Thursday, July 31, 2014

IoT, M2M, Big Data: tools, integration

Tooling Up for the Marriage of the Internet of Things, Big Data, and Cloud Computing | Dr Dobb's:

"Finding tools that will bridge IoT, machine-to-machine, and big data is no simple task. But some integrated solutions are beginning to appear."

IoT

Internet of Things Events

Internet of Things Events:

Internet of Things Events



A dedicated web site for tracking IoT events:

a clear sign that IoT is becoming mainstream, like it was XML, SOA, Web 2.0 etc...


event: IoT Conference 2014 @ MIT Media Lab

Internet of Things 2014: 4th International Conference for Industry and Academia (IoT 2014):

"The 4th International Conference on the Internet of Things (IoT 2014) will take place October 6–8, 2014 at Cambridge, MA, USA."










Amazon Kindle Unlimited subscription service

Amazon Unveils E-Book Subscription Service, With Some Notable Absences - NYTimes.com:

"Amazon... introduced a digital subscription service that allows subscribers unlimited access to a library of e-books and audiobooks for $10 a month.

The service, Kindle Unlimited, offers a Netflix-style, all-you-can-read approach to more than 600,000 e-books, "



Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Google X: define healthy human

Google X sets out to define healthy human | Science/AAAS | News:

"Google X, the secretive research arm of Google Inc., is making a major foray into clinical research with the goal of pinning down what it means to be healthy. The Mountain View, California, company revealed last week that it will launch a project, the Baseline Study, to follow thousands of people and identify patterns of biochemicals, proteins, genetic mutations, and other measurements that correlate with who remains well and who gets sick."




Tuesday, July 29, 2014

IoT devices, HP security concerns

HP tests 10 popular IoT devices, most raise privacy concerns - SC Magazine:

" HP study (PDF) released Tuesday, showed that, on average, each IoT device contained 25 vulnerabilities. Included in the test were a range of IoT devices – TVs, webcams, home alarms, hubs for controlling multiple devices, remote power outlets, door locks, garage door openers, home thermostats, sprinkler controllers and scales."


Saturday, July 26, 2014

Avatar.js: node.js + JVM

Avatar.js: is a project to bring the node programming model, APIs and module ecosystem to the Java platform, enabling a new class of hybrid server applications that can leverage two of the most popular programming languages and ecosystems today. These Java+JavaScript applications can leverage capabilities of both environments - access the latest node frameworks while taking advantage of the Java platform's scalability, manageability, tools, and extensive collection of Java libraries and middleware.





Project Avatar @ InfoQ



Node.js vs Avatar.js performance @ GitHub



first benchmark: node.js: 2,431 avatar.js: 46.74 ops/sec
this is 50 times slower on JVM!
other tests are similar... 

The reactive manifesto

The reactive manifesto
Reactive Applications
Merriam-Webster defines reactive as “readily responsive to a stimulus”, i.e. its components are “active” and always ready to receive events. This definition captures the essence of reactive applications, focusing on systems that:
  • react to events: the event-driven nature enables the following qualities
  • react to load: focus on scalability by avoiding contention on shared resources
  • react to failure: build resilient systems with the ability to recover at all levels
  • react to users: honor response time guarantees regardless of load
Go Reactive: Blueprint for Future Applications @ InfoQ
by Dr Roland Kuhn (Scala, Akka)


Could "responsible" be a better name for this?

Microservices

Migrating to Microservices: @ InfoQ

(Netflix Cloud Architect) "Adrian Cockcroft discusses strategies, patterns and pathways to perform a gradual migration from monolithic applications towards cloud-based REST microservices."

  • Speed wins in the marketplace 
  • Remove friction from product development 
  • High trust, low process 
  • Freedom and responsibility culture 
  • Don’t do your own undifferentiated heavy lifting 
  • Simple patterns automated by tooling 
  • Microservices for speed and availability
  • Focus on unique value add
  • Open source for commodity solutions
  • "Write-only" service (add, not replace, avoid breaking dependencies)

Microservices @ Martin Fowler


MIT: 4D Printing

Forget the 3D Printer: 4D Printing Could Change Everything | Innovation | Smithsonian:
"At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tibbits and researchers from the firms Stratasys and Autodesk Inc were trying to come up with a way of describing the objects they were creating on 3D printers—objects that not only could be printed, but thanks to geometric code, could also later change shape and transform on their own."


