News

Leslie Lamport Wins Turing Award   Wednesday 19 March

Microsoft Researcher Leslie Lamport has been named as the recipient of the 2013 ACM A.M. Turing Award (aka the computer science Nobel prize) for his work in distributed computing. 

Google Flu Still Not Well   Wednesday 19 March

The Google flu tracker is in trouble again for overestimating the seriousness of this year’s flu epidemic, just like last year, and the year before…and the year before that.

Android Comes To Wearables And Watches   Wednesday 19 March

Android seems to be the key mobile operating system and now it aims for the same status on smaller wearable devices. It sound innocent enough, but this could be the change that the market needs to make smart watches a commonplace reality.

Is Microsoft Going To Revitalise .NET With Xamarin Acquisition?   Tuesday 18 March

It is speculation but it makes good sense. CRN is reporting that Microsoft is in the final stages of negotiation to buy, or invest big time, in .NET developer Xamarin.

Google Play Services 4.3 Rolling Out   Tuesday 18 March

The latest version of Google Play Services adds three new components, Google Analytics API, Tag Manager, and the Address API, and adds features to the core Google Play Game services API and to the Drive API.

Clipboard API Working Draft   Tuesday 18 March

The W3C has published a Working Draft of the clipboard API that supports common clipboard operations including cutting, copying and pasting in your Web applications.

Mozilla Pulls Plug on Firefox for Metro   Monday 17 March

Mozilla has abandoned the Windows 8 version of its Firefox browser just before its scheduled debut. The decision is being justified on the grounds of low adoption and poor prospects.

Record Payouts At Hacking Contests   Monday 17 March

Hewlett-Packard paid out a total of $850K for security exploits during its two-day Pwn2Own event held at CanSecWest 2014. A further $150K was awarded by Google in its Pwniumn 4 competition that took place on the first day.

New Faces For UK Developer Conference   Monday 17 March

Now in its 17th year Dev Week 2014 takes place from March 31st to April 4th. Forty nine speakers and hundred of delegates will gather in London for over 100 sessions in the "Definitive Developer Conference".

Lego Solves Rubik Really Fast   Sunday 16 March

When you think of Lego machines controlled by computer you tend to think of devices that work slowly for fear the very bricks of which they are made might fall apart. Now watch the video of CubeStormer 3 untangle a standard 3x3 Rubik's cube in 3.25 seconds. And yes, that's a record.

Is This Ping Pong Robot Real?   Saturday 15 March

Following on a well-publicized match between Timo Boll and a Kuka robot arm that was, being kind, a videographer's realization of what it might be like, it seems that doubt has fallen on all ping pong playing robots. Is this fast and smooth creation real or fake?

An Easy Way To Embed Google Maps   Friday 14 March

Google Maps Embed API lets you generate HTML snippets that make it easier to embed Google Maps in your websites.

Valve Shares DirectX to OpenGL Code   Friday 14 March

Valve has open sourced code for its Direct3D to OpenGL Abstraction Layer, which could help other game developers involved in graphics translation and has also provided alpha code for its Open GL capture/playback debugger.

Happy Pi Day!   Friday 14 March

Yes it is Pi day again, but this year it feels as though we aren't celebrating alone. For the first time it looks as if the momentum has built up to the point were a few people have heard about pi day and there are even attempts to sell you Pi connected items - as if it was a real holiday.

The Easy Guide To Software Licences   Thursday 13 March

Keeping track of the licences to software you use in your own creations is vital if you want stay on the right side of the law - but they are generally more difficult to read than spaghetti code. Now a website that provides easy to understand information about software licences and terms of service has launched in alpha. 

Amazon AppStream Opens Up   Thursday 13 March

Amazon has made AppStream available to all customers. The service lets you stream resource intensive apps including 3D games and interactive HD applications from the cloud.

The Core

Just JavaScript - In The Beginning Was The Object   Thursday 13 March

JavaScript is a very subtle and sophisticated language and it deserves to be treated in its own right and not as a poor copy of other object-oriented language. In this first chapter of Just JavaScript we take a look at the way everything in JavaScript is an object. 

History

Towards Objects and Functions - Computer Languages In The 1980s   Tuesday 18 March

It is difficult to imagine a time when programming didn't involve objects and today we expect most languages to have some aspects of object orientation, yet these ideas had to be invented. The story of how is stranger than you might imagine, but it wasn't the only important development in the 80s.