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Craigslist only took 11 years to make its own iOS app
Considering the App Store has been around for 11 years and Craigslist for 13 years before that, it's astonishing the bastion of online classified ads hasn't bothered to create an official, first-party iOS app until now. It just hit the App Store and, like Craiglist's website, it's pretty straightforward with a simple design.
Motorola targets developing markets with dirt cheap Moto C
The rumors were true: Motorola has a pair of budget smartphones up its sleeve, and they'e called the Moto C and Moto C Plus. As suspected, the electronics company is positioning these as your First Smartphone, with an eye toward developing markets. The specs Motorola has released mostly align with the leaks from last month, too.
ICYMI: Snap's Spectacles are being used to broadcast surgery
try{document.getElementById("aol-cms-player-1").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: A surgeon who goes by the name virtualsurgeon on Snapchat used Spectacles to broadcast a hernia surgery. Meanwhile the Office of Naval Research demoed its prototype autonomous swarm watercraft, that no joke travel in packs and investigate other boats. There was so much big news this week but we recommend reading up on how scientists are duplicating climate change data before a Trump presidency. As always, please share any interesting tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.
Microsoft officially kills its Android app porting tool
Well, that didn't take long. After lots of silence regarding Project Astoria, Microsoft is killing it in favor of its shiny new Xamarin purchase. In case you'd forgotten (entirely understandable!), Astoria was the initiative that'd make porting Android apps to Windows 10 supposedly pretty easy. But with yesterday's announcement that Redmond had purchased Xamarin, a company whose sole mission is multiplatform apps, perhaps the news isn't entirely surprising considering the delay Astoria hit last November. In fact, the Windows Blog post mentions Xamarin explicitly several times, saying that developers can now use that toolset and a pretty big chunk of their existing C# code for cross-platform applications.
Microsoft bought a company that makes porting apps easier
Microsoft is taking its relatively new role as a mobile app maker pretty seriously. So much so that it's bought Xamarin, a company that specializes in cross-platform application development. The platform uses a shared C# codebase to "write the full set of native APIs and mobile capabilities provided by each platform," according to Microsoft's Scott Guthrie. In English, that basically boils down to "apps that run really well across Android, iOS and Windows." Satya Nadella and Co. have utilized Xamarin before, of course, on the likes of the Azure cloud platform and Office 365.
Xamarin's XobotOS opens prospect of Android port to C#, can of worms
Would it be ironic if Android developers did an end-run around Microsoft patents by using Microsoft's own C#? Or if Google kiboshed its Oracle brouhaha with the aid of none other than Redmond? We're asking because Xamarin, the wacky open source implementer of .NET, has ported Android to Microsoft's C# with its XobotOS project. Although just an experiment and unlikely to solve Google's issues, the team showed that running the robot on C# instead of Java gave fewer coding limitations, better battery life and direct graphics access. Additionally, Xamarin reports "massive" speed gains on its HTC Flyer and Acer Iconia when running the side-project port -- no surprise given C#'s machine heritage. Sure, it's pure speculation that Mountain View and its developers would ever change their Java MO, but a little patent relief and faster Android devices in one kill shot? That's a sweet idea.
Google's Native Client focuses on apps and games, brings Bastion to the browser (video)
In case you missed it, Google's Native Client launched at the end of the summer, promising to ease cross-OS deployment by letting developers run x86 code natively in Chrome. Early adopters have had a few months to tinker with Google's new trick, and now the outfit is eager to show off their best work. Supergiant Games, for instance, has ported Bastion to the Native Client, opening up the Xbox Live hit to Mac, Linux and Chrome OS users. Google's Christian Stefansen says Native Client makes porting existing code bases written C, C++ or C# easy, citing Spacetime Studio's Star Legends -- an MMO with over half a million lines of code -- as an example of a large project that was ported in as little as two weeks. Google touts application middleware ports (such as Unity, Moai, Mono, fmod and more) and easy distribution to the Chrome Web Store as a major boon to developers, and encourages interested studios to check out its new Native Client site to help them get started. Interested? Hit up the links below, or simply skip past the break to hear Mr. Stefansen's spiel for yourself.