Skylar Tibbits: The emergence of "4D printing" - YouTube

Friday, July 25, 2014

Windows Developer Program for IoT

Rolling out the Windows Developer Program for IoT


...developer kits include a (Intel) Galileo board and preview Windows image that supports the standard Arduino Wiring API set and a subset of Win32 API.


https://ms-iot.github.io/content/WelcomeAndFAQ.htm

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsembedded/en-us/internet-of-things.aspx




iPhone vs. iPad

What is wrong with $30B iPad sales?

http://fortune.com/2014/07/24/whats-wrong-with-apples-ipad/

iPhone, subsidized by mobile plans is more profitable...

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Asus ChromeBox vs VivoPC

Amazon.com: ASUS CHROMEBOX-M004U Desktop: Computers & Accessories:

$169
  • 1.4 GHz Intel Celeron 2955U Processor
  • 2GB DDR3 RAM, 16 GB SSD HDD
  • Intel HD graphics
  • Google Chrome OS
Amazon.com : ASUS VivoPC-VM40B-02 Desktop : Computers & Accessories

$249
  • Intel Celeron 1007U Processor
  • 4GB DDR3
  • 500 GB 5400 rpm Hard Drive
  • Windows 8



Monday, July 21, 2014

IoT: CoAP: Constrained Application Protocol (!)

Constrained Application Protocol - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

"Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) is a software protocol intended to be used in very simple electronics devices that allows them to communicate interactively over the Internet. It is particularly targeted for small low power sensors, switches, valves and similar components that need to be controlled or supervised remotely, through standard Internet networks. CoAP is an application layer protocol that is intended for use in resource-constrained internet devices, such as WSN nodes. CoAP is designed to easily translate to HTTP for simplified integration with the web, while also meeting specialized requirements such as multicast support, very low overhead, and simplicity.
...
CoAP makes use of two message types, requests and responses, using a simple binary base header format. The base header may be followed by options in an optimized Type-Length-Value format. CoAP is by default bound to UDP and optionally to DTLS, providing a high level of communications security."


IoT: is MQTT spec a mess?

Clemens is a well known and experienced Microsoft engineer / architect, currently working on IoT solutions.
When trying to implement MQTT he observed some (many) issues with the (IBM's open sourced) spec.
This will clearly initiate active discussion, and that will likely be helpful for for future of IoT.

Clemens Vasters - MQTT. An Implementer’s Perspective:
"MQTT is an old, recycled, and often weirdly inconsistent mess. It's not a good protocol, and certainly not a good protocol for the Internet of Things where we will look connect devices with long-haul links with unpredictable network conditions, and I believe it's unfixable without becoming something different entirely. We ought to know better, and OASIS also ought to know better."

Clemens Vasters - MQTT discussion, continued …

MQTT V3.1 Protocol Specification @ IBM

A Critique of MQTT From a Microsoft Architect | Javalobby @ DZone

MQTT - Another Implementor's Perspective - Tim Kellogg

MQTT – a discussion on Clemens Vasters’ post (IBM messaging) @ IBM

Sunday, July 20, 2014

Machine Learning Summer School @ CMU

Location: Carnegie Mellon University
July 7-18, 2014
Sponsors: Google, Microsoft, Amazon, NSF

"Machine Learning is a foundational discipline that forms the basis of much modern data analysis. It combines theory from areas as diverse as Statistics, Mathematics, Engineering, and Information Technology with many practical and relevant real life applications. The focus of the current summer school is big data analytics, distributed inference, scalable algorithms, and applications to the digital economy. The event is targeted at research students, IT professionals, and academics from all over the world."

Friday, July 18, 2014

Silver and white cars are cooler, says study

Silver and white cars are cooler, says study:
(Berkeley) "The researchers had two cars in the sun for an hour, one black and the other silver, parked facing south, in Sacramento, California. The silver Honda Civic (shell SR 0.57) had a cabin air temperature of about 5-6°C (9-11°F) lower than an identical black car (shell SR 0.05)."
Silver and white cars are cooler, says study
"silver paint instead of black paint would raise fuel economy by 0.44 mpg (2.0 percent); would decrease carbon dioxide emissions by 1.9 percent, and reduce other automotive emissions by about 1 percent."




IoT: 7 Habits of Highly Effective Things on Internet (!)

The CompuServe of Things: by Phil Windley @ Technometria
"On the Net today we face a choice between freedom and captivity, independence and dependence."

Online 2.0: Return of the Silos Each of these online service businesses sought to offer a complete soup-to-nuts experience and capitalized on their captive audiences in order to get businesses to pay for access.

