Google is reportedly building a new version of Android specifically for virtual reality. The Wall Street Journal reported the company already has a team of developers creating a new operating system designed to run virtual reality applications. According to the WSJ sources, Google plans to deliver the new version of Android for free.

The operating system would join Google’s other versions of Android designed for wearables, smartphones, televisions and cars.

The full story can be found here.

Google celebrates International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month
Google wants to get more girls interested in computer science. So in honor of International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, the company said it wants to help provide education necessary to make that happen. Google is offering tutorials from Khan Academy and Codecademy for anyone—especially girls—to learn how to program.

Image by David Miller

Image by David Miller

“Whether she is your daughter, niece, sister or neighbor, she will gain a skill and an outlook that will empower her and learn the value of computer science and coding literacy,” wrote David Miller, software engineer at Google, on the company’s blog.

In addition, the company will also be featuring female developers in order to inspire more girls to get into programming.

“The next Grace Hopper, Ada Lovelace, Frances Allen or Anita Borg is out there, but she has to start somewhere,” Miller wrote.

The Apache Software Foundation releases version 0.10 of Apache Tajo
The open-source data warehouse system in Apache Hadoop has made it to version 0.10. The Apache Software Foundation announced the latest version of Apache Tajo with dozens of new features and improvements.

Major features include:

  • Support for Oracle and PostgreSQL’s catalog store
  • Direct JSON file support
  • Enhanced JDBC driver
  • Improved Amazon S3 support
  • HBase storage integration

“Tajo has evolved over the last couple of years into a mature ‘SQL-on-Hadoop’ engine,” said Hyunsik Choi, vice president of Apache Tajo. “The improved JDBC driver in this release allows users to easily access Tajo as if users use traditional RDBMSes. We have verified new JDBC drivers on many commercial BI solutions and various SQL tools. It was easy and works successfully.”

More information is available here.