Dennis Ritchie, pioneer of C programming language and Unix, reported dead at age 70
We're getting reports today that Dennis Ritchie, the man who created the C programming language and spearheaded the development of Unix, has died at the age of 70. The sad news was first reported by Rob Pike, a Google engineer and former colleague of Ritchie's, who confirmed via Google+ that the computer scientist passed away over the weekend, after a long battle with an unspecified illness. Ritchie's illustrious career began in 1967, when he joined Bell Labs just one year before receiving a PhD in physics from Harvard University. It didn't take long, however, for the Bronxville, NY native to have a major impact upon computer science. In 1969, he helped develop the Unix operating system alongside Ken Thompson, Brian Kernighan and other Bell colleagues. At around the same time, he began laying the groundwork for what would become the C programming language -- a framework he and co-author Kernighan would later explain in their seminal 1978 book, The C Programming Language. Ritchie went on to earn several awards on the strength of these accomplishments, including the Turing Award in 1983, election to the National Academy of Engineering in 1988, and the National Medal of Technology in 1999. The precise circumstances surrounding his death are unclear at the moment, though news of his passing has already elicited an outpouring of tributes and remembrance for the man known to many as dmr (his e-mail address at Bell Labs). "He was a quiet and mostly private man," Pike wrote his brief post, "but he was also my friend, colleague, and collaborator, and the world has lost a truly great mind."
Kinect app promises you'll wear flowery skirts, and you'll like it (video)
Don't be shy now: which of you doesn't love raiding your mother's closet and trying on her paisley dresses and velour tracksuits? That's more or less the idea behind Virtual Dressing Room, a Kinect program that taps into the clandestine thrill of sneaking into other people's boudoirs. Unlike some other shopping hacks we've seen, the app goes beyond just pilling on 2D pieces, but uses 3D models so that the items mold to your limbs, with the shadows and creases in the virtual fabric changing as you preen for the camera. That all comes courtesy of a special physics engine, while the app itself was written in C# along with Microsoft's XNA tools. Arbuzz, the group that dreamed this up, says the project's still a work in progress, though we can see this, too, being used to relieve those of who are allergic to shopping malls. Until then, you'll just have to settle for watching some other guy work a knee-length skirt.
Novell's Mono tools let devs create .NET apps for Android devices
If app developers have a pattern of going after the iPhone first and Android second, well, the same is apparently true of the folks who write software for the code monkeys. Novell just announced Mono for Android, the first set of tools that lets devs write .NET and C# apps for Android phones and tablets. Novell already lets developers do the same for Linux, iOS, and Mac OS X and, as always, lets coders continue to use Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 to write applications -- if that's the testing software they're used to. In addition to the Visual Studio plug-in, you get bindings for native Android APIs and the core Mono runtime. It's available now, starting at $99 for students (minus the ability to, you know, send finished apps to Android Market) and $399 for everybody else. Already developing for the iPhone? Prove that you own MonoTouch (essentially, the same Novell product for iOS devices) and get 50 percent off an Android tool kit.
Toyota puts Prius C on a pedestal, we go back for more
Sorry, we can't help ourselves. You see, we like the Prius. A lot. But it's just so... well... boring. Not the Prius C. It's just a Concept, but it's a Curvy one, a Cute one, and a downright Catch. Call us anytime. Toyota. You have our number. %Gallery-113924%
Samsung releases Bada SDK for developers who want to ride the Wave
Samsung still hasn't managed to get the Wave or any other Bada handset to market yet, but it's doing the right thing by offering developers the software development kit first. Granted, with a planned June release Samsung isn't managing the same sort of massive lead-time that Microsoft has with its Windows Phone 7 SDK, but a few weeks of pressure-free coding are better than none. The first public SDK for Bada was just made available yesterday, and inside developers will find an Eclipse-based IDE, a phone emulator, and tutorials. You can get it all for yourself at the source link below, but make sure you get your reading glasses out before clicking through. You'll need to agree to not one, not two, but four separate sets of terms and conditions before you can get this 606MB download flowing, and a fifth before it'll install. Oh, and it's all C/C++ based, so if you've been living in the merry land of Java and C# lately you'd better brush up on pointer dereferencing and interface definitions. [Thanks, Sacha]
PhoneGap framework fine for App Store development, sez Apple
Now, we've all been concerned about recent updates to the iPhone dev agreement -- you haven't been sleeping and your parents are, quite frankly, worried for your sanity. And it's a heady subject: "what is the fate of PhoneGap in the wake of the iPhone OS 4 beta SDK?" Well, worry no more, little one -- it seems that Jesse Macfadyen, a contributor to the project, pinged Apple to make sure that users of the mobile development platform wouldn't find their apps rejected simply for using the tool. As you remember, the agreement states: "Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine" (and of course HTML and CSS are cool), so PhoneGap -- which indeed sticks to HTML, CSS and Javascript -- is totally safe. Now developers can get back to having their apps rejected for any number of other silly reasons. [Thanks, Bea]
