Programming

Microsoft will gather thousands of developers in San Francisco this week for its Build conference, with much of this year's event focused on generating excitement about updates to its Windows 8 operating system.

CNET will be there live on Wednesday, giving you the blow by blow of the opening keynote, with photos and running commentary as well. The keynote, which will offer a look at the Windows 8.1 update, starts at 9 a.m. PT at the Moscone Center in downtown San Francisco.

You can tune in here:

When Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer took the stage at the company's Build conference for developers last October, the software giant was buzzing from the Windows 8 launch the prior week.

The big news for the first day of that Build: Microsoft had sold 4 million copies of the new operating system in just four days.

This year's Build, which starts Wednesday in San Francisco, will be a bit of a reset for Windows 8. The Windows 8 buzz has long since dissipated, replaced by concerns that the operating system isn't sparking PC sales the way analysts, … Read more

Microsoft on Wednesday announced it will launch a "bug bounty" program, designed to stamp out security vulnerabilities in its software before and after its products are launched.

The software giant has previously offered as much as $250,000 for security vulnerabilities disclosed as part of its BlueHat prize during contests, but the company had yet to offer a long-term, ongoing bug bounty program to encourage researchers to find flaws in its products.

"This is the smartest thing we can do," Katie Moussouris, senior security strategist lead at Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC), told ZDNet on the … Read more

Everybody knows we all need faster Web sites: speedy load times and responsive pages means that people stay on a site longer, look at more photos, see more ads, and buy more stuff. Much of the work to speed things up has happened in the browser, but a startup called Instart Logic hopes to profit by changing what happens on the server, too.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company came out of stealth mode Thursday, describing how its technology works and touting customers including Game of Thrones Ascent, GameStop, Bonfaire, and Kitchit.

"We generally drop people's load time … Read more

TAIPEI -- During Intel's keynote at Computex 2013, the Creative Senz3D Interactive Gesture camera was announced. This camera utilizes 3D sensing technology, and when paired with Intel's Perceptual Computing SDK, allows developers to create applications with gesture control.

The camera has previously been provided to developers working on the SDK, but will be available to the public later this year. No price has been given so far.

Included with the camera is a software bundle that has games and utilities that let you take advantage of the Senz3D. One interesting example is a Skype plugin that allows you … Read more

Web-based photo editing took a second step forward Tuesday with the release of WebRaw, a tool that uses Mozilla's ASM.js technology for the computationally intense process of handling raw photos.

Raw photo formats, available on high-end cameras, offer better image quality and more editing flexibility, but they also are much more of a hassle than standard formats like JPEG, in part because they're so burdensome for computers to decode. That's why the demo, from Mozilla's Vladimir Vukicevic, is interesting: processing raw photos is the sort of chore that only a couple of years ago would … Read more

With a project called Portable Native Client now making its way into Chrome and potentially onto the Web itself, Google is violating its own principles for its Blink browser engine, a Mozilla programmer said Friday.

Portable Native Client, or PNaCl, is a Google technology to let Web apps run specially created software at nearly the speed of the native apps that run on operating systems like Windows or iOS. It plugs into the browser with an interface called Pepper.

Mozilla representatives have been frosty toward Native Client for years, but one programmer, Robert O'Callahan, issued a new criticism Friday, … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO -- A month and a half ago, Google began using its WebP image format in its Google+ app for Android, and now it's saving tremendous amounts of network usage as a result.

"We're saving many terabytes of bandwidth a day, and because of the cost factor, we're saving our users money," said Stephen Konig, a Google product manager, in a well-attended WebP Google I/O talk Friday.

Users' cost savings come because they're less likely to run into data usage caps or incur onerous roaming fees outside their home countries.

But of … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO -- Google long has been a firm believer that JavaScript, the programming language used to build Web apps such as Google Maps and Gmail, could shoulder a much heavier computing load.

But even as the company continues to push JavaScript's abilities with Chrome's V8 engine, some at the company believe JavaScript is pushing up against its limits. For that reason, Google developed its Dart programming language, and at the Google I/O developer show here, the company made the case for Dart.

"The ultimate goal is to get Dart into Chrome. I hope you all … Read more