News

Computer Science MOOCs March Forward   Wednesday 05 March

In our regular monthly round up of Computer Science MOOCs we have options that will be of interest if you want to undertake a course of study rather than a one-off course.

Riecoin Crypto Currency Mines Primes For Riemann   Wednesday 05 March

What a waste of effort bitcoin mining is -all that computer time just to validate transactions! Riecoin is a new crypto currency that uses a search for prime constellations as its proof of work.

Office 365 REST APIs Preview   Wednesday 05 March

Microsoft has a new set of APIs that expose services across the whole of Office 365 in a RESTful way, allowing developers to consume Office data and services from any application. 

Crashlytics Labs Announces Testing Tool   Tuesday 04 March

Twitter Crashlytics is planning to release a beta distribution tool that will offer a better testing method of mobile apps.

Android Dominates In Tablet Market   Tuesday 04 March

The growth in sales of tablets in 2013 was fueled by the low-end smaller screen tablet market, and first time buyers. This led to Android becoming the dominant tablet operating system, accounting for over sixty percent of the market.

The True Cost Of Bugs - Bitcoin Errors   Monday 03 March

The news that bitcoin exchange Mt Gox has gone out of business hasn't had the really big effect on the cyber currency that you might have expected, but it could contain a lesson of the difficulties in getting currencies and software to mix. 

App Engine 1.9.0 Revs Up   Monday 03 March

Google has released App Engine 1.9.0 which brings general availability (GA) of the Modules API, a new MapReduce library for Java developers, and improvements to the PHP runtime.

C# Gets A New Operator - Safe Navigation   Monday 03 March

One of the big problems with computer languages is they tend to throw their hands in the air (metaphorically) and give up at the slightest problem in executing your code. Now C# is taking a small step towards being just a little more forgiving and a little more determined in running your code. 

Arnold C A Schwarzenegger Based Language   Saturday 01 March

New languages come and go, but this one seems likely to "stick around" (Predator). Its entire syntax is based on one line quotes from that well known programmer, movie star and State Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Robots In The Japanese Garden   Saturday 01 March

Sometimes you see a video and really can't make up your mind if this is good, bad or just silly. In this case we have quadruped robots masquerading as garden lanterns in a traditional Japanese style. Just take a look. 

GitHub's Atom Editor Is Web Native - What?   Friday 28 February

GitHub has announced its new code editor. It is called Atom and is a shocking comment on the state of web apps and web development in general. It has even had to coin a new term "web native".

TypeScript Fully Accepted into Visual Studio   Friday 28 February

A typed superset of JavaScript that compiles to plain JavaScript has been integrated into Visual Studio. TypeScript has been developed by Microsoft for creating complex applications, and has now achieved the status of a built-in programming language for Visual Studio.

OpenNI To Close   Friday 28 February

The OpenNI website, home to a widely used framework for 3D sensing, will be shutdown in April. Fortunately the code will continue to be available via GitHub.

Demo Of Wolfram Language   Thursday 27 February

Stephen Wolfram has created a video showing the capabilities of Wolfram language. Is this impressive?

Cordova 3.4 Released   Thursday 27 February

Apache Cordova 3.4.0 has been officially released with a range of bug fixes for its various supported platforms, which now include Firefox OS.

FlightGear 3.0 Released   Thursday 27 February

Version 3.0 of FlightGear, the free and open source flight simulator that can be regarded as a game or as a research tool, has been released.

The Core

Think Global, Act Local - The Bigger Pattern   Tuesday 04 March

The big issue in architecture is usually the choice between global and local implementation.  However, this is so all-pervasive a choice that we tend to miss that there is more to the idea that you might think.

Android Adventures - Fragments And XML   Thursday 27 February

Creating and using Fragments is usually a matter of working with XML layouts. Android Studio can help with this task. In this part of Android Adventures we look at how easy working with Fragments can be if you make use of the templates and other facilities provided by Android Studio.