Gregarius » tech

Feeds

12267 items (3743 unread) in 45 feeds

• Google App Engine Blog (1 unread)
• The Django weblog

Daily (3 unread)

• The Hacktory -
• The Big Picture (1 unread)
• SparkFun Electronics - New Products (1 unread)
• PassiveAggressiveNotes.com (1 unread)

Android (44 unread)

• Android and Me (11 unread)
• Android Phone Fans (23 unread)
• AndroidGuys (10 unread)

news (80 unread)

• the INQUIRER (3 unread)
• The Register (32 unread)
• Ars Technica (18 unread)
• DailyTech Main News Feed (7 unread)
• Netcraft
• The Tech Report: News (4 unread)
• The Tech Report: Articles
• Consumerist (13 unread)
• Phoronix (2 unread)
• Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories (1 unread)
• pfSense Digest

tech (77 unread)

• AnandTech Article Channel (4 unread)
• TechCrunch (32 unread)
• hack a day (6 unread)
• information aesthetics (1 unread)
• ReadWriteWeb (23 unread)
• Semiaccurate.com recent articles (11 unread)
• PC Perspective Articles Feed

gadgets (52 unread)

• Cool Tools (2 unread)
• The Verge - All Posts (50 unread)

slashdot (228 unread)

• Slashdot (228 unread)

comics (25 unread)

• xkcd.com (7 unread)
• The Oatmeal - Comics, Quizzes, & Stories (2 unread)
• Natalie Dee (16 unread)
• Hyperbole and a Half

finance (91 unread)

• The Big Picture (91 unread)

vmware (29 unread)

• VROOM! Blog (3 unread)
• blog.scottlowe.org (13 unread)
• The SLOG - SimonLong/Blog (4 unread)
• Virtual Geek (9 unread)

games (88 unread)

• Zero Punctuation (88 unread)

home (322 unread)

• Toolspotting
• The Hardware Aisle (138 unread)
• Toolmonger: The Week In Tools (184 unread)

MAKE (2703 unread)

• MAKE Magazine (2703 unread)

woodworking

• Rockler Woodworking Blog

tech (77 unread)

• February 01, 2012
• 14:29

  Physics hardware makes Kepler/GK104 fast

  Nvidia's Kepler/GK104 chip has an interesting secret, a claimed Ageia PhysX hardware block that really isn't.
• February 02, 2012
• 13:24

  AMD opens up Bobcat to 3rd party IP

  Updated: Mark Papermaster just confirmed what SemiAccurate has been saying for years, AMD is opening up Bobcat to 3rd party IP.
• 13:57

  AMD outs new client code names

  AMD is talking about client and graphics now, with a few new code names outed.
• 14:16

  Three new Piledriver server code names surface

  AMD is now talking server roadmaps, and another crop of new names is revealed.
• 14:24

  More details about some new AMD cores

  In case you haven't been paying attention, it is roadmap season at AMD, and now it is Desktop CPU time.
• February 03, 2012
• 9:37

  Is Intel about to lose in the Ultrabook market?

  Much has been said about Intel’s new Ultrabook form factor.
• February 06, 2012
• 7:14

  How big is the Kepler/GK104 die?

  There are a bunch of rumors floating about GK104/Kepler, but nothing concrete on the physical chip.
• 7:28

  Why did AMD drop two cores from server chips?

  A lot of people are in a tizzy because AMD has changed the upcoming Seoul CPU from 10 to 8 cores.

• February 07, 2012
• 2:00

  AMD Announces Turks Based FirePro V3900

  While AMD’s consumer GPU division is well into its deployment of their first 28nm products, the long validation and certification period for business hardware means that AMD’s business GPU division is still in the process of wrapping up the last of their 40nm product launches. In November AMD launched the Turks based FirePro V4900, and today they’re launching the final member of the current generation FirePro product stack: the FirePro V3900.

