James Turner

James Turner, contributing editor for oreilly.com, is a freelance journalist who has written for publications as diverse as the Christian Science Monitor, Processor, Linuxworld Magazine, Developer.com and WIRED Magazine. In addition to his shorter writing, he has also written two books on Java Web Development ("MySQL & JSP Web Applications" and "Struts: Kick Start"). He is the former Senior Editor of LinuxWorld Magazine and Senior Contributing Editor for Linux Today. He has also spent more than 25 years as a software engineer and system administrator, and currently works as a Senior Software Engineer for a company in the Boston area. His past employers have included the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Xerox AI Systems, Solbourne Computer, Interleaf, the Christian Science Monitor and contracting positions at BBN and Fidelity Investments. He is a committer on the Apache Jakarta Struts project and served as the Struts 1.1B3 release manager. He lives in a 200 year old Colonial farmhouse in Derry, NH along with his wife and son. He is an open water diver and instrument-rated private pilot, as well as an avid science fiction fan.

Developing Enterprise iOS Applications Developing Enterprise iOS Applications
by James Turner
December 2011
Print: $24.99
Ebook: $14.99

Great Java Web Programming Great Java Web Programming
by James Turner
December 2009
Video: $59.99

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James blogs at:
http://radar.oreilly.com/data/
http://oreilly.com/blogs/
http://www.oreillynet.com/conferences/blog/web_20_summit/
http://radar.oreilly.com

Developer Week in Review: Brother, can you spare $100 billion?

February 02 2012

If you haven't heard that Facebook is going public, I hope you live under a comfortable rock. While you wait for the IPO, brush up your Lua if you run a wiki, just don't leave any empty files lying around. read more

Developer Week in Review: Sometimes, form does need to follow function

January 27 2012

The latest rumors have Apple eyeing the remote control market, but does minimalistic design work for remotes? Australia wants to impose requirements on ISPs, but at what infrastructure cost? And would you let closed-source software keep you alive? read more

Developer Week in Review: Early thoughts on iBooks Author

January 20 2012

It looks like Apple plans to totally disrupt yet another industry, but is that a good thing? Richard Stallman puts free above usability, and Microsoft adds incentives to Visual Studio — but some of them encourage the wrong behaviors. read more

Developer Week in Review: A big moment for Kinect?

January 13 2012

Microsoft thinks the Kinect has a bright future with the PC. Elsewhere, we have a new contender for worst software patent ever, and the mayor of New York City wants to get his geek on. read more

Developer Week in Review: 2012 preview edition

January 05 2012

It's a brand new year, time to look ahead to the stories that will have developers talking in 2012. Mobile will remain a hot topic, the cloud is absorbing everything, and jobs appear to be heading back to the U.S. read more

Developer Year in Review: 2011 Edition

December 22 2011

It's time for our annual look back at the year that was, when mobile ruled the world, HTML5 PWNED Flash, Drupal and Hadoop were the hot buzzwords for your resume, and a new batch of languages tried to become stars. read more

The ethics of the fail

December 20 2011

The content you see on Cheezburger, Inc.'s Fail Blog often mixes humor and pain — but not always in equal proportions. Cheezburger CEO Ben Huh discusses the boundaries of a fail. read more

Developer Week in Review: Siri is the talk of the town

November 30 2011

Everyone either wants to be just like Siri or thinks it's (she's?) a waste of time. Stanford expands its free CS curriculum, and JavaScript gains encryption and a JVM implementation. read more

Developer Week in Review: Adobe sends Flex to Apache

November 18 2011

Adobe just gave away Flex, a new single-board computer might dethrone Arduino as the tool of choice for makers, and researchers bring us a step closer to our robotic overlords. read more

Developer Week in Review: Adobe raises the white flag on mobile Flash

November 10 2011

Flash isn't dead, but Adobe is checking into hospice options. Eclipse adds another language to the list of ones almost but not exactly like Java. And how do you find good programmers? Probably not with brainteasers. read more

