programming

John McCarthy, the creator of the Lisp programming language and a pioneer in artificial intelligence, has died. He was 84.

McCarthy died yesterday, Stanford University's School of Engineering announced in a tweet today. McCarthy invented Lisp, a program that became the language of choice for AI, in 1958 while at MIT and published its design in the 1960 paper Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions and Their Computation by Machine, Part I. One of the oldest high-level programming languages (second only to Fortran), Lisp is still in use today.

McCarthy said he felt there were aspects of human intelligence that … Read more

The early preview of Dart, a new alternative to JavaScript for Web programming unveiled by Google earlier this week, is the latest entrant into the pantheon of programming languages. As such, it's hardly a rarity. There are hundreds of programming languages--perhaps thousands if experimental and academic variants are included. That said, the number of widely used languages is much smaller, numbering perhaps in the dozens, with fewer still broadly relevant to general-purpose server operations and Web software.

In fact, what's so notable about the computer programming language landscape over time isn't so much its diversity and adaptability, … Read more

Using post-consumer materials and finding more energy-efficient ways to produce vehicles are just part of Ford Motor Co.'s strategy to reduce the company's global carbon footprint.

Ford is looking at the energy use and carbon emissions of 128 global suppliers. These suppliers account for nearly 60 percent of the company's $65 billion in annual purchases.

In 2010, the automaker surveyed 35 top suppliers that make seats, steering systems, tires, and metal components. What Ford discovered was how much the companies varied in their readiness to measure and report greenhouse gas emissions.

According to the 2010 survey results, … Read more

Google today launched an "early preview" of Dart, a programming language the company hopes will help Web application programmers overcome shortcomings of JavaScript that Google itself feels acutely.

Programmer and project leader Lars Bak detailed the project in a talk today at the Goto conference in Denmark and in a blog post. Dart is geared for everything from small, unstructured projects to large, complicated efforts--Gmail and Google Docs, for example.

"If we want to focus on making the Web better over time, we have to innovate," including with new programming languages, Bak said in an interview … Read more

Brett Paine Murphy developed the SoundStage tabletop board game for children (or adults) to explore 3D audio in a playful way. I experienced SoundStage at the recent Dumbo Arts Festival in Brooklyn, NY, and was bowled over by the sound. It was a breathtaking display of technical virtuosity, but one that a 6-year-old child could enjoy. More specifically, SoundStage uses a double quadraphonic sound system with four speakers arranged in a square, and four more speakers closer to the floor. Within the eight-speaker sound cube there's a 2-foot square table, illuminated from below, and a large number of "… Read more

commentary For all the folks out there who love to bash Adobe Systems for its Flash Player software, it's time to take a fresh look at the company.

Because today's Adobe is very different than the one that long promoted Flash as the way to a rich, interactive Web. Adobe is being reborn as a Web technology company that is advancing Web standards, not promoting its own in-house technology alternative at the expense of those standards.

It's not just Web standards making an appearance, either. Adobe also is moving beyond the personal-computer era with serious apps for … Read more

After dipping its toes in the water with some limited-scope mobile apps, Adobe Systems is taking the plunge today with six programs for Android Honeycomb tablets, including the company's flagship brand, Photoshop.

The programs, each to debut in November with a $10 introductory price, fall under the new Adobe Touch Apps brand. And they tie in with the new Adobe Creative Cloud, a service for sharing files, finding services, and transferring works from the tablet apps to Adobe's Creative Suite apps running on traditional computers.

Along with Photoshop Touch, the other apps are Collage, Debut, Ideas, Kuler, and … Read more

Using a tried and true method to make up for lost time, Adobe is acquiring two companies, Nitobi and TypeKit, to give it more strength in a fast-moving area where it's playing catch-up.

For years Adobe advocated its Flash Player technology for advanced Web design, but now it's wholeheartedly on board with the biggest alternative, Web standards including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Today, in conjunction with its Adobe Max developer and designer conference populated with the very people wrestling with that transition, the company announced the two acquisitions.

Overall, both acquisitions make sense strategically. Each gives Adobe a solid new starting point for aspects of new-age technology. Terms weren't disclosed, though, so it's not clear whether Adobe had to pay a premium for the companies. The TypeKit acquisition is complete, but the Nitobi buy is subject to closing conditions that should be met this month, Adobe said.

Nitobi makes PhoneGap, an open-source programming tool for creating Web apps that run on a variety of mobile phones. That aligns well with the cross-platform approach Adobe has favored with Flash: give programmers the ability to create what they want, and let the tools worry about the differences from one system to another. … Read more

The U.S. Department of Energy today finalized financing for four utility-scale solar projects, capping a week of intense activity amid heightened political scrutiny on the loan guarantee program.

The solar projects are: Project Amp, for the installation of 752 megawatts' worth of solar power on about 750 commercial rooftops; a partial loan guarantee for the 550-megawatt Desert Sunlight project in California; the 230-megawatt Antelope Valley Solar Ranch 1 Project in California; and the 250-megawatt California Valley Solar Ranch project.

Among the four projects, the Department of Energy will guarantee financing worth more than $4.7 billion. Earlier this week, … Read more