News (236)

Google open sources 'Protocol Buffers'

Google has open sourced an internal development tool called 'Protocol Buffers', a data description language that forms a basic part of the operation of the company's vast computing cluster. Read more »

IT mega-projects: First 100 days are crucial

Executives wanting success from major IT projects need to be "ruthless" in spruiking their benefits to staff, and should only give their direct reports three months to win employees' hearts and minds before replacing them, a senior PricewaterhouseCoopers analyst has reported in sharing the results of recent research on CEO effectiveness. Read more »

Microsoft sweats over Google-Yahoo ad deal

Microsoft launched a campaign today to enlist supporters in its opposition to a new advertising collaboration deal between Google and Yahoo, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. Read more »

Red hat buries patent hatchet with Firestar, DataTern

Red Hat announced on Wednesday that it has reached a settlement with Firestar Software and DataTern over a patent infringement lawsuit. Read more »

Intel hit with antitrust investigation in US

Intel's business practices will come under the scrutiny of the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which has opened a formal antitrust investigation of the chipmaker. Read more »

Apple's WWDC: New iPhone, new OS X, new .Mac?

Expect to hear new details about the future of Apple's Mac OS X and Web business next week at the Worldwide Developers Conference — and we think there might be a new iPhone, too. Read more »

Yahoo and Google attempt to improve the browser

A year after Google launched its Gears project, Yahoo has decided to make your browser better, too. Read more »

OOXML ratification may be delayed after objection

The official standardisation of Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) document format could be delayed after a formal objection letter was lodged. The letter claimed that OOXML's approval process " harmed the reputations of both ISO and IEC. Read more »

Microsoft admits Vista UAC prompts 'need work'

Scott Charney, head of Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing division, admitted this week that Windows Vista's User Account Control (UAC) prompts are not intuitive and confuse users. Read more »

Windows, IIS at risk from 'token kidnapping'

Hosting providers and IT professionals have been warned of a threat posed to Microsoft IIS Web servers through exploitation of vulnerabilities in Microsoft operating systems. Read more »

Features (991)

Visual Studio 2008 simplifies JavaScript debugging

One of the more cumbersome development tasks is debugging client-side JavaScript code. Tools such as Firebug are helpful, but in the case of Firebug, you're forced to use Firefox. Thankfully, Visual Studio 2008 provides a robust and developer-friendly environment for debugging JavaScript. Read more »

Seamlessly integrate applications with eBay using its Windows SDK

The eBay Windows SDK allows you to easily access eBay data within your application. Tony Patton gives you an overview of the functionality provided by the eBay Web services API. Read more »

Download files over the Web with .NET's WebClient class

The System.Net namespace includes the WebClient class for uploading and downloading files via HTTP. You can copy or read files with only a few lines of code. Read more »

Easily test Web services with soapUI

The soapUI tool makes it much easier to test Web services during development. It's also useful for interacting with third-party Web services to get a better idea of what to expect (and what to include) in the response. 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 »

A .NET primer on reference types and value types

This article explains some .NET basics -- the difference between reference types and value types. Read more »

Process and parse XML with ease using Jakarta Digester

Get a brief introduction to processing XML with Jakarta Digester, including how it can be used to create pattern-matching rules for an XML document and to perform actions on the resulting collections. Read more »

Comparing SQL Server constraints and DML triggers

This article sheds some light on when to use constraints and when to use DML triggers. Read more »

Create cross-platform database-driven applications with JDBC

The Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) API offers a unified interface to different databases, providing a series of generic functions that are internally translated into native function calls. This makes it extremely easy to create database-driven applications that work across different RDBMS types. 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 »

Blog (17)

Spry Game

Lana Kovacevic [blogs:webanatomy] -- At this year's Adobe WebDU conference in Sydney, Greg Rewis gave a presentation on Spry 1.6, the AJAX framework. 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 »

Microsoft's Surface goes to Vegas

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- This might not be what Bill Gates originally envisioned with his "information at your fingertips" concept, but in Las Vegas, the Rio hotel will unveil a new Surface computer application called Flirt, that will let bar patrons "interact" with each other through video cameras and text messages. Read more »

Confessions of an accessibility sadist

Chris Duckett [blogs:betaliving] -- If your mouse dies because of a software update, most people would rollback the update -- a small minority will continue to move forward regardless. All in the name of science and testing the world of accessibility. Read more »

Trial of ReiserFS programmer takes bizarre turn

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- The ongoing murder trial of Hans Reiser, the 44-year-old Oakland, California, computer programmer accused of killing his wife, took a rather interesting turn Tuesday with rambling testimony from Reiser's father, who said he had warned his son about "techno-geeks" who are into sadomasochism. Read more »

Google: Don't give up on OpenSocial

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- When Google unveiled its OpenSocial developer initiative at the end of October, observers hailed it as the future of the social Web. But is the search king already too late to the party? Read more »

Drupal gets a Second Life framework

Brendon Chase [blogs:codemonkeybusiness] -- Objects in the Second Life virtual world can now be more easily integrated into Web sites running the Drupal content management system thanks to a new third-party module creator released this week. Read more »

In a world of Goliaths, who's got a stone?

David McAmis [blogs:theneteffect] -- It seems like it is that time of year again... the days are getting longer, the weather is getting a bit warmer and the top-tier software vendors are on a buying spree. Will you get lost in the shuffle? Why not support your local software developer! 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 »

Enterprise Architecture has failed in a big way

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- Most EA initiatives failed. My guess is that more than 90% never really resulted in anything useful. Read more »

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  • Staff Google App Engine sort of getting Perl support

    Google programmers are adding support for the Perl programming language to its App Engine service for hosting Web applications, but so far it's not really an official project. Read more »

    -- posted by Staff

  • Renai LeMay Omnidrive: Alive and kicking?

    Troubled online storage start-up Omnidrive late last week said it was continuing to develop its products and was examining the potential to merge its technology with that of other companies. Read more »

    -- posted by Renai LeMay

  • Renai LeMay Is Streem just Scopical take two?

    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 »

    -- posted by Renai LeMay

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