InfoQ Homepage Applied Research Content on InfoQ
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Stanford Study Shows: Maxi-Multitaskers' Performance Impaired
A Stanford University study confirms that multitasking is definitely counterproductive: maxi-multitaskers fared worst in several standard tests. Agile implementors take note: there's good reason to urge each team to work on one product, with one product owner - splitting time across many tasks is a less effective way to work.
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Interview on Wolfram|Alpha, a Computational Knowledge Engine
Wolfram|Alpha was launched two months ago. It is time to review a few frequently asked questions: What is the relationship between Wolfram|Alpha and Google? How would Wolfram|Alpha position itself in the market? To what extent is Wolfram|Alpha a Semantic Web search engine? And how could Wolfram| Alpha make profit in the market? An interview with Xiang Wang, Wolfram Research, China.
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Wolfram|Alpha, the Details Behind the Rhombic Hexecontahedron
Wolfram|Alpha uses symbolic computation in an attempt to make the world’s systematic knowledge computable. It does that by accepting a linguistic input not a custom set of formulas. The main components of the system are a data curation pipeline, an algorithmic computation system, a linguistic processing system, and an automated presentation system.
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DryadLINQ, Distributed Computing Made Easy
Dryad and DryadLINQ are two Microsoft Research projects which facilitate large data processing on computer clusters or data centers for the C# developer.
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A Study: Ways To Make Web 2.0 Work In The Enterprise
The McKinsey Quarterly Report published a study that spanned the last couple years and more than 50 early adopter enterprises. The purpose of the study was to gain insight into successful adoption of Web 2.0 technologies in the enterprise.
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Requirements Come Second - What Comes First?
Allan Kelly sites an article from MIT's Sloan Management Review about why it is important to get a team's technical competence and ability improved before focusing on business-IT alignment. This, he claims, is one of the reasons Agile software development has been so successful. Allan's point indirectly touches on a recent community debate about successful, valuable, Agile adoption.
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JRuby and Clojure - A Good Match?
Clojure is a JVM based LISP with interesting properties for concurrency (persistent data structures, STM). New libraries for Clojure are popping up - and some of them are inspired by Ruby libraries such as HAML, ActiveRecord, Rack, and others. We also look at combining JRuby and Clojure to get the best of both Ruby and LISP world, as well as access to technologies such as STM.
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Rebooting Computing Summit 2009: Computing is Not Dead
Rebooting Computing Summit 2009 concluded recently and had over 250 people representing industry, practitioners, and academia convene to discuss how to 'reboot' the computer science field, since reports show that the innovation rate in our field has been declining and that enrollments in our degree programs have dropped 50% since 2001.
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Singularity: Microsoft's Open Source Operating System
The second release of the Singularity Research Development Kit is now available as both source code and as a bootable CD. Singularity is an operating system based almost entirely on managed code with a very high degree of isolation between processes. In an unusual move by Microsoft, Singularity is soliciting patches and offering full developer rights on CodePlex.
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Second Functional Test Workshop Results
The second Agile Alliance Functional Test Workshop was held as a pre-conference session before Agile 2008. It was run as a series of open space sessions facilitated by Jeff Paton. The primary purpose of this workshop was to discuss cutting-edge advancements in and envision possibilities for the future of automated functional testing tools.
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Functional Test Workshop from the Agile Alliance
The second Agile Alliance Functional Testing Tools Workshop is being held the day before Agile 2008 (Monday August 4). This is the second workshop being held this year and its goal is “advance the state of the art of automated functional testing tools used by Agile teams to automate customer-facing tests”.
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Microsoft Research Releases Singularity RDK
On March 4th, the Singularity Research Development Kit (RDK) was released as an open source project on CodePlex. The RDK is based on the Singularity Project from Microsoft Research by Galen Hunt, Jim Larus and others. The Project web site said that Singularity itself is primarily about "the construction of dependable systems through innovation in the areas of systems, languages, and tools."
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Burton On Real World SOA Experiences
Chris Haddad of Burton describes a new study they are doing on the success of real world SOA deployments. We've been here serveral times before over the past few years and none of the studies have been particularly accurate. If you are taking part in the study, why not share your experiences here?
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Does TDD Really Ensure Quality?
Analysis of a recent study by the National Research Council of Canada's Institute of Technology into Test Driven Development turned up some interesting observations regarding the value that this approach adds, including whether, in fact, it adds any more value to the quality process than testing after development.
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Agile2008 Call for Submissions
The call has gone out to anyone interested in presenting at the Agile2008 conference in Toronto. Grigori Melnik of the Agile Alliance explained in a video the new collaborative submission process, which rewards early birds with feedback and a chance to improve their submissions right up to the deadline.