With a project called Closure Tools, Google plans on Thursday to start helping developers who aspire to match the company's proficiency in creating Web sites and Web applications.
Google is a strong proponent of using JavaScript to write Web-based programs, part of its Web-centric ethos. Indeed, the company has pushed the language to its limits with services such as Gmail and Google Docs, and it developed its Chrome browser in part to enable JavaScript programs to run faster.
But writing, debugging, and optimizing heavy-duty JavaScript can be difficult--in part because a given JavaScript program sometimes works differently on different browsers. Google's open-source Closure Tools project is an attempt to help with some of these challenges.
The first in the suite of tools is the Closure Compiler, a software package designed to boil down a JavaScript program so it's smaller and runs faster. For example, a function named DisplayAddress() could be replaced with just a().
Along with the compiler come some extra tools that run in the Firefox browser. One, Closure Inspector, is an extension for Firefox's Firebug add-on designed to help programmers understand and debug the rewritten JavaScript--linking a() back to DisplayAddress(), for example. Another add-on for the Google Page Speed extension lets programmers see how much the compiler helped.
Google also plans to make the compiler available as a Web application hosted on its Google App Engine service.
The second element is called the Closure Library, a collection of prebuilt JavaScript code that lets programmers handle relatively sophisticated technology--arrays and string manipulation, for example.
Last are Closure Templates, more prewritten code to ease creation of JavaScript and HTML user interfaces.
In an earlier era, programming tools were expensive packages bought by a select few, but open-source software, new marketing strategies, and new business methods have made that approach the exception rather than the rule these days. Now programming tools are often a means to another end--encouraging programmers to produce the software that will make Windows or the Palm Pre useful and therefore popular, for example.
In Google's case, the objective is often to make the Web more popular because it sees more activity on the Web as corresponding directly with more activity on its revenue-generating search site. Among the high-profile projects to this end are Chrome, Chrome OS, and Android, all subsidized by Google's powerful search-advertising business.
One interesting contrast to Closure is another Google project called Google Web Toolkit. It's designed to accomplish some of the same goals as Closure, including paving over browser incompatibilities and producing high-performance JavaScript. But with GWT, coders write programs in Java that gets translated into JavaScript.
So one last question: why the name?
Google's reply: "Being a functional language, the concept of a function closure is fundamental to the JavaScript language."
Dell is closing its desktop PC manufacturing plant in Winston-Salem, N.C.
The cost-cutting move will ax 905 jobs, with 600 workers set to be laid off in November and the rest in January, Dell said Wednesday.
"This is a difficult decision, especially for our North Carolina colleagues, but a necessary one for Dell customers and our company," Frank Miller, vice president of Dell's Public Business Unit Supply Chain, said in a statement.
Dell had announced some layoffs at the North Carolina plant in March but gave no indication that the plant itself might be in danger of shutting down.
This plant closure is just the latest in a series of efforts by Dell to shrink expenses worldwide by billions of dollars.
In 2007, the company said it would lay off 8,800 employees, or 10 percent of its global workforce. However, the company modified that number last year, cautioning workers to expect even deeper cuts.
Over the past few years, employees in Canada, Ireland, and, of course, the U.S. have gotten pink slips.
The appetite of consumers toward laptops over desktops was a factor behind the decision to close the North Carolina plant, which opened four years ago. Last year, Dell shut down its desktop manufacturing plant in Austin, Texas.
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A Securities and Exchange Commission filing has revealed Blockbuster's plans to close up to 960 retail store locations by the end of 2010 as it attempts to makes its operation more financially stable.
According to the company's filing, it plans to close all unprofitable stores, while refocusing its efforts "to improve four-wall profitability." To do so, the company first analyzed its over 7,000 stores to determine if they were profitable or not. A whopping 18 percent of Blockbuster's stores are unprofitable. The remaining stores are profitable.
Prior to making the decision to close some of its unprofitable locations, Blockbuster planned to close 280 to 300 stores as part of a grouping it calls, "normal closures." Stores added to the "accelerated closures" category will also be closed by the end of this year. According to Blockbuster, the number of accelerated closures will equal 300 to 385 locations.
Next year will be a slightly less active year for store closures. Blockbuster indicated in its SEC filing that 2010 will bring 100 to 125 normal closures and 130 to 150 accelerated closures. By the end of 2010, it expects to have closed 810 to 960 retail locations.
As troubling as that might sound, Blockbuster spokesperson Randy Hargrove said in a phone conversation that a certain amount of measured skepticism should be exercised. According to Hargrove, these figures are not guaranteed.
"All these stores are candidate stores," Hargrove said. "Although we may in fact close that many stores, if we can renegotiate leases or remodel stores to make them more profitable, that number might go down."
But Blockbuster's closure story doesn't quite end there. Further down in the filing, Blockbuster indicated that 275 to 300 stores are subject to the company's "lease mitigation/termination efforts." Another 250 to 300 stores might be converted into outlets. If successful, that would bring Blockbuster's grand total of rental store closures to 1,335 to 1,560, or up to about 22 percent of all the stores currently in operation.
... Read moreDon Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
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