dev

Do you hate your job? Is your boss a jerk? Are you an elephant on roller skates?!

Every year, the DePaul University Game Dev Program chooses a set of students to create an entry for the Independent Games Festival, and the results are usually impressive (see last year's entry Octodad). This year, the anthropomorphic-loving crew is back with Groovy Tuesday, in which you guide a roller-skating elephant on his quest to funkify his office--including furniture, lights, and coworkers--by tossing "plugmen" into heretofore unconnected music devices.

Still under development, the 0.9 version of Groovy Tuesday offers up … Read more

iOS 6.0.1 users can now jailbreak their devices, but there are some bumps in the road.

The latest version of the iPhone Dev Team's Redsn0w can jailbreak iOS 6.0.1 devices, Redmond Pie confirmed today after testing the update.

However, not everyone can take advantage of the effort at this point.

The jailbreak works only on iOS devices powered by an A4 chip or lower. People who own the iPhone 5, the newest iPads, or the latest iPod Touch are out of luck. The jailbreak takes advantage of the Limera1n exploit, which can't handle the … Read more

Microsoft has completely overhauled its Windows Phone Dev Center and added some extra ways for developers to get paid.

The company today announced the changes in a blog post, saying that the site, which allows developers to do everything from submit applications to download software development kits, was completely rebuilt "from the ground up." The design itself comes with a healthy amount of white space and a streamlined, basic feel. According to Microsoft, the redesign aims "at providing faster access to common tasks."

For developers, however, the key additions come by way of availability and payments. … Read more

RIM headlines these days speak doom and gloom, but at least some developers see a brighter future.

According to the handful of devoted BlackBerry developers I spoke with at today's BlackBerry Jam 10 world tour event in Santa Clara, Calif., RIM proved at the BlackBerry 10 Jam in Orlando last May that the beleaguered smartphone-maker finally "gets it," and is prepared to give developers the tools they're asking for to create apps for the QNX-based BlackBerry 10 platform.

The press didn't realize the interesting stuff that was really happening, these software authors maintained, since RIM … Read more

NirSoft's DevManView is a freeware alternative to the built-in Device Manager in Windows. It not only displays your system's devices but also those of any other computers on your network, as long as you have Admin privileges. It's a great choice for managing a home network, letting you keep tabs on each system's hardware and drivers from one interface. DevManView is available in 32-bit and 64-bit versions; we downloaded the 64-bit version for Windows 7.

We've tried many of developer Nir Sofer's excellent free apps, including the 32-bit version of DevManView, and we've … Read more

Google has started to warm up Chrome with features designed to make it interact more smoothly with Android and other computers, as the summer's Google I/O conference and a possible final street-ready version of Native Client wait in the wings.

Google Chrome 19 beta for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Chrome Frame landed today, updated with Other Device support. The new feature lets you access your Chrome tabs from other computers, and includes Chrome for Android if you've got an Ice Cream Sandwich device. The Other Devices option is available at the bottom of the New Tab page, … Read more

The newly-minted Chrome 18 beta expands the scope of hardware acceleration in the browser to older computers, but it's still not available to all. Meanwhile, Chrome 19 dev goes bleeding edge with JavaScript.

Released today, Google Chrome 18 beta for Windows, Mac, and Chrome Frame improves 2D Canvas support and introduces a software rasterizer. The new features are not yet available on Chrome 18 beta for Linux.

Basically, this means that games and animations based in the HTML5 Canvas tag ought to run faster and appear smoother. Google noted in its blog post announcing the changes that this was … Read more

Contrary to popular opinion, BlackBerry users have actually avidly embraced smartphone apps.

That was the key message during today's DevCon Europe event hosted by Research In Motion. Alec Saunders, head of RIM's developer relations, has been the key evangelist in the cause of drumming up interest in BlackBerry's platform at a time when it faces many questions about its growth prospects and ability to compete against the likes of Android and iOS.

Saunders provided the headline stat for the day: 6 million apps downloaded from BlackBerry's App World each day, or nearly 150 million a month, … Read more

Whether or not the masses actually jailbreak their iPhones, it seems as though users are willing to support the work that the jailbreak community is doing, feeding the Chronic-Dev Team with more than 10 million crash reports in a single week after the release of the Chronic-Dev Crash Reporter application.

The app was created for Mac and Windows and, once installed, allows the Chronic-Dev Team to access the crash reports from your iOS devices before they are sent to Apple. Once accessed, they are sent instead to a server run by the Chronic-Dev Team and analyzed.

That data is then … Read more