News

Microsoft Extends Imagine Cup To Pre-Teens With Kodu Challenge   Wednesday 20 March

A new Imagine Cup competition has been launched. This one challenges young students from age 9 upwards to design games with the Kodu Platform.

Go Beyond Responsive Design With JavaScript Capturing   Wednesday 20 March

Why be restricted to how HTML5 and CSS can perform responsive layout? Why not intercept the entire DOM before it is rendered or resources are downloaded, process it as you like and then and only then render it? This is what Capturing is all about.

Google BigQuery Updated   Wednesday 20 March

Google BigQuery has been updated with a greater range of query and data types, more flexibility with table structure, and better tools for collaborative analysis.

Settlement Secures Python Name For Language   Tuesday 19 March

Thanks to a huge amount of support, the Python Software Foundation has been able to reach a settlement with a company that was trying to trademark the name "Python".

International Space Apps Challenge 2013   Tuesday 19 March

NASA is again asking for people to join its "mass collaboration"  effort to produce open-source solutions that address global needs applicable to both life on Earth and life in space. Registration is now open for a 2-day codeathon on April 19-21.

Google Dumps GUI Builder and more   Tuesday 19 March

The outcry for the demise of Google Reader has obscured some other notable cuts. Google is consigning more of its APIs, utilities and services to its ever-expanding trash can. Can it justify this behavior or is it a case of this giant can do exactly what it wants without regard for users?

Queen Elizabeth Prize For Engineering Recognizes Internet and Web   Monday 18 March

Louis Pouzin, Robert Kahn, Vinton Cerf, Tim Berners-Lee and Marc Andreessen have been awarded the first ever Queen Elizabeth Prize For Engineering.

Kinect SDK 1.7   Monday 18 March

The latest revision of the Kinect SDK brings a number of really important high-level features and a few surprising lower-level innovations.

Grunt 0.4.0 The JavaScript Task Runner   Friday 15 March

Grunt, the JavaScript task runner that began only a year ago, has been updated to version 0.4.0 and is now more modular.

Games For Cats Hackathon   Sunday 17 March

The first ever cat game hackathon is being held in LA and the prizes are big $15,000 for the winner. All you have to do is write the best game for cats you can think of.

The Three Principles Of Programming - An Exhibition   Sunday 17 March

The London Science Museum has some interesting new exhibits as part of its Codebreaker exhibition that demonstrate the three key ideas in programming - looping, conditionals and variables.

Teen Market is Cell Based   Saturday 16 March

A new report shows that the percentage of American teens owning smartphones has risen steeply, along with the percentage who are “cell-mostly” internet users.

Nano Quadcopter - Your Personal Flying Robot   Saturday 16 March

If you have been envious of the people having fun programming quatrotors now it is time to get your own. The Nano Quadcopter is small, cheap and programmable.

Registration Opens for PyWeek   Friday 15 March

The next PyWeek, a challenge to write a game using Python, starts on April 14. Registration is now open and voting for the theme of this contest commences on April 7.

Goldwasser and Micali win Turing Award   Friday 15 March

Two MIT professors have been named as the winners of the 2012  A.M. Turing Award for their pioneering work in the fields of cryptography and complexity theory.

Firefox OS Simulator Version 3.0   Friday 15 March

The Firefox OS is moving very fast. We now have the Simulator version 3.0 preview with lots of extra features. With this rate of progress and tmany hardware manufactures on board, this might be the web app-based phone to back.

Deep Learning Researchers To Work For Google   Thursday 14 March

A neural networks start-up comprising Geoffrey Hinton and two of his research students,  Alex Krizhevsky and Ilya Sutskever, has been acquired by Google to help computers understand human meaning.

Google Reader To Close July 1, 2013   Thursday 14 March

Google Reader is a core element in news distribution on the Web - now it is dead as part of another spring cleaning operation. Should Google be allowed to manipulate the applications market in this way?

The Life Of Pi - Yes It's Pi Day   Thursday 14 March

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

Professional Programmer

MySQL and MariaDB Database Books   Thursday 14 March

Books about databases aren’t generally noted for being fun and easy reading, but the ones included here are. OK, not all of them, but even the ones that aren’t fun are the best in terms of readability and accuracy.

Babbage's Bag

Interpreters, VMs and JIT   Wednesday 20 March

The distinction between a static compiler and an interpreter is one that can cause controversy. One programmer's compiler is another's interpreter and the whole subject gets very murky when you throw in the idea of the Virtual Machine and Just In Time compilation. So what is it all about