Links for December 19th through December 21st

Posted on December 21, 2013 by Vinny

Logstash helps you take logs and other event data from your systems and store them in a central place. – elasticsearch works seamlessly with logstash to collect, parse, index, and search logs
SecTools.Org Top Network Security Tools – SecTools.Org: Top 125 Network Security Tools
Become a Better Architect – The most successful IT professionals I know, regardless of title or role, are the ones that are business focused. From an enterprise architecture perspective, the technology is, at best, half of the overall architecture equation
iPad, Surface, Kindle owners reveal their top gripes – A new report from tech Q&A site FixYa cites the biggest complaints with the latest tablets from Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon.
"Backbreaking" OpenStack migrations hinder enterprise upgrades – OpenStack’s promise of an open-source cloud infrastructure free of vendor lock-in is big. But difficulties upgrading from one release to the next are a major kink that needs to be worked out before widespread adoption can begin.
Scott Hanselman’s 2014 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows – Hacker News discussion – Scott Hanselman's 2014 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows – Hacker News discussion
Scott Hanselman’s 2014 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows – Scott Hanselman's 2014 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows
oterm is a web browser unix terminal – oterm is a web browser unix terminal. It serves a console so you can access your server from anywhere in the world where you have an Internet connection. It effectively is an xterm in a browser.
JavaScript spin-off asm.js brings web even closer to native performance | ZDNet – Firefox creator Mozilla release benchmarks showing that asm.js, its performance-optimised subset of JavaScript, can deliver performance only 1.5x slower than code compiled to run natively.
Enterprise App Developer Atlas – An interactive map of the developer journey, helping developers make the right tool choices to reduce costs, increase revenue and capture new markets.

