans are generally very good at working out, or "disambiguating" the meaning of words but now we need AI to be just as good.

SQL Server In The Era Of Big Data   Friday 08 March

Does SQL Server have a future now Big Data is all the rage? This question is addressed in the March 2013 issue of SQL Server Pro, the online subscription-based monthly magazine. 

WebStorm 6.0 Released   Friday 08 March

JetBrains has released version 6.0 of its JavaScript IDE, WebStorm, providing code editing and debugging for CoffeeScript, TypeScript and Dart with automatic compilation of these languages to JavaScript.

Let AI Curate Your Photos   Friday 08 March

That we take a lot of photos is the understatement of the century. The problem isn't taking photos it is curating them - organizing and presenting them so that they capture a story, a feeling an interest. Curation is time-consuming and difficult. Now a startup is offering a new automatic curation service based on recognizing and understanding what your pictures are about.

Google I/O 2013 Website Opens With Lots Of Fun   Thursday 07 March

Google is opening registration for Google I/O 2013, and as usual has made the process more fun by adding Easter eggs to the website to amuse you.

Anime Scrum - An Overview   Thursday 07 March

If you are an anime fan, and perhaps even if you are not, then you might like a new poster about Scrum - in anime style.

Dove's Un-retoucher - Malware As Ad Campaign   Thursday 07 March

Dove, the soap company, has released a Photoshop action tool that claims to do one thing but actually undoes any re-touching that has been applied to a photo. This is the first example of malware being used as part of a high profile ad campaign.

The Core

Getting Started With NetLogo   Monday 11 March

NetLogo is a remarkable language that is fine tuned for particular types of application - agent-based simulation. Oh, yes, and did I mention it was Logo.

JavaScript Objects With Value - valueOf and toString   Friday 08 March

JavaScript objects have a default value. In fact, they have two default values depending on the context. You can easily add default values of your choice to a custom object or even built-in objects.

History

Claude Shannon - Information Theory And More   Wednesday 13 March

Claude Shannon is a little-known character in the history of computing. Even those people who do know Shannon's name think of him as nothing but a theoretician - the inventor of something obscure called information theory.