News

Hekaton Adds In-Memory Transaction Support To SQL   Wednesday 14 November

Microsoft has shown off Project Hekaton, a key element of the next version of SQL Server that will provide a huge increase in performance over the current standard SQL Server.

Go Programming Language Turns 3   Wednesday 14 November

The Go open source project that originated at Google has reached its third anniversary, which is a good point at which to ask: Where did Go come from? Where is it now? Where is it going?

Microsoft Updates Dev Tools - Napa & LightSwitch   Tuesday 13 November

Microsoft has announced updates to Napa and LightSwitch, its new tools for working in Office and SharePoint.

After Sinofsky - All Change For Windows 8?   Tuesday 13 November

The news that Julie Larson-Green has become Windows President, replacing Steven Sinofsky who has left Microsoft with immediate effect, has the tech world speculating. For developers the speculation is more about what the future holds for .NET, C++ and WinRT.

Fukuoka Ruby Award 2013 Approaches Deadline   Tuesday 13 November

There's less than 48 hours left to submit an entry for this year's Fukuoka Ruby Award with its 1 Million Yen prize. But if you have a suitable project it's just a matter of completing a form.

HTC and Apple Settle Patent Dispute   Monday 12 November

Apple and Android handset manufacturer HTC have announced a settlement of their ongoing Android patent dispute. What does this means for the future of Android? Is it good news or bad?

NAG for Intel Xeon Phi Coprocessor   Monday 12 November

The Numerical Algorithms Group's numerical software now supports Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors, enabling intensive computations to be offloaded to the coprocessor when it is efficient to do so.

Naiad - Differential Dataflows   Monday 12 November

Microsoft Reasearch is developing a new data-parallel computing platform, and there’s a new video that makes it much more understandable.

Alien FaceHugger v Predator - Face Tracking Hots Up   Sunday 11 November

A simple video camera as input seems to be getting good enough to challenge depth input devices such as the Kinect. Now we have two competing face tracking methods: the new, aptly named, FaceHugger and the award winning Predator. Can we resist saying it looks like a "face- off".

MIT App Inventor Contest   Sunday 11 November

The Inaugural MIT App Inventor Contest has been announced and is open to everyone. Is this the publicity that App Inventor needs to realize it's potential?

Ivan Sutherland Presented With Kyoto Prize   Saturday 10 November

Dr Ivan Sutherland, often dubbed "Father of Computer Graphics" was one of three laureates honored at the 28th Annual Kyoto Prize Ceremony held today in Japan, 

Unit Testing - The Advantages   Saturday 10 November

Unit testing is almost a religion but what are the facts? This infographic puts the case for unit testing as simply as possible.

JavaScript, Open Source & The Cloud   Saturday 10 November

If you think that cloud is just an over-used word you need to see this keynote from Build 2012. If you don't watch such videos make this an exception. It might change the way you think about things.

Rare Three-Rotor Enigma Machine Up For Auction   Friday 09 November

An three-rotor Enigma machine described as being "an exceptionally good example" is to be auctioned next week by Bonhams in Knightsbridge, London.

Arduino Micro - Leonardo's Capabilities in a Tiny Package   Friday 09 November

The latest addition to the Arduino family of microcontrollers makes it easier for makers to embed a programmable controller into their projects.

Near Instant Speech Translation In Your Own Voice   Friday 09 November

It looks as if the tide is turning for neural network based AI. It is about to move from the lab into the real world. Microsoft Research has demonstrated realtime translation of speech into another language - complete with the intonations of the original speaker.

Nokia Swaps To Premium Developer Program   Friday 09 November

Nokia is dropping its free developer program in favor of a new paid-for Nokia Premium Developer Program.

HDInsight - Brings Apache Hadoop to Windows   Thursday 08 November

Previews of Microsoft's Hadoop-based solutions for Windows Azure and Windows Server, developed in conjunction with Hortonworks, are now available.

HTML5 App Survey   Thursday 08 November

A survey conducted during September 2012 found that 94% of developers are either already actively developing with HTML5 or had plans to do so and that 82% saw HTML5 as important in their work context.

Microsoft Patents Kinect DRM That Detects Number Of Viewers   Thursday 08 November

We are all used to being impressed by the amazing things that can be done with a Kinect depth camera, but the latest patent from Microsoft might not please everyone quite as much. It uses the device to detect how many people are, say, watching a movie to be able to charge per-view per-person.

Professional Programmer

In Praise of Skeuomorphy   Friday 09 November

What is skeuomorphy? Why is it essential in any good UI and why is Apple likely to abandon its use after being its champion for so long?

The Core

Creating The Python UI With Tkinter   Wednesday 14 November

Python has a standard GUI framework - Tkinter - but most Python programmers don't really get to grips with it because they tend to use the command line. In this article we take a look at how a Tkinter program differs from a standard Python program and how to organize things around a GUI.

Getting started with MIT App Inventor   Monday 12 November

Although App Inventor is sometime described as an educational toy that you can use to get kids interested in programming don't let this fool you into thinking that you can't do real things with it. It makes a very good prototyping facility - as we discover here.