Links for November 17th through November 22nd

Posted on November 22, 2013 by Vinny

Introducing node.js Tools for Visual Studio – Scott Hanselman – Just when you thought it couldn't be crazier in Redmond, today they are introducing node.js Tools for Visual Studio!
Apple’s iOS7 Native JavaScript Bridge – The combination of JavaScript support in your native iOS client and the proliferation of JavaScript server technology Node.js makes for exciting opportunities in “asymmetric” JavaScript code re-use for your native iOS App, web client and of course backend
Ionic: The Most Advanced HTML5 Mobile App Framework – Ionic is a beautiful front-end framework for developing hybrid mobile apps in HTML5.
Tableau 8.1 is Available: You Asked, We Delivered – We're happy to announce that Tableau 8.1 is now available around the world. In this release we're delivering a host of features inspired by your ideas.
Tableau 8.1 covers a lot of ground: from enterprise features and enhanced mobile authoring, to sophisti
Google is building a Chrome app-based development environment called Spark – The Next Web – Google’s Chromium team never ceases to amaze. Its latest project is a Chrome app-based Integrated Development Environment (IDE) codenamed Spark.
ReportServer – Professional Open Source Business Intelligence and Reporting – ReportServer integrates many free and commercial reporting engines. This allows you to use existing reports directly and choose the engine that best fits the current need for new developments.
Using Sencha GXT To Build Interactive Web Apps That Manage Big Data – GWT is a great framework for developing small and large interactive web applications. Sencha GXT is a huge addition that gives developers all the tools they need to build great looking and easy-to-use user interfaces. If you are in the process of evaluating web application frameworks, the combination of GWT and Sencha GXT should be high on your list.
We Analyzed 30,000 GitHub Projects – Here Are The Top 100 Libraries in Java, JS and Ruby – We chose the 3 top languages on GitHub – Java, Ruby and JavaScript. For each one we analyzed 10,000 projects (i.e. GitHub repositories) leaning towards those that have been favorited the most by developers.
Why Office 365 is a better Office – Microsoft's flexible approach to Exchange, SharePoint, Lync, and Office means each business can get the right mix of cloud and local for its needs
High performance libraries in Java – There is an increasing number of libraries which are described as high performance and have benchmarks to back that claim up.
Could Tizen be Android’s next nemesis? – Tizen is an up and coming open-source operating system based off of Linux. Like, Android, Tizen is extremely flexible in its uses. Tizen also allows a wide variety of app development as it supports apps running on HTML5 as well as other related web technologies to allow apps to run across multiple device categories. For example, an app on Tizen would be coded in HTML5 and it would be able to run on everything from smartphones to laptops and even to bigger devices such as TVs.
The rediscovery of India | McKinsey & Company – Is diversity an excuse for disunity? CNN’s Fareed Zakaria says Indians must embrace their common ambitions if the nation is to fulfill its tremendous potential.
How Google Sold Its Engineers on Management – Harvard Business Review – That, in a nutshell, is the principle at the heart of Google’s approach: deploying disciplined data collection and rigorous analysis—the tools of science—to uncover deeper insights into the art and craft of management.
Windows and Line of Business Applications: No Good Options – So while it pains me to say it, companies that are looking to develop a new line of business applications should seriously consider abandoning that idea and build an internal website instead.
DevTools Snippets – A collection of helpful snippets to use inside of browser devtools – The snippets can be used in any browser console. Chrome provides a 'snippets' feature that can be used to manage the scripts, while Firefox has a 'scratchpad' feature that lets you run, edit, and save chunks of JavaScript.
Debugging JavaScript – Chrome DevTools – As the complexity of JavaScript applications increase, developers need powerful debugging tools to help quickly discover the cause of an issue and fix it efficiently. The Chrome DevTools include a number of useful tools to help make debugging JavaScript less painful.
5 Advanced Javascript and Web Debugging Techniques You Should Know About – In this article we will discuss 5 advanced techniques which web developers can use to reduce the time they spend debugging and squash challenging bugs by using new tools available to us and taking advantage of the new features offered by debuggers.
Dart SDK 1.0 is here, and it’s on a quest to slay JavaScript – Google’s intention to build a front-end development language for building web apps was first made public two years ago. Today, it was announced at Belgium based Devoxx that Dart SDK 1.0 had finally been upgraded from test version to production-ready option
Elasticsearch & Kibana – visualize logs and time-stamped data – visualize logs and time-stamped data – Elasticsearch works seamlessly with kibana to let you see and interact with your data
Another day, another Java menace: Ceylon has landed – This week’s Devoxx conference in Antwerp saw the launch of two box fresh languages: Google’s Dart SDK 1.0, and Red Hat’s Ceylon 1.0. Creator Gavin King has been adamant from the earliest development stages that the intention has always been to create something that can run alongside Java – but designed as a language and SDK for business computing that learns and builds on Java’s successes and failures

Links for October 31st through November 3rd

Posted on November 4, 2013 by Vinny

PhoneGap and Cordova with iOS 7 – Now that it’s officially available, I wanted to share my experience running and building PhoneGap / Cordova applications on iOS 7.
Putting big data and advanced analytics to work | McKinsey & Company – In a video feature, McKinsey director David Court explains how companies can improve their decisions and performance by getting powerful new tools in the hands of frontline managers.
Improved Java Tooling for Cloud Foundry – Pivotal has released several new components that enable developers using Java, Groovy, and other JVM languages to deploy applications to Cloud Foundry quickly and easily. This blog post will show the options available to JVM developers with this new toolin
8 Reasons Why Even Microsoft Agrees the Windows Desktop is a Nightmare – The Windows desktop is a mess. Sure, it’s extremely powerful and has a huge software library, but it’s not a good experience for average people. It’s not even a good experience for geeks, although we tolerate it. Even Microsoft agrees about this. Microsoft’s Surface tablets with Windows RT don’t support any third-party desktop apps
The many reasons why Chrome OS is appealing – If the Chrome OS is “just a browser”, how can it be more appealing to some people given that other devices all have a browser and more? There are a number of reasons and an article we highlight explains them quite well.
Java EE 7 and IntelliJ IDEA 13. RESTful Web Services Made Easy – One of the notable changes coming in IntelliJ IDEA 13 is the developer tool set for Java EE 7, the cutting-edge version of Oracle’s enterprise Java platform. IntelliJ IDEA will offer support and productivity-boosting features for all Java EE specifications
Software-Defined Infrastructure, As Cloudy Now As Cloud Was – ReadWrite – Remember when everyone tried to define cloud computing? Turns out they're just as confused about software-defined infrastructure.
HealthCare.gov failed despite agile practices – In relation to HealthCare.gov, an agile process was implemented and the software was a national failure. This does not mean agile was the primary cause of that failure but it is not unreasonable to assume it played a part. My hope is that we can learn from
16 Traits of Great IT Leaders – CIO.com – If you want to succeed as an IT leader you have to develop a set of traits that will serve you and those around you. Industry leaders and career experts share their thoughts on what behaviors make an IT leader great.

