Sunday, June 29, 2014

Effective Go - The Go Programming Language

Effective Go - The Go Programming Language:
This document gives tips for writing clear, idiomatic Go code.
It augments the language specification, the Tour of Go, and How to Write Go Code,


How to Write Go Code - The Go Programming Language
Go code must (should?) be kept inside a workspace. A workspace is a directory hierarchy with three directories at its root:
  • src contains Go source files organized into packages (one package per directory),
  • pkg contains package objects, and
  • bin contains executable commands.
The go tool builds source packages and installs the resulting binaries to the pkg and bin directories.

For convenience, add the workspace's bin subdirectory to your PATH (on Windows: Environment Variable) 
Then can use "go run programName.go" and "go install programName.go"






Saturday, June 28, 2014

NDC Conferences on Vimeo

NDC Conferences on Vimeo: (467 conference presentations videos!)

Profile picture for NDC Conferences

NDC Conferences’s Videos on Vimeo

Node.JS by Scott Allen @ NDC





Scott Allen - Node.JS Tools For Front-End Developers from NDC Conferences on Vimeo.

== In The Zone: the Flow State (!!)

Flow (psychology) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"In positive psychology, flow, also known as zone, is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one does. Named by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, the concept has been widely referenced across a variety of fields"
File:Challenge vs skill.svg
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - 2011 UW-Madison Big Learning Event - YouTube

Conditions of the flow experience:

  1. There are clear goals every step of the way
  2. There is immediate feedback to one's action.
  3. There is a balance between challenges and skills



book review: Flow | Brian Johnson
"Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience" Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Flow | This Emotional Life
"Csikszenmihalyi defines flow as the point where your challenges meet your skills.
Painters, athletes, musicians, computer programmers, financial traders, writers all describe themselves as regularly experiencing flow. If you look at the flow chart, you can see that 
flow can happen at high skills and high challenge... or at low skills and low challenge..."


elearn Magazine: Gamification: Using Game Mechanics to Enhance eLearning
"Giving your learner choices by designing nonlinear eLearning can help engage your user."
Flow Channel
"...as the challenge of an experience rises,
the skill of the participant must also grow in direct proportion. 
...If a user's skill exceeds the challenge of the experience, they will become bored. 
...if the challenge exceeds the participant's skill, they will suffer anxiety. 
...an optimal user experience is illustrated in the "Flow Channel" as the squiggly line. 

This line demonstrates the experience described above where a user is challenged to a high degree with new experiences, and then given an opportunity to demonstrate and master the skill of that experience, before given a completely new challenge to conquer."


What Is Flow? - The Psychology of Flow
"According to Csíkszentmihályi, there are ten factors that accompany the experience of flow
  1. Clear goals that, while challenging, are still attainable.
  2. Strong concentration and focused attention.
  3. The activity is intrinsically rewarding.
  4. Feelings of serenity; a loss of feelings of self-consciousness.
  5. Timelessness; a distorted sense of time; feeling so focused on the present that you lose track of time passing.
  6. Immediate feedback.
  7. Knowing that the task is doable; a balance between skill level and the challenge presented.
  8. Feelings of personal control over the situation and the outcome.
  9. Lack of awareness of physical needs.
  10. Complete focus on the activity itself."
In The Zone: 10 Characteristics of the Flow State | The Brain Lady Blog

Surfer in the Flow
  1. Choose your one most important task
  2. Avoid any distractions by creating the necessary environment
  3. Focus all your attention with intensity on your task
  4. Do it for a reasonable period of time, at least 1/2 hour, better more
  5. Stay with this task until it is finished (!)


The metaphor of "FLOW" is related to "RIVER". 

Anxiety is like a hard rock, that blocks progress of water, forcing to change its way
and prevents direct progress to its destination.

