News (77)

Adobe defends Aussie CS4 price hike

Global software giant Adobe has defended recommending local prices for its new Creative Suite 4 software packages that could see Australians paying hundreds of dollars more in real terms than US residents for the same products. Read more »

Net neutrality is an 'American problem'

The leaders of three of Australia's largest ISP's have declared the Net neutrality debate as solely a US problem — and further, that the nation that pioneered the internet might want to study the Australian market for clues as to how to solve the dilemma. Read more »

IBM warns standards bodies to shape up

IBM has issued a warning to international standards body ISO in the wake of its approval of Microsoft's OOXML. Read more »

Microsoft attacks potential VMware feature

Senior Microsoft security strategist Steve Riley last week criticised virtualisation rival VMware for an idea that could see virtualised operating system images patched while they were still running in memory. Read more »

Data breach laws years away

The Australian Law Reform Commission yesterday released a report recommending Australia introduce data breach disclosure laws — but Senator John Faulkner said that bridge would not be crossed by government at least for the next 18 months. Read more »

OpenBSD devs respond to Torvalds' monkey jibe

OpenBSD developers have responded to comments made by Linus Torvalds that they are a "bunch of masturbating monkeys". Read more »

EU vote forces ISPs to disconnect pirates

A high-level European vote on communications legislation will take place on Monday evening, raising fears that alleged file-sharers will be denied internet access by their internet service providers. Read more »

Gates looks back on 30 years at Microsoft

If you were to ask Bill Gates what life will be like when he stops working full time at Microsoft, he'd have to get back to you.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 »

Is whitelisting the new blacklisting?

The IT security industry has come to a frank realisation that the current approach to preventing malware is simply not working. Is whitelisting, which is the reverse of our current approach, the answer? Read more »

Features (132)

Different types of Dreamweaver CS3 layouts

At this year's WebDU conference, Stephanie Sullivan, founder and principal of W3Conversions and Adobe community expert gave a thorough presentation named "CSS Layouts & Dreamweaver CS3". Read more »

Getting to grips with parallelism

Although parallelism may be a new concept for many programmers, there are some for whom the concept is a part of their daily responsibilities. 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 »

Choose the right JDBC driver for your database interface

Picking the right driver can optimise connectivity between your Java apps and database. Read more »

Google vs. Microsoft

At the 2008 Gartner Application Development, Integration and Web Services Summit, David Mitchell Smith, vice president and Gartner fellow gave a presentation titled "Google vs. Microsoft", discussing the seeming battle between the two companies. Read more »

Introduction to the Google Web Toolkit

At the Google Developer Day conference 2008 in Sydney, Lars Rasmussen, the head of engineering for Google Australia gave an overview of the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) with his presentation "AJAX with Google Web Toolkit". Read more »

Improving the mobile Web user experience

Traditionally our experience with the mobile Web was pretty terrible, but the good news is that this is starting to change, at least according to Oliver Weidlich, usability specialist at Ideal Interfaces. Read more »

Ecosystem breaking from Microsoft's grip?

Microsoft got where it is today through its influence over manufacturers. It no longer has the control it once enjoyed. Read more »

HTML 5: A change in course... straight for the iceberg

The W3C recently released a working draft specification for HTML 5. In its current iteration, this is the worst specification I have ever read. Read more »

Seven essential elements of Web application design

At this year's Web Directions South UX conference in Melbourne, Robert Hoekman Jr, the author of Designing the Obvious and Designing the Moment gave a presentation titled -- " The essential elements of Web application design". During the presentation, Hoekman explained seven key design principles that should be implemented when designing Web applications. Read more »

Video (1)

SOA: seen before but difference matters

Gartner fellow, Daryl Plummer agrees that nothing is new in principle with SOA, but that the lower requirements for technical knowledge makes all the difference in the world. Read more »

Blog (7)

What's new in Dreamweaver CS4?

Lana Kovacevic [blogs:webanatomy] -- Let's look at some of the new features we can expect to see in Dreamweaver CS4. Read more »

The Portal of the Future

Lana Kovacevic [blogs:webanatomy] -- At this year's Gartner Application Development, Integration and Web Services Summit, I attended Gene Phifer talk: "Portal of the Future: What's Beyond Web 2.0?". 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 »

Salesforce's new AIR toolkit

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- Following the announcement that Salesforce will provide a free toolkit for Adobe Flex and AIR development on its Force.com platform, I spoke to the company’s Doug Farber, the Vice President of Operations, Asia Pacific about its functionality and other issues surrounding the toolkit. 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 »

Here's to the next step!

Brendon Chase [blogs:codemonkeybusiness] -- By now you can probably see the new look Builder AU Web site. Not bad, don't you think? Read more »

MySpace in a hot place

Graham Lauren [blogs:intheether] -- It seems the now-mainstream MySpace is proving itself just as susceptible to predatory sexual interests as have chat rooms and all manner of other online spaces before it. 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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