A Real, Open Internet of Things If we were really building the Internet of Things, with all that that term implies, there'd be open, decentralized, heterarchical systems at its core, just like the Internet itself. There aren't. Sure, we're using TCP/IP and HTTP, but we're doing it in a way that is closed, centralized, and hierarchical with only a minimal nod to interoperability using APIs.



To follow the metaphor, besides "dependence" and "independence" there is also "interdependence", an ultimate level of collaboration
as defined in "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by  Stephen R. Covey
This could be an effective template for building IoT:

wt ch5 b covey seven habits 7 Habits of Highly Effective People


"Things on Internet", similar to people, start as "Dependent",
that is they need others to take care of them,
then progressing to be "Independent", self-sufficient,
and finally "Interdependent", working well with others.

Independence (self-mastery):
  • Habit 1: Be Proactive
To be "responsible", response-able, not just "reactive".
In a way, to be "smarter" things, adaptable, not just hard-coded.   
  • Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind
"Things" should start with well defined "purpose",
features and characteristics in context of usage. 
  • Habit 3: Put First Things First
Focus on performing most relevant function very well.
With so many "things", even "smart" toaster should be a good toaster first. 
This starts from clear description , and then solid implementation.

Interdependence (working well with others): 
  • Habit 4: Think Win-Win
"Things" that are well focused can be combined with other "things" to mutually support each other. Clearly defined interfaces, "API"s, help avoid combining incompatible "things" and avoid problems. 
  • Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood
This is related to Internet (TCP) Robustness principle
"Be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept"
  • Habit 6: Synergize
Combine the strengths of "things" through positive collaboration,
to achieve solutions no one "thing" could have done alone.

Continuous Improvement
  • Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw
People need to keep learning, "things" (and "services") need to keep upgrading.
Hardware, firmware and software upgrades are an essential feature. 

OK, that is it, "solid design principles" for IoT :)

"Bundling" vs "Unbundling"

Marc Andreessen and Jim Barksdale on How to Make Money - HBR IdeaCast - Harvard Business Review:



Some observations about various product "bundling" options,

from time of Netscape (stand-alone product) vs Microsoft IE (bundled).

Both techniques have merits, at different times, for different companies.

Only constant is change...


Homes Near National Parks

Homes for Sale Near National Parks | Zillow Blog:



Home Near Glacier National Park



Home Near Grand Teton National Park

AI: "Deep Learning" Microsoft 'Project Adam' vs Google 'Brain' (!)

Microsoft Challenges Google’s Artificial Brain With ‘Project Adam’ | Enterprise | WIRED:
"Microsoft’s new artificial intelligence system, Project Adam, can identify images, including photos of a particular breed of dog."
Project Adam at work.
"We’re entering a new age of artificial intelligence.

Drawing on the work of a clever cadre of academic researchers, the biggest names in tech—including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple—are embracing a more powerful form of AI known as “deep learning,” using it to improve everything from speech recognition and language translation to computer vision, the ability to identify images without human help."



While Microsoft's researchers are working on recognizing dogs,
Google's researches are working on recognizing cats :)

In a Big Network of Computers, Evidence of Machine Learning - NYTimes.com
"How Many Computers to Identify a Cat? 16,000"

Google’s Large Scale Deep Learning Experiments « Deep Learning

(Google's) Quoc Le’s Lectures on Deep Learning | Gaurav Trivedi

Stanford Team Develops 11 Billion Parameter Deep Learning System Using COTS GPU Hardware - Andrew Ng
"...Stanford developed a deep learning system with over 11 billion learnable parameters. One of the key drivers to progress in deep learning has been the ability to scale up these algorithms. Ng’s team at Google had previously reported a system that required 16,000 CPU cores to train a system with 1 billion parameters. This result shows that it is possible to build massive deep learning systems using only COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) hardware, thus hopefully making such systems available to significantly more groups."

a paper that shows how to build the same type of system for just $20,000 using cheap, but powerful, graphics microprocessors, or GPUs

WebGL 3D HTML Games (Babylon.js)

Learning WebGL and making 3D HTML Games with David Catuhe and Babylon.js on the Hanselminutes Technology Podcast
David Catuhe is the primary author of Babylon.js and an expert in WebGL. Are 3D games really happening on the web? There are more possibilities than you may realize! WebGL really lights up with libraries like three.js and babylon.js