Developer Week in Review: Adobe raises the white flag on mobile Flash

November 10 2011

Flash isn't dead, but Adobe is checking into hospice options. Eclipse adds another language to the list of ones almost but not exactly like Java. And how do you find good programmers? Probably not with brainteasers. read more

Developer Week in Review: The hijacking of an insulin pump

November 03 2011

If you own an insulin pump, someone out there might have a hack with your name on it. Google decides to make high-volume Maps API users pony up some cash, and the creator of Linux goes after C++. read more

Developer Week in Review: These things always happen in threes

October 26 2011

One of the earliest language pioneers, John McCarthy, passed last week. Elsewhere, one developer admits he's using the GPL to force companies to pay him, and the creator of the "West Wing" is on the short list to write the film version of Steve Jobs' life. read more

Developer Week in Review: Talking to your phone

October 21 2011

This week, we ask if Apple's Siri has more than novelty value, and decide it does. Open Office needs you (or at least your money) to stay afloat, and Google bends to developer pressure and finally adds SQL support to its cloud computing platform. read more

Developer Week in Review: Talking to your phone

October 21 2011

This week, we ask if Apple's Siri has more than novelty value, and decide it does. Open Office needs you (or at least your money) to stay afloat, and Google bends to developer pressure and finally adds SQL support to its cloud computing platform. read more

Developer Week in Review: Two giants fall

October 13 2011

Better late than never, a few thoughts on Steve Jobs. Also, a Unix pioneer leaves us, and Google's dirty laundry is accidentally hung out to dry. read more

Developer Week in Review: Android proves fruitful for Microsoft

September 29 2011

Samsung agrees to pay Microsoft royalties for Android use. Elsewhere, Oracle keeps the SPARC line alive, and the hackability of voting machines is exposed. read more

High voltage music: Behind the scenes with ArcAttack

September 27 2011

ArcAttack creates a maniacal combination of music and mad science that uses half-million-volt Tesla coils to play songs. We caught up with Steve Ward, a recent addition to the ArcAttack crew, at MakerFaire NY and asked him about the technology behind the show. read more

High voltage music: Behind the scenes with ArcAttack

September 27 2011

ArcAttack creates a maniacal combination of music and mad science that uses half-million-volt Tesla coils to play songs. We caught up with Steve Ward, a recent addition to the ArcAttack crew, at MakerFaire NY and asked him about the technology behind the show. read more

Developer Week in Review: webSOS

September 23 2011

WebOS is going to the great operating system repository in the sky, Oracle finds yet another way to peeve developers, and the UK tries to create a new generation of programmers. read more

Developer Week in Review: HP fires up the TouchPad production line one more time

September 01 2011

The TouchPad's $99 price point proves enticing for consumers and — oddly — HP itself, James Gosling leaves Google, and a possible iPhone 5 leak bears a distinct resemblance to the iPhone 4 leak. read more

Developer Week in Review: End of an era

August 26 2011

This week two major players in geek culture called it quits, more airlines decided to replace dead trees with hot silicon, and the HP TouchPad seeks a new OS for a long-term relationship. read more

Developer Week in Review: Google Goes Yardsaling

August 18 2011

We learned that Google liked Motorola products so much they decided to buy the company, that social media has a dark side, and that C++ isn't ready to join Sanskrit in the dead languages section just yet. read more

Developer Week in Review: Lion drops pre-installed MySQL

August 03 2011

A pre-installed version of MySQL is noticeably absent from Lion Server, South Korea penalizes Apple for the location brouhaha, and Java 7's compiler injects a bit of randomness into software development. read more

Developer Week in Review: Linux turns the big 3.0

July 28 2011

The Linux kernel gets to version 3.0. Meanwhile, Oracle doesn't seem to remember the warm reception that Sun gave Android, and big players get lawsuits on their doorsteps. read more

FOSS isn't always the answer

July 21 2011

James Turner says the notion that proprietary software is somehow dirty or a corruption of principles ignores the realities of competition, economics, and context. read more

