News

April's Crop of Computer MOOCs   Wednesday 27 March

The number of MOOCs on offer can seem a little overwhelming so here's a look at computing related ones that will start during April 2013.

Microsoft Announces Build 2013   Wednesday 27 March

This year's Microsoft's developer-focused conference,  Build, will take place June 26-28 at San Fransisco's Moscone Center. Registration for the conference opens Tuesday, April 2 at 9 am PDT.

No Official Twitter App for Ubuntu Phone   Tuesday 26 March

Canonical has been forced to abandon an "official" Twitter app for the forthcoming Ubuntu phone due to failure of negotiations over the use of Twitter trademarks.

Discover Chrome DevTools With A Free Course   Tuesday 26 March

Google has teamed with Code School to produce a training course that covers the developer tools available in Chrome for developing and debugging web apps.

Tearable Cloth In JavaScript   Monday 25 March

Every now and again there is a demonstration program that you just have to play with. Tearable cloth is a JavaScript app that animates a grid-like cloth and you can move it or tear it with the a swish of a mouse. It's addictive and it's going to waste hours of productive programming time.

No Gender Gap In Satisfaction With Technical Salaries   Monday 25 March

Once you adjust for levels of experience and educations and compare parallel job titles the gender gap in compensation technical jobs has disappeared.

Huginn - An Information Collection Agent   Monday 25 March

Huginn, a new open source tool that lets you keep track of data and events on the web, is being described as Yahoo Pipes plus IFTTT on your own server. Huginn agents create and consume events, propagating the events along a directed event flow graph.

Solve The Riemann Hypothesis With A Quantum Computer   Monday 25 March

A new quantum algorithm allows the computation of a range of prime number functions to be computed well beyond the limits of a conventional computer. It is even possible that it could solve the million-dollar Riemann hypothesis.

IPython Creator Wins Free Software Award   Sunday 24 March

The 2012 Award for the Advancement of Free Software was presented to Dr Fernando Perez, creator of IPython at a ceremony held during the LibrePlanet 2013 conference.

How To Become A Games Designer   Sunday 24 March

What do game designers do, how much do they earn and what do you need to do to embark on a career as one? Answers to these questions and more are included in this infographic

A NAND Gate Computer   Sunday 24 March

You know it is possible, but to see it is another thing. The NAND gate is universal and it is all you need to build a computer, but how many NAND gates would it take?

USA Micromouse 2013   Saturday 23 March

If  you were hoping to enter the 2013 Micromouse competition then the sad news is that it's all over, but there are some interesting videos of what happened.

Vote for Alan Turing's Universal Machine   Saturday 23 March

Update:  Voting is now closed. Alan Turing's Universal Machine came top and was voted Great British Innovation from the past. The Raspberry Pi came second for future innovations. 

Google's Keep Reaps The Backlash   Friday 22 March

Something interesting is happening in the attitude of the technical press toward Google. There is a deep bitterness about the way that Google killed their most important tool without even saying sorry. Now even Google fanboys are doubting that they can ever trust  it again. This is a lesson to all open source and other free software creators.

Eclipse Xtend Reaches 2.4   Friday 22 March

If you haven't heard of Xtend don't feel too bad as it isn't making news headlines like Go or Dart, but it might be important and the latest version has some interesting new features.

Microsoft Office Apps With JavaScript   Friday 22 March

A downloadable wall poster that documents the JavaScript API for Office is the latest ploy to persuade developers to create apps for the Office Store.

MongoDB 2.4 Released   Thursday 21 March

Future Firefox Debugging   Thursday 21 March

Mozilla has been considering what we need in the way of debugging and general developer tools in Firefox. Who says that the browser should be the host for debugging activities anyway?

$100 For A Windows App - Is It A Good Deal?   Thursday 21 March

In an effort to populate its app store, Microsoft has a new incentive to entice developers. It is offering $100 per app up to a limit of $2000 for apps published in the Windows and Windows Phone Stores  before June 30.

Professional Programmer

Teach Code In School - Before It's Too Late!   Friday 22 March

Is programming a topic that should be taught in schools? Or should we let kids discover it for themselves? Recent evidence suggests in Vietnam half of the students in grade 11 classes could pass the Google interview process! This is not good enough - grade 11 students everywhere should be able to pass the Google interview. 

The Core

Getting Started With Ruby: Object-Oriented Approach   Monday 25 March

Ruby is a language that is fun to use. It mixes a number of different programming styles - functional, dynamic and object-oriented.  In this first look at Ruby we examine its way of doing object-oriented programming. 

Babbage's Bag

The Computer - What's The Big Idea?   Wednesday 27 March

There can't be a more central concept than the computer, but it is such a commonplace that we tend to take it for granted and miss how truly amazing it is but it might just be that computers are everywhere and built into the very fabric of the universe. So what is a computer? What makes it so special?