Assassin's Creed Pirates Demo






ColorPicker.com - Quick Online Color Picker Tool

ColorPicker.com - Quick Online Color Picker Tool:

ColorPicker.com - Quick Online Color Picker Tool | HTML Color Codes - Colour Codes - Hex Colour - Color Chart - Color Schemes - Colores Codigo - Code de Couleur - Farbcodes - Renk Kodlari - カラーコード - اللون - 颜色 - 顏色 - цвет - Farbe

Thursday, July 17, 2014

Lectures on Deep Learning (Google Brain)

Quoc Le’s Lectures on Deep Learning | Gaurav Trivedi:

Dr. Quoc Le from the Google Brain project team (yes, the one that made headlines for creating a cat recognizer) presented a series of lectures at the Machine Learning Summer School (MLSS ’14) in Pittsburgh this week

  • Lecture 1: Neural Networks Review
  • Lecture 2: NNs in Practice
  • Lecture 3: Deep NN Architectures

IoT: Intel 1/2 billion dollars quarter

Intel made more than half a billion dollars from the “internet of things” last quarter - Quartz:



Intel just disclosed that it made $539 million from its Internet of Things group during the second quarter, up 12% on the preceding quarter, and up 24% from a year ago.

Android Ahead-Of-Time Compiler

Android to Include Ahead-Of-Time Compiler: @ InfoQ

"Android 'L' RunTime (ART) with an AOT compiler replaces the Dalvik virtual machine and its JIT compiler.
...
In the new Android runtime the OS compiles bytecode to native machine code on the device at installation and stores the native code for later execution. The native code representation is larger both in permanent storage and in RAM on the device. Unlike with Dalvik and traditional JIT compilers, on the other hand, the compilation process does not need to be repeated on every application execution.

...

Google is claiming up to 200% performance improvements overall for ART over Dalvik"


ThoughtWorks Radar July 2014

ThoughtWorks Radar July 2014: Trends in JavaScript, Microservices, Conway’s Law and Decentralization:

As it is the case with previous ThoughtWorks radars, the graphic contains four quadrant with four zones each:

  • Adopt – recommended for adoption, 
  • Trial – worth trying for projects with lower risks, 
  • Assess – recommended for evaluation, 
  • Hold – exercise caution.


Technology Radar July 2014 | ThoughtWorks



assets.thoughtworks.com/assets/technology-radar-july-2014-en.pdf






China: The great coal migration

The great coal migration:
"The country’s economic growth has long been fed by coal, but its eastern cities are choking on the smog. Now the government thinks it has a solution: Move the power plants inland."
map2_545
70 new coal-fired plants

China Is Burning Almost as Much Coal as Rest of the World Combined | TIME.com


Ultra-high-voltage electricity transmission in China - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Electric power transmission - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Coal Facts | WCA | World Coal Association

Coal Statistics

Coal provides around 30% of global primary energy needs, generates 41% of the world's electricity and is used in the production of 70% of the world's steel.

Total Global Coal Production
  • 7831Mt (2012e)
  • 7608Mt (2011)
  • 4677 (1990)

Top Ten Coal Producers (2012e)

PR China3549MtRussia359Mt
USA935MtSouth Africa259Mt
India595MtGermany197Mt
Indonesia443MtPoland144Mt
Australia421MtKazakhstan126Mt

Microsoft -= 18000 jobs

Microsoft to slash 18,000 jobs in the next year:
"Nokia division expected to account for the bulk of the job cuts, which are the largest in the company’s history.

Microsoft is slashing 18,000 jobs over the next year, trimming its workforce by roughly 14%, a substantial move to cut jobs as the software giant faces great pressure in a world that lives by mobile devices rather than the PCs where the software giant has traditionally dominated."


Microsoft lays off 18,000, including half of Nokia, in largest-ever job cuts | PCWorld

Microsoft's Android experiment is over | PCWorld

Dell: "Big Ears" for customers

Michael Dell: How I Became an Entrepreneur Again | Inc.com:

"Have Big Ears 

The best customers for us are the ones that present us with a new problem,
because chances are, if one customer has that problem, 100 more have it, or 1,000, or 10,000.
So you start thinking about solution development rather than product development.


That can mean anything from a new feature or capability to a new way to finance purchases or a new way to link things together. Invariably, those solutions come not from guys sitting in a room by themselves saying, "Hmm; what would I want if I were a customer?" or, "What are our competitors doing?" They come from actual customers."

chessboard.js

chessboard.js » Home:

The easiest way to embed a chess board on your site.