  	AMD FirePro V7900	AMD FirePro V5900	AMD FirePro V4900	AMD FirePro V3900
  Stream Processors	1280	512	480	480
  Texture Units	80	32	24	24
  ROPs	32	32	8	8
  Core Clock	725MHz	600MHz	800MHz	650MHz
  Memory Clock	1.25GHz (5GHz data rate) GDDR5	500MHz (2GHz data rate) GDDR5	1GHz (4GHz data rate) GDDR5	900MHz (1.8GHz data rate) DDR3
  Memory Bus Width	256-bit	256-bit	128-bit	128-bit
  VRAM	2GB	2GB	1GB	1GB
  FP64	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
  Transistor Count	2.64B	2.64B	716M	716M
  TDP	<150W	<75W	<75W	<50W
  Manufacturing Process	TSMC 40nm	TSMC 40nm	TSMC 40nm	TSMC 40nm
  Price Point	N/A	N/A	$189	$119

  If the FirePro V4900 was a business version of the Radeon HD 6670, then the FirePro V3900 is a business version of the Radeon HD 6570 DDR3. Clocked at 650MHz and coupled with 1GB of 900MHz DDR3, the hardware specs are identical to the DDR3 version of the Radeon HD 6570.

  For this reason the FirePro V3900 compares to the V4900 in much the same way the 6570 and 6670 do. While the V3900 has a lower core clock (650MHz vs. 800MHz), it’s otherwise a fully functional Turks GPU just like the V4900. The bigger reason for their performance difference is that while the V4900 uses GDDR5, the V3900 uses DDR3, giving it less than half the memory bandwidth and a similar overall performance drop compared to the V4900.

  

  Of course the tradeoff for this drop in performance is size and power consumption. While the V4900 was a full profile card rated for 75W the V3900 is a low-profile card rated for 50W, with most of those power savings coming from switching out GDDR5 for DDR3. This makes the V3900 unique in that it’s the only low-profile FirePro card in AMD’s lineup – though it should be noted that for compatibility purposes it will be shipping with its full-profile bracket installed while the low-profile bracket will be in the box.

  AMD will be releasing the V3900 today, with a price of $119. This positions it directly against NVIDIA’s GT216 based Quadro 400, and roughly $50 below NVIDIA’s GF108 based Quadro 600. For the V3900 AMD will be heavily leaning upon the fact that Turks can drive 5 monitors. However as with the V4900 this feature is effectively MIA until DisplayPort MST hubs ship this summer, as without the hub the card can only drive up to 2 monitors via its DP 1.2 and DL-DVI ports.

  More immediately, on paper the V3900 should be far more powerful than the architecturally ancient Quadro 400. But as this is the professional market AMD’s real competition is NVIDIA’s certification and support, more so than their performance at any given price.

  On that note, since AMD already launched a Turks based FirePro last year the certification process should be rather straightforward. Products (rather than GPUs) are individually certified, but as AMD already worked out any Turks driver kinks for the V4900 there shouldn’t be any surprises in store for the V3900.

  Finally, it’s interesting to note that with this launch AMD has effectively committed to keeping Turks around for quite some time. AMD’s 3 year FirePro lifecycle means that the V3900 will be available until at least February of 2015, some 4 years after the first Turks products launched. Given Turks’ continual recurrence through 2012 in OEM laptops, desktops, and now professional cards, it’s clear that it’s living up to its position of being AMD’s low cost, high volume anchor GPU for the 40nm generation.

• 7:04

  [Infographic] History of Mobile App Stores

  The rise of the app store has fundamentally changed the concept of software delivery. Gone are the days when zealous software companies sent users discs in the mail (oh, AOL, we remember you well) that ended up making better coasters than promotion. Many computers these days do not even ship with a CD-ROM drive and smartphones have never seen any type of physical downloads. The delivery mechanism of the application store is an often-overlooked revolution of the mobile era.

  A Croatian startup named ShoutEm that provides a platform for iOS and Android app creation created a timeline infographic of the history of the mobile app store. Starting in 2008 with the advent of Apple's App Store, the game has fundamentally changed. Check it out below.

  Sponsor
  

  The Apple App Store launched in July 2008, a year after the first iPhone was released. It had 500 apps and, to many, was a revelation. It also signaled the dominance of the native mobile application. 10 million applications were downloaded in the first weekend.

  The Android Market launched a couple months later in October and had 50 apps to start.

  Research In Motion was not far behind, announcing BlackBerry App World at its developers' conference in October 2008 and accepting submissions from developers in early 2009. Nokia's Ovi Store opened in 2009, starting its short-lived run as the No. 2 global app store behind Apple's trailblazer.

  The Windows Phone Marketplace launched in late October 2010. By July 2011 it had nearly 30,000 apps. As of Jan. 2012, it has almost 50,000. The BlackBerry App World had about 37,000 at the end of July 2011.