Boredom is like a flat terrain, where water becomes a marsh,
with no progress and meaningful changes.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi was born in city called "river" (Rijeka in Croatian, Fiume in Italian),
that used to be part of Italy, and now is part of Croatia.
The river separated fast downtown port city from slow suburbs.

Snake River - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Snake River, struggling trough tough rock


Mississippi Delta, big river, slow progress on flat land




.NET Rocks! 1000

.NET Rocks!: (1000)



Troy Hunt: Moving from GoDaddy to DNSimple – an illustrated journey

Friday, June 27, 2014

CAP theorem: Dynamo vs. BigTable





Internet of Things' inflection point?

The Internet of Things' inflection point - O'Reilly Radar:
"The convergence of six factors is creating a climate for mainstream IoT adoption"
  • Costs are falling
  • Connected device demand is accelerating. 
  • Device options are expanding. 
  • More machines are talking to each other.
  • Software is more advanced than ever.
  • The economic benefits are significant.

dotnetConf: .NET Community Virtual Conference

many interesting videos by Microsoft's Channel 9

dotnetConf - The .NET Community Virtual Conference:
Wednesday, June 25, 2014

dotnetConf

Reactive User Interfaces

Using Rx (Reactive Extensions) in WPF and JavaScript with Web Sockets (or alternative)

to present real-time reliable info...



Creating Reactive User Interfaces with Adaptive Consulting's Reactive Trader on the Hanselminutes Technology Podcast: Fresh Air for Developers:



Adaptive's Reactive Trader (Live @ Azure)




ideas, book: Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions

podcast: When to Go with Your Gut - HBR IdeaCast - Harvard Business Review

This view is opposite of one by Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman (system 1 and 2)

The claim is that statistical prediction is valid only when future conditions are similar to past. 
Otherwise, more data may just lead to bigger mistakes. 

Interesting observation:
"Literacy is something that most of us in the western world have learned. But just imagine, a few centuries ago, who would’ve thought that everyone will be able to read and write. Now, today, we need something else. We need risk literacy..."




Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions: Gerd Gigerenzer: 9780670025657: Amazon.com: Books:

In the age of Big Data we often believe that our predictions about the future are better than ever before. But as risk expert Gerd Gigerenzer shows, the surprising truth is that in the real world, we often get better results by using simple rules and considering less information.


Thursday, June 26, 2014

online book: "Clojure from the ground up", site: "Factual"

Another "book in progress" online:

Clojure from the ground up: by Kyle Kingsbury.
Clojure from the ground up: welcome


GLOBAL LOCATION DATA
Tap into definitive data on over 65 million places, updated and improved in real-time by Factual's data stack.

It gets more interesting!


Factual was founded in 2007 by Gil Elbaz, co-founder of Applied Semantics (which launched ASI’s AdSense product). Applied Semantics was acquired by Google in 2003...

And that was the tool that made Google's profit engine so effective!
Clearly, they are very knowledgeable... 
And apparently, they are using Clojure... 

tool: React | JavaScript UI without DOM

React | A JavaScript library for building user interfaces: by Facebook



"JUST THE UI

Lots of people use React as the V in MVC. Since React makes no assumptions about the rest of your technology stack, it's easy to try it out on a small feature in an existing project


VIRTUAL DOM 

React uses a virtual DOM diff implementation for ultra-high performance. It can also render on the server using Node.js — no heavy browser DOM required."

DATA FLOW
React implements one-way reactive data flow which reduces boilerplate and is easier to reason about than traditional data binding."


Even more interesting is a ClojureScript wrapper for React, "om",
that is apparently twice FASTER, thanks to immutable nature of ClojureScript. 

Open Source book: Clojure Cookbook

Interesting approach for writing book: online, collaborative, on GitHub



clojure-cookbook/clojure-cookbook · GitHub:

"Clojure Cookbook marks Clojure's entry into O'Reilly's prestigious Cookbook Series. The book details a large number of recipes – pairs of problems and solutions – for common topics in Clojure."



