Ruby

HTC Amaze 4G and Holiday poised to push Android boundaries

A pair of unannounced high-powered HTC phones were spied in the wild over the long weekend, tipping the hands of both AT&T and T-Mobile. Featuring cutting-edge hardware specifications, the HTC Holiday and HTC Amaze 4G should find themselves near the top of the smartphone food chain later this year.

T-Mobile customers will have their choice of two super phones come October 26, according to rumors out of TmoNews. Not only does the Samsung Galaxy S II make its long-awaited debut, but also HTC is set to offer an equally powerful Amaze 4G on the same day.

Also known … Read more

Robot does Rubik's Cube in 10 secs, claims crown

Robots are quickly catching up to humans in rapidly solving Rubik's Cubes, with an Australian machine now completing the puzzle in just over 10 seconds.

Ruby, developed by students at Swinburne University of Technology, can solve a scrambled cube in 10.18 seconds including scan time, which the university says is the fastest speed in the world for a robot.

The students want to apply for a Guinness World Record, but other machines may challenge the claim. CubeStormer, a Lego-built speed solver, appears to solve a cube in 9.2 seconds in this video.

Another machine developed at UC Berkeley appears to solve the cube in 6 seconds in this video, but it's unclear if that includes the time needed to analyze the puzzle before solving it. … Read more

FlyRuby aims to make booking a private jet easier

PALM DESERT, Calif.--If you're going to spend the cash to charter a private jet, shouldn't it be easy to book the plane?

You would think the industry would simplify things for the wealthy, but that's not the case, according to start-up FlyRuby, which unveiled its service at the Demo Spring conference here today. Indeed, company CEO Michael Leek says that it can often take hours to figure out a suitable private plane charter between two cities. And that's just not efficient.

That's where FlyRuby comes in, Leek said. A former U.S. Marine with … Read more

The 404 644: Where we play Angry Birds while waiting for BioShock Infinite (podcast )

Brace yourself for a lot of video game news on today's episode of The 404 Podcast as we discuss Wilson's obsession with throwing pigs at cats, Street Fighter experts offering lessons for $50 an hour, Rage running on an Apple iPhone, and BioShock Infinite!

Fresh off the success of this year's BioShock 2, the creators of the original game just announced a complete reimagining of the franchise in the form of BioShock Infinite. The original BioShock enjoyed countless game of the year awards, thanks to its creative storytelling. Ken Levine, creative director at Irrational Games, tells us … Read more

The 404 643: Where we stick an Android in our PSP (podcast )

We rarely invite guests to join us on the show, but anyone who listens to The 404 Podcast knows that we're suckers for sweet treats, especially the homemade kind hand-delivered by a cute girl!

Ruby Liza, a dedicated 404 listener and aspiring librarian, joins us on today's episode and brings us a box of lemon bars to munch on while we discuss the war between books and e-book readers, a Sony Ericsson PSP powered by Android 3.0, a study that shows women are attracted to men wearing red, and a French rapper who turns Facebook into a real-life music video.

Google released Android 2.0 less than a year ago, but rumors are already floating around about what the next version, code-named Gingerbread, will bring to the world of Google-powered devices. The folks over at Engadget report insider information about a new Sony Ericsson device that could redefine gaming on the mobile platform.

In fact, it claims a "trusted source" says the company is developing a brand new ecosystem and hardware that will run on Android 3.0, with a new section of the Android Market dedicated to its games. The black and silver phone is supersexy indeed, with a large WVGA display and a landscape sliding design in place of a keyboard. We'll come back to it when there's more to report.

A study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology shows that women are more attracted to a man wearing the color red. Apparently the cherry color draws women because of its capability to make men appear more powerful and likely to succeed, and that ambition to climb the social ladder and become the "alpha male" triggers a biological reaction in women that makes them "act like animals."

To quantify the red effect, researchers interviewed hundreds of participants to determine trends, but we're wondering if women like red only because it's more distinguishable than the rest of the colors. Also, is it a bad sign that none of us even owns any all-red clothing?