  Apple reached the 100,000 app mark first, a little more than a year after launch, in November 2009. Skipping ahead, the Android Market hit 200,000 in early 2011 and nearly doubled its developer output through the remainder of the year. As of now, the Market has about 400,000 apps available while iOS has nearly 550,000.

  Check out the timeline below. It ends in Aug. 2011 but we know the history since. The Ovi Store is in decline as Nokia gradually phases out the Symbian series, BlackBerry is in flux and awaiting new devices and trying to spur developers in to creating apps for the platform again while iOS and Android maintain exponential growth.

  See the timeline on ShoutEm's blog here.

  
  

  Discuss

  
  

  

• 7:23

  GK110 tapes out at last

  With the size of GK104 now pretty settled, what about the big one?
• 7:50

  Fabless Works for AMD

  There have been a lot of stories lately about AMD’s future. One rather overlooked story is how AMD is moving forward with its fabless supply chain strategy.

• 10:30

  Brands Will Spend $10 million On Promoted Tweets By Super Bowl LI

  Five years from now brands could spend $10 million on promoted tweets during the Super Bowl, according to an industry observer.

  But first, brands need to learn how to use Twitter and avoid Sunday night's Toyota disaster, in which the car maker ended up spamming people who used game-related hash tags.

  Sponsor
  

  "It makes complete sense that the most watched television event will also turn into the most talked about subject on social media," said Dave Kerpen, CEO and co-founder of Likeable Media. "If I'm a brand, I definitely want to be part of that conversation."

  The $10 million figure is about 10% of the total spent on television advertising during this year's game, Kerpen said.

  We reached out to Toyota and several people at Twitter on Monday asking what guidance, if any, the company gives to advertisers and brands using the service as part of a marketing campaign. So far, we haven't heard back but will update if we do.

  Toyota is just the latest in a long-line of Twitter miscues by brands, many of which were covered by Robyn Tippins last week. Several verified Twitter accounts, including @CamryEffect, used LocalResponse to invite people discussing the game on Super Bowl-related hashtags like #SB46 to enter a contest to win a Camry.

  LocalResponse is a program that lets users respond to tweets in real-time, but in this case, the response was overdone and many users who had expressed no interest in Toyota or the campaign. Because the Toyota accounts were verified by Twitter, the implication was that the aggressive marketing was condoned by the microblogging site.

  "While such programs are certainly helpful, it's always better to respond to mentions personally," Kerpen said. "A personalized, spam free message makes a big difference in engaging with consumers."

  Discuss

  
  

  
• 11:30

  Microsoft, 24/7 Want To Better Serve Your Customers

  In a world envisioned by a partnership between Microsoft and 24/7 Inc. announced on Tuesday, you'll someday receive a text message that your flight has been canceled, call a customer service number and be able to view flight options on your tablet as you discuss rebooking your travel with the customer service agent on the other end of the line.

  It seems pretty basic, considering all that we're capable of doing in tech. But as anyone who has been put on hold for tech support, received a robo-call about suspicious activity on their credit card, or tried to deal with sudden travel changes can attest, dealing with customer service still seems to be stuck very much in the pre-Internet age.

  Sponsor
  

  That's where the Microsoft and 24/7 partnership comes in. Together, they will develop a Predictive Experience (PX) paltform capable of handling 2.5 billion online and telephone customer service interactions each year.

  "From speech to touch to gestures, consumers expect and demand more natural and intuitive ways to interact with technology," Zig Serafin, general manager of the Online Services Division at Microsoft, said in a statement. "This same demand will change how consumers interact with businesses, and it creates an inflection point for how people will expect businesses to provide customer service. "

  The firms say not only will they help companies link customer service over multiple platforms, but they'll help companies figure out what your preferred platform is and make it easier for you to get the fixes you need.

  "All of us are quickly coming to expect companies to communicate with us in proactive, more natural and intuitive ways, and on the devices we use in our daily lives," Serafin wrote about the deal on Microsoft's official blog. "We should expect businesses to reach out to us when we need service, and to do so in a way that anticipates how we want to be communicated with; whether that's through our smartphone, our PC or through our TV if we happen to be in the living room."