Clojure Cookbook - O'Reilly Media

Recipes for Functional Programming



podcast interview with autors:

Blog | Luke VanderHart and Ryan Neufeld - Cognicast Episode 050 | Relevance




IoT: Big Data, Big Money

The Internet Of Things Will Radically Change Your Big Data Strategy - Forbes: "Companies are jumping on the Internet of Things (IoT) bandwagon and for good reasons. McKinsey Global Institute reports that the IoT business will deliver $6.2 trillion of revenue by 2025."

IoT


Reminds me of "SOA" recently, and ISO/OSI a while back...

A "brute force" approach, because "it is time".

Luckily, in today's connected world, a good simple ideas and solutions may still win, over complex and expensive systems....


Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Google I/O 2014

Google I/O 2014:
I/O Live

Android Auto

Google gives us a simulated ride with Android Auto:



Android 'L'


Android TV

Google targets Amazon's and Apple's set-top boxes with Android TV platform: @ engadget

Much like on Apple's set-top box or Amazon's Fire TV, Google's platform is a convenient front-end for it to plug video content from its own collection, in this case the Play store. It runs apps from other content providers like Netflix, of course, and allows you to pump live TV through the interface



Android TV @ Google



Google officially unveils Android TV | The Verge




Android Wear: LG G Watch, Samsung Gear Live

LG G Watch (Black Titan) - Devices on Google Play:

$229, July 3

Samsung Gear Live (Black) - Devices on Google Play

$199, July 8

Samsung Gear Live vs. LG G Watch vs. Moto 360 specs: Comparing the watches of Android Wear - CNET

LG G Smartwatch, Samsung Gear Live Smartwatch Go on Sale

Samsung Gear Live vs LG G Watch: Android Wear Comparison

Google Unveils Ambitious Android Expansion at Conference - NYTimes.com

Android Wear smart watches the next big Google thing - SFGate

First Take: Android Wear looks beautiful on inside

tool: USBPcap for Wireshark

USBPcap:

USBPcap is an open-source USB sniffer for Windows.
CaptureSetup/USB - The Wireshark Wiki

Capturing raw USB traffic, e.g. the packets a USB mouse will generate on the Universal Serial Bus.(with Linux and Windows)




Monday, June 23, 2014

Go Lang Playground

Go Playground:

"The Go Playground is a web service (site) that runs on golang.org's servers. The service receives a Go program, compiles, links, and runs the program inside a sandbox, then returns the output."

Inside the Go Playground - The Go Blog

A Tour of Go

Examples - The Go Programming Language


Google Go Language IDE (based on Intellij IDEA platform)


site: vsChart.com – The Comparison Wiki

vsChart.com – The Comparison Wiki:

"With vsChart.com you can compare products and a lot more. Through the clear charts the differences are emphasized and so decision making is easier.

In a similar way as Wikipedia you can expand and correct all the contents."


Apple vs. Orange comparison | vsChart.com

Apple Inc. vs. Orange (Brand) comparison | vsChart.com

Lang.NEXT 2014 | Channel 9

Lang.NEXT 2014 | Channel 9:
"Lang.NEXT is a cross-industry, grass roots, free conference on what's trending in programming languages. It occurs every couple of years and is primarily sponsored by Microsoft. We bring together a broad range of language experts as speakers as well as audience. The goal is to have a lively and intense exchange of ideas, straddling the usual barriers between different segments of the community and between academia and industry. In a nutshell, it's an open ended, open minded programming languages geek out festival."




Great!

Sunday, June 22, 2014

HP: reinventing the computer

HP takes a crack at reinventing the computer - CNET:

"Here's a tall order: Reinvent the computer, both hardware and software architecture. That's what Hewlett-Packard is trying to do."
Rising data volumes from "cloud computing, the Internet of things, mobile networks, machine to machine computing" are generating unfathomable and unmanageable amounts of data and a new computing architecture is necessary to deal with it, Whitman said.

