News

Flat UI Is Slower!   Wednesday 06 September

The whole world is flat. The flat UI is about the only design you can use and expect respect. But old fashioned 3D non-flat UIs are faster and this has now been reasonably demonstrated by research from the Nielson Norman group. 

New Mobile Web Certification From Google   Wednesday 06 September

Google has introduced a new developer certification, costing $99. To earn a badge to display on your website or resume you need to pass an online exam and a post-exam interview.  Successful candidates are also entered into a registry, which employers can check against. 

Apache Kylin Adds RDBMS Support   Wednesday 06 September

 Apache Kylin 2.1 has been released with new features including support for RDBMS and the ability to edit metadata model's JSON directly on the web. 

Introducing Object-Oriented Programming To Teachers   Tuesday 05 September

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has a new course Future Learn. Aimed at teachers, this four week course sets out to introduce the principles of object-oriented programming while creating an adventure game in Python and has just started its first ever presentation. 

Earthquake Prediction Using Machine Learning   Tuesday 05 September

Machine Learning is good it identifying signals that human observers might not notice. Researchers at Los Alamos have used it with a laboratory-created earthquake simulation to predict the time remaining before a fault fails. 

Comparing Kafka To RabbitMQ   Tuesday 05 September

Researchers from Nokia Bell Labs have analyzed the relative merits of Apache Kafka and RabbitMQ, two open-source and commercially supported publish/subscribe systems to see how they compare.  

Google Earth Users Go Pro   Monday 04 September

The free version of Google Earth has been merged with Google Earth Pro to become Earth Pro. Its tools have been improved and it remains free.  

Alexa Prize Finalists Announced   Sunday 03 September

The three teams that will compete for the inaugural Amazon Alexa Prize, worth $500,000 come from the Czech Technical University in Prague, the University of Washington in Seattle and Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland. 

As Much Fun As You Can Have With A Ball And Hoop   Saturday 02 September

Hi, my name is Mike and I'm a recovering physicist. Or I was until I found this video. OK, this one isn't going to be to everyone's taste, but I assure you it's fun. How do you control a ball inside a wheel when you only have control over the rotation of the wheel? 

Link Between Android Development and Poverty?   Friday 01 September

Stack Overflow has amassed a wealth of data about developers from all over the world. One of the latest insights revealed on its blog is that interest in Android comes predominantly from countries with lower GDP per capita.  

Top 10 From Around the Web: More PHP Development Resources   Friday 01 September

PHP is focus for this roundup of external blog posts. While PHP may not be the most trendy web development language, it is what is behind the scenes of many of the websites we use daily. Here we present tools, tips and trends. 

New Proof That P≠NP: Final Update - Almost Certainly not   Friday 01 September

Proofs that P=NP, and even for the less exciting and more likely P≠NP, abound. Most of them by enthusiasts who, usually, can be commended for their enthusiasm, but not so much for their proofs. However, the latest proof is by a respected complexity theorist and can't be dismissed in the usual way.

Final Update: The paper has been withdrawn. 

Developer Edition Of FaunaDB Enters Preview   Thursday 31 August

There's a new preview version of FaunaDB Developer Edition that provides a free to use, single-node, plug-and-play version of the database. FaunaDB has been available as a managed, serverless, cloud database since March this year.  

N Queens Completion Is NP Complete   Thursday 31 August

The problem of putting eight queens on the chess board so as no queen attacks another is a solved problem, as is placing n queens on an nxn board. However if you place some queens on the board and ask for a completion then the problem is NP complete.

Professional Programmer

Teach Concepts Not Just Code   Thursday 31 August

What tends to get overlooked when discussing STEM skills is that we need to teach algorithmic thought in the same way as needing to teach math, not just arithmetic. What you don't know the difference between math and arithmetic? You're not alone and even many programmers don't know the difference between code and algorithmic thought.

The Core

Building A Digital Twin With Predix   Monday 04 September

The concept of the digital twin is revolutionizing engineering. A digital twin is a virtual reality copy that is identical in every way to the 'real' version, apart from the fact it exists only in a digital form.