Wednesday, April 02, 2014

Hopscotch: Coding for kids @ iPad

Hopscotch - Coding for kids:

Screenshot2



very similar to MIT Scratch



MIT was late in converting from Flash to HTML5...






Grafana - Graphite Dashboard

Grafana - Graphite Dashboard:

Edit dashboards

visualization: GitHub Punchcard

fogleman/Punchcard:

Sample

Apache Spark: Lightning-Fast Cluster Computing

Apache Spark™ - Lightning-Fast Cluster Computing:

"Run programs up to 100x faster than Hadoop MapReduce in memory, or 10x faster on disk.

Spark has an advanced DAG execution engine that supports cyclic data flow and in-memory computing."




Berkeley research paper behind Apache Spark.www.cs.berkeley.edu/~matei/papers/2012/nsdi_spark.pdf

Build 2014: Windows Universal App

Microsoft Opens Windows to the Universal App: One App for All Platforms: @ InfoQ

"Microsoft’s Build developer conference... announced Universal Windows apps.  These apps will run across the Windows family of devices:  phone, tablet, and desktop PC.  The upcoming release of Windows Phone 8.1 will align that platform with the existing Windows 8.1 platform that exists for desktops and tablets. 



This change means that developers can write a single app that will run unmodified on all of these platforms.  Developers will retain the ability to customize the app behavior and appearance for each environment if they desire."



Channel 9: Build 2014



Universal Windows apps are coming to your Xbox One @ engadget




SQL Server 2014 released

SQL Server 2014 now Generally Available - SQL Server Team Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs:

"Microsoft released Microsoft SQL Server 2014, the foundation of (Microsoft's) cloud-first data platform. SQL Server 2014 delivers breakthrough performance with new and enhanced in-memory technologies"

Download Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Express

Download Microsoft SQL Server 2014 (trial)

Cortana, Microsoft's Siri

The story of Cortana, Microsoft's Siri killer | The Verge:



"Apple has Siri and Google has Google Now — both digital assistants that run on smartphones — Microsoft is taking an approach that mixes the best of the competition with its own unique take. Based on a 26th-century artificially intelligent character in the Halo video game series, Cortana will debut as part of Windows Phone 8.1, the next big update for Microsoft’s mobile operating system."

Amazon Fire TV

Will Amazon's Fire TV Win Over the Masses?:



Amazon Fire TV officially announced

amazon_fire_tv



Amazon Fire TV – Streaming Media Player 

$99, with "voice control that really works"

("remote is the key")



Time for Apple to come up some improvements?




Government as radical, patient VC

Mariana Mazzucato: The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Private vs. Public Sector Myths - The Long Now:
 The iPhone, Mazzucato pointed out, is held up as a classic example of world-changing innovation coming from business.

Yet every feature of the iPhone was created, originally, by multi-decade government-funded research. From DARPA came the microchip, the Internet, the micro hard drive, the DRAM cache, and Siri. From the Department of Defense came GPS, cellular technology, signal compression, and parts of the liquid crystal display and multi-touch screen (joining funding from the CIA, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Energy, which, by the way, developed the lithium-ion battery.) CERN in Europe created the Web. Steve Jobs’ contribution was to integrate all of them beautifully.


Venture Capitalists (VCs) in business expect a return in 3 to 5 years, and they count on no more than one in ten companies to succeed. The time frame for government research and investment embraces a whole innovation cycle of 15 to 20 years, supporting the full chain from basic research through to viable companies."


Try Go Programming Language in web browser

The Go Programming Language:


An Introduction to the Go Programming language with Andrew Gerrand on the Hanselminutes Technology Podcast