One of the most exciting tidbits that’s come out of Google IO is the new development platform for Android developers, called Android Studio.We’ve noticed a fair amount of grumbling around the internets about difficulties using ADT with Eclipse in terms of stability, and there has been an almost audible sigh of relief in the many Android developer forums across the globe in reaction to the news that Android Studio is now built upon the IntelliJ IDEA IDE.
As with pretty much …
One of the most exciting tidbits that’s come out of Google IO is the new development platform for Android developers, called Android Studio.
We’ve noticed a fair amount of grumbling around the internets about difficulties using ADT with Eclipse in terms of stability, and there has been an almost audible sigh of relief in the many Android developer forums across the globe in reaction to the news that Android Studio is now built upon the IntelliJ IDEA IDE.
As with pretty much anything Google releases, the current version is very much an early preview (read: beta), but it’s already creating quite a buzz.
Some of the features you’ll find in addition to all the IntelliJ goodness that Google is touting include:
- Build support for Gradle
- Android-specific refactoring and quick fixes
- Lint tools to catch performance, usability, version compatibility and other problems
- ProGuard and app-signing capabilities
- Template-based wizards to create common Android designs and components
- A rich layout editor that allows you to drag-and-drop UI components, preview layouts on multiple screen configurations
You’ll be glad to know our Android App Development training course will henceforth offer delegates the opportunity to do all the lovely juicy hands-on coding exercises using Android Studio (while still supporting ADT / Eclipse).
Unreal Engine Citadel Demo – now in a browser near you!
I was blown away by the Android Unreal Citadel demo app on the Nexus 10, so imagine my surprise when I saw that they’ve created an HTML5 version and it runs in Firefox!
As we understand it, it’s essentially a great wad of C++ code that has been compiled to JavaScript, and it calls on under-the-hood HTML5 technologies such as WebGL, WebAudio, pointer lock, objectURL, and asm.js – but the fact is that no external plugins are required and it runs like butter on my (admitedly pretty nifty) PC.
I was blown away by the Android Unreal Citadel demo app on the Nexus 10, so imagine my surprise when I saw that they’ve created an HTML5 version and it runs in Firefox!
As we understand it, it’s essentially a great wad of C++ code that has been compiled to JavaScript, and it calls on under-the-hood HTML5 technologies such as WebGL, WebAudio, pointer lock, objectURL, and asm.js – but the fact is that no external plugins are required and it runs like butter on my (admitedly pretty nifty) PC.
Check the Unreal demo out here – but be warned, it may make your browser unresponsive (some people have been reporting crashes) as it is a pretty resource-intensive and hefty download.
Keep making the sexy things, Unreal!
Windows Blue / 8.1 to bring back the Start button?
The Windows Start button has been an iconic and (eventually) highly intuitive UI feature in Windows since good old Windows 95 confused and confounded Windows 3.1 users back in the day. That was nearly 20 years ago…Yikes!
Its disappearance was just one of the criticisms levelled at Microsoft when the Windows 8 betas emerged, and everyone got in a bit of a flap about the Metro Modern interface.
According to The Verge, Microsoft have listened to the online *ahem* discussions…and is reportedly bringing back the Start button in the next major update for Windows 8. There is …
The Windows Start button has been an iconic and (eventually) highly intuitive UI feature in Windows since good old Windows 95 confused and confounded Windows 3.1 users back in the day. That was nearly 20 years ago…Yikes!
Its disappearance was just one of the criticisms levelled at Microsoft when the Windows 8 betas emerged, and everyone got in a bit of a flap about the Metro Modern interface.
According to The Verge, Microsoft have listened to the online *ahem* discussions…and is reportedly bringing back the Start button in the next major update for Windows 8. There is also talk of having a “Boot to deskptop” option too.
The actual functionality of the resuscitated button is also still a little moot, but either way, this is good news and should go a long way to appeasing the nay-sayers.
It’s taken a bit of getting used to, but here at Framework Towers, we likes us a bit of Windows 8, it’s a solid OS.
[SOLVED] Can’t upgrade to Windows 8 because you can’t uninstall Intel PRO/Set Wireless Bluetooth?
Yeah, we had that too!
Add/Remove programs didn’t work, and not even the Swiss Army Knife that is CCleaner! Windows 8 Upgrade just couldn’t get past uninstalling the Intel PRO/Set Bluetooth adapter.
Thanks to this post on the Intel forums by AtlanticBirD, the solution turned out to be quite painless.
Presumably you’ll have selected the option to keep all your apps, documents and settings in place for the upgrade.
If you’re stuck on the screen asking you to uninstall the Intel PRO/Set …
Yeah, we had that too!
Add/Remove programs didn’t work, and not even the Swiss Army Knife that is CCleaner! Windows 8 Upgrade just couldn’t get past uninstalling the Intel PRO/Set Bluetooth adapter.
Thanks to this post on the Intel forums by AtlanticBirD, the solution turned out to be quite painless.
Presumably you’ll have selected the option to keep all your apps, documents and settings in place for the upgrade.
If you’re stuck on the screen asking you to uninstall the Intel PRO/Set Wireless Bluetooth adapter (for the umpteenth time), click “Back”, and select the option to only keep your personal files.
Click next once.
Before you go ahead and upgrade on the next screen, click “Back” again, and choose to keep your apps and settings this time.
Cross your fingers, hold your breath, and click Next…
Low and behold, you’re good to go!
Hats off to you, AtlanticBirD, you’ve saved the day.
Samsung S4 picture leak?
