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Tags > microsoft
Developer Week in Review: Talking to your phone - Getting serious about Siri, Open Office on the rocks, and Google embraces SQL.
October 21, 2011
This week, we ask if Apple's Siri has more than novelty value, and decide it does. Open Office needs you (or at least your money) to stay afloat, and Google bends to developer pressure and finally adds SQL support to its cloud computing platform.
Developer Week in Review: Android proves fruitful for Microsoft - More bucks for Microsoft, more horsepower for SPARC, and more votes for ... someone.
September 29, 2011
Samsung agrees to pay Microsoft royalties for Android use. Elsewhere, Oracle keeps the SPARC line alive, and the hackability of voting machines is exposed.
Five digital design ideas from Windows 8 - With Metro, it's clear Microsoft has put a lot of thought into touchscreen design.
September 20, 2011
Microsoft's Metro interface offers plenty for digital book designers to study. The best part? Whether or not Microsoft actually ships something that matches their demo, designers can benefit from the great thinking they've done.
Four short links: 31 August 2011 - Maps on Android, Security Laws, Trough of Potential, and Enterprise Gamification
By Nat TorkingtonAugust 31, 2011
OSMdroid -- The OpenStreetMapView is a (almost) full/free replacement for Android's MapView class. Also see this tutorial. (via Simon Gianoutsos) 10 Immutable Laws of Security (Microsoft) -- an oldie but a goodie. Law #1: If a bad guy can persuade you to run his program on your computer, it's not your computer anymore. What's in The Trough? (BERG London)...
Developer Week in Review: Mobile's embedded irony - Who really profits from Android sales? And does the world need another source control system?
July 20, 2011
Microsoft profits from Google's toils, why you shouldn't put older developers out to pasture, and a new source control system enters the fray.
Four short links: 18 July 2011 - Organisational Warfare, RTFM, Timezone Shapefile, Microsoft Adventure
By Nat TorkingtonJuly 18, 2011
Organisational Warfare (Simon Wardley) -- notes on the commoditisation of software, with interesting analyses of the positions of some large players. On closer inspection, Salesforce seems to be doing more than just commoditisation with an ILC pattern, as can be clearly seen from Radian's 6 acquisition. They also seem to be operating a tower and moat strategy, i.e. creating...
Developer Week in Review: Start your lawyers! - If the lawsuit fits, the Kinect SDK for Windows arrives, and IPv6 day fails to excite.
June 22, 2011
The legal community continued to feed off IP disputes among software giants, Microsoft brings the Kinect SDK to Windows, and the web switches IPv6 on for a day, but did anyone notice?
Developer Week in Review: Are .NET programmers going extinct? - Microsoft embraces HTML5, selling a startup at 15, and a new version of Java looms.
June 15, 2011
For Microsoft programmers, the week brought fear, uncertainty and doubt regarding their future as an elite class of developers. For a lucky teen, it brought a big paycheck. And for fans of Java, it brought a new version of the popular language one step closer to release.
Four short links: 2 June 2011 - Windows 8, CC YouTube, Corporate Innovation, and Crypto Lifetimes
By Nat TorkingtonJune 2, 2011
Building Windows 8 - Video #1 (YouTube) -- lovely to see Microsoft's operating system finally leaping past a 2002 look and feel. YouTube Offers Creative Commons Licensing (BoingBoing) -- bravo! Redefiners Capturing Media Growth Dollars -- Anil Dash's corporate presentation about innovating within large (media) companies. The initial slides are money posturing to get the attention of the audience,...
What did Microsoft get for $8.5 billion? - Microsoft shelled out a lot of cash for Skype. Here's what they'll get in return.
May 12, 2011
Why would Microsoft pay so much for a company that doesn't have vastly superior technology or great financials? Here's five reasons.
Four short links: 14 April 2011 - HTML5 Demos, Resilience Engineering, Kinect SDK, and London Nerd Daytrips
By Nat TorkingtonApril 14, 2011
Chrome Experiment: ArcadeFire -- choreographed windows, interactive flocking, custom rendered maps, real-time compositing, procedural drawing, 3D canvas rendering in HTML5. I have to say that "Built for Google Chrome" at the bottom does turn my stomach, a "this page looks best in Microsoft Internet Explorer" for the 2010s. Resilience Engineering, Part 1 (John Allspaw) -- listing human error as...
