How apps are changing the way surgeons operate and communicate with patients — from betakit.com by Abigail Keeso
HTML5DevConf – October 2012 — Recordings
Excerpt:
What is the HTML5 Developer Conference?
The HTML5 Developer Conference has become the largest JavaScript and HTML5 developers conference in the world! With a number of varying and expanding approaches, tools, best practices, and advice to be had, there’s a lot of new information to wrap your head around.
We provide tracks on Javascript, HTML5, Apps & Games, client, server, mobile, and more. See leading edge sessions given by renowned speakers…
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Digital Revolution’s Winners And Losers — from Information Week by John Foley
Workers with in-demand digital skills benefit most as computers increasingly take over
everyday tasks. In this InformationWeek 500 video, MIT’s Erik Brynjolfsson discusses
how this trend could affect your enterprise.
I agree with Erik that a large swath of people are being left behind, mainly because of technological changes and the pace of those changes. Again I ask, can you hear the engines roar? How can we re-train folks to take advantage of the 3+million open jobs out there? How can we reinvent ourselves as quickly as possible?
- Andrew McAfee: Are droids taking our jobs?
Robots and algorithms are getting good at jobs like building cars, writing articles, translating — jobs that once required a human. So what will we humans do for work? Andrew McAfee walks through recent labor data to say: We ain’t seen nothing yet. But then he steps back to look at big history, and comes up with a surprising and even thrilling view of what comes next. - America’s jobs gap: 9 million — from cnn.com by Tami Luhby
Andreessen Horowitz’s $100 million bet on developers — from cnn.money.com
Excerpt:
In simple terms, GitHub is an online repository for developers to store and collaborate on code. It’s been called a “Facebook for geeks.” Managers can also log in and track changes that are made along the software development process. But while GitHub has implications for non-programming needs, it’s mainly a tool for developers. In other words, if you can’t tell code from gibberish it’s probably not on your radar.
GitHub pours energies into enterprise – raises $100 million from power VC Andreessen Horowitz — from techcrunch.com by Alex Williams
Excerpt:
Andreessen Horowitz is investing an eye-popping $100 million into GitHub, the ever popular repository for developers to post code and collaborate.
It’s GitHub’s first infusion of venture capital.Co- founder Tom Preston-Warner said the round will go to developing GitHub Enterprise, a server side version of GitHub.com. Reports state GitHub has been valued at $750 million.
What language should you build your app with? — from Mashable.com by Grace Handy
Excerpt:
Mobile developers across the globe have developed and released more than 650,000 iPhone apps, 400,000 iPad apps, and 600,000 apps for Android. Are you thinking about building an app? A key step in the process is choosing the right programming language, which depends on how scrappy you’re willing to be.
Make sure you’ve researched cross-platform app design and reviewed the common pitfalls of developing your app. Decide on your audience and what platform you’ll use, and then weigh your options to select a language.
Playcraft Labs launches HTML5 dev tools, aiming at games and beyond — from techcrunch.com by Billy Gallagher
Hey developers: This real-time coding environment could take social code to the next level — from thenextweb.com by Harrison Weber
Created by the folks at Chaos Collective, “Space” is an internal project that takes social coding to the next level with a real-time collaborative editor baked right into your browser. Right now, we’ve only seen the tool in use and haven’t played with it ourselves, but boy does it look impressive.
Here’s the interesting part: since Space is an internal project, the creators are trying to decide how to share it with the public. They company is asking if they should open source the entire project, or if they should build, maintain and support it as a full-on service.
Successful businesses will be those that optimize the mix of humans, robots, and algorithms — from nextbigfuture.com by Brian Wang
Addendum on 7/13/12 — see also:
- MobileAdvantage from infragistics.com
“Deliver the most amazing user experiences across mobile devices with the new MobileAdvantage bundle. With toolsets for HTML5, iOS, and Windows Phone, you get every UI control you need to create the most performant, vibrant, and consistent applications for decision makers on the move.”
Computer programming for all: A new standard of literacy — from readwriteweb.com by Dan Rowinski
From DSC:
Dan Rowinski brings up some solid questions and points here, and I’ve heard others wrestle with the question whether we should require all students to take programming courses.
I’ve taken some computer programming courses and I’ve had some experience with scripting.
Bottom line:
I find it to be a very different way of thinking. Programmers have their shortcuts which are intuitive to them and work very well for them. But the syntax loses many of the rest of us:
- What happened to that variable?
- Why did you make it a local vs. a global variable?
- What occurs in this loop?
- Why did (blank) not make it into the array?
- Where do I have to declare this variable?
- Why is the syntax written like this?
- Is (blank) a reserved word of the programming language’s syntax or can I use it?
The reason programmers make a pretty good coin is because most people don’t like programming and don’t want to do it. The manner of thinking doesn’t work for them. It’s highly-detailed and very unforgiving. Along these lines and by way of example, I find that people in the web world fall into 1 or 2 camps: either they are web developers (i.e. the back end world of programming, databases, infrastructure, etc.) or they are web designers (i.e. the front end world of graphic design and layout, interface design, interaction design, etc.). It is a rare person who excels at both the front and back ends.
If we are going to make programming required, we had better do a better job with providing higher-level languages that are more intuitive for the masses. Or we’ll just discourage many who try their hand at it. And it’s not that I don’t value programming — I do! In fact, I wish that manner of thinking came much easier to me. But it doesn’t.













![The-Living-Class-Room-Daniel-S-Christian---July-2012 The Living [Class] Room -- by Daniel Christian -- July 2012 -- a second device used in conjunction with a Smart/Connected TV](http://danielschristian.com/learning-ecosystems/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/The-Living-Class-Room-Daniel-S-Christian-July-2012.jpg)








