Microsoft plans to release a beta version of its upcoming Internet Explorer 9 browser sometime in September. Better performance, “same markup” and improved Acid3 test scores are expected. - Microsoft plans to release a beta version of its upcoming Internet Explorer 9 browser sometime in September. Speaking at the Microsoft Financial Analyst Meeting on July 29, Microsoft Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner said the company will be moving ahead with a beta of the next generatio...

Novell delivers Mono Tools for Visual Studio 2.0, a new version of the open-source tool for developers to use Visual Studio to design, code and maintain multiplatform applications. Mono Tools 2.0 features new Mac OS X support. - Novell has delivered Mono Tools for Visual Studio 2.0, a new version of the open-source tool for developers to use Visual Studio to design, code and maintain multiplatform applications. Mono Tools for Visual Studio 2.0 is an add-in module for the Visual Studio integrated development environm...

Adobe Systems plans to acquire Web content management software provider Day Software for $240 million. - In a move to beef up its ongoing play for the attention and purse strings of enterprise customers, Adobe Systems has announced plans to acquire Web content management software provider Day Software for $240 million. In a press release announcing the acquisition, Adobe said its acquisition of Da...

Lockheed Martin, the nation's largest defense contractor, has launched a new open-source project for enterprise social networking called Eureka Streams. The company is inviting developers to give the technology a whirl. - Lockheed Martin, the nation's largest defense contractor, has launched a new open-source project for enterprise social networking called Eureka Streams. The Eureka Streams technology, which looks and behaves much like existing commercial social networking software, is aimed at helping what Lock...

Compuware Workbench is a suite of development tools designed to ease the application development and maintenance burden faced by mainframe shops. - Compuware is looking to help ease the application development and maintenance burden mainframe shops face by delivering a new suite of intuitive development tools. The company's Compuware Workbench, announced July 20, is an Eclipse-based quot;development environment for managing mainframe appl...

For the second year in a row, Evans Data has ranked Google and IBM as the top cloud computing environments for developers. Google was named best public cloud provider and IBM best at delivering a private cloud. - For the second year in a row, Evans Data has ranked Google and IBM as the top cloud computing environments for developers. Based on the results of a recent Evans Data survey of more than 400 software developers, Google stood out as the favorite public cloud platform and IBM as the preferred pri...

The Symbian Foundation and Nitobi team up in an effort to make it easier for mobile application developers to create mobile apps for any device. - In a move to help make it easier for developers to create mobile applications for any device, the Symbian Foundation and Nitobi have joined forces. Symbian and Nitobi, quot;creators of the ground-breaking PhoneGap mobile application development framework, [July 21] announced an open-source ...

Oracle delivers a new version of its Coherence high-performance data grid solution to bolster its position in the middleware space. - Oracle has delivered a new version of its distributed in-memory data grid product, Oracle Coherence 3.6, Announced in mid-July 2010, Oracle Coherence 3.6 is a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g. And Oracle WebLogic Server and Oracle Coherence are critical components of application grid and ...

Microsoft updated its suite of productivity enhancing extensions for developers using Visual Studio 2010. - Microsoft has announced an updated version of its Visual Studio 2010 Productivity Power Tools, featuring several new features and key bug fixes and enhancements. In a blog post describing the update, Sean Laberee, a program manager on Microsofts Visual Studio team, said the company has provided f...

The team behind the Peppermint cloud-based flavor of Linux is at it again, this time delivering Peppermint Ice – a new version of Peppermint featuring Site Specific Browser (SSB) technology for launching web applications and cloud applications. - The team behind the Peppermint cloud-based flavor of Linux is at it again, this time delivering Peppermint Ice – a new version of Peppermint featuring a Site Specific Browser for launching Web applications and cloud applications. Initially released in May, Peppermint is a fork of the Lubuntu Linux ...

