News

Complexity Theorist Gets Abel Prize   Wednesday 02 April

The Abel prize is sometimes called the Noble Prize for mathematics, but then so is the Fields medal. The good news this year is that the recipient, Yakov G Sinai, is known for his work in computational complexity. 

Windows XP Refuses To Fade Away   Wednesday 02 April

Support for Windows XP ends next week. Updates and technical assistance for the operating system will already be unavailable on April 8th. We've known this date was coming since April 2011. Even so XP still has a sizeable share of the desktop operating system market - and it shows no sign of rapid decline.

Price War In The Cloud - Azure Lowers Prices   Tuesday 01 April

A week after Google and Amazon lowered their prices, Microsoft follows with a sizable price cut. Perhaps the rumor that cloud has been overpriced for some time is true. On the other hand, when you look at what Microsoft is actually offering it isn't quite a price cut

Google Fool's Day   Tuesday 01 April

Google's tradition of taking April Fool's Day seriously is so well known that wait wait expectantly to see what it will come up with each year. In particular what is there for developers?

NFC For Man's Best Friend   Tuesday 01 April

Barclalycard has unveiled plans for PayWag, a payment chip that is discretely embedded into a dog's collar to allow it make small purchases. Does it mean you can stay in bed while the dog collects, and pays for, the newspaper?

Robowow - Mows, Vacs And Cleans Your Pool   Tuesday 01 April

This is the time of the domestic robots, but they aren't like Rosie from the Jetsons. They aren't general purpose machines but are specialized to one task. Now Robomow has a robot that does three domestic tasks.

Microsoft Opens MS-DOS Code   Monday 31 March

Microsoft has made the source code for early versions of MS-DOS and Word for Windows available in the Computer History Museum which already has a range of significant software programs in its collection.

Clojure 1.6   Monday 31 March

Clojure is a dialect of Lisp that has attracted a following among programmers who want to adopt a functional approach. Version 1.6 introduces new and improved features, enhancements to performance, printing, documentation strings and error message plus bug fixes.

HTML Templates For dtSearch   Monday 31 March

The newly released dtSearch 7.5 adds HTML5 templates for publishing data on the Web in a searchable format.

Water In WebGL - One You Have To See   Sunday 30 March

Sometimes there are demo programs that you just have to see because they are beautiful. In this case it is a raytraced water simulation - but using WebGL to deliver it in your browser.

Big Names Create Big Database   Friday 28 March

Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google have cooperated on the creation of a custom version of MySQL designed specifically for use in apps that need to scale massively.

Fear And Loathing In The App Store 3 - Banned For Life   Friday 28 March

Google Play is often regarded as one of the most unwalled of the walled gardens, but after reading this tale of woe you might want to think again. 

Facebook ThreatData   Friday 28 March

Facebook has developed a security-focused framework called ThreatData that it says will make it simpler to manage a range of online threats.

Java 8 Launched With Supporting Line-Up   Thursday 27 March

Java 8 has been officially launched and the good news is that it also has support from its best known IDEs - NetBeans and Eclipse. 

Google I/O 2014 Site Launches   Thursday 27 March

We already know the dates and venue for Google I/O 2014 - it will take place June 25-26 at Moscone West in San Francisco. Now that the event's website has opened there's some more information - but not much!

Yahoo Launches Games Network   Thursday 27 March

A new platform for third-party game developers has been launched by Yahoo with facilities for authenticating players, charging for games, and social sharing.

The Core

Anonymous Methods In C#   Tuesday 01 April

Anonymous methods aren't particularly new, but they have hidden depths and lead on to lambda expressions.

Fragment And Activity Working Together   Thursday 27 March

The real problem with using Fragments is making them work together with Activities. This comes down to working out how to allow the Activity to communicate with the Fragment and vice versa. It is a tricky problem and the solution is often just accepted without a deep understanding of the how and why. It is time to take a close look at the Fragment template.