MIT license


Illustrated history of programming languages

James Iry’s history of programming languages (illustrated with pictures and large fonts) | The Quick Word:






Tuesday, July 15, 2014

.NET Framework Source Code Browser

(.net 4.5.1) Reference Source



Announcing the new Roslyn-powered .NET Framework Reference Source - Scott Hanselman:




Windows Developer Program for IoT

Windows Developer Program for IoT:



"Windows application running on a Galileo "

Microsoft Internet of Things (IoT)
Build intelligent systems to gather, store and analyze your organization’s data.

IoT: Intel Galileo Board

Introducing the Intel® Galileo Gen 2 Development Board:
Key features
  • Intel Quark SoC X1000 application processor, a 32-bit, single core, single-thread, Pentium® instruction set architecture (ISA)-compatible CPU, operating at speeds up to 400 MHz.
  • Support for a wide range of industry standard I/O interfaces, including a full-sized mini-PCI Express* slot, 100 Mb Ethernet port, Micro-SD slot, USB host port, and USB client port.
  • 256 MByte DDR3, 512 KByte embedded SRAM, 8 Mbyte NOR Flash, and 8 Kbit EEPROM standard on the board, plus support for MicroSD card up to 32 MB.
  • Hardware-/pin-compatibility with a wide range of Arduino Uno R3 shields.
  • Programmable through the Arduino integrated development environment (IDE) that is supported on Microsoft Windows*, Mac OS*, and Linux host operating systems.
  • Support for Yocto 1.4 Poky Linux release.
Intel GALILEO Single ATX DDR2 1066 Microcontroller Motherboard GALILEO1.Y



Future of .NET Runtime

Informative presentation, .NET Native, RyuJIT, modular .NET...
New Innovations in .NET Runtime | dotnetConf 2014 | Channel 9:
Speakers: Andrew Pardoe

Monday, July 14, 2014

Anti-Patterns in Python Programming

Anti-Patterns in Python Programming - Constantine Lignos:
"a collection of the most unfortunate but occasionally subtle issues I've seen in code written by students new to writing Python. It's written to help students get past the phase of writing ugly Python code and understand some of the most common idioms. "

Sunday, July 13, 2014

"Outernet": internet from outer space

Outernet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

inforgraphics Outernet @ Pinterest

Outernet | Information for the World from Outer Space
"Unrestricted, globally accessible, broadcast data.
Quality content from all over the Internet.
Available to all of humanity.
For free."


150 satellites deliver various content to WiFi-enabled devices on Earth's surface
"Outernet will utilize a constellation of low-cost, miniature satellites (CubeSat) and existing infrastructure in geostationary orbit. In both cases, satellites receive content from the web through a network of ground stations which uplink content that the community has collectively requested. The data packets are broadcast in loops so that poor signal quality does not prevent continuous updating of content."

A CubeSat is a type of miniaturized satellite for space research that usually has a volume of exactly one liter (10 cm cube), has a mass of no more than 1.33 kilograms,[1] and typically uses commercial off-the-shelf components for its electronics.

Microsoft "Yammer" : Enterprise Social Network

Yammer : Enterprise Social Network:
"Yammer is a private social network that helps employees collaborate across departments, locations and business apps."

"Used by more than 200,000 companies worldwide."

Yammer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yammer, Inc. is a freemium[2] enterprise social networking service that was launched in 2008 and sold to Microsoft in 2012.[3][4]

Yammer is used for private communication within organizations and is an example of enterprise social software. The tool was originally developed as an internal communication system for the genealogy website Geni.[5] Access to a Yammer network is determined by a user's Internet domain so that only individuals with appropriate email addresses may join their respective networks

co-founder David Sacks,[3] a former PayPal executive, developed the basic concept of Yammer while working on a startup project after he left PayPal in 2002.

Saturday, July 12, 2014

Microsoft Delve ("Oslo"), Office Graph

Nadella Bets Heavily On Delve - Business Insider

Codename "Oslo" is now the Delve product | Tony Redmond's Exchange Unwashed Blog

The reason code name was "Oslo" is that the team was based on Oslo, Norway.
Likely that is related to Microsoft acquisition of "Fast Search"
That technology is used in Bing and SharePoint...

Introducing Delve (codename Oslo) and the Office Graph | Office Blogs:
"the newest member of the Office 365 family: Delve (formerly codename Oslo). We announced it and the Office Graph last week at the SharePoint Conference keynote. You can get a closer look at Delve by watching this Garage Series for Office 365 episode"


Olso_dd_01
GUI resembles Pinterest...

