Monthly Archive:: March 2010

"The CodePlex Foundation has announced the arrival of several new board members, including Jim Jagielski, the Chief Open Source Officer of SpringSource. Jagielski, who was one of the original cofounders of the Apache Software Foundation, brings a lot of credibility and leadership experience to the CodePlex Foundation."

Brown University has developed an IDE for Java called Code Bubbles that takes a pretty radical departure from current IDEs. While most IDEs, such as Eclipse are file-based, Code Bubbles is based on fragments. The system appears to support reading and editing code with fragments, multi-tasking, annotating and sharing, and debugging with bubbles. There's a website with video too.

One of the things I love about software, particularly open source software, is innovation can come from anywhere. Sometimes it appears out of large tech companies such as Red Hat, IBM or Sun and other times it can come from one person writing code on a second hand computer in their college dorm. Software is really the expression of ideas and concepts, which can come from anyone. So I really enjoy seeing small open source projects try new things. Some will succeed and be adopted and some will fade away, but the amazing thing is to see people put their idea out there and present it to the world. Which is why I was thrilled when a few people directed me to Paldo and suggested it was worth a look.

Palm has released the PDK for the webOS, which allows developers to code in C and C++, while also providing access to, for instance, the 3D chip. "The PDK complements the Palm webOS Software Development Kit, letting developers use C and C++ alongside the web technologies that power the SDK and mix them seamlessly within a single app. The PDK enables new functionality, including immersive 3D graphics, and gives developers who have built games for other platforms an easy way to bring their titles to the webOS platform. Developers can download the beta PDK and start developing today, but distribution of games built with the beta PDK will require functionality provided in an upcoming Palm webOS update."

"Few people understand Microsoft better than Tandy Trower, who worked at the company from 1981-2009. Trower was the product manager who ultimately shipped Windows 1.0, an endeavor that some advised him was a path toward a ruined career. Four product managers had already tried and failed to ship Windows before him, and he initially thought that he was being assigned an impossible task. In this follow-up to yesterday's story on the future of Windows, Trower recounts the inside story of his experience in transforming Windows from vaporware into a product that has left an unmistakable imprint on the world, 25 years after it was first released."

Cisco Systems today introduced its next-generation Internet core router, the CRS-3, with about three times the capacity of its current platform. "The Internet will scale faster than any of us anticipate," Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers said during a webcast announcing the product. At full scale, the CRS-3 has a capacity of 322Tbit/sec., roughly three times that of the CRS-1, which was introduced in 2004. It also has more than 12 times the capacity of its nearest competitor, Chambers said.

We have some very, very good news for Europeans (which happens to include myself): we have the European Parliament on our sides when it comes to battling ACTA. If you may recall, ACTA is basically an attempt by the US to impose upon the rest of the world draconian measures like three strikes laws and the DMCA. All parties within the European Parliament have together put forth a resolution that would effectively tackle ACTA.

So have you actually read the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement? The EFF, using a freedom of information act to shrewdly get a copy legally off of NASA, look into the details and don't like what they find. As well as trying to prevent anybody from so much as mentioning the existence of these terms, Apple owe you no more than $50 if they sink your company by removing your apps for any reason they so please. It makes for scary reading, that is--if you think the terms are enforceable in court. I hope to see this very thing challenged as soon as possible.

You know what's fun? Making claims on the internet about how something or someone was first with something or someone - if you catch my drift. You know what's also a lot of fun? QNX, the microkernel realtime operating system that powers just about any possible piece of kit you can think of. As it turns out, QNX was the first operating system to support a hard drive on a PC. On a related note, a new pre-release has been released of QNX 6.5.0.

"Want better games on your Android phone? They may be coming sooner now, at least for Android 2.0 models. Google has let programmers tap directly into mobile phone graphics power by releasing a third version of its Android Native Developer Kit on Monday."

"Filling a position left open since 2008, former Novell CTO Jeffrey Jaffe has taken on the role of chief executive officer for the W3C. Jaffe will work alongside Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who will remain the organization's director. While Berners-Lee will concentrate primarily on the direction of the W3C's standards, Jaffe will look to streamline the W3C process of working with members."

"Three University of Michigan computer scientists say they have found a way to exploit a weakness in RSA security technology used to protect everything from media players to smartphones and ecommerce servers.RSA authentication is susceptible, they say, to changes in the voltage supply to a private key holder. The researchers - Andrea Pellegrini, Valeria Bertacco and Todd Austin - outline their findings in a paper titled "Fault-based attack of RSA authentication", to be presented 10 March at the Design, Automation and Test in Europe conference."

Fabien "Fab" Coeurjoly has released Origyn Web Browser 1.7 for MorphOS. HTML5 video and audio is provided through FFMpeg, supporting a wide range of codecs (Ogg/Theora/Vorbis, MPEG4, H264, AAC, MP3, Wav). Highlights of the change log follow.

Dust off your he's-a-Microsoft-fanboy complaints, people, because here's yet another story praising the Redmond software giant (sorry). In case you were wondering what the Xbox Live integration on Windows Phone 7 Series (inhale, signified by a comma), meant, then Eric Rudder (what's in a name), Microsoft's Senior Vice President of Technical Strategy, has the answer for you - and it's pretty impressive.