branching

The open-source distributed version control system Git has reached version 2.13. The latest release includes features and bug fixes, as well as a brief security announcement. According to the Git team, version 2.13 fixes a git shell program vulnerability for those running their own Git hosting server.

The release also includes SHA-1 collision detection to detect or reject any objects that show a potential collision attack; more convenient pathspecs; and conditional configuration.

The full release notes are available here.

Altova MobileTogether 3.2 now available
Altova is updating its cross-platform mobile development framework with new features for near field communication and text-to-speech. MobileTogether 3.2 introduces more than 18 new features for building data-centric mobile apps.

“With each new release of MobileTogether, we’re adding powerful functionality that broadens the scope of what’s possible for app developers to create,” said Alexander Falk, CEO and president of Altova. “This version adds almost 20 new ways to deliver the tools end users need — and to delight them at the same time.”

Key features include: the ability to access mobile device contacts, the ability to add text-to-speech functionality, new features for tables, and additional options for generating area, line and gauge charts.

GDPicture.NET SDK version 14 released
GDPicture.NET SDK version 14 was released. This is the first major release of 2017. All major features have been improved, and the release features new enhancements for other popular document file formats, including Office Open XML related capabilities and TIFF using Wang annotations.

The major features that were improved in this release include PDF, TWAIN acquisition, compression, document rendering, document version, barcode recognition, character recognition and document clean-up.

The new version comes with a redesigned rendering engine with the ability to display multi page documents in a multi page view mode. It also comes with a new class to handle fast document conversion, and the OCR engine has been improved to reduce memory usage. More features and improvements can be found here.

Amazon introduces new device: Echo Show
Amazon introduced Echo Show, a new device that uses Alexa and comes with a screen. Amazon is also introducing new capabilities to the Alexa Skills Kit, and these developer features are coming soon for display and video interfaces as well as smart home cameras, according to Amazon.

Expected developer tools for Echo Show will include the ability to build optimized display and video interfaces. Developers will also be able to choose from several GUI templates for their skill and optimize their skills for the screen, according to Amazon. In addition, developers will be able to check out Amazon’s Smart Home Skill API, which taps into Amazon’s standardized Alexa language model.

Developers can sign up to get notifications on when these features are available.

Apple buys sleep tracking app maker Beddit
According to several reports, Apple has acquired a sleep tracking app and hardware maker Beddit. Beddit created a monitoring device that tracks the heart rate, breathing and sleep time of a user when placed on a bed.

According to the company, personal data will be collected, used and disclosed in accordance with Apple’s Privacy Policy, and Apple said that Beddit users should see no changes to their application following the acquisition.