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Valve opens Steam for Linux beta, asks users to track bugs via GitHub
Not "experienced" enough to qualify for Valve's first Steam for Linux beta? That's okay -- patience pays off. Poised as an early Christmas present, Valve has opened Steam's Linux beta to all users. The team is tweaking how it handles bug reports too, eschewing the existing forum-based system for a public GitHub repository -- though the Linux forums will remain open for community discussion. New and updating beta testers will be treated to a few minor fixes -- correcting excessive CPU usage from the client while running Team Fortress 2 and adding a few needed details to the Linux variant of Big Picture mode. With just under 40 games working on the Penguin-suited OS, Newell's Windows 8 alternative is starting to gain ground. It's going to be interesting to see where it goes. [Thanks, Devon]
Mozilla pulls Firefox Home from the iOS App Store, posts source code to GitHub
iOS users keen on Mozilla's Firefox Home will have to find another browser syncing solution: the application has been retired. The app worked in conjunction with Firefox Sync, and was designed to give users access to their desktop history, open tabs and bookmarks on the go. Mozilla says the project "provided valuable insight and experience with the platform," but ultimately decided its resources were better focused elsewhere. All isn't lost, however -- the company is making the source available on GitHub, encouraging users to tinker with the iOS Sync client Firefox Home was built on. Feel free to swim in the code yourself at the source link below.
WaveTap snags audio on your Mac with a keyboard shortcut
Recording audio on the Mac just got a little easier thanks to WavTap, a nifty audio utility created by Github user Patrick Ellis. Spotted by Peter Kirn of Create Digital Music, the tool lets you record audio on your Mac using a keyboard shortcut. You can use the customizable shortcut to both start and stop the recording on the fly. WavTap is a fork of Soundflower, an OS X system extension that lets you pass audio from one application to another. Besides being a single channel device, Soundflower also acts as a 16-channel device, which means WavTap can potentially record input from a multichannel rig. WavTap is open source and available for free on GitHub. There's no installer included in the app, so users must have Xcode installed and know how to install an app using Terminal.
Use Eve to learn Mac OS X shortcuts
Eve is a brilliant little program that I just installed on my MacBook -- it's got one function only, and that is simply to pop up on the screen whenever you do something with your mouse, and remind you that there's a way to do it with your keyboard. I am a huge fan of keyboard shortcuts, but I have a terrible memory for them, and Eve is designed to fix exactly that problem. Most people know Command-X, Command-C, and Command-V for cut, copy and paste, but I often forget about other shortcuts for common tasks, so I'm hoping Eve can help me build up some muscle memory for them. Eve is an open source project, so it's being added to all the time (and it looks like a "learned button" is one of the first features on the list, which makes a lot of sense -- you wouldn't want a warning to keep showing up after you've learned the shortcut). It's free to download. This kind of instant feedback could be just what you're looking for if you want to increase your keyboard-fu. [via OTW & Lifehacker]
Raspberry Pi gets Ice Cream Sandwich up and running, sounds delicious
Work on Raspberry Pi just doesn't stop, and the latest news from the programming box's official blog is that its already got Google's (second) newest Android iteration running on the tinker toy. While this early version is reportedly working smoothly, with hardware-accelerated graphics already in place, a developer is still working on adding support for AudioFlinger, Android's native audio software. This Raspberry-flavored Ice Cream Sandwich apparently runs on both a kernel and VideoCore binary image that's currently not publicly available. The team is still looking into whether the two code lines can be wrapped into a single entity before it offers up the source to its users. See how the experimental pairing fares in a quick video runthrough after the break.
GitHub branches out, releases Windows client
GitHub, the version tracking and collaboration platform for developers, has proven quite popular, especially with the open source crowd. There's been one glaring issue with the dev hub, though -- lack of an easy to use Windows client. Sure, app creators could sync their changes though command line tools and SSH, but Mac devs have had a slick desktop app to call their own for sometime. Now Microsoft users get the same benefits, including the ability to merge branches and roll back changes, wrapped in pretty Metro-friendly package. You'll find more info and a download link at the source.
Facebook snaps up mobile photo sharing firm Lightbox, decides Instagram isn't enough
We get the impression that Facebook is on a big mobile photo sharing kick: just weeks after it bought Instagram for a cool billion, the social network has just hired the staff behind Lightbox. The two-man team of Nilesh Patel and Thai Tran is bringing its mostly Android- and HTML5-focused knowledge over to Facebook, where it's hoping to reach many, many more people. You'll have to wait awhile to see what the Lightbox team brings to Facebook's ever more mobile platform, but you'll also want to hurry if you want to keep anything hosted on Lightbox: the service shuts down on June 15th. As a consolation for the shutdown, the startup's code is being posted to GitHub so that the fruits of its efforts live on in open-sourced form.
Perian posts end of life notice. Mac video enthusiasts weep.
Perian has been a steadfast friend on my computer for years. With Perian, nearly any video format I throw at QuickTime simply works. Perian has been a wonder. It supports AVI. It supports DivX. It supports MKV. It's been one of the best and most useful tools I have had access to and invariably the first thing I reinstall after any upgrade. And now, according to a statement by its devs, it's reaching the end of the road. Today, the Perian dev team announced that the software will no longer be updated. They will release all the source code to Google Code or Github, but the team is moving on. We here at TUAW give them a well-deserved round of applause for the excellence of their effort, and their contribution to the OS X community. Perian will be missed. Thank you to Chris "Growl" Forsythe, Graham "Adium and Fire" Booker, Alexander "ffmpeg" Strange, and Augie "mecurial" Fackler, as well as everyone else who contributed in the past. For now, Perian continues to work with OS X Lion. From here, however, it's unsure whether it will make the leap to Mountain Lion. Check out NicePlayer, which remains in development. The dev team is no longer accepting contributions and requests that you send any money in their honor to Ronald McDonald House, Child's Play, or the EFF. Goodbye Perian. You were amazing.