Links for October 27th through October 30th

Posted on October 31, 2013 by Vinny

Guava Collections Cookbook – This cookbook article is organized into small and focused recipes and code snippets for using Guava style collections.
Apple’s R&D up 32 percent in 2013, still dwarfed by rivals – Apple remains one of the smallest R&D spenders compared with its peers. Microsoft, for instance, spent $10.4 billion, or 13 percent of the company's revenue, on research during its 2013 fiscal year, which ran through June. There's also Google, which has spent $5.8 billion so far this year (and $9.8 billion in all of 2012), as well as Samsung, which spent around $10.5 billion on R&D last year and which is currently building a massive new facility in Silicon Valley.
Review: Mobile Web development frameworks face off – jQuery Mobile, Sencha Touch, Kendo UI, and Intel App Framework bring a native look and feel to Web apps for mobile devices
Mastering the building blocks of strategy – Increase your likelihood of developing effective strategies through an approach that’s thorough, action-oriented, and comfortable with debate and ambiguity.
The art of strategy | McKinsey & Company – Examining how strategies are created, implemented, and executed is a relatively recent practice. In this video interview, McKinsey’s Chris Bradley and Angus Dawson explain how strategic thought has evolved and where it is headed.
Cisco launches Internet of things division, eyes standardization – Cisco on Tuesday launched an Internet of things division that will focus on linking data, machines and people and the standards that go with them.
The Economist explains itself: Is The Economist left- or right-wing? – The Economist’s political stance – We like free enterprise and tend to favour deregulation and privatisation. But we also like gay marriage, want to legalise drugs and disapprove of monarchy. So is the newspaper right-wing or left-wing?
Webinar: Modern Component Design with Spring – YouTube – Speaker: Juergen Hoeller In recent years, the Spring Framework focuses on flexible and powerful Java-based configuration. This talk presents Spring as an annotation-oriented application framework, illustrating the rich set of features that Spring has to offer for modern component design. General component model trends will be discussed along with selected Spring feature highlights, such as standardized annotations for dependency injection, stereotypes, and declarative services such as validation and scheduling.
Microsoft makes available its Azure-based Hadoop service – Windows Azure HDInsight is "100 percent Apache Hadoop" and builds on top of HDP. HDInsight includes full compatibility with Apache Hadoop, as well as integration with Microsoft's own business-intelligence tools, such as Excel, SQL Server and PowerBI.
Google Search Serves Users From 600% More Locations than A Year Ago – From October 2012 to late July 2013, the number of locations serving Google’s search infrastructure increased from from a little less than 200 to a little more than 1400, and the number of ISPs grew from just over 100 to more than 850, according to the stu
Advanced Web Applications Using Symfony with Doctrine, Postgres, and Redis – My new book, Advanced Web Applications Using Symfony, will teach you the secrets behind building, deploying, and securing an advanced web application from the ground up!
Clojure from the ground up: welcome – This guide aims to introduce newcomers and experienced programmers alike to the beauty of functional programming, starting with the simplest building blocks of software. You’ll need a computer, basic proficiency in the command line, a text editor, and an i

