News

Three Tips for the Linux Shell Addict   Wednesday 17 May

This time around we have three great tips for the Linux shell addict, three sites that will increase your productivity and save valuable time in your daily interactions with the shell. 

Bitcoin Is Not The Only Cryptocurrency   Wednesday 17 May

The rise of the cryptocurrency is a phemenon worth study. It came out of nowhere and the fear is that it might well go back to nowhere, leaving lots of people with a huge loss. Can physics help to explain the dynamics? 

Microsoft Expands Cognitive Services APIs   Wednesday 17 May

At last week's BUILD 2017 Microsoft announced more intelligent APIs and launched its Cognitive Services Labs, which will enable developers to experiment with AI services that are still in early development. One of these, Project Prague for gesture control and interaction, is already in private preview. What is more, AI is becoming truly useful and usable. 

Cosmos DB Strengthens Microsoft's Azure Database   Tuesday 16 May

Microsoft is improving the database features of Azure, with a number of features shown off at Build 2017, Microsoft's annual developer conference.  

Make With Ada Embedded Software Contest   Tuesday 16 May

The second annual Make With Ada contest has just opened for submissions that design and implement an embedded software project where Ada and/or SPARK are the principal language technologies. To discover what's required take a look at last year's prize winning entries. 

NVIDA Updates Free Deep Learning Software   Monday 15 May

There was a time when NVIDA was thought of as a maker of hardware for high end games machines, but the need for powerful number crunching has propelled the GPU maker into new areas and now it is one of the leaders in AI.  

Codetracer - Have Your Code Peer Reviewed   Monday 15 May

Codetracer is a new free service for coders who seek wisdom through brainstorming when stuck in writing their code. 

Style Transfer Applied To Cooking - The Case Of The French Sukiyaki   Sunday 14 May

We have seen AI used for style transfer in the world of painting and photography, but what about cooking? What would a classic dish in one cuisine look like, or rather taste like, in another?  

A Slap In The Face - A New UI?   Saturday 13 May

Could an air cannon that fires vortex rings be the next big thing in the UI? Probably not but it is still worth seeing and there might well be applications that you can think up.  

Windows 10 On Arm Runs Win32 Apps   Friday 12 May

One of the biggest, but largely unnoticed, announcements at BUILD 2017 is all about a "new" version of Windows 10 that runs on ARM architecture and can run Win32 apps.  

jQuery Mobile 1.5 Alpha Officially Available   Friday 12 May

The first alpha release of jQuery 1.5 has been announced. This long overdue news comes as a great relief to its users as it signals that the project is still ongoing. The new release is expected to move into beta soon and includes many changes. 

Cortana Skills Kit Now In Developer Preview   Thursday 11 May

At BUILD2017, its annual developer event, Microsoft has unveiled a raft of new skills for Cortana created by a range of partners and announced that the Cortana Skills Kit is now available for all developers. 

The Performance Of AngularJS   Thursday 11 May

AngularJS is a popular and hence important JavaScript framework, but there isn't a lot of information about how it performs in the real world. Some research based on a survey gives us some clues.  

Visual Studio For Mac Launched   Wednesday 10 May

Visual Studio 2017 for Mac is now in production and this is not something anyone would have predicted only a few years ago. The real story is, as always. slightly more complicated. but even so things have changed. 

The Core

Asynchronous Code In JavaScript   Monday 15 May

Events are central to the programming in JavaScript and most programmers master their use early on. Asynchronous programming is just another aspect of an event driven environment, but this is much more difficult to master. Let's find out what the relationship is and why it is so difficult.  

Babbage's Bag

Principles Of MP3   Thursday 11 May

MP3 is just a file format for audio files but judging by the revolution in the way music is listened to since it was introduced you might think it was much more and in a sense it is.