News (20)

Google co-founder books trip to outer space

Google co-founder Sergey Brin has put down a US$5 million deposit to book a flight into space with the space tourism company Space Adventures. Read more »

The bonfire of online vanities: Web 2.0 critic speaks

Lee Siegel is a cultural critic who has written for The New York Times, Slate and The Nation. However, he is perhaps best known for what happened in 2006 when writing for The New Republic. Read more »

OpenOffice may seek OOXML peace deal

OpenOffice may support Microsoft's Office Open XML standard in future, but the organisation behind the open source productivity suite anticipates that everyone including Microsoft will have "difficulty" in making the format work. Read more »

AFL teams a danger on the Web: Google

Google has flagged the Web sites of 10 AFL clubs as potentially dangerous, preventing visitors from accessing the teams' sites via the search engine. Read more »

Porn-blocker hit as Razor Gang slash AU$30m off tech

The Rudd government's so-called Razor Gang has taken the blade to some of the Howard government's pre-election promises for the 2007-08 fiscal year, including AU$30 million sliced from the federal tech budget. Read more »

Vendors question open source AntiVirus results

Since publishing the results of the AntiVirus fight club, organisers from Untangle have been met with a storm of queries, criticisms and complaints about their methodology and the accuracy of the reports. Read more »

Microsoft answers Google's call on desktop search

Microsoft will make modifications to Windows Vista's search feature in service pack one to appease competition concerns from Google, as well as head off further antitrust battles with US regulators. Read more »

Microsoft hopes 'Milan' table PC has magic touch

At first glance, Microsoft's secret project looks like a 2007 version of the sit-down arcade game Ms. Pac Man. Only if this machine were running the game, you could just take your finger and flick away any monsters chasing the heroine. Read more »

Aussie business can learn from Linux: IBM chief

Australia's future economic prosperity will depend on it embracing the principles of community-driven technologies such as Linux and Second Life, according to IBM CEO Glen Boreham. Read more »

auDA fund charity projects

The .au Domain Administration (auDA) is using its surplus to fund projects to improve the social impact of the Internet within Australia. Read more »

Features (9)

My move from VB.NET to C#

The author confesses why he stuck with VB.NET for so long rather than moving to C# and reveals how life has been now that he's taken the plunge. Read more »

Beyond the barriers: What women want in IT

Is it time to accept that females lack IT or is lack of support and enduring stereotypes keeping women away? Ella Morton investigates. Read more »

Developer Spotlight: Richard Stallman

Builder AU recently caught up with RMS to talk about his achievements, the Free Software movement and his concerns with the US-Australian Free Trade Agreement. Read more »

Can't J2EE and .NET just be friends?

The two Web services standards are now settling into their respective roles and the reasons for choosing one over the other are becoming clearer. But can they play nicely together? Read more »

Six "must haves" for the creation of highly productive software teams

An Inc. 500 profile from the SoftwareCEO Web site: Performance Software CEO Tim Bigelow shares his six "must-haves" for the creation of highly productive software teams. Read more »

Create powerful Flash applications with shared objects

Learn how to leverage shared objects to create more robust Flash applications. Read more »

Know your clustering architectures

In this article Builder.com explains the meaning of scalability and availability in EA and explore different architectures for achieving them. Read more »

Specify DataSet in XML

This article describes a mechanism that uses a Singleton Factory Class for creating DataSet objects that represent sets of views, locating the base configuration nodes for each view via XPath query. Read more »

Simplifying .NET assembly libraries

Maintaining header files is often tedious and can lead to mistakes. Thankfully, .NET assembly libraries erase the reliance on these files. Read more »

Video (33)

Ivar Jacobson, Bill Gates and the weekly poultry -- Club Builder

On this week's Club Builder: Ivar Jacobson talks about what he dislikes with the software industry, Bill Gates returns, and blackmailing a former employee wins a researcher some poultry. Read more »

Captain Obvious vs the Crackpots -- Club Builder

In the case of the bleeding obvious, IBM says open source needs good designers; a claim is made that China can activate your phone to snoop on you; and we take a look at the Defcon conference. Read more »

Crystal Ball gazing, Firefox & Tetris -- Club Builder

On this week's episode: we learn how to waste time in the terminal, cast an eye over the state of Firefox and see what Microsoft's Sphere is all about Read more »

ASCII, .Net Naming and the ATO -- Club Builder

This week's Club Builder looks at fixing .NET's versioning problems, how ASCII art can help remembering SSH keys, and how the ATO intends to let people running OS X or Linux file tax returns. Read more »