An Intel supercomputer called, "Encanto," is helping researchers track the direction of the oil spewing from the massive BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico. We'll let you in on what it's predicting and how accurate its tracking actually is; Google is getting a lot of backlash from users over its revamp of Google News. Users of the Google Web service are angry that their customization was disposed of in the changeover June 30. The reaction is so severe that some users are turning to Microsoft's Bing News or Yahoo News to tailor their interests; Googles Internet Content Provider License has been renewed by the mainland Chinese government. The news comes just two days after Beijing officials reported that the application was under review but with no firm deadline for approval. So what does this mean for the Chinese people and will the censoring remain strong? Thinking of taking a vacation this summer, but want a break from the maddening tourist crowd in coastal tourist traps? Well this summer forget the beach and choose a destination you can really geek out to. eWEEK contributor Nathan Eddy, suggests a list of top five destinations.
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Microsofts Windows Azure is for developers. The company's “general purpose” cloud computing platform offers developers more flexibility and choice than any other at the developer tools level, Microsoft officials said. - WASHINGTON – Microsofts Windows Azure is for developers. Well, that is what the head of Microsofts Windows Azure team said. Microsoft has positioned Windows Azure as the “general purpose” cloud platform. At the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) here, key Microsoft officials delivered ...

Code-named Helios, the latest release of Eclipse brings client access to Eclipse Marketplace from within the IDE, some worthwhile JavaScript-related features and a set of tools for C/C++ application development. - So far this summer there's been an eclipse for every audience: a big-screen edition for fans of teen horror movies, a total eclipse for Easter Island-based sky watchers and, for those of us with our attention trained on the application development world, a major new platform release from the Ecl...

App Inventor for Android is designed to help people with no computer programming experience write applications for smartphones based on Google's Android open-source mobile operating system. - Google July 12 launched App Inventor for Android, a tool people without programming knowledge can use to build applications for smartphones based on the company's open-source Android platform. While Android was designed for software programmers who speak geek, App Inventor is a sort of software ...

Software testing should be part of a much larger process for software quality assurance. When complex systems are built from many subsystems, it's vital to understand, measure and manage the software quality assurance process for all systems from end to end. Here, Knowledge Center contributor Rex Black discusses software quality and testing lessons that IT professionals should learn from the debacle that recently befell Toyota. - How the mighty have fallen. Starting in the 1980s, Japanese companies became legendary for quality and none more legendary than Toyota. But earlier this year, Toyota led the news due to quality problems. The situation was so severe that Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda personally appeared at a Congressional h...

Microsoft announces the dates for its next Professional Developers Conference (PDC): Oct. 28-29. Microsoft's PDC 2010 will be held on the company's Redmond, Wash., campus, and all keynotes and sessions will be Webcast for viewers who do not make it to the event. - WASHINGTON Microsoft has announced the dates for its next Professional Developers Conference (PDC): Oct. 28-29. At the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) here on July 12, Bob Muglia, president of the Server and Tools Business at Microsoft, announced that the next Microsoft PDC will...

JackBe, a maker of enterprise mashup software, has announced version 3.0 of its enterprise mashup platform, Presto. The new version enables developers to build enterprise app stores. - JackBe, a maker of enterprise mashup software, has announced version 3.0 of its enterprise mashup platform, Presto. A key feature of the new release is that it provides a platform for creating internal enterprise application stores, JackBe officials said. In addition, Presto 3.0 features a visu...

Google has introduced a new software development kit (SDK) for the Android 2.2 operating system known as Froyo. Android 2.2 also supports application installation on external storage devices such as SD cards. - Google has introduced a new software development kit for the Android 2.2 operating system known as Froyo. In a July 8 blog post, Google engineer and Android SDK Tech Lead Xavier Ducrohet, said Google initially released an Android 2.2 SDK at the Google I/O developer conference in May, but the ...

Version 3.0 of the Symbian Product Development Kit is available, and Symbian 3's Mobile Runtime for Java Applications support enables developers to write Java apps for Symbian devices. - The Symbian Foundation has released Version 3.0 of the Symbian PDK, based on the Symbian 3 operating system. In a July 7 blog post, Mark Skrebels, release council chair and senior release manager for Symbian, said Symbian PDK 3.0 is quot;the first PDK (Product Development Kit) based on Symb...

The agile methodology is quickly becoming a preferred approach to software development. Agile offers a lightweight framework for helping teams maintain a focus on the rapid delivery of software projects. But even the most carefully prepared teams can make mistakes. Here, Knowledge Center contributor Ian Culling explains how to avoid the top five most common mistakes during the transition to agile. - Through a process of continuous planning and feedback, the agile methodology ensures that value continues to be maximized throughout an organization's software development process. Though these benefits may compel businesses to implement agile, the transition and subsequent scaling within the organ...