Science & Engineering
- WSO2 Releases Web Services Framework for Ruby
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1/23/2008
Web developers who use the increasingly popular combo of the Ruby programming language with the Rails framework, better known as Ruby on Rails, now have an open source framework for providing and/or consuming Web services. WSO2's newly released Web Services Framework for Ruby (WSF/Ruby) is the first Ruby extension to support the WS-* specifications, which include the SOAP Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism (MTOM), WS-Addressing, WS-Security, WS-SecurityPolicy, and WS-Reliable Messaging.
- Early Look: Acid3
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1/22/2008
In December, I wrote about Internet Explorer 8's ability to properly render the Acid2 test. Many current or upcoming browser releases are able to successfully process Acid2. However, the bar is about to be raised again. Since April 2007, the Web Standards Project has been designing Acid3 to be the next rendering milestone for modern browsers.
- Mindreef Boosts WS-Security and SOA Testing
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1/21/2008
Mindreef released a new version of its collaborative flagship server solution for testing service-oriented architectures (SOAs). SOAPscope Server 6.1 lets architects, developers, testers and support engineers collaborate in the creation of Web services and composite applications.
- DataSynapse To Offer FabricServer 2.5
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1/21/2008
DataSynapse has upgraded its FabricServer application virtualization product, which is part of the company's suite of solutions that help businesses attain high availability for their applications.
- Xignite Unveils Web Service Mashup Platform
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1/16/2008
Xignite is offering subscribers an on-demand service that lets users create custom business applications via a Web services mashup platform. The platform, called Xignite Splice, enables composite Web services applications to be built using a visual development environment.
- SpringSource Offers Spring.NET 1.1
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1/9/2008
SpringSource is offering the final release of Spring.NET 1.1. The framework, which apparently was released early last month, lets .NET developers use some of the features that are currently available in the open source Java-based Spring Framework.
- First Look: Project Zero
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1/4/2008
Project Zero (an IBM incubator project) is an extension of the Eclipse open source Java programming IDE. It allows Java programmers to use a familiar development environment to create dynamic Web applications. While the project is supported by a "community," much like open source efforts, the aim of Project Zero is commercial, with IBM counting on getting feedback from developers in the mean time.
- Component Assembly Service Has Its Head in the Cloud
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1/4/2008
Eclipse and Java coders are being offered a helping hand with their component assembly challenges from a new company with a fledgling free service. The Web-based Cloudsmith service, from the company of the same name, is designed to streamline component assembly across multiple sources. It helps developers cobble components directly from the Internet, or "the cloud"--that global pool of connected computers drawn as lump on countless whiteboards.
- Creative Commons Introduces CC+ License
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1/3/2008
The Creative Commons foundation recently released the CC+ protocol, which allows authors and other content makers to release their work for free (under the Creative Commons noncommercial license) and charge a fee for commercial use at the same time.
- Google Web Toolkit Gets Update, Unofficial Leopard Build Also Released
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12/13/2007
Google has released Google Web Toolkit 1.4.61, a minor update to its open-source AJAX development framework. The company has also released an unofficial build for Mac OS X 10.5 ("Leopard") that includes changes to the hosted mode for improved compatibility.
- ELC and FiveRuns Team on Enterprise Ruby on Rails
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12/13/2007
ELC Technologies, a Santa Barbara, CA-based application development company, has partnered with FiveRuns to support enterprise-grade Ruby on Rails (RoR) applications. The partnership will help enable ELC's enterprise customers to actively monitor the performance of their RoR applications.
- Software Aids Collaborative Teaching and Learning at U Georgia
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12/12/2007
Active, collaborative learning is a laudable goal in the classroom, but with individual students at computers throughout the room, it's not always easy to achieve.
- IBM alphaWorks Expands Web Services
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12/12/2007
IBM has added two new Web services to its alphaWorks Web site, which provides "sneak previews" of the kind of technologies that are being contemplated at IBM research and development labs. The new Web services include IBM Sharable Code, a platform for managing Web 2.0-type mashup applications, and IBM Web Highlights.
- Red Hat Bundles Tooling and Runtime in New JBoss IDE
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12/11/2007
Red Hat today began shipping a new application integrated development environment (IDE) that combines both tooling and runtime. JBoss Developer Studio Eclipse is an Eclipse-based IDE bundled with the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform and the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Network. It also includes tooling for Java EE, the JBoss Seam app framework, AJAX, Hibernate, Persistence, JBoss jPBM, Struts and the Spring IDE.
