Emerging Technology: APIs and Mashups and eLearning — from interactyx.com by Jeff Roth
Also see the following API and mashup directories
On 08/02/2010,
in computer science, programming,
by Daniel Christian
On 07/30/2010,
in computer science, digital photography, innovation, programming,
by Daniel Christian
On 07/20/2010,
in collaboration, computer science, innovation, programming, web-based collaboration,
by Daniel Christian
— original posting from FastCompany.com
Also see:
Computers intersect with sociology to sift through ‘all our ideas’ (from News at Princeton)
Fortunately, an acquaintance referred Moles to Matthew Salganik. An assistant professor of sociology at Princeton, Salganik has teamed up with Princeton computer scientists to develop a new way for organizations to solicit ideas from large groups of people and simultaneously have those same people vote on the merit of the ideas generated by the group.
Called “All Our Ideas,” the survey tool melds concepts from sociology and computer science to allow an organization to quickly set up a free website where large numbers of people can contribute and rank ideas. The system could help governments tap into public opinion and provide sociologists with a new research tool.
Learning from the creative industries – consistency to build trust — from infoq.com
In the June 2010 edition of Wired magazine Jonah Leher wrote an article titled “Animating a Blockbuster: Inside Pixar’s creative magic” in which he examines the creative process in use at Pixar Animation Studios. He states
“Since 1995 when the first Toy Story was released, Pixar has made nine films, and every one has been a smashing success. Pixar’s secret? It’s unusual creative process.”
According to Leher: “the studio has built a team of moviemakers who know and trust one another in ways unimaginable on most sets”
He points out how Pixar’s process requires deep trust among the team, and the ability to handle feedback on the quality of the work being done. Each day the team review the work done the previous day and “ruthlessly shred” each frame. This constant feedback cycle enables the team to continuously improve the quality of the work being done, and the product being developed. This process involves every member of the team, “even the most junior staffers are encouraged to join in”, the intent is to learn, adapt and improve in a short cycle time – something that should be very familiar to anyone who has worked in an Agile software development team.
This safe to fail environment is one of the key aspects that makes Pixar so successful. Leher quotes Lee Unkrich (director of Toy Story 3) who says “It is important that nobody gets mad at you for screwing up. We know screwups are an essential part of making something good. That’s why our goal is to screw up as fast as possible”
…
Summer Institute of Linguistics, Inc (SIL) International is a faith-based nonprofit organization committed to serving language communities worldwide as they build capacity for sustainable language development. SIL has some linguistic software available for translators and linguistics that goes beyond simply learning a language. They are more like language analysis and language parsing. Check out http://www.sil.org/computing/catalog/index.asp
Categories include:
- Data Management
- Font
- Font Utility
- Keyboard Utility
- Other
- Parser
- Programming Language
- Text Analysis
- Text Utility
For German, see:
dict.leo.org
dict.leo.org
On 05/19/2010,
in Apple, computer science, mobile learning, mobile technologies, programming,
by Daniel Christian
On 04/20/2010,
in cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, computer science, programming,
by Daniel Christian
TR10: Cloud Programming — from Technology Review
A new language will improve online applications.
Cloud computing offers the promise of virtually unlimited processing and storage power, courtesy of vast data centers run by companies like Amazon and Google. But programmers don’t know how best to exploit this power.
Also see:
http://databeta.wordpress.com/2009/12/16/bloom-and-dedalus/
PHP: What you need to know to play with the web — SmashingMagazine.com by Christian Heilmann
What Is PHP?
PHP is a server-side language that has become a massive success for three reasons:
- It is a very easy and forgiving language. Variables can be anything, and you can create them anytime you want.
- It is part of the free LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) and thus available on almost any server you can rent on the Web.
- It does not need a special editor, environment or build process. All you do is create a file of the .php file type, mix PHP and HTML and then put it on your server for rendering.
From DSC:
Christian makes this sound so easy. However, in my experience, programmers have a different skillset that is not easily mastered or obtained. They have a different way of thinking, and the syntax of coding languages is not something many people enjoy working with. That is why there seems to be two camps: web designers (who focus on the front-end of the web) and web developers (who focus on the back end of things such as application development/programming and database integration). Sometimes, a person can bridge those two worlds…but rare is the person who can stay up-to-date and do both sides of the house well…and consistently over time.