Functions are values: explore C# lambda types in Visual Studio
By Andrew StellmanApril 9, 2011
I love that a college professor of mine from long ago, Bob Harper, is tackling the tricky issue of how to teach students about the nature of functions in his new Existential Type blog. His post got me thinking about how you'd go about teaching this concept to a learner—specifically, in my case, a C# learner. I've given it a bit of thought, and here's what I've come up with.
Developer Week in Review - WWDC tickets are here and gone, Gosling goes to Google, and irony at MySQL.
March 30, 2011
If you wanted WWDC tickets, you better have had a fast mouse finger. But if James Gosling wants to go to Google I/O, he'll have an inside track next year. Meanwhile, MySQL needs to practice what they preach, security-wise.
Developer Week in Review - Amazon buys itself a lawsuit, a setting Sun.com, and the new name in databases
March 23, 2011
What's in a name? For Amazon's new Appstore, it was a lawsuit. For Oracle's sun.com domain, big money. And would MySQL by any other name smell as sweet?
Inside the e-wars: Barnes & Noble Woes and the Digital Marketplace: A 1-2 Punch
By William StanekMarch 7, 2011
Borders and Barnes & Noble used to be great. The #1 and #2 booksellers in the U.S., building out new superstores like they were going to grow forever. Three years ago, a new Borders was built in Olympia. It's...
Developer Week in Review - Special Jeopardy edition featuring Nokia, MacBook Pro rumors, and Google's Public Data Explorer.
February 17, 2011
Tired of everyone making "Terminator" or "Matrix" references to Watson's domination of its pitiful human rivals? Well, we go old school with our media references, as we look at Nokia's fickleness, new toys for geeks, and Google's campaign for pretty data.
Four short links: 14 February 2011 - Vesting Incentives, Camera Hacks, iPad Longform Saviour?, and Bogus Science
By Nat TorkingtonFebruary 14, 2011
Stephen Elop is a Flight Risk (Silicon Beat) -- a foresight-filled 2008 article that doesn't make Nokia's new CEO look good. A reminder to boards and CEOs that option vesting schedules matter. (via Hacker News) CHDK -- Canon Hack Development Kit gives point-and-shoot Canon digital camera new features like RAW images, motion detection, a USB remote, full control over...
In Google's "glass house," a battle with Bing looms - Commentary: Copy or theft? How Google set themselves up to get Bing’d.
By Mark SigalFebruary 3, 2011
Is Google's recent war of words with Microsoft a case of calling a thief out by name, or a matter of pot calling kettle black?
Developer Week in Review - iOS and Android kick out new SDKs, Microsoft head count decreases by one, and the Today Show struggles with the @ symbol
February 2, 2011
Snowed in, we look at new mobile SDKs, old Microsoft employees, and really old video about the Internet.
Adventures in Windows 7 Troubleshooting: Browser-run Apps
By William StanekJanuary 20, 2011
Ever had a problem with an app run via a browser window? You're not alone. Here's an entry related to troubleshooting these types of problems using the Sirius XM media player app as an example. The Sirius XM media player...
Chrome's lack of support for H.264 is meaningless for the open web
By RJ OwenJanuary 14, 2011
Yesterday Google announced that future versions of its Chrome browser would not support the H.264 video codec. This codec is seen by many as the only viable alternative to Flash, and support for it in browsers as the default implementation for the <video> tag was thought to be the future of the web. Google's decision to drop H.264 in favor of WebM yesterday has left many feeling upset, decrying the decision as bad for the open web and a sign that Flash Player will not actually die in the near future, but live on. Yet Google's decision is ultimately unimportant to the open web. There is one simple reason for this: Firefox doesn't support H.264 either.
Developer Week in Review - Unix IP on the block, AT&T can't keep a secret, and take one tablet and call me in the morning
January 12, 2011
This week, Unix was for sale, then it wasn't, then it was again. AT&T announced the most poorly kept secret in the history of secrets. And the tablet was all the rage at CES.
Four short links: 11 January 2011 - Microsoft and the Web, URL Library, Optimism, and NoSQL Instruction
By Nat TorkingtonJanuary 11, 2011
Dive Into 2010 (Mark Pilgrim) -- Mark wrote a hugely popular guide to HTML5 which was available online and published by O'Reilly. 6% of visitors used some version of Internet Explorer. That is not a typo. The site works fine in Internet Explorer — the site practices what it preaches, and the live examples use a variety of fallbacks...
