Microsoft Foundation Classes for C++ (MFC) continue to evolve, and many useful features are added. Let's Compare MFC9 to MFC10 and discover which classes and methodes are added.

Accessibility is about making your applications usable by people with limitations that prevent or impede the use of conventional user interfaces (UIs). Karl Erickson just wrote a QuickStart with a bunch of tips to help you make your apps more accessible...(read more)

Gartner was late in pooping on the PC party. Intel had already confirmed Wall Street reports that consumer PC sales were crapping out by the time the research house took down its forecast for the second half a half-hearted couple of points, reducing its growth projection to 15.3% against an easy compare. It cited the uncertain economic outlook for the United States and Western Europe as well as sheer supply chain fear. “There is no doubt,” it said, “that consumer, if not business PC demand has slowed relative to expectations in mature markets. Recent dramatic shifts in the PC supply chain were in no small part a reaction to fears of a sharp slowdown in mature-market demand. However, suppliers’ risk-aversion is as much a factor in these shifts as any actual downshift in demand.”

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Google Chrome has teamed with a director and the band Arcade Fire to create "The Wilderness Downtown," a wistful, HTML5-intensive trip down memory lane to the band's song "We Used to Wait." - In one of the more bizarre mash-ups involving Web-based maps, browsers and indie rock music, Google has teamed with a director and the band Arcade Fire to create a sort of do-it-yourself movie that takes a wistful look at childhood. Where REM's quot;Stand quot; provided an upbeat soundtrack for...

There's been a lot of discussion lately around web standards and HTML 5 in particular. People have been asking us how Silverlight fits into a future world where the <video> tag is available to developers. It's a fair question—and I'll provide...(read more)

If you wanted to check out some of the talks at the recent 2010 JVM Language Summit most of the sessions are now available to watch on the Oracle Media Network:

• Gathering the Threads -- JVM Futures by John Rose - Session Abstract
• Trending Toward the Middle -- The Best of Static and Dynamic by Charles Nutter - Session Abstract
• Faking Closures on the JVM Isn't as Simple as It Looks by David Pollak - Session Abstract
• Kawa and gnu.bytecode Update by Per Bothner - Session Abstract
• LINQ: Language Features for Concurrency (Among Other Things) by Neal Gafter - Session Abstract
• Symmetric Multilanguage VM Architecture by Oleg Pliss - Session Abstract
• Register Allocation on SSA form for Java Just-in-Time Compilation by Christian Wimmer - Session Abstract
• Erjang -- A JVM-based Erlang VM by Kresten Krab Thorup - Session Abstract
• Project Fortress Compiler Implementation Status by Christine Flood - Session Abstract
• Digital Performance by Cliff Click - Session Abstract
• The Maxine Inspector: A Specialized Tool for VM Development by Michael Van De Vanter - Session Abstract
• Efficient Lambda Compilation using MethodHandles and JRockit by Fredrik Öhrström - Session Abstract
• Coroutines for the Java Platform by Lukas Stadler - Session Abstract
• Engineering Fine-Grained Parellelism in Java (Keynote) by Doug Lea - Session Abstract
• Mixed Language Compilation in Eclipse: Java and Groovy by Andy Clement - Session Abstract
• MethodHandles: An IBM Implementation by Dan Heidinga - Session Abstract
• Chronon -- Time-Travelling Debugger by Prashant Deva - Session Abstract
• The Thorn Language: Robust Distributed Scripting on the JVM by John Field - Session Abstract
• Improvements in OpenJDK Useful for JVM Languages by Eric Caspole - Session Abstract

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Today we released a new update to for Silverlight 4 (4.0.50826.0) and a new SDK to go along with it.  Tim Heuer posted a summary here and you can check out the full details at KB2164913 . I summarized the key elements below. Here are the relevant...(read more)

Today we released an update to Silverlight 4 (update build is 4.0.50826.0) along with an updated SDK. We appreciate our customers’ patience on working with us to help identify and verify necessary updates to this service release. You can find all the...(read more)

Infoworld are reporting that Google has pulled out of presenting sessions at JavaOne. Which is probably not that big of a surprise considering Oracle decided to sue Google last month.

In a blog post on the Google Code Blog, Joshua Bloch stated, "..we're sad to announce that we won't be able to present at JavaOne this year. We wish that we could, but Oracle's recent lawsuit against Google and open source has made it impossible for us to freely share our thoughts about the future of Java and open source generally. This is a painful realization for us, as we've participated in every JavaOne since 2004, and I personally have spoken at all but the first in 1996."