Instead of showing you the awful French music video that Wilson dug up, we'd like to thank our buddy Todd for sending us pictures of his 404-powered motorcycle! His Honda CBR600RR is all decked out in 404 stickers to match his race number! Check out his bike cam video from last year, and be sure to click through the page break to see pics! Thanks again, Todd- ride safe!… Read more

Three-year-old stages solo photo exhibition

Most professional photographers don't get to hold a solo exhibition till they've reached a pinnacle in their career. However, 3-year-old Ruby Ellenby is headlining the news with her first photo exhibition at Moshi Moshi, a restaurant in San Francisco.

It helps that Ellenby's parents are photographers themselves. The little tot picked up a camera six months ago and started shooting with it. She uses a compact digital camera, wanders around with her folks and snaps scenes that capture her attention. A lady who bought four of her photos marveled at Ellenby's perspective and "ability to … Read more

The 404 Yuletide Mini-sode: Where The 404 is the Fifth Element

Welcome back to another Yuletide Mini-sode of CNET's The 404 Podcast. We'll be keeping you company all season with fresh episodes, year-end wrap-ups, CES 2010 previews, and much more!

Today's special holiday edition of The 404 is dedicated to The Fifth Element, easily one of our favorite movies of all time. From the epic vision of the distant future to the colorful characters and of course the operatic techno scene, this movie retains its entertainment value after almost 13 years.

To celebrate, we run off a list of our favorite scenes and quotes from the movie, then play a quick game of trivia. For example, did you know that Ruby Rhod wasn't supposed to be the original name for Chris Tucker's character? It was actually Loc Rhod! The original name appears in the script and the movie novelization.

Lots more to talk about, so check out the show and keep it hot hot HOT!

Yuletide Mini-sode - The Fifth Element Subscribe in iTunes audio | Suscribe to iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

A modern approach to Java application development

With Java investments in the billions over the last dozen years, it's a safe bet that enterprise companies won't be replacing these systems any time soon. In fact, one could claim Java usage is growing in spite of best efforts to claim otherwise by aficionados of Ruby, PHP, Python, Groovy, Scala, and other dynamic languages.

Red Hat for example reports that its JBoss Java middleware is its fastest growing business. IBM remains heavily invested in its WebSphere Java middleware. And let's not forget Oracle, which not only has the Sun brand (and ergo Java) pending but last year added BEA to the fold.

Java application platforms have been so focused on scalability and efficiency of database-driven applications that they've often ignored what's evolved in the consumer Web: rich user environments, better interactivity, and a mixing of content and data, collaboration and social features--all with much more personal control and empowerment. Efforts like JavaFX have been interesting if not ready for prime time.

But Java is hardly irrelevant, and Benjamin Mestrallet, founder and CEO of eXo Platform, thinks he can change exactly the perception that Java can't be Web 2.0 hip. eXo, which just opened its first U.S. office, is hoping to remake Java from stodgy to socially aware by combining powerful REST-based common services with rich Web 2.0 apps to get the most out of so-called legacy Java apps.

eXo counts a number of very smart people with deep Java roots in their court to make this happen including: Bob Bickel, a founder of Bluestone Software, former head of HP Middleware and former JBoss head of strategy; Edwin Khodabakchian, founder of Collaxa and former VP of Product Management at Oracle; and Sacha Labourey, longtime JBoss CTO and former co-GM of Red Hat Middleware. … Read more

Jruby powers Gilt.com luxury shopping

JRuby is a relatively new high-performance Java implementation of the Ruby language that is showing increasing popularity among Java developers looking for additional productive frameworks.

JRuby allows for the incremental adoption of the Ruby language by allowing easy integration with existing Java libraries. It also lets Ruby and Rails applications to run easily on existing Java application servers that have been selected as standards within an organization.

I've been somewhat dismissive of Ruby as a language but there are more and more examples of large websites running extremely well. In fact RubyConf (already sold out) and JRubyConf are both seeing significant interest from developers for the upcoming events in San Francisco.

In the Q&A below I discuss how Jruby powers shopping site Gilt.com with CTO and co-founder Michael Bryzek.

If you are not familiar, Gilt Groupe has an interesting business model, somewhere between eBay and Woot, offering invitation-only sales of high-end fashion and luxury brands for men, women, and children. The site deals with unique spikes in traffic when new items are released as well as when an item becomes extremely popular. Accordingly, the IT infrastructure needs to be able to scale and burst in order to meet customer demands. … Read more