In 2014, “mobile” evolved into a more widely unified and interconnected concept. The last several years have seen smartphones, tablets and mobile apps take control of how we consume and compute information, redefining how we communicate with each other. A train with that much momentum doesn’t stop when the market reaches its peak; it barrels … continue reading
A change at the top, followed by a clearly defined focus, with an all-out embrace of open technologies and an increased update release cycle. Throw in a further commitment to consumer devices for good measure. One could argue that 2014 was the year of Microsoft. Or, at least, the year it remade itself. But it … continue reading
Google has unveiled the first prototype of its self-driving vehicle. The vehicle was first revealed in May, but the car Google presented was just a mockup without headlights. “Since then, we’ve been working on different prototypes-of-prototypes, each designed to test different systems of a self-driving car—for example, the typical ‘car’ parts like steering and braking, … continue reading
Microsoft has announced a major update to the beta release of Windows App Studio, its Web-based developer tool for creating mobile apps. The most significant changes and additions to Windows App Studio, detailed in a blog post by Emilio Salvador Prieto of the Windows Phone Developer Experience team, are integration with Microsoft’s TouchDevelop programming language, … continue reading
Microsoft’s developer and open-source arms are busy this holiday season, with the company releasing Bing Developer Assistant for Visual Studio and open-sourcing Project Orleans, the cloud-computing framework behind much of Azure as well as the popular first-person shooter game Halo 4. The release-to-manufacturing version of Bing Developer Assistant, available as an extension for both Visual … continue reading
Microsoft is now accepting Bitcoin as a payment method for buying apps and games for Windows, Windows Phone and Xbox. Starting today, customers can use the BitPay payment processor to trade in the digital currency at current market value for funds in their Microsoft account. More information is available a in a blog post from … continue reading
Microsoft has announced plans to tweak the pricing and licensing of its ALM offerings to improve enterprise development teams’ bottom lines. Brian Harry, Microsoft corporate vice president of the Developer Division, revealed that Microsoft will roll out pricing changes for VS Online in the next month or so, and in the next on-prem release of … continue reading
Microsoft has released details about Visual Basic 14, the new version of Visual Basic set to ship with Visual Studio 2015. According to a blog post from Visual Basic program manager Lucian Wischik, Visual Basic is skipping from 12 to 14 to keep in line with Visual Studio’s numbering. The new VB language features are … continue reading
Samsung’s first development kit for its wearable virtual reality device, powered by Oculus, is now available. “With Gear VR Innovator Edition, Samsung is putting the device in the hands of creators to craft amazing experiences as we define this new mobile category together,” said Justin Denison, vice president of product strategy and marketing at Samsung. … continue reading
Today marks the start of Code.org’s second annual Computer Science Education Week, and with it another round of the Hour of Code campaign, this time with even higher goals. This year, President Obama kicked off the festivities with a speech, also taking on the title of “Coder-in-Chief” and becoming the first president to program a … continue reading
Android Action Launcher 3 is coming soon, and will be released as a paid upgrade. Android developer Chris Lacy announced the impending release in a Google+ post, explaining that Google is charging for it because it is an entirely new, redesigned version of the app. According to Lacy, when version 3 is released, Action Launcher … continue reading
With the move to open-source .NET and C#, Microsoft is making a clear statement that it feels its future is in its software, not its Windows operating system. While largely applauded in the technology industry for moving toward openness and compatibility, the company is taking a major risk. But it’s a risk that must be … continue reading
