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The iPhone: Tricorder Version 1.0?
November 17 2009
The iPhone, in addition to revolutionizing how people thought about mobile phone user interfaces, also was one of the first devices to offer a suite of sensors measuring everything from the visual environment to position to acceleration, all in a package that could fit in your shirt pocket. On December… read moreThe Minds Behind Some of the Most Addictive Games Around
November 06 2009
The gaming industry tends to focus on the high end products, first person shooters that crank out a bazillion polygons a seconds and RPGs with spend more time developing the plot in cut scenes than in actual gameplay. But for every person playing Borderlands, there are scores playing casual games… read moreWhy Google and Bing's Twitter Announcement is Big News
October 21 2009
Lurking innocently on Google's blog this afternoon, like many of their big announcements, was the bombshell that they have reached an agreement with Twitter to make all tweets searchable. This followed an earlier announcement at the Web 2.0 conference by Microsoft that Bing has also arranged to make tweets searchable. read moreLife With TED - Micromanaging Your Carbon Footprint
October 19 2009
I've been interested in having a better handle on my electrical consumption for a long time. Our family regularly goes through 1100-1200 kWh a month, and it's been frustrating that I couldn't really get a grip on where or when the power was really being used. Then, this week, Google… read moreDavid Hoover's Top 5 Tips for Apprentices
September 29 2009
If you're a senior developer with years of experience under your belt, it may be hard to remember what it was like coming out of college with a newly minted CS degree, and entering the workplace. But as David Hoover argues, helping these newcomers to the workforce to succeed can… read moreSnow Leopard, 10 Days In - No Major Problems, But No Rush to Upgrade Either
September 08 2009
A week ago last Friday, Apple unleashed Snow Leopard (aka OS X 10.6) on the world. So far, there haven't been many rumblings either way, although the trade press has been generally kind. We thought it might be a good idea to check in with Chris Seibold, author of the… read moreAugust 27 2009
With the release of the 3.1 iPhone OS, application developers will finally be able to develop augmented reality (AR) apps. In other words, Terminator Vision is right around the corner. I recently talked to Chetan Damani, one of the founders of Acrossair, about their new AR applications, Nearest Tube, and… read moreHow NPR is Embracing Open Source and Open APIs
July 17 2009
News providers, like most content providers, are interested in having their content seen by as many people as possible. But unlike many news organizations, whose primary concern may be monetizing their content, National Public Radio is interested in turning it into a resource for people to use in new and… read moreMaking Government Transparent Using R
July 14 2009
With Open Source now considered an accepted part of the software industry, some people are starting to wonder if we can't bring the same degree of openness and innovation into government. Danese Cooper, who is actively involved in the open source community through her work with the Open Source Initiative… read moreJuly 13 2009
The Human Genome Project took X years to fully sequence a single human's genetic information. At Washington University's Genome Center, they can now do one in a week. But when you're generating that much data, just keeping track of it can become a major challenge in itself. David Dooling is… read moreJono Bacon on the Value of Good Communities
July 09 2009
Ubuntu has enjoyed fantastic success over the past few years, becoming one of the dominant Linux distributions, and the distribution of choice for netbooks. Jono Bacon's job is to make sure that that success continues, by keeping the huge Ubuntu developer community happy and productive. We caught up with Jono… read moreOpen Source is Infiltrating the Enterprise
July 07 2009
There's a persistent perception that open source software is being ignored in the enterprise, that they fear it and it ends up being more costly to deploy than proprietary solutions. That's certainly the perception that some major software vendors would like you to have. But it's Jeffrey Hammond's job to… read morePatrick Collison Puts the Squeeze on Wikipedia
July 02 2009
Think about Wikipedia, what some consider the most complete general survey of human knowledge we have at the moment. Now imagine squeezing it down to fit comfortably on an 8GB iPhone. Sound daunting? Well, that's just what Patrick Collison's iPhone application does. App Store purchasers of Collison's open source application… read moreWant A Job? Learn SharePoint, Says Gary Blatt
June 29 2009
Even with an improving economy, there's still a lot of developers out there who are looking for work. And though it may make seasoned Open Source hackers cringe at the thought, one quick way to find employment may be to go over to "the Other Side" and become a Microsoft… read moreWalking the Censorship Tightrope with Google's Marissa Mayer
June 15 2009
Google sometimes finds itself at an difficult crossroad of wanting to make as much information available to as many people as possible, while still trying to obey the laws of the countries they operate in. I recently had a chance to talk to Marissa Mayer, who started at Google as… read moreRecent Posts | All Posts
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Webcast: Open Source Language Roundtable
July 22, 2009
Duration: Approximately 90 minutes. Cost: Free We all have our favorite languages in our tool-belt, but is there a best overall language? If anyone can hash that out, it will be the members of this roundtable discussion, some of the stars of the open...
