December 13, 2011

Uncle Sam Wants Mobile Devs

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has launched a new program to create applications that can coordinate intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) programs. Many of these applications rely on increasingly complex sensors created for DARPA’s Adaptable Sensor System (ADAPT) program. “The end vision for ADAPT is warfighter access to

10 Billion Downloads for the Android Market

Google has unveiled some more statistics about the success of the Android mobile operating system. According to the company, the Android Market passed the 10 billion download mark over the weekend; it had 6.5 billion downloads as of last July. In addition, users have activated 200 million Android smartphones and

Java Apps Have Most Expensive Technical Debt

An analysis of 745 applications by Cast Software finds that Java apps have the most violations of standard development practices per line of code. When application developers are rushed to complete a project, they sometimes cut corners, leading to flaws that are often called “technical debt.” If you estimate $75

What Enterprise Application Developers Can Learn from Excel

At the GigaOM Net:Work conference, Podio CEO Tommy Ahlers said that enterprise application development pros shouldn’t try to build too many features into their apps. Instead, he said devs should give users the ability to build their own apps. “If they build it themselves, they are going to use it,”

Report: 84% of Applications Have Security Bugs

According to code-testing vendor Veracode, the company finds security vulnerabilities in 84 percent of desktop and Web applications when they are submitted for testing the first time. Two-thirds of those applications included cross-site scripting vulnerabilities and one-third had SQL injection vulnerabilities. However, the company notes that the volume of bugs

Kindle Fire Boosts Amazon Appstore Sales

While hard statistics can be hard to find, several developers say that their sales and downloads through the Amazon Appstore have skyrocketed after the release of Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet. For example, the makers of the Quickoffice productivity app say their Amazon sales were about 1/100 of their Android Market

RIM Loses BBX Trademark Dispute

A federal court in New Mexico has issued a temporary restraining order that prevents RIM from using the trademark “BBX,” the name the company had been using for the next version of its BlackBerry mobile operating system. As a result, RIM says that it will now call the OS “BlackBerry

A New Crop of Computer Programming Schools

With demand for skilled programmers on the rise, many organizations are offering new training programs that teach application development skills. Recently, several of those organizations have attracted funding from investors. For example, Treehouse Island Inc., which teaches online classes in Web and mobile development, recently received $600,000 in funding, and

HP Decides to Open Source WebOS

Following weeks of speculation about whether HP would sell the WebOS platform it acquired with the purchase of Palm, company CEO Meg Whitman has announced that WebOS will become open source. In a company-wide e-mail, she said the decision was “the best way to ensure the benefits of webOS are

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