News

Beginner's Courses On edX Starting Now   Wednesday 29 April

edX has new courses starting this week that will be of interest to those who don't have any background in programming. Both are introductory level classes in computer science aimed at complete beginners, but they go in different directions.

Fear And Loathing In the App Store 11 - Apple Is Watching   Wednesday 29 April

The new Apple Watch is a big opportunity for developers. It is also a huge opportunity for Apple to display new restrictions on what it allows in the App Store. 

Algorithmic Challenge From Cimpress   Wednesday 29 April

Can you find an algorithm that can cover a irregular shaped grid in the fewest number of squares? There's $10,000 for the best solution and $1,000 each for up to ten more.

More Google Android Samples On GitHub   Tuesday 28 April

New Android code samples covering Android Wear, Android for Work, NFC and Screen capturing have been made available on GitHub. The Santa Tracker Android app is also now available there.

GNU Compiler Collection 5.1 Released   Tuesday 28 April

Thanks to its new numbering scheme this is the first stable release of the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) 5.x series and comes less than a year after the release of GCC 5.0, the experimental release.

C# 7 Features   Monday 27 April

While you are still trying to get your head around the new features in C# 6 the team are starting to think about what should be in C# 7.

New Google Udacity Courses   Monday 27 April

Udacity has announced three new courses from Google on responsive images, browser rendering, and developing scalable apps in Python. You can start them immediately as free self-paced courses and two of them are also included in Udacity Nanodegrees.

Seeing Buildings Shake With Software   Sunday 26 April

Using motion magnification, monitoring large structures could become cheap enough to be routine. All you need is a video camera and you can literally see rigid buildings move like reeds in the wind.

ICRA 2015 - A Cornucopia Of Robots   Saturday 25 April

ICRA is one of the big robot conferences where some of the best research is shown off. A new trailer for the conference showcases some of the amazing things that are going to be discussed. Watch it and get a view of where modern robotics is at and just how diverse it is.

Microsoft Expands Bounty Programs   Friday 24 April

Microsoft has launched a new bounty for Project Spartan, expanded both the Online Services Bug Bounty Program and the Mitigation Bypass bounty.

Azure Service Fabric Announced   Friday 24 April

 A new Azure service, designed to let you build microservices and with the aim of reducing complexity in a hyper-scale world, has been announced by Microsoft.

Break Into Code Challenge   Friday 24 April

Microsoft has announced a global contest for 9 to 18 year olds designed to introduce kids to coding using Touch Develop, its easy-to-use web app creator.

Meet SquiDB   Thursday 23 April

Yahoo has announced SquiDB, an open source SQLite database layer for Android.  

Android Support Library 22.1 - The Way To Write Android Apps   Thursday 23 April

We tend to get all excited about new versions of Android - IceCream Sandwich, Lollipop and so on, but we probably should also take note of what is happening to the Support Library. A decimal point upgrade has just been announced and it contains some important changes.

Plan 28 Makes Progress In Understanding Babbage's Mechanical Notation   Thursday 23 April

Plan 28 is a project to build Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine by the 2030s, two hundred years after it was originally designed. Recent work has been on Babbage's notational design language, which he considered even more important that the machines themselves.

The Core

Getting Started With SVG   Tuesday 28 April

Although Canvas is the star graphic component of HTML5, we shouldn't forget SVG, which provides vector graphics using tags and script. We take a programmer's look at how it all works.

The Goto, Spaghetti and the Velociraptor   Thursday 23 April

What is it about the Goto that attracts velociraptors? Once you know, dino attack is the least thing on your mind!