Developer Week in Review: Developers are our most important asset? - A good hacker is hard to find, a cheap data center is hard to get to, and the app store model is hard to ignore
An argument for the value of highly productive programmers, datacenters head for the country to save a few bucks, and the app store model seems to be taking over the industry, and not just for mobile.

Developer Week in Review: Siri is the talk of the town - Voice-driven apps on the horizon, take Stanford CS courses on the house, and JavaScript flexes its muscles.
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.

Developer Week in Review: Talking to your phone - Getting serious about Siri, Open Office on the rocks, and Google embraces SQL.
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.

Developer Week in Review: Android proves fruitful for Microsoft - More bucks for Microsoft, more horsepower for SPARC, and more votes for ... someone.
Samsung agrees to pay Microsoft royalties for Android use. Elsewhere, Oracle keeps the SPARC line alive, and the hackability of voting machines is exposed.

Developer Week in Review: Windows 8 Developer Preview goes public - Win8 for free, Google throws a Dart, and Congress whiffs on patent reform.
Microsoft changes tack on a Windows 8 alpha, Google is darting away from JavaScript, and the great Patent Reform of 2011 reforms little.

Five digital design ideas from Windows 8 - With Metro, it's clear Microsoft has put a lot of thought into touchscreen design.
Microsoft's Metro interface offers plenty for digital book designers to study. The best part? Whether or not Microsoft actually ships something that matches their demo, designers can benefit from the great thinking they've done.

Five digital design ideas from Windows 8 - With Metro, it's clear Microsoft has put a lot of thought into touchscreen design.
Microsoft's Metro interface offers plenty for digital book designers to study. The best part? Whether or not Microsoft actually ships something that matches their demo, designers can benefit from the great thinking they've done.

Four short links: 31 August 2011 - Maps on Android, Security Laws, Trough of Potential, and Enterprise Gamification
OSMdroid -- The OpenStreetMapView is a (almost) full/free replacement for Android's MapView class. Also see this tutorial. (via Simon Gianoutsos) 10 Immutable Laws of Security (Microsoft) -- an oldie but a goodie. Law #1: If a bad guy can persuade you to run his program on your computer, it's not your computer anymore. What's in The Trough? (BERG London)...

Developer Week in Review: Mobile's embedded irony - Who really profits from Android sales? And does the world need another source control system?
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.

Four short links: 18 July 2011 - Organisational Warfare, RTFM, Timezone Shapefile, Microsoft Adventure
Organisational Warfare (Simon Wardley) -- notes on the commoditisation of software, with interesting analyses of the positions of some large players. On closer inspection, Salesforce seems to be doing more than just commoditisation with an ILC pattern, as can be clearly seen from Radian's 6 acquisition. They also seem to be operating a tower and moat strategy, i.e. creating...

Developer Week in Review: Start your lawyers! - If the lawsuit fits, the Kinect SDK for Windows arrives, and IPv6 day fails to excite.
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?

Developer Week in Review: Are .NET programmers going extinct? - Microsoft embraces HTML5, selling a startup at 15, and a new version of Java looms.
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.

Developer Week in Review: Are .NET programmers going extinct? - Microsoft embraces HTML5, selling a startup at 15, and a new version of Java looms.
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.

Four short links: 2 June 2011 - Windows 8, CC YouTube, Corporate Innovation, and Crypto Lifetimes
Building Windows 8 - Video #1 (YouTube) -- lovely to see Microsoft's operating system finally leaping past a 2002 look and feel. YouTube Offers Creative Commons Licensing (BoingBoing) -- bravo! Redefiners Capturing Media Growth Dollars -- Anil Dash's corporate presentation about innovating within large (media) companies. The initial slides are money posturing to get the attention of the audience,...

Functions are values: explore C# lambda types in Visual Studio
I love that a college professor of mine from long ago, Bob Harper, is tackling the tricky issue of how to teach students about the nature of functions in his new Existential Type blog. His post got me thinking about how you'd go about teaching this concept to a learner—specifically, in my case, a C# learner. I've given it a bit of thought, and here's what I've come up with.

Developer Week in Review - WWDC tickets are here and gone, Gosling goes to Google, and irony at MySQL.
If you wanted WWDC tickets, you better have had a fast mouse finger. But if James Gosling wants to go to Google I/O, he'll have an inside track next year. Meanwhile, MySQL needs to practice what they preach, security-wise.

Developer Week in Review - Amazon buys itself a lawsuit, a setting Sun.com, and the new name in databases
What's in a name? For Amazon's new Appstore, it was a lawsuit. For Oracle's sun.com domain, big money. And would MySQL by any other name smell as sweet?

Inside the e-wars: Barnes & Noble Woes and the Digital Marketplace: A 1-2 Punch
Borders and Barnes & Noble used to be great. The #1 and #2 booksellers in the U.S., building out new superstores like they were going to grow forever. Three years ago, a new Borders was built in Olympia. It's...

Inside the e-wars: Barnes & Noble Woes and the Digital Marketplace: A 1-2 Punch
Borders and Barnes & Noble used to be great. The #1 and #2 booksellers in the U.S., building out new superstores like they were going to grow forever. Three years ago, a new Borders was built in Olympia. It's...

Developer Week in Review - Special Jeopardy edition featuring Nokia, MacBook Pro rumors, and Google's Public Data Explorer.
Tired of everyone making "Terminator" or "Matrix" references to Watson's domination of its pitiful human rivals? Well, we go old school with our media references, as we look at Nokia's fickleness, new toys for geeks, and Google's campaign for pretty data.