Developer Year in Review: Operating Systems - Windows 7 outshines Vista (not hard), Linux still in peril (hard luck), and the Mac App Store launches (hard sell)
January 5, 2011
Last year saw Linux fight free of one legal morass, and perhaps right into another; Microsoft take another swing at replacing XP; and Apple bring the App Store model to the desktop.
Four short links: 21 December 2010 - Big Companyitis, Spyware Apps, Maturing Cloud, and Mobile Sync
By Nat TorkingtonDecember 21, 2010
Cash Cow Disease -- quite harsh on Google and Microsoft for "ingesting not investing" in promising startups, then disconnecting them from market signals. Like pixie dust, potential future advertising revenues can be sprinkled on any revenue-negative scheme to make it look brilliant. (via Dan Martell) Your Apps Are Watching You (Wall Street Journal) -- the iPhone apps transmitted more...
Developer Year in Review: Mobile - Our look back at 2010 starts with the year in mobile.
December 15, 2010
The past year brought new success for Apple, a breakout for Android, a windfall for lawyers, and app stores galore.
7 areas beyond gaming where Kinect could play a role - How Kinect could apply to art, education, health and other domains.
December 3, 2010
Microsoft's Kinect has implications that go beyond gaming. From medicine to learning to participatory art, Alex Howard considers ways Kinect's interface could shift our computing-based interactions.
Developer Week in Review - What's missing from Java's upcoming release, Novell sells out, and injection protection
November 24, 2010
In the latest Developer Week in Review: A look at Java's divide and conquer approach to upcoming releases, the end of an era for Novell, and a common programming shortcut that can end up cutting your throat.
Four short links: 24 November 2010 - Android, Cellphone Photos, Long-Exposure iPhone Apps, and Open Street Map
By Nat TorkingtonNovember 24, 2010
What Android Is (Tim Bray) -- a good explanation of the different bits and their relationship. Cell Phone Photo Helped in Oil Spill (LA Times) -- a lone scientist working from a cell phone photo who saved the day by convincing the government that a cap it considered removing was actually working as designed. (via BoingBoing) Penki -- iPhone...
Four short links: 11 November 2010 - Bounty Paid, C Archived, Blind Queried, and Links Shared
By Nat TorkingtonNovember 11, 2010
Open Kinect -- less than a week after the bounty for developing an open source driver for Microsoft's Kinect controller was announced, it is claimed. libfreenect is the software. CCAN -- the Comprehensive C Archive Network. TextCAPTCHAs -- simple questions, written in English, that are accessible to blind users. F1 -- Mozilla browser extension for sharing links via Twitter,...
Developer Week in Review - Intel opens an app store, Apache fumes over Java, old software Microsoft should open source, Apple updates on the way
By James TurnerNovember 10, 2010
In this edition of Developer Week in Review: Intel opens an app store, Apache is peeved at Oracle, Microsoft open sources a language you've probably never heard of, and Radar detects an incoming salvo of point-releases from Apple.
Understanding C#: Nullable Types
By Andrew StellmanNovember 7, 2010
Every C# developer knows how to work with value types like int, double, boolean, char, and DateTime. They're really useful, but they have one flaw: they can't be set to null. Luckily, C# and .NET give you a very useful tool to for this: nullable types. You can use a nullable type any place that you need a variable that can either have a value or be null. This seems like a simple thing, but it turns out to be a highly flexible tool that can help make your programs more robust. In this tutorial, I'll show you the basics of nullable types, and give you a quick example of a program that uses them to handle unpredictable user input.
Developer Week in Review - Apple's iOS 4.2 approaches, OpenOffice loses contributors, IE's share drops slowly, and here come the Chrome netbooks
By James TurnerNovember 3, 2010
This week, Apple readies iOS 4.2, OpenOffice loses 33 contributors, competitors chip away at IE's browser share, and soon you'll have a Chrome option for netbooks.
Windows 7 Inside Track: Printer, Scanner, and Fax Installation
By William StanekOctober 27, 2010
Let's embark on what I'd like to call "Adventures in Printer, Scanner, and Fax Installation." Last Thanksgiving, I did something I rarely do: I went shopping on Black Friday. Picked up some great buys on USB flash drives, SDHC cards and a fantastic deal on a HP Officejet All-in-one. By now installing new devices, hardware and even entire systems is old hat around my house.
Developer Week in Review - Apple deprecates, Microsoft assassinates, Adobe infiltrates, and Linux obfuscates.
