development

Where we're not crying, it's just raining on our faces

EPISODE 31

Today we joke with Natali Del Conte about Valentine's Day, why Facebook is helping people know what's going on with Tennessee tornadoes, the Arrested Development movie in early talks, and unlimited phone plans.

Listen now: Download today's podcast

Microsoft says 'D' language better than 'C' variants

Microsoft is working on a new development language, called 'D,' which will make it easier to model applications, Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet reports.

Her post describes D as a "declarative language aimed at non-developers."

Modeling and end-user programming are big themes in Microsoft's development tools work.

By creating models of applications, developers can speed up their development time and make it easier to deploy and operate those applications once they are live.

End-user programming, a long-held idea, is getting more realistic in the days of mashups where people combine data from different Web feeds onto a … Read more

MySpace to developers: Come play in our sandbox!

As expected, MySpace has announced that it will launch its developer platform on Tuesday morning.

MySpace, which is owned by News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media, is one of the most high-profile social media companies to be working with Google's new OpenSocial standard. All applications for the MySpace Developer Platform will be OpenSocial-compatible with MySpace-specific extensions.

Developers will have access to all public profile data (interests, region, friends' list) and will be able to use JavaScript and HTML as well as ActionScript, which powers Flash applications. Most of the HTML widgets that have become so popular on MySpace profiles … Read more

"Kinder capitalism"? It's called open source, Mr. Gates. You should try it

Bill Gates welcomed the world to a new breed of "kinder capitalism" at Davos this week. Conveniently forgetting his past, Mr. Gates declared:

We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well.

We have. It's called open source. Open source is "kinder" by design, no matter how capitalistically/self-interestedly it is used. Here's why:… Read more

iPhone application development book debuts

Although Apple has yet to release an official SDK (software development kit) for the iPhone, developers have already become proficient at creating native applications for the device using an unofficial toolchain. Presumably many these applications, some of which hold significant value, will be easily transferrable or natively compatible with Apple's official distribution/development scheme. In fact, Apple hired the creator of the first unofficial SDK.

As such, one of the most noted iPhone developers, Jonathan Zdziarski, has written and released a new book dubbed "iPhone Open Application Development" that will be published by O'Reilly. His description: … Read more

Novell developer tool embraces main rival

Novell has endowed its OpenSuse Build Service with the ability to produce software for its main rival, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and a clone called CentOS, the company said Thursday.

The build system was originally established so programmers could make sure their software works on new versions of Novell's Suse Linux products. The build system already worked with two other Linux distributions, Debian and Ubuntu.

Why the largesse from Novell?

My guess is that the company hopes to tow more open-source developers into its orbit, but there are altruistic motives as well: "By adding support to build packages … Read more

Nokia's success tied to emerging markets

What separates the mobile handset winners from the losers? The answer seems to be success in developing markets like China, India, the Middle East, and Africa.

On Thursday Nokia announced that it had sold a record 133.5 million mobile phones during the fourth quarter of 2007. This figure was up by more than a quarter from the same period a year earlier, boosting its overall market share to 40 percent.

Meanwhile, Nokia rival Motorola reported Wednesday that shipments of its handsets had fallen 38 percent during the quarter, pushing its market share down yet again to 12 percent, the … Read more

Salesforce fine-tunes 'per drink' pricing for developers

Salesforce.com on Thursday introduced a cheaper way to access applications written with its Force.com platform and detailed an Eclipse-based development tool.

Right now, the fee to use applications written for Force--Salesforce's hosted development platform--is $50 per user per month for an unlimited amount of time.

The company added another option, in which applications cost $5 per log-in with a maximum of five log-ins per month. This option is meant for applications that are accessed only occasionally, like vacation request programs, said Adam Gross, vice president of developer marketing at the company.

Salesforce also announced enhancements to its … Read more

Yahoo throws weight behind OpenID standard

In one of the most significant moves yet in the growing push toward service interoperability on the Web, tech giant Yahoo announced Thursday that it is supporting the OpenID 2.0 standard for a universal Internet log-in.

No matter what your views of Yahoo's current stability may be, this is undoubtedly a big victory for OpenID. Not so long ago, the protocol was considered a dot-com/futurist pipe dream. OpenID was created by Web 2.0 guru Brad Fitzpatrick, who founded LiveJournal and was brought on board at Google last year as one of the most prominent players in … Read more