Links for October 21st through October 25th

Posted on October 26, 2013 by Vinny

WhiteDB is a lightweight NoSQL database library written in C, operating fully in main memory. – WhiteDB is a lightweight NoSQL database library written in C, operating fully in main memory. There is no server process. Data is read and written directly from/to shared memory, no sockets are used between WhiteDB and the application program.
Google: Our Robot Cars Are Better Drivers Than Puny Humans | MIT Technology Review – Data gathered from Google’s self-driving Prius and Lexus cars shows that they are safer and smoother when steering themselves than when a human takes the wheel, according to the leader of Google’s autonomous-car project.
Seagate just reinvented the disk interface using Ethernet, TCP/IP, Protocol Buffers, and key-value objects – Seagate just reinvented the disk interface using Ethernet, TCP/IP, Protocol Buffers, and key-value objects
Microsoft Surface Pro 2 review from gdgt – With the Surface Pro 2, Microsoft hasn't changed much — it kept the study build and sharp display, adding a new kickstand and improved battery life. But, despite all it has going for it, the Surface Pro 2 is still a hybrid device that isn't going to suit everyone.
Offline.js – Handle your users losing their internet connection like a pro – Offline.js is a library to automatically alert your users when they've lost internet connectivity, like Gmail. It captures AJAX requests which were made while the connection was down, and remakes them when it's back up, so your app reacts perfectly.
Technology Change: The journey from .NET to Scala – There are now several dev teams at Empathica working on Scala projects. Tool chains are being developed. Coding standards are being established and enforced. Libraries are being standardized across our projects. It’s starting to return to a comfortable
LinkedIn Intro: Doing the Impossible on iOS | LinkedIn Engineering – Similarly, Intro’s approach of proxying IMAP is a novel way of delivering software to users. It operates at the limit of what is technically possible, but it has a big advantage: we can enhance the apps you already use. Of course the idea isn’t limited to
Webinar replay: Spring Boot – Simplifying Spring for Everyone – n this webinar Phil Webb will demonstrate how Spring Boot can take you from zero to Spring with minimal fuss. We will look at how you can rapidly prototype Spring applications using Groovy, and how Spring Configuration in Java applications can be radically
Debian/Ubuntu extend the dominance in the Linux web server market at the expense of Red Hat/CentOS – Debian has been the most popular Linux distribution on web servers for almost two years when it took over rank #1 from CentOS. Now CentOS lost another rank to Ubuntu, giving Debian-based distributions a solid lead over the Red Hat camp.
Linux is king *nix of the data center—but Unix may live on forever – Unix servers hit lowest market share ever, but they still have a long future.
How a flawed deployment process led Knight to lose $172,222 a second for 45 minutes – The tale has all the hallmarks of technical debt in a huge, unmaintained, bitrotten codebase (the bug itself due to code that hadn’t been used for 8 years), and a really poor, undisciplined devops story.
How to balance maintenance and IT innovation via @robcrussell – Many IT leaders admit their spending is too heavily weighted toward keep-the-lights-on projects. Here's how to tip the balance.
Microsoft, the sleeping giant of the cloud – With its vast portfolio of software and billions of dollars in data center infrastructure investment, Microsoft stands poised to rule the cloud
Learn Haskell Fast and Hard – A very short and dense tutorial for learning Haskell. – A very short and dense tutorial for learning Haskell.

Links for October 6th through October 10th

Posted on October 10, 2013 by Vinny

Why MongoDB is worth $1.2 billion – JavaWorld – While you were sleeping, 10Gen — the company behind the MongoDB document database — changed its name to MongoDB, Inc., raised $231 million, and became the first billion-dollar open source startup. That's right, an open source NoSQL database startup has a $1.2 billion valuation.
Microsoft’s enterprise cloud strategy begins to take shape – A wave of new offerings shows that Redmond is serious about dominating public and hybrid clouds
Developing For Native: Cordova, Sencha and Ripple on Vimeo – If you want to make your application available in the different platform application stores or need to add native device functionality, you’ll want to package it. We’ll show you how to use Cordova to do just that.
Google brings Mobile Backend Starter, its one-click deployable cloud backend for Android, to iOS – The Next Web – Google today launched Mobile Backend Starter for iOS, simplifying server-side development for app developers on Apple’s mobile platform. Mobile Backend Starter is a Google App Engine application, meaning it lets developers support hundreds of concurrent us
Android for the Busy Developer: Free 12-Lesson Course – Do you want get started with Android development but can’t seem to find the time or you are unsure where to begin? Problem solved! Dino Esposito, in cooperation with Tuts+ Premium, welcomes you to the dazzling world of Android development with this free 12
The 10 hottest JavaScript framework projects – Community strength is a huge factor is determining which JavaScript framework to adopt. Here's a close look at the activity swirling around AngularJS, Backbone.JS, Ember.js, and more
SDN For Engineers – Brandon Heller is one of the authors of The Controller Placement Problem. In this video, he's going to give an introduction to OpenFlow and what the network engineer needs to know right off the bat about SDN.
Android Create shortcut of Application on Home Page – Create App Shortcut on Home Screen on Android Programmatically – Today I am going to share very useful code for create application shortcut on Home-Screen in android.
A Hacker’s Guide to the Bay Area – This guide is targeted to “hackers” who wish to move to the San Francisco Bay Area, specifically San Francisco or Silicon Valley. This guide reflects my lifestyle – male, single, focused on work (in tech) and saving money, but keeping an eye on my health. I will only focus on things deemed important to “Hackers”.