By James TurnerOctober 27, 2010
Heading up developer news this week: Is XP really dead this time? Linux release notes are an exercise in futility. Apple pulls the rug out from two development environments on the Mac. And Adobe gives tablet programmers more options.
Developer Week in Review - Ozzie architects a departure, Apple earnings and rumors, the BSA meddles, and C++ is 15.
By James TurnerOctober 20, 2010
This week, Microsoft loses their chief architect, Apple continues to own the news cycle, the BSA tries to put the kibosh on open standards, and a well-known language reaches a milestone.
Understanding C#: Simple LINQ to XML examples (tutorial)
By Andrew StellmanOctober 16, 2010
XML is one of the most popular formats for files and data streams that need to represent complex data. The .NET Framework gives you some really powerful tools for creating, loading, and saving XML files. And once you've got your hands on XML data, you can use LINQ to query anything from data that you created to an RSS feed. In this post, I'll show you two simple LINQ to XML tutorial style examples that highlight basic patterns that you can use to create or query XML data using LINQ to XML.
Understanding C#: Equality, IEquatable, and Equals()
By Andrew StellmanSeptember 29, 2010
What does it really mean for two objects to be equal? How can you tell if object #1 is equal to object #2? Do you compare all of their properties? What about private properties or fields? Is it possible for two objects to have exactly the same state, but to not be equal? It's more complex than it seems. In this post, I'll detangle some of those ideas, and show you how to use IEquatable, the Equals() and GetHashCode() methods, and overloading the == and =! operators so that you can compare objects in your own code.
Flex vs Silverlight: Versioning in the eyes of the coder
By Justin J. MosesSeptember 28, 2010
In this topsy turvy world of RIA development, both Adobe and Microsoft are guilty of version inflation. Don't let complacency fool you into believing the marketers and their arbitrary numerbering systems.
Microsoft Releases IE9 Beta
September 17, 2010
Yesterday, Microsoft released the beta candidate for IE9. An interesting change in direction from Microsoft, as HTML5 is now a first class citizen (amongst other new features). In fact, HTML5 rendering is even hardware accelerated.
Understanding C#: Raising events using a temporary variable
By Andrew StellmanSeptember 10, 2010
A lot of C# developers notice that there's something odd about how we normally raise events in C#. We're always told to set a temporary variable equal to the event first, and then raise the event using that variable. It looks very strange—how could that variable do anything at all? But it turns out that there's a very good reason for using the temporary variable, and understanding that reason can help you become a better C# developer. This post shows a quick example of why you need that variable.
Build HTML documentation for your C# code with Sandcastle in under 5 minutes
By Andrew StellmanSeptember 3, 2010
If you've ever used a library that has accurate MSDN-style API documentation, you know how useful it can be. There are lots of ways to create HTML documentation. But the easiest way that I've found is to use Sandcastle. It's an open source documentation generator from Microsoft that reads your assemblies (DLL or EXE files) and their XML Comments and automatically generates HTML documentation. Sandcastle is a very flexible tool, which means it's also a very complex tool. Luckily, there's a companion tool, Sandcastle Help File Builder, that makes it really easy to get up and running with Sandcastle in minutes.
Lessons learned building the elmcity service - Jon Udell's reflections on mashing up software cultures and calendar data.
By Jon UdellAugust 3, 2010
What happens when you mix open source goals, styles, and attitudes with Microsoft tools, languages, and frameworks? You get a cultural mashup. That's what the elmcity project is, and what this series will explore.
Four short links: 20 July 2010 - Hardware Hacking, BI Reporting Tool, Book Recommendations, and Winning the Futurist Lottery
By Nat TorkingtonJuly 20, 2010
Dangerous Prototypes -- "a new open source hardware project every month". Sample project: Flash Destroyer, which writes and verifies EEPROM chips until they blow out. Wabit -- GPLv3 reporting tool. Because No Respectable MBA Programme Would Admit Me (Mike Shaver) -- excellent book recommendations. The Most Prescient Footnote Ever (David Pennock) -- In footnote 14 of Chapter 5 (p....
Windows 7 Inside Track: 64-bit and Beyond
By William StanekJune 22, 2010
(pdf download) Know the classic rock song that says "I did a bad, bad thing, a real bad thing"? Well, Tunnel Vision is a bad, bad thing, and this article hopefully will help you avoid it when you deploy and...
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