"We've been using the same architecture and been doing it the same way for decades," said HP CTO Martin Fink, who also spoke at the conference.

Ninety percent of what the operating system and processors are doing "is just shuffling data between different storage tiers," he said. For example, getting data from pokey hard drives to speedier memory.

HP's answer is The Machine -- a new compute design built from the ground up. Processors specialized for a particular task or "workload" connect to a fabric based on light for communication. In turn, all of this is connected to a large single pool of "universal memory," which obviates the need for separate memory and storage tiers.






start about 15:00




Datalog: data query language

Datalog - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Datalog is a truly declarative logic programming language that syntactically is a subset of Prolog. It is often used as a query language for deductive databases. In recent years, Datalog has found new application in data integration, information extraction, networking, program analysis, security, andcloud computing.[1]



parent(bill,mary).
 parent(mary,john).

ancestor(X,Y) :- parent(X,Y).
 ancestor(X,Y) :- parent(X,Z),ancestor(Z,Y).


It is used by Datomic (that is based on Clojure)

The Datomic Information Model @ InfoQ 

by Rich Hickey (creator of Datomic & Clojure)


If you had a database containing these datoms (where sally, fred and ethel are stand-ins for their entity ids):
[[sally :age 21]
 [fred :age 42]
 [ethel :age 42]
 [fred :likes pizza]
 [sally :likes opera]
 [ethel :likes sushi]]
We could ask a query like this:
;;who is 42?
[:find ?e :where [?e :age 42]]
And get this result:
[[fred], [ethel]]


.

Friday, June 20, 2014

IoT with Azure Service Bus

Internet of Things - Using Microsoft Azure Service Bus for ... Things!: @ MSDN

by Clemens Vasters



Internet of Things or Thing on the Internet? - Clemens Vasters. - Site Home - MSDN Blogs









Subscribe! | Channel 9 by ClemensV | Niners | Channel 9













Azure Machine Learning service

Microsoft readies public preview of cloud-based machine-learning service | ZDNet:

"Called Azure ML — and previously known as CloudML — the new service is designed to allow partners and customers to build predictive analytics services using Microsoft-developed tools and templates
...
Azure ML includes a design studio tool aimed at business analysts; an application programming interface (API) service for deployment; and a software development kit (SDK) for building applications on top of Azure ML. "



azureMLstudio

Thursday, June 19, 2014

Microsoft: "Programmable Hardware" (speed 2x to 100x)

How to speed up servers beyond Moore's Law?
By using custom hardware chips (FPGA), that could be re-programmed, in a few seconds typically.

FPGA is about 10x slower that non-programmable chips, but is 100-1000 times faster than software. It is trying to solve / improve:
  • Speed
  • Power
  • Cost
Ushering in the Era of Programmable Hardware | Microsoft Research Luminaries | Channel 9

Doug Burger about the findings of a Microsoft Research and Bing research project that equipped servers with reconfigurable hardware, in the form of field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), to accelerate data center services. Based on the success of the pilot, Bing will roll out FPGA-enhanced servers in one data center to process customer searches starting in early 2015.

gadget: The CODE Keyboard

The CODE Keyboard:

Jeff Atwood: "My dream is more modest. I decided to create a keyboard."

The CODE Keyboard, front image with backlight





format: Markdown

Markdown - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Markdown is a plain text formatting syntax[5] designed so that it optionally can be converted toHTML using a tool by the same name. Markdown is popularly used to format readme files, for writing messages in online discussion forums or in text editors for the quick creation of rich text documents.

Sites such as GitHub, reddit, Diaspora, Stack Overflow, OpenStreetMap, and SourceForge use variants of Markdown

 Heading
 =======

 Sub-heading
 -----------
 
 Paragraphs are separated
 by a blank line.
 
 Text attributes *italic*,
 **bold**, `monospace`.
 