Developer Week in Review: Mobile's embedded irony

July 20 2011

Microsoft profits from Google's toils, why you shouldn't put older developers out to pasture, and a new source control system enters the fray. read more

Developer Week in Review: Christmas in July for Apache

July 15 2011

In the latest Developer Week in Review: Apache gets a gift of code from IBM, and a handy patent / travel guide for your next trip to East Texas. read more

JavaFX 2.0: Making RIA with Java

July 11 2011

Jim Weaver, founder of JMentor, explains why JavaFX could become a viable contender in the Rich Internet Applications world. read more

Developer Week in Review: The unglamorous life of video game developers

July 07 2011

The folks who make video games sound the alarm bells on working conditions, governments try to break the Internet, and MITRE unveils 2011's most dangerous software errors. read more

Developer Week in Review: Would your passcode pass muster?

June 30 2011

A weekly lawsuit update, MySpace is purchased for a bargain price, and your darkest suspicions about the stupidity of passcode selections is confirmed. read more

Clojure: Lisp meets Java, with a side of Erlang

June 28 2011

OSCON speaker Stuart Sierra digs into Clojure: what it is, how it works, and why it's attracting Java developers. read more

Developer Week in Review: Start your lawyers!

June 22 2011

The legal community continued to feed off IP disputes among software giants, Microsoft brings the Kinect SDK to Windows, and the web switches IPv6 on for a day, but did anyone notice? read more

Developer Week in Review: Are .NET programmers going extinct?

June 15 2011

For Microsoft programmers, the week brought fear, uncertainty and doubt regarding their future as an elite class of developers. For a lucky teen, it brought a big paycheck. And for fans of Java, it brought a new version of the popular language one step closer to release. read more

JavaScript spread to the edges and became permanent in the process

June 09 2011

James Duncan, the chief architect at Joyent, is one of the people using JavaScript in surprising ways. In this interview he shares his thoughts on how we came to depend so heavily on the language and where it might be headed. read more

Developer Week in Review: WWDC edition

June 08 2011

in the latest Developer Week in Review: The real value of WWDC, Apple's new iCloud offering and what it means for developers, and an example of how not to create an iOS application. read more

Developer Week in Review: The other shoe drops on iOS developers

June 02 2011

If you were an iOS developer, you may have gotten to meet a process server in person this week, as Lodsys doles out the first batch of lawsuits. Oracle gave Apache the keys to OpenOffice, and told them to take it out for a spin, and your faithful editor vents… read more

Developer Week in Review: Apple devs cry "gimme shelter"

May 25 2011

If you were an Apple developer, it was a good week. If you were a Sony executive, it was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week. If you were Oracle, it was business as usual. read more

Developer Week in Review: Buying a lawsuit with an in-app purchase

May 18 2011

This week Apple's iOS developer community got a patent wake up call, the recently discarded Mono project found a new home, and a favorite scripting language got a new version. read more

Developer Week in Review: Oracle sends Hudson on its way

May 12 2011

Oracle casts another piece of Sun from their portfolio, Apple and Google defend themselves from big-brother accusations made by, um, Big Brother, and it turns out you probably have a pretty sweet job, after all. read more

Process kills developer passion

May 10 2011

The software industry is now full of "best practices," and many of them make sense when considered in isolation. But when you lump them all on the backs of developers, you end up with dispirited bureaucrats/bean counters. read more

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Webcast: Developing Effective OCUnit and UI Automation Testing for iOS
January 11, 2011
Duration: Approximately 60 minutes. Cost: Free The iPhone is a powerful development platform, but can be a difficult one to develop effective testing methodologies for. The OCUnit framework and the UIAutomation framework can allow developers to ...

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...

Webcast: Preparing Enterprise Applications for the iTunes Store
October 05, 2011
Duration: Approximately 60 minutes. Cost: Free Watch the recorded webcast > For individual developers, getting an application into the iTunes App Store is pretty straightforward, once you know the tricks. For developers working in large companies...

James Turner