InfoQ Homepage Development Content on InfoQ
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Presentation: Making Apps That Don't Suck
Developing apps that surprise and delight can seem like an illusive goal that is difficult to articulate or quantify. But in this latest presentation just posted on InfoQ Mike Lee, the software engineer that worked on projects like Delicious Library,Tap Tap Revenge and the Obama ’08 iPhone app, proposes an algorithm for making better apps.
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WebP’s Adoption Remains Unclear Despite New Improvements
Google has enhanced WebP, their open source image compressing format with higher image quality, progressive decoding, reduced pixelation along edges, and JNI support. Alpha channel support will be added soon, along with more speed improvements. The format is currently supported only by Google and Opera.
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Azul's Zing 4.1 Virtualisation System for Java Gets up to 80% Better Performance Than Zing 4.0
Azul Systems' Zing 4.1, shipping in the next week, is 80% more performant than the already impressive Zing 4.0, according to the vendor. InfoQ spoke to Vice President of Technology and CTO for Azul Systems, Gil Tene, to find out more about how this has been achieved.
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Mango, the Next Windows Phone, Is Packed with New Features
Microsoft has announced Mango, the upcoming version of Windows Phone, a mobile OS that wants to catch up with the competition by providing a plethora of new features: mobile hardware-accelerated IE, multitasking, integrated communication, Silverlight 4 and XNA support, additional sensors, VB.NET support, and others.
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Siwpas 1.0 - a Tomcat Based Server for EE6 Web Profile
MechSoft releases Siwpas, a lightweight application server based on Apache Tomcat that focuses exclusively on Web applications.
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OpenJDK Bylaws Delay JDK 8 Project, Slightly
Mark Reinhold introduced the second public draft of the OpenJDK Community Bylaws last week, clearing the way for OpenJDK 8 projects to begin.
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An Introduction to D and Visual D
D is a systems programming language from Digital Mars that focuses on “combining the power and high performance of C and C++ with the programmer productivity of modern languages like Ruby and Python.” While still being a statically typed language that compiles directly to native code, the syntax looks very much like Java or C# but it has some interesting advances.
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PMI Agile Certification Pilot Starting
Early adopters who want to be among the first to earn the new PMI-Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP) designation can apply starting May 23rd for the PMI Agile Certification pilot. Those selected for the pilot will need to take and pass a multiple choice exam on Agile fundamentals to receive the PMI-ACP certification.
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Introducing the Entity Framework Power Tools
The introduction of a Code First option in Entity Framework has received quite a bit of praise. While it still has a long way to go before it unseats the reigning ORM, nHibernate, the progress Microsoft is making is quite astounding. In order to keep the momentum up Microsoft is releasing a set of power tools that will take an existing database and create a Code First representation.
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The Future of the Web as Seen by Gartner
Gene Phifer, Managing VP in Gartner Research, and David Mitchell Smith, VP and Fellow in Gartner Research, recently held a webinar entitled How Web and Cloud Computing Will Drive Your IT Strategy (registration required), outlining some of the key characteristics of the future web as seen by Gartner, concluding with a number of recommendation for businesses that want to be prepared.
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Virtual Machine Test Harness (VMTH): Test Your Configuration Management
A Google search for “devops” yields tons of interesting postings and even a couple of manifestos. Refine the search further to “devops quality” and the results become less direct; “devops testing” simply doesn’t exist according to Google. That said, things are starting to change. In late April Greg Retkowski released Virtual Machine Test Harness (VMTH), for unit-testing infrastructure automation.
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JetBrains Release IntelliJ IDEA 10.5 With Full Java 7 Support
JetBrains have released IDEA 10.5 with support for Java 7, Groovy 1.8 and Spring 3.1 as well as further usability improvements. Version 10.5 is a free update for developers with a version 10 license, and the Ultimate version is now offered at a lower price for new licenses and for personal license upgrades.
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Build Connected Windows Phone Applications Faster with AgFx
AgFx is a framework for creating Windows Phone 7 applications that simplifies data access and storage. Developers need only to specify the source of information, how to parse it within the application, and expiration rules. After that, data retrieval, caching and refreshes are handled automatically.
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Spring.NET Gets Visual Studio Add-in, CodeConfig, NuGet Packages
Spring.NET, the .NET counterpart of Spring Framework for Java has several new features through CodeConfig and a new Visual Studio extension meant for content-assist. The Spring.NET packages are also now distributed via NuGet, making it much easier for developers to manage dependencies when using them in their projects.
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Bloggers React To Open Virtualization Alliance Announcement
Yesterday’s announcement that a group of company’s led by Red Hat, IBM, HP and others have formed the Open Virtualization Alliance had bloggers talking. The the goal is to foster the adoption of Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM). But speculation ran high after the announcement that some member companies may be attempting to break the stranglehold VMWare and Citrix hold on the market.