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Atlassian Support is pleased to announce the release of the Support Tools Plugin for JIRA 4.1 and Confluence 3.1 and higher. The Support Tools plugin was created by the Atlassian Support team to help our customers get the answers they need more quickly. Confluence and JIRA Administrators now have a whole new way to help themselves and keep their users happy.

Atlassian Support is pleased to announce the release of the Support Tools Plugin for JIRA 4.1 and Confluence 3.1 and higher. The Support Tools plugin was created by the Atlassian Support team to help our customers get the answers they need more quickly. Confluence and JIRA Administrators now have a whole new way to help themselves and keep their users happy.

ActiveState announced a version of its Python, ActivePython, with connectors to open source and proprietary databases, new GUI toolkits and secure connections. - ActiveState has announced a new version of its implementation of the Python language, ActivePython. ActiveState, which focuses on delivering solutions for dynamic language developers using such languages as Perl, Python, and Tcl, is adding key Python open-source packages to its ActivePython Busi...

In its 11-plus years of operating, Google has rarely been shy about snapping up companies where it sees a need. Google has acquired DoubleClick for display advertising and the wealth of ad data the company holds, Postini for cloud-based e-mail security and, of course, the prized YouTube video-sharing Website. Then the economy tanked and Google's shopping spree dried up; the company acquired no companies from October 2008 until August 2009, when it bid for On2 Technologies. Since that time, the company has pursued and snapped up more than 20 companies and counting in search, social networking, gaming, advertising, cloud collaboration and a few miscellaneous acquisitions. The key theme here is Google's increase in social-oriented purchases. Expect buys such as Slide, Jambool, Angstro and SocialDeck to bolster Google's Social Me network to fight Facebook. Scores.org has whipped up a helpful infographic to put the purchases in perspective. In the slide show, eWEEK runs through the deals here. - ...

Okay, maybe it's not a 'cloud in a box.' And maybe they don't even want us to refer to it as a 'cloud in a box.' But that's what they're gearing up for with all of these product acquisitions.



VMware - SpringSource - VCloud - Cloud computing - Emulators

High performance, availability and scalability with messaging solutions, and the key to the mix is the WebSphere Application Server (WAS) along with a handy Service Integration Bus (SIB). Here we're going to deliver some hints and best practices, as we show you how to configure for high availability.



IBM WebSphere - IBM - Application server - Cloud computing - server

The end of the year is right around the corner (already!) but we’re not quite done showcasing projects that have been with us for 10 years or more. September’s Project of the Month is GPL Ghostscript, a complete set of page description language interpreters including PDF, PostScript, PCL5, PCLXL, and XPS.

Even if you’ve never used GPL Ghostscript, you’ve probably heard its name since it’s been around since 1989. Project developers say, “anyone who needs to view, print, archive, or convert PDF, PostScript, PCL, or XPS on any platform is a potential GPL Ghostscript user.” If that describes you, then be sure to check out the app. If you already know it and love it, why not contribute? “We are willing to pay for bug fixes through our bug bounty system,” says GPL Ghostscript’s Project Lead.

Have a look at what the development team has learned over the years, then take a trip down memory lane and see what other projects we’ve covered this year.

We are absolutely thrilled to announce that Atlassian is joining the 2011 class of World Economic Forum Technology Pioneers. Thirty-one companies were selected for this year's award by a selection committee composed of technology experts, top academicians, venture capital firms, technology incubators, entrepreneurs, innovators and Forum Members and Partners.

The thirty-one winners of this year's award hailed from 13 countries. Past winners include some of the most sensational names in business such as Google, Mozilla and Twitter. Following the announcement, winners are covered in a variety of news media and will be recognized during the Annual Meeting of the New Champions in Tianjin, People's Republic of China, later this month. Atlassian co-founder and CEO, Scott Farquhar, is featured in one of a series of videos, sponsored by the World Economic Forum, about entrepreneurship.

If you're not familiar with the World Economic Forum, they are a non-profit that "brings together top business leaders, international political leaders, selected intellectuals and journalists to discuss the most pressing issues facing the world." (from Wikipedia)

View all the winners at the World Economic Forum website.

Google's Chrome Web browser rallied to 7.5 percent market share in August after sliding to 7.1 percent in July, according to Net Applications. IE, Firefox and Safari held the line. - Google's Chrome Web browser bounced back from a down July with a new high of 7.5 percent market share, according to the latest data from Net Applications. Microsoft Internet Explorer continued to pace the market, with a 60.4 percent share, a dip from 60.7 percent in July. Mozilla Firefox matche...

In praise of the single page interface. In this little presentation, the author of ItsNat explains why every other web development framework sucks.



Web development - Programming - Languages - PHP - Framework

Horizontal scalability for relational databases with Hibernate Shards



Shard - Database - Programming - Java - Languages