Links for September 23rd through September 27th

Posted on September 28, 2013 by Vinny

The HTML5 Scorecard: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly in iOS 7 – We’ve been testing the final release of iOS 7 over the last few days against our usual battery of HTML5 tests. Normally we’re effusive about new releases of iOS to the point of fanboy-dom, but this time, and for the first time ever, we’re disappointed in t
Safari on iOS 7 and HTML5: problems, changes and new APIs – In this post I’ll show you the new APIs and abilities and most of the problems that you will need to deal with right now if you have a website or a webapp.
Red Hat brings JBoss middleware to PaaS cloud | ZDNet – The next phase of Red Hat's PaaS strategy focuses on the delivery of key additional Red Hat JBoss Middleware technologies in the cloud as services powered by OpenShift. This will include new integration capabilities, business process management (BPM), and mobile push notifications
Microsoft’s open source BrowserSwarm tool lets developers test JavaScript frameworks across all major browsers – The Next Web – Microsoft today launched BrowserSwarm, an open source tool to help Web developers automate testing of their JavaScript frameworks and libraries across devices and browsers. To take advantage, all you have to do is sign up for free here.
Adventures in RubyMotion: The App Store in 2 weeks – Chris Zetter – RubyMotion is be a great choice for anyone who has Ruby knowledge that wants to build for iOS and OSX. I’ve since opened Xcode again and the Cocoa understanding I got from RubyMotion has made it feel a lot less daunting.
Build Ext JS and Sencha Touch Applications Faster with Sencha Architect 3 on Vimeo – Architect 3 enables developers to build robust applications quickly and easily with new features such as templates, user extensions, code completion and theming. Watch this 1 hour recording where they will demo the latest Architect 3 release and show you how to build your mobile and desktop apps even faster.
AngularJS is amazing… and hard as hell – It's ok if you don't really understand AngularJS all at once. Getting started with the software is completely different that actually using for real applications. It just really takes time, more than you think it will to really get AngularJS.
The Second Coming of Java: Clinton-Era Relic Returns to Rule Web – In the summer of 2011, Bob Lee — the chief technology officer at Square and a former engineer at Google — announced at a prominent software conference that the web was “on the cusp of a Java renaissance.” Two years later, this renaissance is upon us. Like Twitter, many other companies have realized that Java is particularly well suited to building web services that can stand up to the massive amounts of traffic streaming across the modern internet.
Why I Hacked Apple’s TouchID, And Still Think It Is Awesome – Despite being hacked, TouchID is an exciting step forwards for smartphone security and I stand by our earlier blog on fingerprint security. Hacking TouchID gave me respect for its design and some ideas about how we can make it strong moving forward. I hope
How iOS 7’s new APIs change the game for business – Apple's new content-focused management APIs for iOS and OS X should further reduce security doubts of IT admins and CSOs, while keeping users empowered