Olso_dd_02
"Office Graph"

Introducing Delve (codename Oslo) and the Office Graph | Office Blogs
Microsoft also announced that Codename Oslo, an upcoming Office 365 product previewed this year, will be officially branded "Delve." The company says Delve will use machine learning to become familiar with a user's needs and routines, which it will use to deliver real-time insights. 

There is a completely unrelated app in Microsoft store with the same name

Python for Computer Science 101

Python is Now the Most Popular Introductory Teaching Language at Top U.S. Universities | blog@CACM | Communications of the ACM:

"At the time of writing (July 2014), Python is currently the most popular language for teaching introductory computer science courses at top-ranked U.S. departments.

Specifically, eight of the top 10 CS departments (80%), and 27 of the top 39 (69%), teach Python in introductory CS0 or CS1 courses."







Friday, July 11, 2014

Machine Learning | Microsoft Azure

Machine Learning | Microsoft Azure:
"The limit of human understanding is a numbers game. A doctor can only consume so much information on a chart, a business analyst only so many rows, an Operations team only so much sensor and equipment data. With machine learning, computers can approach human performance in perception and understanding across vast amounts of data. Expensive and disconnected tools stood in the way of this innovation, but today Microsoft is democratizing machine learning."

To be announced very soon... an Azure service,
likely similar to Google Prediction API




SolarCity: solar panels New York Gigafactory

DailyTech - Elon Musk's SolarCity Buys Silevo, Plans New York Gigafactory for 2016:

SolarCity Corp. (SCTY), America's largest solar power systems firm, made a bold step forward this week into the realm of panel manufacturing, announcing it has come to terms to acquire top startup Silevo, Inc.


Elon Musk $1M for Tesla Science Center

DailyTech - Elon Musk Donates $1M to Help Complete Tesla Science Center:
Tesla Motors Museum

Tesla Model S



Microsoft CEO: "Bold ambition and our core"

Satya Nadella's email to employees: Bold ambition and our core:
"At our core, Microsoft is the productivity and platform company for the mobile-first and cloud-first world. We will reinvent productivity to empower every person and every organization on the planet to do more and achieve more."

Microsoft Corporation (MSFT)’s New CEO is Making a Big Policy Shift : Former Executive | Tech Insider

Prepare for layoffs – we translate Microsoft CEO's coma-inducing memo • The Register
With 25000 people from Nokia, not surprising that some streamlining is needed.

Machine Learning is mentioned, but Internet of Things is not. Would be too early.
The core is "Productivity", that would be Office and the like, and "platforms", like Windows, Azure, and devices.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella talks about memo that hints at big changes to come | Microsoft Pri0 | Seattle Times

Skulpt: Python in web browser

Skulpt:

Skulpt is an entirely in-browser implementation of Python.
No preprocessing, plugins, or server-side support required, just write Python and reload.

Interestingly, it does not seem to be Python VM (C-based) cross-compiled to JavaScript. It appears to be Python compiler and byte-code interpreter written in JavaScript directly. 

The compiler part of skulpt reads python code and generates a Javascript program. If you want to change the syntax of Python these are the files to look at. The syntax used in skulpt is taken right from the Python 2.6.5 distribution.
When you run the program in the browser the javascript part is 'evaled' by javascript.

Amazon Zocalo (vs. Box, DropBox, Google Docs...)

Amazon Zocalo:

"Amazon Zocalo is a fully managed, secure enterprise storage and sharing service with strong administrative controls and feedback capabilities that improve user productivity. 



Users can comment on files, send them to others for feedback, and upload new versions without having to resort to emailing multiple versions of their files as attachments. Users can take advantage of these capabilities wherever they are, using the device of their choice, including PCs, Macs, and tablets. Amazon Zocalo offers IT administrators the option of integrating with existing corporate directories, flexible sharing policies, audit logs, and control of the location where data is stored. Customers can get started using Amazon Zocalo with a 30-day free trial providing 200 GB of storage per user for up to 50 users."



Amazon Zocalo rocks Box, socks DropBox, clocks Google Docs • The Register

Thursday, July 10, 2014

AngularJS 2.0 = DurandalJS 2.0

podcast: The Future of Durandal with Rob Eisenberg @ .NET Rocks!:



A huge momentum behind Angular, driving the future of the web.

