Articles about Developer Tool

You can't go too far in the big data world without encountering Apache Hadoop. The open source framework was created in 2005 to handle large scale processing.

A new infographic from data management company Solix looks at what Hadoop is, the four modules that make it up, and how it’s used in the enterprise, along with a glimpse at its future.

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The Apache Spark framework is a popular add on to Hadoop for handling big data, particularly for building machine learning algorithms.

Until now though it's been hard to effectively monitor Spark performance. That's about to change as Brooklyn-based performance management company Sematext is launching its SPM for Spark.

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As any Facebook user knows, 'liking' content online has become almost second nature. Facebook has Likes, Google+ has +1s, and various other variations exist. But it is Facebook's Like button that reigns supreme -- regardless of the privacy concerns it may raise. Today Facebook is expanding its Like feature so that mobile app developers can take advantage of it. Not just content with giving web users the chance to indicate their approval of a particular Facebook post or online article, it is now possible to 'like' any piece of content within a supported app on iOS and Android.

It's a feature that is likely to be picked up very quickly by game developers, so you can expect to see notifications in the near future letting you know that your Facebook friends like level 118 of Candy Crush Saga. The feature was previewed earlier this year, but is now being made available to any developer who wants to use it. Facebook says:

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A large proportion of websites are not standalone sites in their own right, but creations based on CMSs such as Drupal, WordPress, and Joomla. This is particularly true for personal blogs, but using a CMS as the basis for a site has been increasingly popular among larger companies. CMSs are used because they allow for articles to be posted easily, make it simple for multiple people to contribute to a site, and allow for different users to be assigned different access rights. They can also be extended through the use of plugins, but these self-same extensions are also a security disaster waiting to happen.

Security experts High-Tech Bridge frequently discover vulnerabilities in extensions and plugins for popular CMSs. It is standard procedure to notify the developer before going public three weeks after the discovery -- this provides an opportunity for the problems to be fixed without alerting others who might exploit it. High-Tech Bridge CEO, Ilia Kolochenko, says that CMS security issues are nothing new:

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Windows XP is still in use in a surprisingly high number of businesses. A recent survey suggests that more than half of organizations are still running it somewhere.

The survey was conducted by systems management specialist Adaptiva among more than 100 TechEd North America attendees showed that 53 percent still had some XP systems.

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It's important for any business to establish an online presence, and this is certainly true in emerging markets. It's something recognized by Google, and the company is teaming up with Endurance International Group to help SMBs in Africa and Southeast Asia to launch online ventures.

Google's reputation online precedes it, but Endurance might not be a name that's overly familiar. The company provides hosting, and the new partnership with Google is set to benefit businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Indonesia and Malaysia.

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People are slowly but surely coming round to the idea of SaaS (Software as a Service), and this is particularly true for businesses. Microsoft is making something of a success of pushing monthly or annual subscriptions for Office 365, but there's still a massive untapped market -- small businesses who are simply not in a position to make additional financial commitments each month. GoDaddy is helping to wipe out this obstacle by offering a package aimed at getting small businesses up and running online for just $1 per month; and the package includes Office 365.

As this is GoDaddy, it should come as no surprise that there is a web-focus to the package. For $1 a month, businesses can bag themselves a custom domain and take advantage of the Website Builder tool as well as site hosting. On top of this, there's round the clock support and $50 worth of Bing credit to help with online promotion. This is already a great value deal, but throwing Office 365 into the mix is going to be too much for many businesses to resist.

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Seven years after its inception, online image editing service Aviary has been acquired by Adobe. The Photoshop stalwart is no stranger to the cloud, but this latest purchase seems to indicate that the company is looking to expand further in this arena. Pay a visit to the Aviary website and the Adobe branding is already in place -- there's also a new entry on the Aviary company timeline that has been updated to reflect the acquisition. The Adobe-branded Aviary website makes clear the thinking behind the move: "accelerating delivery of mobile apps that integrate with Adobe Creative Cloud".