  Of course the deal isn't all about altruistic good will to consumers: the market for customer service applications like the ones proposed by Microsoft and 24/7 is huge and expected to grow. The announcement also follows a long-building trend of Microsoft working to offer more, specialized B2B solutions.

  The deal also includes the shuffling of some Microsoft employees, as well as Micrsoft taking an unspecified ownership stake in 24-7, according to ZDNet.

  Discuss

  
  

  

• 11:40

  Nokia Announces White Lumia 800

  

  Nokia announced today that their first Windows phone, the Lumia 800 (our review), will be available in white later this month. The initial lineup included three color options: black, cyan (blue-ish), and magenta (red-ish). The white version is internally identical to the other colors, which means 1.4GHz single-core Qualcomm Snapdragon, Adreno 205 GPU, 512MB of RAM and 16GB of built-in NAND. At first it will be available in Europe, but other continents will follow.

  
  Lumia 800 lineup

  White has proven to be an exceptionally difficult color for smart phones. In the case of the Lumia 800, the chassis has not been painted like phones often are, but the actual plastic (polycarbonate if you prefer that name) has been dyed white. The advantage is that there is no paint to wear out and scratches won't reveal a different color either. This isn't the only problem unfortunately. The material must be designed so that light cannot penetrate it as that might cause problems with the internal components. It was speculated that the white iPhone 4 was delayed because of light leakage, though obviously we don't know the real reason behind the delay. Moreover, white is relatively hard to keep white over time (remember "White" MacBooks), so for example heating up could cause chemical reactions that change the color slightly.

  Regardless of the difficulties with white casings, the Lumia 800 will offer that option. We'll see how it fares over time, but there are certainly a lot of people interested in a white phone, so having more choices is generally a good thing.

• 11:57

  BREAKING: SV’s Sagest Soothsayers Sport Sassy Socks (Plus A Contest)

  If you're just waking up out of your post Super Bowl stupor, a crumble of Doritos dusting your chest and beer cans littering the coffee table, floor, and dog, you'll be excused for not knowing that all the greatest entrepreneurs in the world (and Om Malik) are wearing colorful socks. See, apparently dudes in the Valley wear sassy socks. It's something that's done. But why? Well, apparently wearing colorful socks helps you stand out in the dressed-down, always-on, loosey-goosey, fancy-dancing world of Silicon Valley. In a land where no one can see your bespoke suit with working cuff buttons, how are you supposed to show your power? With socks, people. With socks. In fact, fancy socks are like a gang sign.
• 12:00

  Kleiner Perkins Debuts First Engineering Fellows Class

  Last year, venture firm Kleiner Perkins debuted its plans for a summer internship program to place top engineering talent from colleges at the firm's portfolio companies. The benefit is two-fold: students get to work at the startup level, are mentored (and have the prestige of Kleiner Perkins on their resume) and startups get access to young engineering talent. Today, Kleiner is debuting the first inaugural class of the fellow program. As Kleiner explains, the goal of the paid fellowship is to give engineering students the experience of working on tough technical problems at startups. Fellows are placed at Kleiner portfolio startups and are also invited to exclusive events at Twitter and Zynga, where they can network.

• 12:01

  Circuit Playground – An electronics reference app from Adafruit

  It’s not everyday that we review software around here, but the folks at Adafruit recently put together an iOS app that I figured might be of interest. Their iPad/iPhone compatible application is called “Circuit Playground”, and it includes all sorts of handy electronics reference tools. For the context of this review, it should be noted [...]

• 12:25

  With Speeksy, Facebook Users Can Meet New People (Just Don’t Call It “Online Dating!”)

  How do you meet new people in today's digital age, without over-exposing yourself the creeps, trolls and spammers? The answer, perhaps, is build a social service on top of Facebook, leveraging your network, your friends of friends and shared interests to form connections with people you don't know. That's what the new startup Speeksy is doing. The service is virtualizing the experience of going out to a bar or nightclub by offering an online venue where users can interact, message each other and video chat, while bonding over their shared music playlists.

• 12:32

  Infographic: ShutterStock Reaches 200 Million Image Downloads

  Shutterstock.com claims it is the first such venture to reach a total of 200 million downloads of licensed images of stock photography, vector graphics and other illustrations. "Searching the word 'networking' used to return images of handshakes and business contacts; now it's all about online social networking," says Jon Oringer, Founder and CEO of the company.