Links for September 15th through September 23rd

Posted on September 23, 2013 by Vinny

For 2nd Generation of Surface, Tweaks From Microsoft – On Monday, Microsoft introduced a second generation of Surface tablets with only subtle adjustments from the originals, a sign that the company still believes in its vision of devices that blend the benefits of tablets and laptop computers. The most meaningful changes are under the hood, providing faster performance, better battery life and sharper screens.
Cutting Through the Cloud – NYTimes.com – Cutting Through the Cloud – NYTimes.com
What Clayton Christensen Got Wrong in his Theory of Low-End Disruption – Apple is – and, for at least the last 15 years, has been – focused exactly on the blind spot in the theory of low-end disruption. Differentiation based on design which, while it can’t be measured, can certainly be felt by consumers who are both buyers and
Doing well by doing good: A leader’s guide | McKinsey & Company – Addressing community problems increasingly requires cooperation among the private, public, and not-for-profit sectors. Here, three executives explain how a civic alliance in America’s Minneapolis–Saint Paul region may point toward an operating model.
Introduction to Java multitenancy – The IBM Multitenant JVM recently became available as part of the IBM Java™ 8 beta. By running multiple applications within a single multitenant JVM, a cloud system can speed applications' start times and reduce their memory footprint. This article introduc
iOS 7 Safari & New Web Platform Features – Today, iOS 7 ships with a new version of Mobile Safari which brings with it a whole slew of features that our team worked on! Here are some of the big ones we worked on and what they can help you with.
Deploymate helps you identify unavailable, deprecated and obsolete API usage in your Xcode projects – We've all been there. Your app is targeting an older OS version and you have used an API introduced later than your target OS. Xcode didn't warn you about it, did it? Now your app crashes
The Architecture of Open Source Applications – In these two books, the authors of four dozen open source applications explain how their software is structured, and why. What are each program's major components? How do they interact? And what did their builders learn during their development? In answeri
Spotify changes tune on Hadoop with switch to Hortonworks | ZDNet – Spotify's Hadoop infrastructure, which stood at about 30 nodes five years ago, is now described as Europe's largest commercial cluster, consisting of 690-nodes storing data from more than 24 million active users and six million subscribers.
RESTX, the lightweight Java REST framework – Introducing RESTX – the lightweight, modular, feature rich, blazing fast, open source Java REST framework
Move over WordPress? Microsoft throws its weight behind Ghost – Ghost, the node.js-based blogging platform that took Kickstarter by storm a few months ago, is set to release its first beta to the public in just a few weeks. Given the overwhelming dominance of WordPress in the blogging space, some may be surprised to see such a clamor around a new platform

