At the IBM InterConnect conference in Las Vegas this week, IBM announced modular mobile solutions, a new hybrid cloud initiative, enterprise and developer cloud services, and IBM Enterprise Containers.

IBM laid out plans to develop half a dozen native, HTML5 or hybrid-optimized apps on the IBM MobileFirst platform to build and deploy mobile apps, or to integrate with third-party tools. The company also announced new hybrid cloud services based on Bluemix composable APIs, on top of several new public cloud services such as IBM DataWorks, the general availability of Watson Personality Insights, and services around orchestration, collaboration and security.

On the developer-specific front, IBM is rolling out a secure passport gateway and an API Harmony service for managing client applications, along with new Enterprise Containers extending native Linux containers with Docker APIs.

A full breakdown of IBM’s cloud announcements at InterConnect is available here, and the mobile announcements are available here.

Mozilla introduces a JavaScript Internationalization API
Mozilla first included a JavaScript Internationalization API when it released Firefox 29 last year, but the company has finally laid out exactly what it means for Web developers.

Mozilla software engineer Jeff Walden detailed the API in a blog post explaining how the API enables the process of writing applications for easy adoption by international audiences using varied languages. Leveraging a unique interface, formatting and locale-centric options, the Ecma-standardized API enables the creation of location-specific Web applications in Firefox worldwide.

Microsoft announces new UI debugging tools for XAML
Microsoft has introduced new UI debugging tools for XAML in the latest release of Visual Studio 2015 CTP6. The tools feature the ability to inspect the visual tree of developer WPF apps, the ability to inspect properties on elements in the tree, and in-app selection. Microsoft plans to add support for Windows Store apps and source-code persistence in later versions of its XAML debugging tools.

Google and Mirantis team up
Google and Mirantis have announced a new initiative to integrate Kubernetes with OpenStack. The integration would give developers access to Kubernetes clusters with Docker containers without having to set up infrastructure. More information is available here.

Google extends Pwnium competition
Every year, Google holds its Pwnium bug-hunting competition and rewards security researchers on their exploits. The company has announced that Pwnium will go from being held once a year to a year-round, worldwide opportunity. More information is available here.

Python 3.4.3 released
Python 3.4.3 has been released with hundreds of bug fixes and small improvements. New major features and changes include:

  • A “pathlib” module to provide object-oriented filesystem paths
  • Improved semantics for object finalization
  • A build improvement to help generate introspection information for builtins
  • A new framework for asynchronous I/O
  • A new and improved protocol for pickled objects
  • A new hash algorithm
  • A new C API for implementing custom memory allocators.