  Sponsor
  

  Yes, images about cats lead the way, no surprise with over 400,000 downloads, surpassing "only" 79,000 downloads of last year's Royal Wedding. But what is interesting is that vector graphic downloads are on the increase, and vintage images are also up. Who knew the Internets could be so nostalgic?

  

  Shutterstock has been providing licensed images to businesses, agencies and media organizations since 2004 and has more than 17 million images online.

  Disclosure: ReadWriteWeb uses Shutterstock for some of its post illustrations.

  Discuss

  
  

  

• 12:40

  Google Chrome Is Now Available For Android (And It’s Fantastic)

  If you have one of the few Android devices currently running Ice Cream Sandwich, then you're going to love this post. The rest of you, including those of you on iOS, will have to gaze longingly for a while. Because Chrome just landed on Android. It's faster. It syncs everything (provided you want it to). It has nifty transition effects and a more intuitive system for jumping between tabs. And it's also loaded with potential. Google's Chrome browser, which has skyrocketed to popularity since its debut in 2008 and consistently gets top marks for being the fastest browser in town, has long been strangely absent from Android. To be clear, Android has always shipped with a browser of its own — and it actually shares much of the same codebase with Chrome, including the V8 JavaScript engine. But next to the real Chrome, it's a clear wannabe. After using it for a day, I really have no intention of using the older browser again.
• 12:44

  YippieMove Wants To Become The Twilio Of Email Migration

  One of the more annoying aspects of starting a new jobs recently was switching email accounts — I tried figure out an easy way to transfer messages and contacts, but after a few minutes of fumbling around with my email client, I gave up, forwarded a few key messages, and then set to work rebuilding my contact list (mostly) from scratch. In other words, I could really have used something like YippieMove, a product from startup WireLoad that promises to make the email migration process as easy as possible. You just enter your account details (the company supports more than 100 email providers — co-founder and CEO Viktor Petersson says it should work with pretty much any email service that uses IMAP) and YippieMove handles the rest of the process, no software installation or constant babysitting required.

• 12:45

  Google Releases Chrome For Android

  

  It has finally happened; Google has officially released Chrome for Android. In typical Google fashion, the browser is currently in beta and requires Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich to run.

  Chrome for Android has been designed from the ground-up for mobile devices with focus on speed and simplicity and a lot of the features from the desktop version have made their way into the Android version.

  Some of the main features include a minimalist UI optimized for smaller screens and support for intuitive gestures such as flip and swipe to manage an unlimited numbers of tabs. Google compares this to holding a pack of cards in your hands, but I doubt it would be the same for a 10” tablet.

  Of course, Chrome for Android also inherits the same speed and performance from its desktop sibling with super-smooth scrolling, background loading of top search results and some other under-the-hood tweaks for a speedy browsing experience on your mobile device.

  To get an idea of how Chrome for Android compares relative to other Android browsers, we've run some quick SunSpider tests on a Motorola Xoom running Android 4.0.3:

  

  As with the desktop versions, Chrome trails Firefox in raw SunSpider speed, though of course it should be noted that Chrome is a freshly-released beta and Firefox for Android has had a few product cycles to mature. Chrome is also slightly slower than the stock Android browser, but the same footnote applies - Chrome for Android is still a work in progress.

  Chrome for Android also features the Incognito mode and as Google calls it, some “fine-grained” privacy options. Some other nifty features include Link Preview, which makes selecting the right link easier on a cluttered page.

  The sync feature is an attempt by Google to unify your browsing sessions at home and on your mobile devices. There an option to view the open tabs on your desktop and even get autocomplete suggestions for the most visited websites on your computer, displayed right on your phone or tablet. Bookmark syncing is obviously a given. While these features are extremely handy, I see potential for abuse in every single one of them, especially if you lose your phone.

  Android for Chrome is now available on the Android Market, and as usual, Google would greatly appreciate your feedback. We will follow up with a more in-depth benchmark run soon.

  Update:

  Some further testing on one of our Galaxy Nexii running 4.0.4 reveals that in some cases the version of V8 bundled in Chrome for Android winds up being slightly faster than that of the stock browser application. This is quite possibly due to the different instruction sets supported between Tegra 2 on the Xoom as shown above and OMAP4460 in the Galaxy Nexus, the largest difference being inclusion of NEON.