Links for August 19th through August 29th

Posted on August 29, 2013 by Vinny

Why Microsoft .Net failed – Microsoft tried, but it couldn't win the hearts and minds of developers who weren't already indoctrinated — and it alienated others along the way
CSS Sprites vs. Data URIs: Which is Faster on Mobile? | Mobify – Based on this research, I recommend limiting the use of data URIs to very small resources and to not use too many of them in your CSS or inline HTML. 15-20kB for max data URI size, and no more than 3 – 5 instances seems like a good rule of thumb for mobile!
Parallels Access – use your favorite Mac or Windows applications on your iPad as if they were native iPad apps – Parallels Access lets you use your favorite Mac or Windows applications on your iPad as if they were native iPad apps, easy to use and automatically sized to take up the full display of your iPad.
Plain Text Doesn’t Exist… Unicode and encodings demystified | 10K-LOC – Always, I mean always, indicate the encoding of your document either by using Content-Type or meta charset tag. By doing this, your are preventing web browsers from guessing the encoding and telling exactly which encoding they should use to render the page.
High Scalability – High Scalability – Reddit: Lessons Learned from Mistakes Made Scaling to 1 Billion Pageviews a Month – Jeremy Edberg, the first paid employee at reddit, teaches us a lot about how to create a successful social site in a really good talk he gave at the RAMP conference. Watch it here at Scaling Reddit from 1 Million to 1 Billion–Pitfalls and Lessons.
Enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of application development | McKinsey & Company – Software has become critical for most large enterprises. They should adopt a reliable output metric that is integrated with the process for gathering application requirements.
Extensionizr – Start a chrome extension in 15 seconds! – Extensionizr is a simple way to jump start your chrome extension development. Just select the type of extension you want, choose permissions and you're off.
How To Create Your Own Chrome Extensions – This is going to be a quick crash course to give you a general idea of what all you can easily do with Chrome extensions.
Celluloid: Actor-based Concurrent Objects for Ruby – Celluloid is a concurrent object oriented programming framework for Ruby which lets you build multithreaded programs out of concurrent objects just as easily as you build sequential programs out of regular objects
Java 7 Sockets Direct Protocol – Write Once, Run Everywhere …. and Run (Some Places) Blazingly – This article will survey the new Java Sockets Direct Protocol (SDP) technology, a very exciting breakthrough that was recently introduced in the Java 7 SDK. SDP empowers the Ultra High Performance Computing (UHPC) community to use Java’s ubiquitously common features and merits for a very uncommon use case: native access to the InfiniBand Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) capability
How An Arcane Coding Method From 1970s Banking Software Could Save The Sanity Of Web Developers Everywhere – Forty years ago, a Canadian bank pioneered a brand new computer system that allowed non-programmers to help write code. The paradigm was so disruptive that it was suppressed by computer scientists for decades. But as web apps get increasingly complex, and w
Gartner: AWS Now Five Times The Size Of Other Cloud Vendors Combined – Amazon spends less than its rivals on cloud infrastructure yet seriously dominates them in adoption. Why?
Steroids.js Bridges The Performance Gap Between PhoneGap And Native Apps – Steroids then lets developers easily add these to PhoneGap HTML5 apps to allow them to build “HTML5 hybrid apps with animation and other performance results that are indistinguishable from those of native apps.”
iOS App Store Approval Tips and Tricks – In this post I hope to provide some guidance on what to avoid when developing and publishing any iOS app (be it native or hybrid).
The Critical Path #93: The Innovator’s Curse – Markets are expected to do one thing and one thing only: determine price. What happens when they fail? The tragedy and comedy of corporate raiders.
A Bright Future Full of Promise: Asynchronous Pipelines in Scala and Java – A Bright Future Full of Promise: Asynchronous Pipelines in Scala and Java