Just so happens that I’m starting to think about my next phone. That it will be an Android beastie I have no doubt, but there’s a crop of nice hardware that should be released at just about the right time and I’m in that quandrary of what to go for again.
One of theose is the Samsung S4 and just ahead of the announced announcement date of March 14, it looks like some pictures may have already leaked out
Here’s one of’em:
Just so happens that I’m starting to think about my next phone. That it will be an Android beastie I have no doubt, but there’s a crop of nice hardware that should be released at just about the right time and I’m in that quandrary of what to go for again.
One of theose is the Samsung S4 and just ahead of the announced announcement date of March 14, it looks like some pictures may have already leaked out
Here’s one of’em:
To be honest it looks rather like an S3, but the rumoured specs (8-core, 2 Gb RAM, 13 megapixel camera and a slew of hands-free gesture / recognition features) would definitely mark it as a solid upgrade.
I’m also weighing up the Xperia Z and the HTC One though.
Choices choices!
New Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2012
Microsoft has just released a tool suite that bolts on to Visual Studio 2012. The new Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2012 allow deeper control, integration, and app development and deployment options for Office 2013, SharePoint 2013, and cloud-based Office 365.
Following the new Modern design paradigm that is running through the latest generation of Microsoft products and platforms, the underlying technologies are assembled with ease of deployment to the Web and Cloud firmly in mind. HTML5, …
Microsoft has just released a tool suite that bolts on to Visual Studio 2012. The new Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2012 allow deeper control, integration, and app development and deployment options for Office 2013, SharePoint 2013, and cloud-based Office 365.
Following the new Modern design paradigm that is running through the latest generation of Microsoft products and platforms, the underlying technologies are assembled with ease of deployment to the Web and Cloud firmly in mind. HTML5, CSS, JavaScript are promoted for develop rich user interfaces, while OData provides solid and platform-agnostic networked data connectivity (the same OData API used with Windows Azure).
It’s great news for internal development teams that create and maintain Office solutions within their organisations, but also paves the way for small, medium and large commercial software houses to develop and publish apps to the Microsoft Office Store.
Want to know more? Check out “Project Napa”, where you can create apps for SharePoint and Office 2013 / 365 directly in your browser, with the option to drop them into Visual Studio 2012 later on, and keep on coding.
Happy Birthday Raspberry Pi!
Congratulations to the visionary bods at the Raspberry Pi Foundation – 1 today!
Congratulations to the visionary bods at the Raspberry Pi Foundation – 1 today!
Plus points for Intel’s Clover Trail mobile Atom SoC
Silicon chip giant Intel have announced the specs on their latest crop of portable powerhouses.
Codenamed Clover Trail+, the latest generation of their Atom-branded System on a Chip (SoC), brings the fight to manufacturers like Qualcomm and Nvidia who largely focus on ARM-based chip architecture. But Intel’s chips have the benefit of providing x86 support so full-blown Windows apps can be run – the previous generation of Clover Trail / Atom chips can be found in many Microsoft Surface devices.
These new Atom chips, dubbed Z2580, Z2560, and Z2520, will clock in at up to 2Ghz, and are fabbed at 32nm (that’s …
Silicon chip giant Intel have announced the specs on their latest crop of portable powerhouses.
Codenamed Clover Trail+, the latest generation of their Atom-branded System on a Chip (SoC), brings the fight to manufacturers like Qualcomm and Nvidia who largely focus on ARM-based chip architecture. But Intel’s chips have the benefit of providing x86 support so full-blown Windows apps can be run – the previous generation of Clover Trail / Atom chips can be found in many Microsoft Surface devices.
These new Atom chips, dubbed Z2580, Z2560, and Z2520, will clock in at up to 2Ghz, and are fabbed at 32nm (that’s really very small, which is good for power consumption and heat production).
Because it’s a SoC, it fulfils more than just the role of the CPU – it delivers the grunt in the graphics department too, both 3D hardware rendering and HD video playback, and also handles radio functions with support for the latest 4G / LTE networks, so you can expect to see this underpinning the next tranche of Windows 8 devices – phones, tablets and dare I say, netbooks (are you even allowed to say netbook these days?)
Throwing and catching – THIS is what technology is for!
A friend sent me a link to this video this morning – I sat at my desk with a cup of coffee and watched the video open-mouthed.
For those of us who considered BigTrak as space age technology it’s fair to say that this latest video from the team at ETH Zurich’s Flying Machine Arena
A friend sent me a link to this video this morning – I sat at my desk with a cup of coffee and watched the video open-mouthed.
For those of us who considered BigTrak as space age technology it’s fair to say that this latest video from the team at ETH Zurich’s Flying Machine Arena
Read the article here
is equal or greater than….
Playstation 4 teaser – but still no box shot!
If your eyes are in need of a feast, then get your ocular knives and forks ready for this:
Tasty looking graphics and physics effects for sure, and the controller looks more comfortable than previous generations (very subjective, I know) and it looks like there’s a sensor bar that could be the lovechild of the kinect and the wii’s IR receiver…but we still don’t know what the box looks like.
Why is this so important?
I don’t know. But it is!
This is definitely on my DO WANT list though.
If your eyes are in need of a feast, then get your ocular knives and forks ready for this:
Tasty looking graphics and physics effects for sure, and the controller looks more comfortable than previous generations (very subjective, I know) and it looks like there’s a sensor bar that could be the lovechild of the kinect and the wii’s IR receiver…but we still don’t know what the box looks like.
Why is this so important?
I don’t know. But it is!
This is definitely on my DO WANT list though.
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