  

  Interestingly enough, Chrome for Android also includes an about pane that includes the JavaScript V8 version - 3.6.6.18, and WebKit version - 535.7, which is the same version of WebKit as the stable branch of desktop chrome runs. In addition, this marks the first time that I've seen Android running a newer version of WebKit than iOS, which as of 5.0.1 is still 534.46. 

  User Agent String Comparison
  Browser	WebKit Version	UA String
  MobileSafari in iOS 5.0.1	534.46	Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3
  Stock Browser - Android 4.0.4	534.30	Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 4.0.4; en-us; Galaxy Nexus Build/IMM30B) AppleWebKit/534.30 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/534.30
  Chrome for Android	535.7	Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 4.0.4; en-us; Galaxy Nexus Build/IMM30B) AppleWebKit/535.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) CrMo/16.0.912.75 Mobile Safari/535.7

  When it comes to HTML5test, the newer version of WebKit in Chrome for Android also handily outscores both the stock Android browser and the latest version of MobileSafari on iOS. This is a definite step forward for true parity between the desktop and mobile browsers.

  The HTML5 Test
  Test	MobileSafari in iOS 5.0.1	Stock Browser - Android 4.0.4	Chrome for Android Beta
  OS	iOS 5.0.1	Android 4.0.4	Android 4.0.4
  WebKit Version	534.46	534.30	535.7
  Total Score	305 (and 9 bonus points)	261 (and 3 bonus points)	343 (and 10 bonus points)
  Parsing rules	11 (2 bonus points)	11 (2 bonus points)	11 (2 bonus points)
  Canvas	20	20	20
  Video	21/31 (4 bonus points)	21/31	21/31 (4 bonus points)
  Audio	20 (3 bonus points)	20 (1 bonus point)	20 (4 bonus point)
  Elements	22/29	23/29	23/29
  Forms	77/100	57/100	87/100
  User Interaction	17/36	17/36	17/36
  History and navigation	5	5	5
  Microdata	0/15	0/15	0/15
  Web applications	15/20	15/20	17/20
  Security	5/10	5/10	5/10
  Geolocation	15	15	15
  WebGL	9/25	9/25	10/25
  Communication	32/36	12/36	32/36
  Files	0/20	10/20	20/20
  Storage	15/20	15/20	20/20
  Workers	15	0/15	10/15
  Local multimedia	0/20	0/20	0/20
  Notifications	0/10	0/10	0/10
  Other	6/8	6/8	8/8

  In spite of not being compatible with Flash (which isn't a surprise given Adobe's previous statements) far it's looking like Chrome for Android is almost everything that Android users were hoping for. In addition, uncoupling the core OS version from the browser is a huge step in the right direction for ensuring that users are using the latest and most secure browsers online instead of being saddled with the incredibly slow carrier-approval update cadence. 

  Gallery: Chrome for Android Gallery

  Source: Google Chrome Blog

• 13:00

  Klout Acquires Local And Mobile Neighborhood App Blockboard

  Flush with new capital, Klout, the startup that measures influence on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Foursquare, Google+ and other social apps, is making its first acquisition. Klout is purchasing mobile and local neighborhood app Blockboard. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Blockboard develops a neighborhood app through which neighbors can interact with one another. They can report potholes and graffiti directly to the city, alert each other about crime and vandalism through a Blockwatch, post general observations about the neighborhood, ask their neighbors questions, and post pictures of lost and found items. Basically, the app is focused on creating a community within real neighborhood.

• 13:01

  Web game bot coded with Python

  We find the programming challenge of game-playing bots to be fascinating. Take a look at this Python bot which plays Burrito Bison all the way through (video after the break). This is a totally pedantic exercise which has no purpose, other than to hone your mastery of a certain programming problem. And to that we [...]

• 13:02

  The Disintegration of PaaS

  In PaaS Makes Progress in 2011, I argued that the previous 12 months had been pivotal to the advancement of platform-as-a-service. As a result of this fast-paced evolution, the PaaS of 2012 is quite a different beast than that of just a couple of years ago. While this second-generation PaaS differs in many ways from initial forays in the field, one of the most important distinctions is that this new PaaS has been disintegrated, or at least made more modular.