 A [link](http://example.com).
 <<<   No space between ] and (  >>>

 Shopping list:
 
   * apples
   * oranges
   * pears
 
 Numbered list:
 
   1. apples
   2. oranges
   3. pears
 
 The rain---not the reign---in
 Spain.

<h1>Heading</h1>
 
<h2>Sub-heading</h2>
 
<p>Paragraphs are separated
by a blank line.</p>
 
<p>Text attributes <em>italic</em>,
<strong>bold</strong>,
<code>monospace</code>.</p>
 
<p>A <a href="http://example.com">link</a>.</p>
 
<p>Shopping list:</p>
 
<ul>
<li>apples</li>
<li>oranges</li>
<li>pears</li>
</ul>
 
<p>Numbered list:</p>
 
<ol>
<li>apples</li>
<li>oranges</li>
<li>pears</li>
</ol>
 
<p>The rainnot the
reignin Spain.</p>

The Web of Data: Bridging the Skills Gap

Computing Now | The Web of Data: Bridging the Skills Gap @ ieee computer.org
"With a projected six-figure skills gap looming in the US alone, here the authors share strategies and lessons learned regarding how to bridge the gap in training competent data scientists in the near future."

computingnow.computer.org/cms/Computer.org/ComputingNow/issues/2014/06/mex2014010070.pdf




JavaScript function: expressions vs declarations

A detailed explanation of nuanced differences in JavaScript syntax and semantics

Named function expressions demystified:
"In a nutshell, named function expressions are useful for one thing only — descriptive function names in debuggers and profilers. Well, there is also a possibility of using function names for recursion"

function foo(){} // declaration, since it's part of a Program
var bar = function foo(){}; // expression, since it's part of an AssignmentExpression

new function bar(){}; // expression, since it's part of a NewExpression

(function(){
  function bar(){} // declaration, since it's part of a FunctionBody
})();

"function declarations are parsed and evaluated before any other expressions are."



Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Amazon’s New Fire Phone

Everything You Need to Know About Amazon’s New Fire Phone | Gadget Lab | WIRED:
Jeff Bezos announces Amazon's new phone at an event hosted by Amazon at Fremont Studios in Seattle.

There are cameras tucked into all four corners of the front of its 4.7-inch screen—not for taking Brady Bunch selfies, but to pull off some fancy “Dynamic Perspective” tricks. Using the camera’s face-tracking input, you can look around onscreen objects, even peer behind them. It’s not about popping-out-of-the-screen 3-D, but about infusing a sense of depth and realism into a bunch of flat pixels. Your phone becomes a little diorama box, with stunning effects for 3-D maps, games, and homescreen wallpaper

$200 for the 32GB version and $300 for the 64GB one. Both of those are with two-year contracts. The phone will only be available on AT&T for the time being.

$649.00 new without contract

The "big thing" with "dynamic perspective" is ability to provide view of 3D object from another angle. No need to 4 cameras and tracking, same can be cone by sliders on the touchscreen. Not as fancy, but it could work on any existing device, phone, tablet, and computer... Many phones already have a motion detectors, so some movements could be used to change perspective. Anyway, a nice but expensive phone to be competitive....

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Bill and Melinda Gates @ Stanford

Bill and Melinda Gates made a remarkably personal plea for graduates to pursue more than profit - Quartz:



Bill and Melinda Gates' 2014 Stanford Commencement Address - YouTube



Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech 2005 - YouTube

Azure Security: Red vs. Blue teams

Red vs. Blue - Internal security penetration testing of Microsoft Azure:

"Scott hears from John Walton all about the full time security testers that attack Azure and find (and plug!) security holes, keeping our sites safe"


Microsoft has full-time hackers employed trying to both break the system ("red team") and detect break-ins ("blue team"). Occasionally they get together to compare notes...  

edu: Udacity "Nanodegrees"

Nanodegrees: A New Kind Of Credential For Jobs in Technology - Udacity:



  • Front-End Web Developer 
  • Back-End Web Developer 
  • iOS Developer 
  • Data Analyst


"AT&T is offering scholarships and up to 100 internships underscores our firm commitment to the potential of nanodegrees to build a pipeline of talented workers for our future workforce."