It is inclusive: using parts from other two major "SPA" libraries,

parts of it being used in node.js,

and even being supported by Microsoft VisualStudio in a major way.



 ng-conf  DurandalJS  AngularJS  Expressionist in Angular 2.0  Watchtower  di.js


Nikola Tesla's Birthday

Nikola Tesla's Birthday:
Nikola Tesla's Birthday
Nikola Tesla - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nikola Tesla's Once-Neglected NY Lab Gets a New Life
Tesla's lab at Wardenclyffe 
Today, July 10, on Tesla's 158th birthday, the organization announced that billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, who named his electric car company after Tesla, has pledged $1 million to the creation of the museum.

Google "Kubernetes" Container Management Coalition

Google Leads Coalition For Container Management - InformationWeek:
"IBM, Microsoft, Red Hat, Docker unite behind Google's Kubernetes as a container management system."




Wednesday, July 09, 2014

IoT: "Smart Cities" by ERCIM NEWS

Introduction to the Special Theme - Future Cities and Smart Technologies: A Landscape of Ambition and Caution @ ERCIM:

The old Chinese curse of “may you live in interesting times” has never been more relevant than in the field of urban development. For some time now, the global urban population has exceeded the global rural population. Cities and city regions have therefore emerged as the only growth models capable of meeting the increased demands and strains facing global supply systems, which are seriously affected by population growth, climate change, globalization and international security issues.

IoT: Open Interconnect Consortium (Intel, Samsung, Dell)

Samsung, Intel and Dell Launch 'Internet Of Things' Consortium @ Forbes

"The Internet of Things market will be worth $7.1 trillion by 2020, according to a study by the International Data Corporation (IDC). To keep tabs on the market, Samsung, Intel  Dell Atmel and Broadcom have joined forces to launch the Open Interconnect Consortium (OIC), an organization that will set standards for connecting billions of household gadgets and appliances.

But the OIC is not the only consortium to focus on the Internet of Things: Haier, LG Electronics, Panasonic, Qualcomm, Sharp, Technicolor, Silicon Image and TP-LINK announced the AllSeen Alliance in December, which now has a total of 51 members. The organizations involved in AllSeen will work off of Qualcomm’s AllJoyn open source project as the initial framework."


Open Interconnect Consortium |

"The Open Interconnect Consortium will define connectivity requirements to ensure the interoperability of the more than 30B devices projected to come online by 2020"


Monday, July 07, 2014

Google co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin chat with Vinod Khosla

Google Co-Founder Says People Shouldn't Have to Work So Much - ABC News:
"It sounds like a dream: Work part-time while maintaining the same standard of living.
Google co-founder Larry Page thinks it should be a reality for everyone.

d3.js online tool: Tributary

Tributary:

"Tributary is an experimental environment for rapidly prototyping (D3) visualization code.
The environment provides several useful libraries, as well as a simple interface for live code editing"



Saturday, July 05, 2014

CoreOS

CoreOS - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

CoreOS is an open source lightweight operating system based on the Linux kernel and designed for providing infrastructure to clustered deployments, while focusing on automation, ease of applications deployment, security, reliability and scalability. As an operating system, CoreOS provides only the minimal functionality required for deploying applications inside software containers, together with built-in mechanisms for service discovery and configuration sharing.

CoreOS is a fork of Chrome OS, using its source code freely available through Chromium OS as a base while adding new functionality and customizing it to support hardware used in servers.


Coreos-wordmark-horiz-color.png

CoreOS is Linux for Massive Server Deployments



used in combination with

Docker - Build, Ship, and Run Any App, Anywhere



creative advertising on GoPherConf






Programming Languages Performance: Scala, Go, F#, Java, C++...

Measuring performance - benchmark - is a difficult and tricky with programming languages. One important aspect is "human performance" that is how easy and quick is for a human programmer to make effective and efficient program.

Then there is a "test machine", effect of hardware and system software (OS) and tool (version of compilers etc). That is a job of engineers, "give me limitations to optimize solution".

Google Multi-Language Benchmark with F#:
multi-language-bench.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/doc/scaladays2011-paper/main.pdf
C++ : 23 sec
Java : 89 sec
Scala: 58 sec
Go : 126 sec

Google’s Multi-Language Benchmark in F# | Faisal's space
same algorithm ported on F#, different machines:
F# 31 sec on Core Duo 2.00 GHz
F# 20 sec on Core i5

Profiling Go Programs - The Go Blog
Same program tested on different environment:
C++ program runs in 17.80 seconds and uses 700 MB of memory.
Go program runs in 25.20 seconds and uses 1302 MB of memory.