  Sponsor
  

  Before you run off thinking I'm advocating the destruction of PaaS platforms, please realize that I am not. Rather, I'm referring to the shift away from monolithic, one-size-fits-all PaaS systems towards more open, loosely coupled platforms that makes it easy to consume code and services provided by third parties.

  Early PaaS offerings, circa 2007-2009, were conceived of as all-in-one affairs. In fact, a big part of the value proposition that providers envisioned was its delivery via proprietary services and custom APIs that developers would use in their applications. Examples include App Engine's data store and Memcache services, the Force.com data store, the distributed cache and storage systems we built at Appistry and many more.

  The fact is, the early players in the space had little choice but to roll their own. At the time, there were critical gaps in the market that needed to be filled in order for developers on PaaS platforms to be able to deliver rich, scalable applications. Fortunately for PaaS users, this is no longer the case for most application-level services.

  Sam Charrington is the principal of CloudPulse Strategies, an analyst and consulting firm focusing exclusively on cloud computing, big data and related technologies and markets. He can be followed on Twitter at @samcharrington. REST Assured, We've Got Git

  In order to build modern, scalable, connected web applications, developers must have access to a wide variety of third-party components and services upon which to build. With the proliferation of open source and SaaS services, these are now readily available on the open market. While both open source and SaaS predated the earliest PaaS offerings, in recent years the advent of GitHub and the popularity of REST-based Web services has played a significant role in expanding the selection of building blocks available to developers.

  GitHub, by dramatically lowering the barriers to collaborating on and sharing open source projects, has become an "App Store" of sorts for developers, and is home to over one million projects. Likewise, the popularization of Roy Fielding's REST model for web service APIs has simplified developer access to the many application- and app-infrastructure-oriented SaaS services now available. It's now possible to store files, query and analyze data, send emails, create maps, subscribe to messages, encode videos, and much more, just by sending simple HTTP-based commands. (If you've never visited the ProgrammableWeb API Directory, the selection will blow your mind.)

  This Cambrian explosion of high quality components and services has made web application development a much more productive affair for developers. And because the market has removed the burden of providing these low-level building blocks, those PaaS providers ready to embrace openness stand to gain great advantage.

  Modular PaaS is Better for Providers, Too

  While the end-user benefits of an open approach to PaaS, namely increased choice and reduced lock-in are apparent, the advantages of a modular approach to PaaS are two-sided, benefiting providers at least as much as users. This is because, as a PaaS provider, it's simply too hard to deliver both a solid application platform and the services that plug into it. For most businesses, such a thing would spread their development resources too thinly, even if they had the necessary domain expertise, which most don't. In addition, because the open source and SaaS genies have left their bottles, trying to do it all puts the provider at odds with their customers.

  By building and offering an open platform able to easily consume third-party components and services, and by cultivating a thriving ecosystem of the tools' providers, second-generation PaaS vendors can improve their own chances of success while creating a better world for their users.

  Discuss

  
  

  
• 13:32

  User-Centric Design is Great, Just as Long as You Find the Right User

  My friend and colleague Esther Schindler has written a wonderful post over on SoftwareQuality Connection about encouraging user-centric design. The only trouble is figuring out the right set of users that your software is designed for. Put another way, this is the classic programming problem: the person who hires you (or who sets up the job) isn't the ultimate end-user audience for the actual program.

  Sponsor
  

  Schindler mentions the Abomination That Is Taleo as Exhibit A. For those of you that haven't been in the job market lately, this is one of the go-to apps that employers use to collect resumes and screen applicants. The only trouble is that its UI is bad, really bad. As she says, "Features and functionality that would give joy to the most common hands-on-the-keyboard user (the hundreds of job applicants applying for a given position) may not even appear on the list of application requirements."

  And having agile programming practices can actually remove programmers from the ultimate consumers of the app, because you write so quickly and get close enough in your first build that you stop doing anything further. Or don't get to have any further discussions beyond the initial meetings, if you even meet with your programming team at all, because the budget for the project gets cut.

  Some of the problem is the Dilbert-ization of corporate life, where a boss gets the overview and the devil is in the details. Part of it is the level of communication in modern companies can be frighteningly bad, as work teams are more distributed and we all have more work to do as layoffs have decimated most IT departments.

  It is a great article, and one that you should email to your boss when it comes time to put together your next project. Along with the appropriate Dilbert cartoon, of course.

  N.B.: The agile turtle is from Sarah Maddox' FFeathers blog.