Apple's iPhone lockdown: apps must be written in one of three languages, Adobe in the hurt locker
Apple's already got a veritable novella describing things you can't do with the iPhone as a developer -- create apps that execute their own code is the biggie, obviously, blocking technologies Flash and Java in the absence of a loophole -- but it seems they've locked down the ecosystem just a little further today with the release of the iPhone OS 4 beta SDK. Check out this snippet from the developer's agreement: Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited). What does that mean, exactly? Well, it means that technologies like Adobe's iPhone compiler in Flash CS5 won't be allowed, simply because the source code of the app that you're writing isn't in a language Apple's comfortable with. The compiler had been seen as a potential boon for Flash devs that had already been blocked out of the iPhone ecosystem for lack of a true Flash player, but Apple's found a way to block even this workaround -- technically you don't need to be using Apple's own tools, but you've got be using one of three variants of a single programming language. It's hard to say why Apple cares, exactly, but we suspect that the company would have to analyze your app pretty closely to detect variances in how the compiler produced your machine code in order to determine that you'd violated the rule. This could be a blow to publishers -- Condé Nast included -- who'd been banking on Adobe Air to lead the digital push, since those guys presumably won't be able to bring their issues to the iPhone (and, more importantly, the iPad) without violating the terms of Apple's agreement. Protectionism is a core element of the iPhone's success, in Apple's view -- but ultimately, this might come out as a decision that's difficult to defend, unnecessarily sours publishers to the platform, and turns Flash devs' heads just a little grayer than they already were.
Second Life script limitations to prejudice against Mono?
In a sense, script memory limitations aren't coming to Second Life; they already exist. What's going on is the process of Linden Lab making those limits predictable, and setting things up in such a way that script memory usage doesn't cause simulator processes to thrash madly (from paging memory to and from disk). There's some interesting side-effects emerging from the overall prototype implementation, however. Mono (and, eventually C# when or if it becomes implemented as a scripting language) look like the losers.
Linden Lab investigates new/updated technologies for Second Life
Over the last few weeks, Linden Lab staff have been talking about a few upcoming Second Life projects during their in-world office-hours sessions. Now the Lab has always been quick to stress that the accuracy and reliability of information obtained through those venues is questionable, and that we shouldn't assume that anything said at them is actually accurate. With that in mind, we went back to the Lab about several identifiable (or at least apparent) projects to get the skinny on them and find out what's actually happening with them, and where they're at.
Sony finally admits NVIDIA chips are borking its laptops, offers free repair
Last summer, while Dell and HP were busy pinpointing and replacing faulty NVIDIA chips in their notebooks, Sony was adamant that its superior products were unaffected by the dreaded faulty GPU packaging. Well, after extensive support forum chatter about its laptops blanking out, distorting images and showing random characters, the Japanese company has finally relented and admitted that "a small percentage" of its VAIO range is indeed afflicted by the issue. That small percentage comes from the FZ, AR, C, LM and LT model lines, and Sony is offering to repair yours for free within four years of the purchase date, irrespective of warranty status. Kudos go to Sony for (eventually) addressing the problem, but if you're NVIDIA, don't you have to stop calling this a "small distraction" when it keeps tarnishing your reputation a full year after it emerged? [Thanks, Jonas]
Eneloop batteries get C and D-sized, still not bigger than yo mama
Ever seen a toy robot low on batteries? It's sad, sadder than the shredded flesh and bone caked between its servos. Unfortunately, modern gear chews through disposable batteries faster than the time it takes to make a hippie cry. Enter Sanyo, which today finally announces its new rechargeable C and D-sized Eneloop batteries. This ain't the same, sad Ni-MH rechargeable tech found in yo mama's pager battery -- you know, the one that beeps and makes people think she's backing up... Oh! Eneloops come pre-charged, maintain that charge in the drawer, and can be recharged a thousand times without any of that lame memory effect. Available initially on September 12th in Japan before breaking out for global distribution.[Via I4U]
Game concept: Limbo
Eliot from Hackaday tipped us off to the existence of this nifty concept trailer for game-in-development Limbo. The teaser trailer scores high marks for its beautiful art direction and suggestive physics, but then again, so did the trailer for Killzone 2. Still, the game's lead designer (Arnt Jensen) has crunched his way around the game block a few times, so we shouldn't be so quick to assume that this won't eventually become a real game, graphs be damned. In fact, we'll assume that this project will get done, and we'll encourage you to join the effort, if you can code C++. Good luck!