Sunday, June 15, 2014

Xamarin.Forms: portable mobile C# GUI

Xamarin.Forms - Build native UIs from a single, shared C# codebase. - Xamarin:

using Xamarin.Forms;

var profilePage = new ContentPage {
    Title = "Profile",
    Icon = "Profile.png",
    Content = new StackLayout {
        Spacing = 20, Padding = 50,
        VerticalOptions = LayoutOptions.Center,
        Children = {
            new Entry { Placeholder = "Username" },
            new Entry { Placeholder = "Password", IsPassword = true },
            new Button {
                Text = "Login",
                TextColor = Color.White,
                BackgroundColor = Color.FromHex("77D065") }}}
};
                
var settingsPage = new ContentPage {
    Title = "Settings",
    Icon = "Settings.png",
    (...)
};
 
var mainPage = new TabbedPage { Children = { profilePage, settingsPage } };

$2000/dev/year
podcast: Xamarin Forms with Chris Hardy @ .NET Rocks!

Or just use Cordova/PhoneGap, and some CSS for GUI adjustments...


Docker containers on Azure

Here's how Microsoft is supporting the open-source Docker container model | ZDNet:
Docker testers already were able to run pre-release versions of Docker on Azure in Linux virtual machines. But during the DockerCon show this week, Microsoft representatives demonstrated Docker deployment into an Azure Linux virtual machine using Azure's Virtual Machine Extensions.
azuredockervmcontainer

IoT: Arduino, Rasberry Pi, AMQP, Azure, Hadoop

Azure Insider - Telemetry Ingestion and Analysis Using Microsoft Azure Services: @ MSDN magazine

Basic Flow of Big Data Telemetry Solution

An example of IoT "cloud" system

This is also an example of opportunity for system optimization (reducing complexity and cost) both on "device" as well as on "cloud" side.

IoT: China "Smart City", Apple "HomeKit"

This Is How Apple Could Dominate China (AAPL):

"China is leading the Internet of Things: A recent report by the GSM Association shows that China's overall machine-to-machine -- and by extension IoT -- connectivity far surpasses anything currently in the U.S. or Europe.

China has 219 cities signed up for 'smart city' initiatives that connect local municipality infrastructure systems to the Internet. By comparison, the US public sector is just getting started with IoT in San Jose this month.

Apple's HomeKit is designed to pair third-party devices like Phillips' smart light bulbs andHoneywell's new smart thermostat together on one platform. 

This means that users won't have to open two separate apps to turn down the lights and adjust the temperature and, more importantly, they can pair both devices together and give a voice command to Siri to control both the lights and the thermostat at the same time."

Saturday, June 14, 2014

Elixir programming language: Erlang VM + Ruby syntax

Elixir-lang.org

Elixir is a functional, meta-programming aware language built on top of the Erlang VM. It is a dynamic language that focuses on tooling to leverage Erlang's abilities to build concurrent, distributed and fault-tolerant applications with hot code upgrades

Interesting fact mentioned in podcast interview 

Building Functional Communities with Bryan Hunter @ .NET Rocks!

that Ruby programming language got attention an popularity after a book by Dave Thomas (of Agile Manifesto and Pragmatic Programmer fame).

Now, he wrote a book about brand new language that is just getting to version 1.0.









"Hack" programming language, Facebook PHP

It is not only Apple, Google, Microsoft inventing new programming languages.

Hack is a statically typed programming language based on PHP,
that runs on HHVM, same JIT compiler used for PHP.
It is developed and used by Facebook.

