Development

HP aims to make webOS mainstream

The news from the US overnight is HP will pre-install webOS on all its PCs in 2012. Short of HP deliberately stopping such PC shipments outside the US, Australians will finally get a taste of webOS and an alternative operating system other than Linux distributions and Mac OS X.

By Rodney Gedda | 10 March, 2011 11:17

Tags: Android, HP, iOS, Linux, PCs, tablet PCs, webOS

How sweet it is: Google splits Android like Honeycomb

This week Google announced the availability of Android 3.0 “Honeycomb”, a release of the Linux-based mobile operating system for tablets and larger touch screen devices. It’s a deviation from Android’s core market, but can we expect the smartphone success to be mirrored with tablets?

By Rodney Gedda | 28 January, 2011 12:22

Tags: Android, Google, Google Android 3.0, Honeycomb, smartphones, tablet PCs

With OS project, is Google over-extending itself?

Google's decision to build a PC operating system could be a master stroke or a colossal blunder, depending on whether the company has the resources that such an ambitious and long-term undertaking will require.

By Juan Carlos Perez | 09 July, 2009 05:15

Tags: Chrome OS, Google, Google Chrome OS, Linux, operating systems

Will Oracle kill the Java community?

Will Oracle be good to Java's developers?

By Robert McMillan | 04 June, 2009 03:41

Tags: Java, javafx, oracle, Oracle-Sun merger

Ogg and friends challenge Flash

Mozilla has given US$100,000 to improve and develop Ogg Theora, an open source video codec being developed by the Xiph.org Foundation. Wikimedia will disburs funds over a six-month period. Although not the best-known video format, Ogg already has some major support from web developers. Theora will be built into Firefox 3.1, which is currently in Beta 2, as well as into Norway's homegrown browser Opera. Theora is also the video format of choice for all Wikimedia Foundation projects.

By Ian Paul | 29 January, 2009 06:09

Tags: Flash, Ogg Theora

COBOL and governmental efficiencies

Welcome to a New Year. For the US, 2008 saw our 401ks become 201ks, our worries about the price of gas come and go, our house values plummet, our economy implode and our IT budgets shrink. It was not a good year.

Are international standards organisations no longer incorruptible?

For the last several months Microsoft has been pushing for their Office Open XML (OOXML) office suite file specification to be accepted as an international standard by ISO, presumably to help them gain traction for future government contracts (look, this file specification is an ISO standard, it must be good).

By Carl Jongsma | 08 October, 2008 13:55

Tags: odf, ooxml

Should computer programming be mandatory for students?

If Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the State Board of Education have their way, soon every California student will have to pass an algebra test to graduate from the eighth grade.

By Neil McAllister | 03 October, 2008 08:59

Tags: education, Java, software development

Nokia challenges developers to think outside the phone

You don't have to be a programmer to be a mobile innovator. All you need to do is open your eyes to the fact that a smart phone or QWERTY handset is a personal computer, sans legacy baggage. In the future, user-facing computers will have more in common with the high-end mobile devices of today than with the eight-core desktops and quad-core notebooks of 2009.

By Tom Yager | 02 October, 2008 11:55

Tags: Nokia

Google has gone and redefined 'beta'

The question of why so many Google products are classified "beta" -- and classified thusly for so long -- has knocked around the tech press for some time. However, no one really seemed to know the answer, at least no one outside of Google.

By Paul McNamara | 30 September, 2008 10:56

Tags: Google

Building Google Chrome: A first look

Last week I said I would look at Google Chrome "from a developer's perspective." I should have specified what kind. I meant I was considering it from a Web developer's perspective: What does it mean for Web application builders to have yet another browser enter the already-crowded field?

By Neil McAllister | 12 September, 2008 09:49

Tags: Google Chrome

What the heck is Mozilla thinking?

I'm continually amazed at how the premier Web properties are willing to share what they are doing. We get to peek behind the curtain routinely. Google and Yahoo both have good lab pages, but there's some seriously experimental stuff on the Mozilla labs page. Here's what they're up to.

PHP 4 is dead, long live PHP 4

For a technology that has been in stable release since May 22, 2000, PHP 4 has finally reached the end of its official life. With the release of PHP 4.4.9, official support has ended and the final security patch for the platform issued.

Calling all COBOLers

There you are, sipping your latte while banging out code in Django, Drupal, and Ruby, and feeling pretty cutting-edge. Sure, those are the hot skills of the moment, and they'll probably help you land your next job. But take a minute to think about the guys who came before you and the tools, particularly COBOL, they used. And give 'em some respect. They deserve it.

iPhone hackers go too far, get shut down by Apple

I was all set to give this week's column over to a new register-direct implementation of a JavaScript interpreter that's many times faster than all currently available implementations. It's not exactly growing hair on a billiard ball, but a nitro-boosted JavaScript will put a shine on AJAX and keep my most beloved language on track to becoming the gold standard for dynamic languages.

Microsoft bites the bullet on .Net suit

Two entries in a row about .Net. What is this blog coming to?

Who's Afraid of the Big .NET?

You may have noticed this has been a slow week in Cringeville. Well now the truth can be told. For the past five days I've been held captive in Amsterdam by a small group of mad Dutchmen. They locked me in the tower of a Swiss hotel, trundled me into a van with three other captives, drove us around the Dutch countryside until we were disoriented, and forced us to consume vast quantities of rich foods delivered in thimble-sized portions accompanied by heroic volumes of tangy Teutonic wine. It was Hell.

Coding green for the future

We know that some computer hardware -- PCs and servers, for example -- are greener than others. They are built to be more energy efficient and easier to recycle, plus they use fewer hazardous materials. Certifications such as Energy Star and EPEAT make it easy to find at least some of those machines.

Is the iPhone dev deal fair?

Apple apparently chose the best possible template for its iPhone developer programs: its own Apple Developer Connection for OS X. Why it then made the iPhone SDK confidential even for those who download it for free poses a puzzling contradiction in the company's seemingly open approach to development.

Which platform: Cathedral or open source?

Have you ever experienced a software bug and thought to yourself, "I could fix that"? If you could, would you? How could that even be possible?