Google launches Polycasts Google wants to help developers get started with Polymer and Web Components. The company has announced Polycasts, a new video series dedicated to teaching one concept at a time, and highlights best practices for working with Polymer and DevTools. “Because Polymer and Web Components are such big changes for the platform, there’s … continue reading
Twitter invests in MIT laboratory Twitter is giving the MIT Media Lab US$10 million to create the Laboratory for Social Machines (LSM). The laboratory is a part of a five-year initiative to develop new technologies based on semantic and social patterns across mass media, social media, data streams and digital content. The LSM will explore … continue reading
Realm for Android Less than three months after releasing Realm for iOS, the mobile database provider is releasing Realm for Android, maintaining the same simple API and modern design as the iOS version. “We consciously tried to release Android in an earlier state than what we shipped for iOS, so that we could benefit from … continue reading
Microsoft has announced its next-generation operating system for all devices: Windows 10. Windows chief Terry Myerson walked onstage at Microsoft’s press event this afternoon and announced a curveball: The new operating system is skipping over 9 and moving straight to 10, and the Microsoft community is getting wider preview access than ever before with the … continue reading
Apple’s Touch ID vulnerable to attack Lookout security researcher Marc Rogers warned that the fingerprint reader on the iPhone 6 is vulnerable to attack, just as the iPhone 5s was. “When the iPhone 6 came out, the first thing I wanted to find out was whether or not there had been any changes to the … continue reading
Years ago, we heard about a movement in software development that was more about individuals and interactions than processes and tools. It was about responding to change and not a rigid plan. Of course, I’m quoting from the Agile Manifesto. Agile development didn’t spring to life overnight, but slowly and over time we’ve adapted as … continue reading
Test early and test often is a mantra every tester these days is familiar with, but with the advent of mobile and methodologies such as DevOps and agile, testing can get lost. “Organizations are expected to put code out faster, and there are pressures to do that, said Kyle Cochran, vice president of product management … continue reading
Much of the discussion about Microsoft buying Minecraft publisher Mojang has focused on whether this makes business sense for either Microsoft or Mojang. Some people think the whole acquisition is stupid, while others have argued that it makes strategic sense. Some of these articles argue that Microsoft is trying to reach a younger demographic that … continue reading
The Windows App Team announced the release of a Microsoft OCR Library for Windows Runtime, enabling developers to integrate text-recognition capabilities in Windows Phone 8/8.1 and Windows 8.1 apps. Optical character recognition (OCR) software converts images containing text into a digitally readable format. The technology’s inclusion in Windows Runtime, Microsoft’s Windows 8/8.1 application architecture, allows … continue reading
Wolfram launches Tweet-a-Program Stephen Wolfram has announced a new Wolfram Language program, Tweet-a-Program, which allows users to compose a tweet-length Wolfram Language program. Once it’s composed and tweeted to @WolframTaP, the company’s Twitter bot will run the problem in the recently announced Wolfram Cloud and tweet back the result. “In the Wolfram Language, a little … continue reading
Microsoft releases WinJS 3.0 with multiplatform support, nixes developer fees Microsoft has released version 3.0 of WinJS, the Windows library for JavaScript, adding cross-platform and cross-browser support, JavaScript modularization, and improved universal control designs. The update adds support for popular Web and mobile browsers, as well as HTML-based app environments, including Apache Cordova. According to … continue reading
After several days of reports and speculation, Microsoft and Minecraft developer Mojang officially confirmed their US$2.5 billion deal. Most of the staff of Mojang, the Stockholm-based developer of the popular gaming franchise, will join the Microsoft Studios team, which includes companies behind games such as Fable and Halo. Microsoft will continue to make Minecraft available … continue reading