Converting a large codebase to Hack | Lang.NEXT 2014 | Channel 9:

PHP Evolved: Facebook's New Hack Programming Language @ InfoQ

Keith Adams on PHP at Facebook, Efficient PHP with HHVM, Optional Typing with Hack

Hack (programming language) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hack: a new programming language for HHVM | Engineering Blog | Facebook Code

"Open Source" Tesla Motors's Patents (!)

Why Elon Musk Just Opened Tesla's Patents to His Biggest Rivals - Businessweek:
"Musk did announce that Tesla will let other companies use its inventions under an open-source-inspired agenda at the company. Here’s how Musk put it in a blog post: ”Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology.”
Elon Musk at the Tesla's assembly plant in Fremont, California on July 10, 2013

"According to Musk, Tesla made this gesture to—once again—try to nudge the rest of the automotive market along. Tesla’s Model S has proved that there’s massive interest in a well-made, fun-to-drive electric car. Still, Tesla is barely making a dent in the massive auto market. Musk wants to promote a more dramatic shift toward electric cars, so he will do what he can to accelerate things. “I don’t think people quite appreciate the gravity of what is going on [with regard to global warming] or just how much inertia the climate has,” Musk said during a conference call. “We really need to do something. It would be shortsighted if we try to hold these things close to our vest.”


All Our Patent Are Belong To You | Blog | Tesla Motors
"Yesterday, there was a wall of Tesla patents in the lobby of our Palo Alto headquarters. That is no longer the case. They have been removed, in the spirit of the open source movement, for the advancement of electric vehicle technology."

"...receiving a patent really just meant that you bought a lottery ticket to a lawsuit..."

"We believe that Tesla, other companies making electric cars, and the world would all benefit from a common, rapidly-evolving technology platform.

Technology leadership is not defined by patents, which history has repeatedly shown to be small protection indeed against a determined competitor, but rather by the ability of a company to attract and motivate the world’s most talented engineers. We believe that applying the open source philosophy to our patents will strengthen rather than diminish Tesla’s position in this regard."



This move is in the spirit of Nikola Tesla, whose name Tesla Motors is using.
Nikola Tesla has given away royalties on his patents to help Westinhouse
to be able to sustain market competition and advance deployment of electricity.

Quote by Nikola Tesla”
“Let the future tell the truth, and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I have really worked, is mine”
Tesla circa 1890.jpeg



16 NoSQL, NewSQL Databases

16 NoSQL, NewSQL Databases To Watch - InformationWeek:





And where is Neo4j ?


ASP.NET - Topshelf and Katana

ASP.NET - Topshelf and Katana: A Unified Web and Service Architecture:

"Katana project (katanaproject.codeplex.com) and the specifications provided by OWIN (owin.org), it’s now possible to self-host Web applications, taking IIS out of the equation, and still support many of the ubiquitous ASP.NET components such as WebApi and SignalR. The Web self-host can be embedded in a rudimentary console application along with Topshelf (topshelf-project.com) to create a Windows service with ease. As a result, Web and service components can live side-by-side in the same process,"
Unified Web and Service Architecture with Katana and Topshelf

Friday, June 13, 2014

IoT: $45 BeagleBone mini-computer

$45 BeagleBone Black is a more powerful Raspberry Pi alternative | Digital Trends:

BeagleBoneBlack01_small

it’s essentially a Linux computer with a powerful 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor from Texas Instrument (SitaraTM AM335x), 512MB RAM, and 2GB of on-board storage.

Unlike the Raspberry Pi which relies on its SD Card slot to load software (including its operating system), Linux and Cloud9 IDE are preloaded onto this BeagleBoard so it frees up its microSD Card slot for whatever you need. 

It even offers an upgraded Web interface for Arduino-like controls. The mini-computer also supports other flavors of Linux like Ubuntu and Fedora, as well as Android for users who need a development device for the mobile platform.

IoT: Tessel, JavaScript microcontroller

Technical Machine:

"Tessel is a microcontroller that runs JavaScript. 
It's Node-compatible and ships with Wifi built in. 
Use it to easily make physical devices that connect to the web."