  Discuss

  
  

  

• 13:37

  Cloudera Founder’s Big Data Management Startup WibiData Raises $5M From NEA And Eric Schmidt

  Exclusive: WibiData, the big data management startup co-founded by Cloudera founder Christophe Bisciglia and Aaron Kimball, is announcing $5 million in new funding from NEA and Google Chairman Eric Schmidt. Past investors in the company include Cloudera CEO Mike Olson, and SV Angel. As we've written in the past, WibiData wants to help companies manage and analyze complex business data about users so you can predict how they are going to interact with the product in the future. Data such as email records, web histories and other interactions cannot be easily analyzed together, but WibiData aims to solve this problem. Specifically, the technology can be used for personalization for a number of web companies, including consumer web, e-commerce and gaming companies.
• 13:41

  Keen On… Larry Downes: Why Best Buy Is Going Out Of Business (Not So Gradually)

  Sometimes it's the quiet ones who end up doing the most damage. I always thought of Larry Downes, the co-author of the mega-selling Unleashing the Killer App, as an unusually gentle and wise soul. But this was before Downes unleashed his all-too-critical powers on Best Buy, transforming himself from a cerebral author into a bomb throwing critic of America's leading consumer electronics retailer. In Why Best Buy is Going out of Business...Gradually, a brilliant article he published at Forbes last month, Downes finally told the truth about the terrible customer service at Best Buy. And the article went viral, of course, amassing close to 3 million page views and even forcing Best Buy CEO, Brian Dunn, to issue a response.

• 13:45

  Today is Safer Internet Day

  Here at ReadWriteWeb, we encourage safer Internet use. We try to bring you the stories that help you navigate the World Wide Interwebs.

  So we wanted to make sure you know that today is Safer Internet Day, and it's meant especially for children and young people. Past Safer Internet Day themes have focused on cyberbullying and social networking. This year's very apropos topic is "connecting generations." How do we make sure everyone on the Internet - from young kids to grandparents - feel safe?

  Safer Internet Day began as an initiative of the EU SafeBorders project in 2004. Today more than 70 countries worldwide on six of the seven continents participate. Take a look at the map after the jump.

  Sponsor
  

  

  91% off Gen-Y'ers surveyed say that they have used the Internet in the bathroom from their mobile phones. Acts that take place in the bathroom are not exactly social - yet people are connecting to others from that private space. People use the Internet from their mobile phones less as the ages go up; only 41% of Internet users in the silent generation use their phones in the bathroom. From this study, one could infer that people who use the Internet less are safer - not so. Young people and older people are both vulnerable when it comes to the Internet.

  This is exactly why Safer Internet Day is of vast importance.

  In 1999, the European Commission created the Safer Internet Programme. Today, the Insafe network has set-up 30 Safer Internet Centres, one in each of the 27 EU states, in addition to Iceland, Norway and Russia. These Safer Internet Centers have an awareness center, helpline, hotline and youth panel.

  More Tips for Staying Safe on the Internet
  
• Be Careful Whom You Befriend on Social Networks
• Why Using 2 or 3 Simple Words May Be the Best Password Protection of All
• Where Is the iPhone Malware? Lookout Releases iOS Security App
• 5 Easy Steps to Stay Safe and Private on Facebook
• Stop Sharing Your Files When You Travel
Internet Safety Facts and Stats

Safer Internet Day has also released some interesting facts about European Internet user experience and safety. Take a look:

• 26% of kids have a social networking profile
• 12% of European 9-16 year-olds say that something they saw on the Internet has bothered them
• 56% of parents whose kids received mean messages online had no idea that this had happened
• 1 in 8 parents do not mediate their kids' Internet use
• 36% of 9-16 year-olds say that they know about the Internet than their parents
• 87% of kids use the Internet at home
• 48% of parents get online safety advice mostly from friends and family
• 63% of kids say they get online safety advice from their parents

Kids need to know about how to stay safe online - but if kids are coming to parents before teachers, relatives and peers, it is parents' responsibility to know how to stay safe online.

To find out how you can participate in Safer Internet Day, go here: [www.saferinternetday.org]

If you don't have a national contact point, email the SID helpdesk at SID-helpdesk@eun.org. They can help you create your own.

Are you a parent of an Internet-using kid? Share your experience about Internet safety in the comments.

Discuss