Links for July 11th through July 26th

Posted on July 27, 2013 by Vinny

What’s New in Eucalyptus 3.3: AWS-compatible Private Clouds for Dev & QA – Review the latest AWS-compatible features in Eucalyptus 3.3, including Auto Scaling, Elastic Load Balancing, CloudWatch, and more.
Learn why Eucalyptus is the ideal solution for developing and testing your apps built for AWS and how hybrid usage between Eucalyptus and AWS will make Dev and QA more agile and productive
Services, Not Devices is the best way forward for Microsoft – The solution to the secular collapse of the PC market is not to seek to prop up Windows and force an integrated solution that no one is asking for; rather, the goal should be the exact opposite. Maximum effort should be focused on making Office, Server, and all the other products less subservient to Windows and more in line with consumer needs and the reality of computing in 2013.
OpenStack’s Future Depends on Embracing Amazon. Now – The time has come for the OpenStack community to choose a public cloud compatibility strategy that will position the project for dominance in the private and hybrid cloud markets.
Udacity Blog: New Course: The Design of Everyday Things – Design 101: The Design of Everyday Things is based upon the new edition of The Design of Everyday Things (revised and expanded: to be published in Fall 2013).
More Git and GitHub Secrets – This is the brand-new, action-packed sequel to the original Git and GitHub Secrets talk I did in 2012. For one, it has more emoji.
ZeroMQ instead of HTTP, for internal services (August Lilleaas’ blog) – This article describes how to use ZeroMQ for RPC calls to internal services. HTTP is the canonical choice for public facing services. But for RPC to internal services in systems composed of many small parts, you're probably better off using ZeroMQ instead
This Explains Everything: 192 Thinkers Each Select the Most Elegant Explanation of How the World Works | Brain Pickings – In 2012, the question Brockman posed, proposed by none other than Steven Pinker, was “What is your favorite deep, elegant, or beautiful explanation?” The answers, representing an eclectic mix of 192 (alas, overwhelmingly male) minds spanning psychology, qu
Google and Microsoft spent a combined $3.4B on infrastructure last quarter — Tech News and Analysis – Microsoft invested $1.79 billion in “property and equipment” during its fiscal fourth quarter, while Google’s second quarter saw it invest $1.61 billion
Divshot 1.0: Visual Front-End Development for Bootstrap and Beyond – Today we are proud to take the wraps off of Divshot 1.0. This next stage of our visual HTML builder for Bootstrap (and Foundation, and Ratchet) is simple like a mockup tool, powerful like a text editor, and packs more new features than you can fit in a <marquee> tag.
Tableau takes its data-analysis software to the cloud – Tableau has gotten into the SaaS game with a cloud-based version of its popular analytics software. Called Tableau Online, it’s essentially the company’s server-based version delivered as a service.
Puppet Labs acquires Cloudsmith to ease devops’ automation burden – Puppet Labs is acquiring Cloudworks to make it easier for devops people to roll out software updates on servers configured exactly the way they should be, on premise or in the cloud.
Review: Puppet Enterprise 3.0 pulls more strings – Version 3.0 of Puppet Labs' configuration automation tool shines with speed boosts, orchestration improvements, and deeper support for Windows servers
The future of Linux: Evolving everywhere | Open Source Software – InfoWorld – Cemented as a cornerstone of IT, the open source OS presses on in the face of challenges to its ethos and technical prowess
Why Microsoft’s reorganization is a bad idea – In my (very-biased) opinion, I believe collaboration is fundamentally broken at Microsoft. It is all about politics, not great outcomes, and that is absolute death in a functional organization, which has nothing but collaboration to hold together cross-fun
The Great Gatsby Curve: Inequality and the End of Upward Mobility – Is the American economic system fundamentally unequal, perpetuating income inequality and stymieing upward economic mobility? Or do families — by virtue of their differing genes and values — reproduce income inequality?
Using Information About Our Network to Remove Monitoring Noise – In cases like this we need to make our monitoring system more aware of the dependencies exist between these checks so that we can eliminate the noise. To do so we use a number of open source technologies:
Do Things that Don’t Scale – Actually startups take off because the founders make them take off. There may be a handful that just grew by themselves, but usually it takes some sort of push to get them going. A good metaphor would be the cranks that car engines had before they got elec
Why mobile web apps are slow | Sealed Abstract – this is the most complete and comprehensive treatment of the idea that many iOS developers have–that mobile web apps are slow and will continue to be slow for the forseeable future.
One big threat to cybersecurity: IT geeks can’t talk to management – Quartz – A new report on the state of risk-based cybersecurity management helps explain why IT employees and their corporate bosses don’t see eye to eye about hacking and other computer-based threats.
The report, titled “Are Security Metrics Too Complicated for Management?” is the latest installment of an ongoing series by Tripwire and the Ponemon Institute.
Minified.js – A Truly Lightweight JavaScript Library – Minified.js is a client-side JavaScript library, comparable to jQuery and MooTools in scope. Its features include DOM manipulation, animation, events, cookies and HTTP requests.
Hibernate adds OSGi Support – Hibernate, the popular Java ORM implementation, has recently added OSGi support, enabling Hibernate to be used both as a standalone Jar and also in an OSGi runtime
Why is nobody using SSL client certificates? – In the current state, this excellent idea is rendered completely useless by the awful usability and the completely detached nature: This is a browser feature. It's browser dependent without a way for the sites to control it – to guide users through steps.
Do the right thing, Wait to get fired – But greatness rarely happens by following rules, process and structure. That is why companies also want to find employees ready to take risks, make decisions, try new things, move fast and even break things.
Three big takeaways from the Microsoft reorg | CITEworld – Our new strategy will put us right at the intersection of the consumerization of IT and the evolving needs of the enterprise customer, delivering the devices that employees want and the productivity, security and control that IT managers need.
Top 10 Ext JS Development Practices to Avoid | Blog | Sencha – Based on a review of our work over the last few years, we came up with this list of the top 10 development practices we recommend you avoid in your Ext JS apps.

Vinny Carpenter’s blog

{ “passion”: “software development” }

Tag Archives: microsoft