Tessel

  • 180mhz ARM Cortex-M3 LPC1830
  • 32mb SDRAM
  • 32mb Flash
Compared to RaspberryPi ($35) it is much less powerful and much more expensive ($99). In fact node.js can run on RaspberryPi, too, along many other things. 


Mozilla's $25 Firefox OS phones

Mozilla's $25 Firefox OS phones look to score in India - CNET


Firefox OS, Mozilla's ambitious attempt to establish a more open mobile operating system than Google's Android or Apple's iOS, is about to hit one of its biggest potential markets: India.

Two Indian companies, Intex and Spice, will build a super-cheap $25 Firefox OS phone based on aprocessor from Chinese company Spreadtrum and start selling them in the next few months.

tools: Is WebRTC ready yet?

Is WebRTC ready yet?:
"WebRTC is one of the most transformative additions to the web platform, but it's still early days. 

There's a big difference between technology that makes for an interesting demo and what's needed for something that could work on par with existing video chat products."
Chrome CanaryChromeFirefox NightlyFirefoxInternet ExplorerSafariOpera

The idea is to have a open platform for (video and other) communication, 
equivalent to simplicity of using phone. 

Currently, Microsoft Skype, Apple Facetime, Google Hangout and Talk
are nice, but work only with equivalent tool, can not inter-operate. 
Imagine time of BBS, AOL and CompuServe private networks...
Web was a logical solution, just took some time...

One interesting part of WebRTC are dataChannels that could be used for any purpose, not only video.

WebRTC.org


Thursday, June 12, 2014

Big Data Lambda Architecture

Big Data Lambda Architecture: by Nathan Marz

Lambda Architecture » λ lambda-architecture.net

Nathan Marz came up with the term Lambda Architecture (LA) for a generic, scalable and fault-tolerant data processing architecture, based on his experience working on distributed data processing systems at Backtype and Twitter.

The LA aims to satisfy the needs for a robust system that is fault-tolerant, both against hardware failures and human mistakes, being able to serve a wide range of workloads and use cases, and in which low-latency reads and updates are required. The resulting system should be linearly scalable, and it should scale out rather than up.

LA overview

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Built with AngularJS

Built with AngularJS:

web sites and applications built with AngularJS



YouTube on PS3 screenshot

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

IoT World - MIPS CPU for Internet of Things

IoT World - Rich Quinnell - MIPS Targeting the Internet of Things:

"The widely licensed ARM architecture has gotten the lion's share of publicity among processors. Now a multivendor rival is entering the fray. The MIPS architecture, popular in the home electronics and media player markets, is stepping up to claim a role in the Internet of Things."




IoT: Google: New Network for Internet of Things

Here comes another interesting "Project X":



Google Exec: Internet of Things Requires 'Brand New Network' | Light Reading:

The Internet of Things will require telecom operators to turn their networks upside-down, believes Google Developer Advocate Don Dodge.

He picked on a TV commercial from Verizon Wireless showing a pole in the middle of an agricultural field. "It's got a cell phone -- not duct taped to it, but it's attached. And they use a cell phone to transmit the data from the sensor to the server at $40 a month. So how do you do that when you have a sensor on the dumpster that's only sending kilobytes of information maybe once a day, or maybe once a week? You can't spend $40 a month for that," he noted.

"What we're going to have to do is build a brand new network, because up to now Cisco and all the networking guys have focused on very high bandwidth, very high throughput, very high quality, but that's the opposite of what you need for the Internet of Things," Dodge said.


Reported plans to launch 180 satellites could provide significant competition in the developing world and rural areas.

Google has spent $500 million to buy Skybox Imaging, a company that uses small satellites to transmit high-resolution images from space. Tuesday’s announcement comes just two months after Google acquired Titan Aerospace, which beams Internet signals from high-altitude drones.