News (145)

Alleged Palin hacker indicted

A 20-year-old college student suspected of hacking into one of US vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's email accounts was indicted Tuesday in the US, a district court announced. Read more »

Adobe CS4 hits BitTorrent

Little more than a week after its global launch, Adobe's Creative Suite 4 has shown up on popular BitTorrent tracking sites in large numbers. Read more »

Google plans 'Chrome' browser

Search giant Google has confirmed it will shortly unveil a new Web browser dubbed 'Chrome' and based on code from the Webkit project. Read more »

DNS exploits are happening

A fatal flaw with the DNS (Domain Name System) was currently being exploited in internet attacks and more attacks were likely, the security researcher who discovered the flaw said on Thursday in the US Read more »

Gates: Privacy a 'challenge' as software advances

As software gets more powerful, privacy issues pose an "interesting software challenge," says Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates. Read more »

VMware Australia plays down bug

VMware's Australia and New Zealand division today said the local impact was small from a botched software patch that had left some customers unable to start their virtualised environments. Read more »

Google defends Street View coverage

Search giant Google today defended the incomplete Australian coverage provided by its Street View add-on to its Google Maps and Earth tools, after launching the service early this morning. Read more »

Unisys wants AU$250k open source advocate

The Australian arm of IT services multinational Unisys has placed an advertisement for an evangelist to plug open source software locally, with a potential pay packet of AU$250,000 per year. Read more »

Sydney Uni "hero" chip breaks light speed record

A team of Australian scientists have demonstrated a photonic chip that boosts the data rate of fibre-optic connections by more than 64 times to 640Gbps, promising faster, cheaper internet for all. Read more »

Google open sources XML-alternative Protocol Buffers

XML, it seems, has run out of steam for Google. Google said Monday that it has created an open source project for a data interchange format called Protocol Buffers. Read more »

Features (435)

Evaluate volatile keyword and synchronisation in Java

If you need to control access to certain pieces of data in a class when writing multithreaded applications, see how you can use the volatile keyword to get a similar effect as using the synchronised keyword. Read more »

How to achieve real diversity in IT

While just hiring people who look different may satisfy internal mandates or passing fads, the truly beneficial form of diversity comes from a diversity of ideas and experience. Read more »

Audit data using SQL Server 2005's COLUMNS_UPDATED function

This article looks at how the SQL Server 2005 COLUMNS_UPDATED function works and then discusses how to parse out the field names. Read more »

New Date Datatypes in SQL Server 2008

SQL Server 2008 provides new data-types for storing wider ranges of dates with more precision. Heres how you can use these new data types to your advantage in SQL Server 2008. Read more »

Build Web applications without writing code

This article gives an overview of Iceberg -- a tool for building Web application without writing code. Read more »

Secure ASP.NET 2.0 sites with Membership API

Beginning with ASP.NET 2.0, the Membership API was added to simplify adding security to a Web application. This article explains how to use the Membership API with a SQL Server back-end. Read more »

Sleep deprivation can spell big trouble

Most of us operate on short sleep from time to time -- it's the nature of our profession and modern lifestyles. But if skimping on sleep is a way of life for you, watch out: you could wind up functioning below par and incur some serious health problems. Read more »

Employ refactoring via Visual Studio to write better code

Refactoring is the practice of making your code cleaner and clearer without affecting the functionality. Find out what's included in Visual Studio's Refactor menu, and discover a couple of Visual Studio add-ins that bring refactoring to the Visual Basic community. Read more »

Customise javadoc output with doclets

Did you know that the javadoc is a pluggable documentation tool? This means you can create your own class, or doclet, to perform any task, using your source code as an input. Find out how to create a doclet. Read more »

RIFE with possibilities

Developing a web-based application is never a small undertaking. At the very best it's a lot of work just to develop the code that does whatever it is your application is supposed to do but before you even get to the point of writing your application's code, you have to decide what you going to write it in. Read more »

Video (1)

Sex will solve IT skills shortage

20 years ago Indian students sweated for degrees in engineering and science, but today these courses are not being filled. The problem is sex appeal, says Gartner research fellow, Andy Kyte. It will take programmers driving sports cars to inspire kids to get degrees in the field. Read more »

Blog (21)

NICTA: Aussies should focus on embedded programming not VB

Brendon Chase [blogs:codemonkeybusiness] -- The CEO of the national ICT research centre says the future of Aussie developers should focus on building better embedded and wireless applications and focus less on technologies such as Visual Basic. Read more »

The 2008 Trends and Threats to Internet security

Lana Kovacevic [blogs:webanatomy] -- I recently came across the IBM Internet Security Systems X-Force 2008 Mid-Year Trend Statistics report, which outlines issues affecting internet security, including application vulnerabilities, phishing, malware and spam. Read more »

Is Streem just Scopical take two?

[blogs:bootstrappr] -- When I wrote about Sydney-based social news start-up Streem earlier this week, the group was less than forthcoming about the real history behind its operations. Read more »

What's new in GWT 1.5?

Lana Kovacevic [blogs:webanatomy] -- I recently wrote an introduction to the Google Web Toolkit based on Lars Rasmussen's session at the Google Developer Day 2008 in Sydney. Following the introductory session Lars gave us a deeper insight into GWT, particularly what's new in version 1.5. 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 »

Firefox 3's better performance and memory improvements

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- As beta 5 is due to come out next week, I take a look at some of the new features and improvements in Firefox 3. Read more »

2008 iAward nominations open

Brendon Chase [blogs:codemonkeybusiness] -- Seeking recognition in the field of excellence for one of your recent projects? It might not be the Oscars, or even the Logies, but nominations for the annual AIIA iAwards are open this week. Read more »

Unlocking the Wii's hidden potential

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- In a collection of videos, notable for their lucid explanations, Johnny Lee, a Ph.D. graduate student from CMU's Human-Computer Interaction Institute shows exactly how versatile the "Wiimote" system can be Read more »

No, you can't have private attributes in Python

Nick Gibson [blogs:byteclub] -- Is the lack of privacy a real shortcoming of the language, or is our judgment clouded by the old conventions of C++ and Java? Why do we need private variables anyway -- at what point does defensive programming become paranoia? Read more »

Web survey confirms the obvious

Nick Gibson [blogs:byteclub] -- Web Design blog A List Apart has published the results of their first annual survey of web professionals, and the results should surprise absolutely nobody. I'll take this opportunity to break down the results (Warning: statistics ahead). Read more »

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  • Staff XP stays on life support for longer

    This week's Roundup looks at Microsoft's decision to extend the life of Windows XP, the release of Microsoft Surface SDK, Firefox's new Geode plug-in, Yahoo's new tool -- Smush It and more. Read more »

    -- posted by Staff

  • Chris Duckett The good and truly awful celluloid depictions of computers

    Ever wonder why your lawyer uncle leaves the room whenever you turn over to Boston Legal? Or why your forensic science cousin can't stand crime drama? You know the answer: it’s the horrid trivialisation and dumbing down of an occupation to make it appear entertaining. Sometimes it is so unbelievable that it actually hurts and yelling at the screen is the only outlet. Read more »

    -- posted by Chris Duckett

  • Brendon Chase Apple's iPhone engineers to tour Sydney, Melbourne

    Aussie developers will be able to get up close and personal with some of the iPhone engineers in November to learn how to build applications for the platform. Read more »

    -- posted by Brendon Chase

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