Animal Euphemisms and Robot Musicians -- Club Builder

In this episode we look at an Aussie clarinet robot, Linus Torvalds insults monkeys and walruses, what's it take to make a good mobile app, and the UK gets totalitarian Read more »

Honesty, WWIII and other minor annoyances -- Club Builder

On this week's Club Builder we look at some local scientists who have made a break through in fibre throughput, a group of local lads win big in Paris and we hand out our first Honesty Award. Read more »

Cynicism, Barcodes, and Guns -- Club Builder

Club Builder asks whether Google's indexing of Flash content will be good for the Internet? Is Gentoo merely a testbed for rsync? And we show how Telstra wants to increase mobile phone data usage. Read more »

Sports, Gates and Gears -- Club Builder

This week on Club Builder: Steve Ballmer gives a teary goodbye to Bill Gates, Mark Taylor moves into IT endorsements and we ask some Google Gears questions. Read more »

How to hack NASA -- Club Builder

Club Builder learns that blank passwords allow access to America's most sensitive computer networks. We ask if open source cut development costs? And we come across the quote of the year, thus far. Read more »

What's a FishSquirrel look like? -- Club Builder

This week on Club Builder, we look at Robots, javascript interpreters and iPhones. What more does a geek need? Read more »

Blog (18)

VMware shows how not to do it

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- As a developer there will be a time when you ship a bug -- be it a stub that you left in, or a flaming, crashtastic segfault. The next time this happens and your bosses come baying for blood, point them in the direction of VMware, who this week gave the developer world a great example of how to ship a showstopper bug. Read more »

Lack of turn out shows Linux's crossover

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- This week's Roundup looks at the lack of excitement surronding this year's LinuxWorld conference, Dan Kaminsky has finally revealed the details of his DNS flaw and we take a look at the new features to come in Firefox. Read more »

Perils of outsourcing

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- This edition of the Weekly Roundup looks at what happens when outsourcing companies are robbed, there's more Google news than one can poke a stick at, Samba has a new version and we see what endorsement Mark Taylor has signed on for. Read more »

Screw-ups, Mobile Linux shakeup and kthxbai Bill

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- The Roundup looks at where Sun went wrong with open source, what is happening in the Mobile Linux world and look at the departure of Bill Gates from full time work duties. Read more »

Gestation, robots and NASA hacking

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- Firefox 3 made it out the door last week, and set a world record while doing so; after 15 years Wine 1.0 also hit the street. We also look at robots, google developer day and outsourcing in this week's Weekly Roundup. Read more »

Bracing for Applefest

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- It's that time of year again, Steve Jobs' reality distortion field is about to extend throughout the internet and consume your favourite tech news sites for days. To Apple fanboys it is more than Christmas -- to others it is WWDC and you cannot escape it . Read more »

How useful is OpenSocial?

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- This week's coverage was all over the local MySpace developer launch, we took a look at Google's AppEngine, had more videos than we knew what to do with and can someone put us out of our misery buy Yahoo already! Read more »

Quote of the year (so far)

Brendon Chase [blogs:codemonkeybusiness] -- Hats off to James Gosling for this corker about developers who insist on using Emacs for their developer needs in the face of better tools. Read more »

How soon is Semantic?

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- At some point in the future you will be able arrive at work George Jetson-style. Your electric flying car will be streaming content to you from the new Semantic Web while your son in the backseat will be enjoying Duke Nukem Forever. Read more »

Feeling fines with Microsoft

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- This week had Microsoft-related news coming at us from left, right and centre -- fines, launches and more Steve Ballmer than you can handle. Read more »

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  • Staff Share a keyboard and mouse with Synergy

    Even in the era of virtualization, many IT pros (including myself) have a small army of computers sitting on, under, and around their desks. Read more »

    -- posted by Staff

  • Staff Android devs less than gruntled

    Yet more discouraging news on the Android front. Having hacked off its developer community by releasing updated SDKs to just a small group of chosen devs, Google has now given the brush-off to a petition that called for more to be given to the wider community. Read more »

    -- posted by Staff

  • Staff VMware shows how not to do it

    As a developer there will be a time when you ship a bug -- be it a stub that you left in, or a flaming, crashtastic segfault. The next time this happens and your bosses come baying for blood, point them in the direction of VMware, who this week gave the developer world a great example of how to ship a showstopper bug. Read more »

    -- posted by Staff

What's on?

  • Club Builder: Captain Obvious vs the Crackpots

    In the case of the bleeding obvious, IBM says open source needs good designers; a claim is made that China can activate your phone to snoop on you; and we take a look at the Defcon conference.