It seems that the main reason for Adobe's interest in Aviary is the fact that the ornithologically-named firm has developed a number of mobile SDKs. Aviary is already a popular tool, and Adobe is understandably keen to monetize the popularity of cloud apps and mobile services: Aviary is a ready-made package that encompasses both of these ideas perfectly. An announcement by Adobe explains that "the acquisition accelerates Adobe's strategy to make Creative Cloud a vibrant platform for third-party apps, through a new Creative SDK".

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Free's good, right? Who doesn’t like something gratis? Microsoft has -- sort of -- cottoned onto this idea and dropped the annual fee associated with the Windows Dev Center. The 'sort of' caveat remains because signing up for a Dev Center account is not completely free; there's still a registration fee of $19 to pay, but this is for a lifetime account -- no more annual charges. Announcing the move on the Windows blog, Todd Brix explains that "each of our 600,000+ registered developers will no longer need to pay any additional fees to maintain their account. It’s also a very good time for developers new to the platform to get a Dev Center account and start submitting apps".

Having paid the fee, developers are then free to submit apps to both the Windows Phone Store and the Windows Store. But this is not the only change that's coming to the Dev Center. In what is becoming something of a trend, Microsoft clearly pinned back its ears and made it easier to promote apps and provide offers to users. Improvements to in-app advertising means that campaigns can be more easily run on a global scale and pay outs are made faster.

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The PaaSLane tool for assessing the cloud-readiness of applications has been available for two years and has helped many organizations transition their software smoothly. It's able to detect outdated architecture, weak security, platform issues and more.

Now Cloud Technology Partners has brought out a new release to allow Java and .Net developers to assess and optimize their source code for the cloud more quickly and efficiently.

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For organizations that deal with large quantities of data, the NoSQL database is a popular choice. However, it can present problems for traditional database programmers.

For this reason developers are always on the look out for ways to build applications more easily and unlock the potential of unstructured data. With the release of its latest Riak Enterprise 2.0, NoSQL specialist Basho is addressing these needs.

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I am reluctant to criticize unreleased Apple Watch because my analysis about original iPad -- given before seeing it -- was wrong. That said, Android Wear, while seemingly sensible comparison that analysts, bloggers, and journalists make, isn't right. When put in perspective of next-generation wearables, I think Apple Watch should be compared to Google Glass.

Be honest. Which looks more innovative to you? The utility of something you see at eye level that provides real-time, location-based information is much greater than something that demands more responsive -- "Hey, Siri" -- interaction and turns the glance and fingers downward. Granted, Apple Watch delivers alerts, and you feel them, but your attention is always to look away.

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Google geeks have speculated for nearly a year about Android and Chrome OS coming together as one operating system. Yesterday's announcement -- that some Android apps can now run on the browser-based platform -- seems to foreshadow a combined future. Make no mistake about what this really means. Chrome OS is an ecosystem with no future because there is little monetization of apps. The platform would be dead if not for the existing and smoothly integrated Google cloud ecosystem.

Android apps inject life into the Chrome OS ecosystem. Free apps can't sustain any platform because developers have no incentive to create them. Android opens a huge spigot of apps -- and some which developers can monetize, more than they do through paid services tacked onto free web apps. BTW, Microsoft should take a cue from Google, by bringing boatloads of Windows Phone apps to its PC operating system.

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In a fast-changing world there's demand for new applications to be delivered quickly and traditional development processes often can't keep pace.

Seattle-based startup Shippable has announced a new version of its platform that helps developers to innovate and deliver more quickly using open source Docker containers. Docker -- in case you didn't know -- isolates resources of the Linux kernel to allow independent software containers to run on one Linux platform without the need to launch virtual machines. Docker containers can be run on any Linux machine whether on site or in the cloud.

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A recent study by Gartner shows that mobile app use grew an incredible 115 percent from 2012 to 2013. Apple, which offers more than a million apps for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, said recently that customers spent more than $10 billion on apps in 2013, yet the most popular apps have a distinct difference.

Take the incredibly popular and successful WhatsApp; the five-year old company has over 500 million active monthly users, and the founder signed a $19 billion acquisition deal with Facebook just a few blocks away from the social services office where he used to collect food stamps.

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