Programming

Those who've bought the low-cost Samsung Chromebook will be able to watch Netflix streaming video -- at some point.

"We are collaborating with Google on a solution for ARM-based Chromebooks," said Netflix spokesman Joris Evers last night.

He didn't share details on the company's schedule or its technical approach to bringing its service to Chrome OS, Google's browser-based operating system.

Most Web apps work just fine on the $249 Samsung Chromebook even though it has a Samsung ARM processor rather than the x86 chip found in all other computers running Google's Chrome OS. … Read more

By some measures, over a million iOS apps have been developed by this point, and Apple reports over 40 billion total app downloads from the App Store. Yet there are some indicators that developers are becoming less interested in continuing to push out more grist for the Apple app mill.

According to data from Freelancer.com (PDF), which maintains the biggest online outsourcing marketplace in the world with 4 million job postings and 7 million users, iOS development job postings dropped in the final quarter of 2012 for the first time ever. iPhone jobs dropped 3.8 percent to 5,… Read more

Google has released a new beta of its Chrome browser for Android that gives people the option to try new features such as WebGL and CSS graphics features.

The update, the third since the inaugural version of the Chrome beta for Android, shows not only more of the browser team's ambition but also a faster pace of change.

The unbranded stock browser that shipped with Android for years moved comparatively glacially, but in particular with the new Chrome beta releases for Android, Google is pushing for a broader feature set. And the code base is evidently an offshoot of … Read more

He stopped well short of saying information wants to be free, but Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the World Wide Web, said today the world would be better with some judicious liberation.

Speaking at the 2013 World Economic Forum today in Davos, Switzerland, Berners-Lee called on social-networking sites, academics, musicians, and governments to share more information online.

In earlier days of computing, people had full control over their own information because it was all stored on their own computer in front of them. Now, people store data with online services that deprive them of that control.

"They put their … Read more

Google has finished a version of its Native Client programming technology that extends beyond mainstream x86 PC processors into the world of ARM chips.

Native Client, or NaCl for short, is designed to let programmers easily adapt the C or C++ software they've written for native software so that it can run as a part of Web apps, too. It's designed for high performance, but it's also got security mechanisms built in to counter the risks of running malicious code directly on the processor. The first version of NaCl, though, only worked on personal computers using Intel … Read more

Microsoft has made available for download its software development kit (SDK) for Windows Phone 7.8.

Officials shared download links and more information on January 22.

Microsoft officials still are not saying when the actual Windows Phone 7.8 operating system will be made available to those with existing Windows Phones. The only official guidance was that it would be in early 2013. The 7.8 operating system already is shipping on new Windows Phones.

Windows Phone 7.8 brings the resizable live tiles that are part of the Windows Phone 8 operating system to some, but not all, existing … Read more

After a fractious false start last year, Web standards makers will reconvene in Orlando, Fla., this March to try to settle a debate about the best video technology for browser-based chatting.

The Web-based chat standard, which holds the potential to bring Skype-like audio and video communication services to the Web, is called WebRTC. The debate about it centers on how best to compress video: the widely used industry-standard H.264 codec, or Google's royalty-free, open-source VP8 codec?

The discussion took some surprising twists and turns late last year -- including Google's last-minute action to postpone discussion because of … Read more

A small Spanish startup called GeeksPhone has started selling phones that let developers get a taste of Mozilla's new Firefox OS.

GeeksPhone announced two 3G phones for the browser-based operating system, the lower-end Keon and higher-end Peak. The phones, while geared for programmers rather than mainstream customers, make Mozilla's open-source mobile OS a lot more real, since programmers will be able to develop apps as well as to debug and advance the underlying operating system.

Firefox OS is Mozilla's ambitious attempt to build an operating system that brings more openness to the walled gardens of Apple's … Read more

Sometimes code speaks louder than words.

That's why Microsoft today published software demonstrating its own proposal for a Web standard enabling browser-based audio and video chat. In the demo, the CU-RTC-Web (Customizable, Ubiquitous Real-Time Communication) technology is used to set up a real-time voice communication link between Chrome on Mac and IE10 on Windows.

Microsoft has an uphill battle getting CU-RTC-Web to catch on: it showed up late to the game, well after the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) began work standardizing a different approach called WebRTC.

But Microsoft thinks its own proposal … Read more