- Open-Source NetBeans Beta 2 Gets Dual-License
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12/4/2007
The NetBeans community has released the latest build of its open source, Java-based integrated development environment (IDE) with, among other new features, a dual-licensing scheme. NetBeans 6.0 Beta 2 is licensed under both the GNU General Public License (GPL) v2 with ClassPath exception and Sun Microsystems' Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL). NetBeans creator and primary corporate sponsor Sun Microsystems proposed adding the GPL license option.
- MIT Extends OpenCourseWare to High Schools
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11/29/2007
Five years after the initial pilot of MIT's OpenCourseWare initiative, it's now making its way into secondary education with the launch this week of "Highlights for High School," which aims to bolster high school STEM education through free and open course materials, from complete curricula and syllabi to videos, lecture notes, and animations.
- HPC-Powered Science Gateways Open Doors to Discoveries
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11/28/2007
Collaborative science gateways, also known as hubs, are opening up new possibilities for researchers.
- Rails Yet To Make Dent in the Enterprise
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11/28/2007
The eardrum-rupturing buzz around Ruby on Rails (RoR or just "Rails") among Web developers is understandable. Even the luminaries are singing its praises. James Duncan Davidson, creator of Tomcat and Ant, has described RoR as "the most well thought-out Web development framework I've ever used." Tech book publishing titan Tim O'Reilly thinks it's "a breakthrough in lowering the barriers of entry to programming." Agile programming expert Martin Fowler calls Rails "a standard to which even well-established tools are comparing themselves."
- Nvidia CUDA Brings GPU-Based Parallel Programming to the Classroom
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11/27/2007
Nvidia has released a public beta of CUDA 1.1, an update to the company's C-compiler and SDK for developing multi-core and parallel processing applications on GPUs, specifically Nvidia's 8-series GPUs (and their successors in the future). While the 1.1 beta was originally released to developers Nov. 12, an update was posted last week that includes new public beta Linux display drivers. In addition, Nvidia has announced that more than 20 universities around the world have adopted CUDA for multi-core and parallel processing programming, with several more also exploring CUDA for inclusion in their parallel programming curricula.
- NMSI To Grant $25 Million for STEM Teacher Prep
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11/21/2007
The non-profit National Math and Science Initiative (NMSI) will award $25 million to 12 universities in the United States in an effort to boost the number of teachers with "enhanced math and science teaching skills." The grants will be awarded to universities whose teacher preparation programs are modeled after the UTeach program at the University of Texas at Austin--a program that has doubled the number of math and science majors being certified at the university.
- IBM/University Collaboration To Develop Open-Source Accessibility Tools
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11/20/2007
University researchers in the United States and the U.K. have started collaborating with IBM to develop open-source software solutions aimed at bringing accessibility to older workers to "help them adapt to and remain productive in the changing workplace of the 21st century," according to information released late last week by IBM. The effort is part of IBM's Open Collaborative Research initiative, which creates partnerships with universities for the purpose of developing and releasing open-source tools to the public.
- Red Hat and Platform Computing Team on Grid Solution
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11/20/2007
Red Hat recently announced an agreement with Platform Computing to support high-performance computing (HPC) solutions. HPC is a form of distributed computing where multiple processors are linked together to act as a single system. This type of system uses an array of commercial-grade processors to create a system that has processing speeds comparable with today's fastest supercomputers.
- OASIS Ramps Up SDO Efforts for SOAs
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11/19/2007
The nonprofit OASIS standards group has created a technical committee in support of the Service Data Objects (SDO) specification at OASIS. The SDO spec, which is a subset of the Service Component Architecture (SCA) spec, aims at simplifying data handling in service-oriented architectures (SOAs).
- Microsoft Releases Beta of High-Performance Computing Server
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11/16/2007
Microsoft took the next step into the arena of high-performance computing (HPC) Nov. 13 when it announced the release of the first beta of Windows HPC Server 2008, the successor to Compute Cluster Server 2003.
- MIT Researchers Advance Lecture Capture with Search Capabilities
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11/14/2007
Researchers in MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have developed a new Web-based technology that's designed to take recorded classroom lectures to the next level. The technology, developed by a team led by MIT's Regina Barzilay and James Glass, provides search functionality for classroom video recordings. At present, the prototype only works with MIT's online lectures made available to the public through the university's OpenCourseWare initiative, but it may be made available to other institutions in the future.