The Go final version runs in 2.29 seconds and uses 351 MB of memory:
Then translated the final Go program into equivalent C++ code. Its execution time is similar to the Go program

The main optimization is avoiding memory management by VM.
I would not be surprised that Apple's Swift, that does not use VM, may have excellent performance in most cases...

www.csc.kth.se/utbildning/kth/kurser/DD143X/dkand12/Group6Alexander/final/Anders_Jarleberg_Kim_Nilsson.report.pdf
"Go, F# and Erlang"
This report examines the three languages Erlang, F# and Go, which
all have some form of inherent support for concurrency. T


Cayley: open source graph database in Go Lang

google/cayley · GitHub:

Cayley is an open-source graph inspired by the graph database behind Freebase and Google's Knowledge Graph.

Its goal is to be a part of the developer's toolbox where Linked Data and graph-shaped data (semantic webs, social networks, etc) in general are concerned.
  • Written in Go
  • Easy to get running (3 or 4 commands, below)
  • RESTful API
  • or a REPL if you prefer
  • Built-in query editor and visualizer
  • Multiple query languages...


Friday, July 04, 2014

Dropbox: Python => Go Lang, Open Source

Dropbox Tech Blog » Blog Archive » Open Sourcing Our Go Libraries:

(python code moved to) around 200,000 lines of Go code; Open Sourced libraries:
  • caching: provides a general abstraction for building caching layers.
  • errors: enhances the standard error interface and exposes stack trace information.
  • database/sqlbuilder: allows developers to generate sql statements programmatically.
  • memcache: implements a fully featured memcache client library which supports connection pooling and flexible sharding.
  • net2: adds functionality for connection management.
  • (and my personal favorite, hash2, which includes a space efficient permutation-based consistent hash algorithm)

IDEs for Go lang

Comparison of IDEs for Google Go - GeekMonkey:

Google Go Logo



golangide - LiteIDE Released for Go - Google Project Hosting

GopherCon 2014: Go lang conference videos

GopherCon 2014 Schedule - Confreaks, LLC:
GopherCon 2014


The origin of Go Gopher logo:
The Go Gopher - The Go Blog

The logo is designed by Renée French,
spouse of Rob Pike, a co-creator of the Go language

Google NaCl "Native Client" with Go Lang

Go Lang "Playground" (also used in Tour of Go) is reporting "OS" as NaCl.
Go 1.3 Release Notes - The Go Programming Language
Inside the Go Playground - The Go Blog

NaCl: "Native Client" is a Google tool developed
for safely running x86 code from Chrome web browser
and apparently can be used as a Virtual Machine of a kind.

Welcome to Native Client - Google Chrome:
  • Native Client is a sandbox for running compiled C and C++ code in the browser efficiently and securely, independent of the user’s operating system. 
  • Portable Native Client extends that technology with architecture independence, letting developers compile their code once to run in any website and on any architecture.


Thursday, July 03, 2014

Android RunTime (ART) in Android L

AnandTech | A Closer Look at Android RunTime (ART) in Android L:

"The big paradigm-shift that ART brings, is that instead of being a Just-in-Time (JIT) compiler, it now compiles application code Ahead-of-Time (AOT). The runtime goes from having to compile from bytecode to native code each time you run an application, to having it to do it only once, and any subsequent execution from that point forward is done from the existing compiled native code.
"






(2x faster than current Android)

IoT, Open Source: "AllSeen Alliance"

Open Source IoT to advance the Internet of Everything - AllSeen Alliance:

"AllSeen Alliance is an open source nonprofit consortium providing open source IoT for widespread adoption of products, systems and services for the Internet of Everything.  It is portable open source for all major platforms and operating systems."





No Intel, No Apple, No Google, No IBM?



Microsoft Joins AllSeen Alliance To Get In On Internet Of Things Action - ReadWrite



The 'splendid isolation' of Apple's (AAPL) ecosystem might disrupt 'Internet of Things' 

One of the keys to Apple’s success has been to present the world with a unified ecosystem in which all the varied form factors of devices, services, and programs are made to work in synergy. 

Qualcomm is developing AllJoyn, which Microsoft and a number of other powerful companies have endorsed. The IoT may be further fragmented by Intel’s current refusal to accept either set of standards, though it has not yet offered its own.

Internet of Things