News

Google Introduces Manual Review For Apps   Wednesday 18 March

Google is introducing an age-based rating system for apps and games on Google Play and has revealed that a manual review process for apps has already been introduced.  Is this good for developers?

Windows 10 - Get Ready For Summer Launch   Wednesday 18 March

Although it might seem unlikely from the current state of the Windows 10 Technical Preview, the launch is set for the summer. Do we need to get ready?  

Mozilla's Fetch API Could Clean Up AJAX   Wednesday 18 March

One of the foundations of AJAX, it is what made it possible, is the XMLHttpRequest method, which allows you to programatically download new data and resources. It isn't perfect but it seems to work. Mozilla thinks that its new Fetch API is the next logical step.

Yahoo's New Disposable Passwords   Tuesday 17 March

Yahoo has introduced on-demand passwords for accessing email accounts, doing away with the need to remember a strong password. Is this an idea that will catch on?

RoboVM 1.0 Released   Tuesday 17 March

Trillain Mobile has produced the first stable release of RoboVM, providing a way to run Java on iOS.

BodyKit APIs In Beta   Monday 16 March

BodyKit, a collection of APIs and embeddable components that gives the ability to virtualize, analyze, and simulate the human body, is being launched in private beta.

Google's JavaScript Team Proposes "Strong Mode"   Monday 16 March

Is Strict mode enough for JavaScript? The Chrome V8 team is proposing an extension to Strict mode to be called Strong mode which allows bigger changes in the language than are possible with the requirement of backward compatibility. 

GCHQ Builds A Raspberry Pi Cluster   Sunday 15 March

GCHQ, the UK equivalent of the NSA, has created a 66 Raspberry Pi cluster called the Bramble for "educational" purposes. What educational purposes isn't exactly clear, but you do associate super computers with spooks and spies.

Pi Day Of The Century   Saturday 14 March

Google Code Shuts   Friday 13 March

Google has announced that it has disabled new project creation on Google Code and will be shutting the service entirely on January 25th, 2016. It is providing a migration tool to GitHub. 

Rowhammer - Changing Memory Without Accessing It   Friday 13 March

Until a few days ago the recently discovered flaw in modern memory chips was just a worrying curiosity - changing some bits at one location in a particular way could result in another distinct bit flipping its state. Now Google researchers have shown that it is possible to use this to gain kernel privileges.

Groovy Joins Apache   Friday 13 March

The Groovy JVM programming language is being submitted to the Apache Software Foundation following a number of major changes to the way the language is supported.  

BBC Giving Away 1 Million Microcomputers   Thursday 12 March

Google Code Jam 2015 Adds Distributed Contest   Thursday 12 March

Code Jam is Google's annual coding contest. This year it will have an extra track that as well as challenging algorithmic skills also tests your distributed coding and latency reduction abilities. The competition will have two on-site finals and you can win cash prizes in both!

Improved Performance In MySQL Developer Milestone Release   Thursday 12 March

Oracle has released MySQL 5.7.6 developer milestone 16 and claims that its performance has improved by a factor of between two and three times compared to previous releases.

The Core

How XAML works - Creating Objects With XAML   Tuesday 17 March

XAML can be confusing - especially if you think it is a markup language like HTML - it isn't. XAML is a general purpose object instantiation language and to find out what this means - read on. 

Getting Started With RealSense In C#   Thursday 12 March

Intel's RealSense project wants to bring a depth camera to every laptop, mobile and desktop machine. It could be revolutionary, but getting started with such a complex system isn't as easy as it should be. We start from scratch in C#.