developers

Episode 579: New rule: All music on floppies

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Report: MySpace to launch developer platform

Have you gotten sick of the word "platform" yet? Sorry.

According to a post on TechCrunch, MySpace.com is planning to follow in Facebook's footsteps and open up a set of application program interfaces (APIs) so that developers can create "MySpace apps" in the vein of Facebook apps.

TechCrunch's Michael Arrington, who apparently got the details from developers who have been consulted on the project, wrote that we may be seeing this as early as next week--potentially at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco.

More specifically, this is allegedly going to be … Read more

Report: Facebook 'issues mulligan' on developer grant application process

According to an e-mail copied to the CenterNetworks blog, Facebook's much-touted developer grant program may be off to a rocky start. The FBFund initiative is apparently restructuring its application process and is asking that all previous applicants re-submit their materials. Initially, applications were to be submitted via e-mail; now, a submission form is available.

"To make sure that everyone understands the conditions of submitting a grant application, we will not review any materials you have sent via email, and any materials you may have sent have been deleted," the copy-pasted e-mail read. It's apparently to ensure … Read more

Microsoft's .Net gets the shared-source treatment

Microsoft has been notoriously anti-open source in the past, so today's announcement that it will be releasing the source code for its .Net Framework comes as a bit of a surprise.

The source code will be released under Microsoft's Reference License. This means that you can only use the source as a reference for debugging, maintaining or enhancing your applications. You cannot modify or distribute the code for any purpose. This happens to be the most restricted shared-source license that Microsoft has. This announcement confirms that .Net is going to be shared source, not to be confused with … Read more

Out-Googling Google, a la Krugle

Krugle has been silent for the past year. I was actually worried that the company had fizzled out, but--as I learned from Laura Merling today--nothing could be further from the truth:

We released the Enterprise product as GA, with 16 substantial companies (most are Fortune 100 or Fortune 500) that are now using it. No one will give us our evaluation search appliance back! Even those who are just evaluating our product refuse to drop Krugle once they've started using it. They've been providing their use cases to us to help us improve our services.

Krugle is doing well, in part, because it's done a good job of figuring out how to profit from open source, even when it, in itself, is not open source:… Read more

Simonyi tells programmers to leave the Dark Ages

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--Charles Simonyi--legendary Microsoft programmer, good friend of Martha Stewart and space tourist--doesn't have many good things to say about the current state of his own profession, software engineering.

He says businesses are stuck in a "poverty economy," using only the cheap and crude tools available to write programs. And he calls software development "the bottleneck on the high-tech horn of plenty."

Simonyi spoke at EmTech, the Emerging Technologies Conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology here Wednesday, where he described his solution to the programming problem.

Professionally, Simonyi is well-known for … Read more

Infantry to lead the way with a new PDA

A collaboration between military R&D and industrial designers is bringing state-of-the-art PDA technology to Joe Snuffy out on the battlefield.

The Soldier Flex PDA (SFPDA) introduced by Inhand Electronics features flexible display technology with input from industrial design firm Artisent, display technology firm E-Ink and the U.S. Army Flexible Display Center at Arizona State University.

The PDA offers InHand's PXA270-based Fingertip4 CPU board, along with Ethernet, USB, Bluetooth and keypad interfaces all in a "ruggedized" glass-free package that weighs less than a pound. Best of all, the unique low-power characteristics of electronic paper displays … Read more

Facebook announces incentive fund for application developers

Because opening up the site just wasn't enough, apparently: Facebook is branching into a new role as an investor. The company has announced a new program called FBFund to provide grants to developers who are interested in creating applications for the Facebook Platform. FBFund, with cash infused by Facebook investors Accel Partners and the Founders Fund, will start with $10 million and will provide $25,000-$250,000 grants to developers who apply for the program. The fund's investment committee will consist of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, vice president of product marketing and operations Charmath Palihapitaya, and board … Read more

Report: Facebook may be headed for data storage

Remember when Facebook was just a way to "poke" that kid who sat in front of you in macroeconomics class? Yeah, that was a long time ago. Rev2 reported on Sunday that technobabble on the Facebook Developer Wiki may be hinting that the "social utility" wants to expand into data storage.

So far, this appears to only apply to developers who have created applications on the Facebook Platform and have until this point provided their own data storage for the apps. A Facebook data storage plan would allow them to rent or purchase storage (or perhaps, … Read more