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Google moves could bring fast Web apps closer

Google's Native Client project to accelerate Web applications just got a lot more real--and a lot more ambitious.

Browsers today come with increasingly powerful engines to run programs written in JavaScript, but those programs must be translated laboriously into the native instructions a computer understands, typically making them much slower than the software that runs directly on the operating system. Native Client is an attempt to bridge those worlds, letting code downloaded over the Web run fast and natively.

A year and a half ago, when Google announced Native Client, the open-source project could run only 32-bit software for … Read more

Google aims for easier 3D Web on Windows

Google announced a move Thursday that could broaden the appeal of a nascent 3D Web graphics technology called WebGL.

A year ago Mozilla and the Khronos Group announced WebGL, which gives Web programmers a way to use hardware-accelerated 3D graphics on their Web pages, and in December, the two issued a draft WebGL standard. One hurdle, though, is that WebGL uses the Khronos Group's OpenGL graphics interface standard, but not all video cards have OpenGL support.

Google hopes to sidestep this issue with a new open-source projet that translates the OpenGL commands into the related dialect more common on Windows computers, Microsoft's Direct3D. The project is called ANGLE, short for Almost Native Graphics Layer Engine, Henry Bridge, a Google product manager, said in a blog post Thursday. … Read more

Going beyond Flash, Adobe shows off Web tech

Sure, Adobe Systems spends a lot of effort developing and promoting its Flash technology. And sure, a lot of the new "Open Web" technologies are a competitive threat to Flash.

But that doesn't mean Adobe isn't interested in HTML5 and CSS3--the updates to Hypertext Markup Language for describing Web pages and to Cascading Style Sheets for Web page formatting--that are two of the most important parts of that Open Web work. After all, Adobe does have its DreamWeaver product for Web site development.

But there's a new sign that Adobe is taking more interest in … Read more

Web guru Tim Bray takes Google Android job

Tim Bray--co-inventor of XML, notable tech blogger, and until recently a Sun Microsystems employee--has joined Google's Android team in part to show the world what he thinks is wrong with Apple's iPhone.

The move puts a personal face on the cultural, technical, and business issues central to Silicon Valley companies. In a blog post titled "Now A No-Evil Zone," Bray said Monday he's in philosophical alignment with Google in general and in opposition to Apple's iPhone specifically.

"The reason I'm here is mostly Android. Which seems to me about as … Read more

More states propose Internet sales taxes

Jeremy Bray received an e-mail message this morning with an unwelcome surprise: Amazon.com told him it had canceled its affiliate program, which provides small payments for referring customers, for everyone in the state of Colorado.

The reason? A state law, which Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter signed last week, slaps onerous new restrictions on large out-of-state sellers like Amazon, which said it has no choice but to end its marketing program in response.

Bray, a blogger who has lived in Pueblo, Colo., for more than 20 years, told CNET on Monday that he's now trying to "bring as … Read more

Apple drops price of Mac Developer Program to $99

The fee to become an Apple Mac developer dropped significantly Thursday to $99. According to Apple the new low cost of membership is in response to the success of the iPhone Developer Program (also $99 per year) and the potential that apps from that platform might crossover to the Mac. Apple had previously sold memberships to the Apple Developer Connection (ADC) Select or Premier programs for $499 and $3,499 respectively.

The newly named Mac Developer Program offers access to Mac OS X prereleases, technical documentation, Xcode 3 and other tools, development videos, member-only developer forums, and two technical code-level … Read more

Apple offers MacBook Repair Extension Program for hard drive issues

Apple is now offering the MacBook Repair Extension Program for hard-drive issues on machines purchased roughly between May 2006 and December 2007. Customers experiencing hard-drive issues should take their machines to an Apple Store or Apple Authorized Reseller to have it diagnosed.… Read more

PHP and Perl crashing the enterprise party

The enterprise has long favored Java and .Net, but PHP and other dynamic programming languages have left their infancies and are rapidly closing the gap on their more stodgy competitors.

That's the message I got from Bart Copeland, CEO of ActiveState, the "dynamic languages company," in a conversation this past week. I wanted to find out how the Vancouver-based "old school" open-source company is faring in building business solutions and developer tools around Perl, Python and Tcl.

Quite well, as it turns out (and as described by Forrester analyst Jeffrey Hammond). But the story is … Read more

Obama ends moon program, endorses private spaceflight

On the seventh anniversary of the Columbia disaster, President Obama unveiled a sweeping change of course for the nation's space program Monday, putting an end to NASA's post-Columbia moon program and shifting development and operation of new rockets and capsules from the government to private industry.

Requesting some $19 billion for NASA in fiscal 2011, the administration announced plans to pump an additional $6 billion into NASA's budget over the next five years to kick-start development of a new commercial manned spaceflight capability, including some $500 million in 2011.

Over that same five years, some $7.8 … Read more