Twitter introduces Innovators Patent Agreement, vows to not abuse patent system
When it comes to patents Twitter doesn't want to be part of the problem. Or, at least doesn't want you to think it's part of the problem and its new IPA (that's Innovators Patent Agreement, not India Pale Ale) outlines how it plans to stay above the fray and avoid abusing the system. The document is a relatively simple contract between Twitter and its employees that says any patents related to their work will be used for "defensive" purposes only. Meaning that the microblogging service has no plans to take one of its engineers designs and hammer Google in court because a function of Google+ is similar to a feature of Twitter. Almost as important, these restrictions are bound to the patents themselves -- not the company. So, should Twitter ever sell off its patent quiver in an effort to boost its bottom line, the purchasers would still be bound by the IPA and unable to use them in offensive litigation without the inventors approval. Twitter intends to officially implement the agreement later this year and it will apply not only to all of its patents going forward, but will be retroactively applied to its existing stable. Check out the more coverage link to read the IPA in full.
Browserquest: an MMO tech demo made to work in browsers everywhere
Browserquest is a game put together by Mozilla (the company behind the popular Firefox browser) and intended to show off WebSockets, a technology that allows constant communication between your browser and a server online. But outside of the tech, it's a nice little streamlined MMORPG. There's no story to speak of, but you can explore a beautiful world, meet NPCs, and kill creatures while upgrading your items.Browserquest is also impressive because it's as cross-platform as these things get -- even just resizing your browser screen will change the way the HTML 5 game is displayed, so it works great on your big-screen monitor, mobile devices, or anything else you run it on. If you happen to be a coder, the full source is also available on Github, so you can see how it's all done, and even use that code to build your own games.The graphics and gameplay are charming enough that you'll wish it was filled out more, but Browserquest already works as a template for what browser-based games might be like in the future.
Developer creates proxy server for Siri, controls thermostat with his voice (video)
Now that Siri's protocol has been freshly dissected and laid bare for the world to behold, hackers have been busy finding ways to move Apple's personal assistant beyond the realm of the iPhone 4S. That task may be getting easier, however, now that a developer has created his very own third-party proxy server, designed specifically for Siri. The dev, known by his Twitter handle @plamoni, demonstrated his brainchild in a recent video clip, using a plug-in to control a WiFi thermostat with only voice commands. As @plamoni explains, the hack won't require users to jailbreak their iPhone 4S, but it won't let them port Siri over to earlier iPhones or iPod Touch models, either -- not yet, at least. The idea, according to the developer, is to make it easier for other hackers to experiment with and build upon Siri's functionality. Head past the break to see the demo video for yourself, or if you're up for it, grab the source code and instructions on how to create your own server, at the source link below. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
GitHub for Mac now available
GitHub, probably the best-known hub for both public and private repositories, is now available for the Mac in the form of a handy management application. The Mac version will hunt for repositories already on your machine, then allow you to manage them. You can view commit history, make changes, automatic updates and more. It also tracks all of your GitHub repositories and can clone them to your machine. GitHub for Mac is a free download and requires OS X 10.6 or higher. We will have a full review of GitHub for Mac later this week.
Github removes PS3 jailbreak files after Sony sends DMCA takedown notice
Removing files from the internet is about as difficult and futile a task as trying to remove an upsetting mental image from your thoughts -- elephants with spider faces! (Boom! That's in your mind now.) This isn't stopping Sony from trying its darndest to keep the PS3 jailbreak files from circulating. The company recently sent a Digital Millennium Copyright Act notice to Github -- a site for hosting super efficient Git files, designed to assist coders in collaborating over the web -- to remove the "Custom Firmware" files authored by George "GeoHot" Hotz. Github acquiesced, removing the files in accordance with its policy concerning DMCA notices. Of course, in doing so ... the site also highlighted the filenames of each of the removed Custom Firmware components!
iPhone devsugar: SwapKit
iPhone developer Emanuele Vulcano has been working on a new iPhone OS data exchange protocol called SwapKit [Apple Dev account required for link]. Hosted on GitHub, SwapKit provides App Store-friendly application-independent ways to publish data with custom metadata for sharing between applications. SwapKit can automatically find all other SwapKit-using applications on a device and determine which of those applications can perform specific actions on that data. For example, a developer might send a string to the first Twitter-ready client it finds and request that client to post the string as a new tweet. SwapKit basically offers a Mac-style LaunchServices for iPhone. Open source and provided under the MIT license (basically "use however you like"), SwapKit remains in early development. The screencast shown above demonstrates basic SwapKit features, demoing both sending and receiving functionality.
TUAW is now on GitHub
As posting code on the blog can sometimes can get very cluttered, we have just set up a GitHub account for TUAW to make everything better and easier for everyone. This is where you'll be able to find code for our developer-related posts. We'll try to get some projects hosted in there very soon, so don't worry that it's empty now! If you haven't heard of it, GitHub is a hosting site for git revisions, which makes it a great place to host and interact with code of all kinds. You can find our profile at http://github.com/tuaw today. What would you like to see on TUAW for iPhone/Mac development? Let us know in the comments below!
