Items tagged with developer
In late June, Google began the phaseout of Android Application Packages (APKs) in favor of Android Application Bundles (AABs). With these changes and improvements for developers, the Mountain View-based company is now introducing the Android Game Development Kit (AGDK), “a full range of tools and libraries to help you develop, optimize, and deliver high quality Android games.” Announced yesterday, the AGDK has three key pillars: it is built for game development around C or C++ APIs with performance in mind, cross-compatible across Android versions, and backward compatible, when possible, with future Android platform updates. Furthermore, the developers behind the ADGK are “focusing...
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In 2018, Google launched the Android App Bundle, a new publishing format that “offers a more efficient way to build and release” an app. Since then, Android developers worldwide, like those at Adobe, Duolingo, Netflix, and Twitter, have taken advantage of this with approximately 1 million different apps. Now, Google wants to bring the benefits of the AAB to more users while modernizing Android app distribution by requiring new apps to use the AAB in August 2021. Announced on the Android Developers Google blog yesterday, APKs or Android Application Packages will be phased out as the standard publishing format over time in favor of the new AABs. With this change, AABs will allow apps...
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Microsoft's been changing quite a bit - for the better - since Satya Nadella stepped in as company CEO, and I don't think that's a coincidence. In the latest major move, the company has announced that it will soon be open sourcing its .NET Core stack, which includes everything from ASP .NET 5 down to the Core runtime and Framework. Once completed, .NET Core will run on Linux and Mac OS X systems, along with Windows. An important thing to note here is that this open sourcing, and the newly-supported OSes in general, is all server-side. That means that regular users won't be gaining a .NET client install for their Linux or OS X box, and potentially run legacy or current .NET desktop software...
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Mozilla is a company that cares a lot about developers - especially those who make the Web a better, more exciting place. Over the years, the company's done much to aide developers who work towards that goal, and today, even the standard Firefox browser includes a number of useful tools that can be used to quickly improve development work. Well, to help celebrate the 10th anniversary of Firefox 1.0's release, Mozilla has kicked its developer support up a notch. The result? Firefox Developer Edition, a Web browser designed through and through for those who take Web development seriously. It's hard to tell from the simple screenshot above, but this version of Firefox includes what I personally...
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There's never been doubt that Valve takes gaming - and the PC as a platform - very seriously, but when the company announced its SteamOS, Steam Machines and Steam controller, it became clear as day that the company wants to make its already major impact on the gaming industry even more definitive. Outside of its own games, fueling Valve's success is other developers - indie or established. For continued success, further support is required, and to help with that, the company has just unveiled "Steam Dev Days", a special two-day conference that will kick-off this coming January in Seattle. Whether this is going to become an annual event or not, we'll have to wait and see. The goal with Steam...
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Here's an interesting one. You may (or may not) realize that when Microsoft launched Windows 8, it enabled customers to roam their apps on up to 5 devices. According to Microsoft, "this gave customers who embraced the new OS the flexibility to run their apps on all Windows 8 devices they owned, while protecting the app builders' investment and helping to prevent abuse." Evidently, many customers felt that just 5 wasn't enough, and now the company is responding to that feedback. Starting on October 9, Windows Store apps can be installed on up to 81 devices associated with a single Microsoft account. This will apply to all apps in the Store, for both Windows 8 and Windows 8.1. Microsoft is providing...
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It's a big day for IT folk the world over: Microsoft has just announced the release of Windows 8.1 Enterprise Preview. Alright - I might have been a little sarcastic there, but for those who either have already or plan to deploy Windows 8 in the near-future, this preview is going to be worth checking out. The enterprise edition of 8.1 bundles in all of the enhancements we discussed at length last month, which includes the much-improved Start Screen, a more accurate search, a Start button (but no Start Menu), a quicker way to shutdown / restart, the much-liked "Boot to Desktop" option and et cetera. To better cater this edition to the enterprise, however, a handful of other tools are tossed onto...
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Last week, Apple's Developer Portal went offline unexpectedly, and it remained that way for a week. That's a long time for any one Apple product to be offline, particularly one so closely linked to its iOS ecosystem. The company later confirmed that it had been breached, and that it was working on an internal overhaul before opening it all back up again. Now, it appears that the internal tinkering has been finalized, as the Developer Center is back online and open for business. Devs are reporting that the Center looks the same as it did before, with no major consumer-facing modifications. However, Apple has likely overhauled the guts of the thing in order to hopefully prevent yet another security...
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Here's a strange one: Apple recently published a page on its developer portal that openly apologized for maintenance that was "taking longer than expected." Of course, it's hard to fault a company for taking time to ensure something is done correctly, but the notice has now been up for several days. That's unlike Apple, and many have started to wonder on Twitter and elsewhere if Apple's systems were compromised at some point. It should be stated that this is in no way confirmed, but tweets are surfacing nearly every minute that suggest tons of attempts were made to change one's User ID / password. Apple hit a similar hiccup earlier in the year, and then went on to institute (optional) two-factor...
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When you're dealing with a name such as SmartThings, it's hard to disregard it as something that won't make an impact in the world, right? This week, the company just mentioned made a big announcement by opening up a new platform to enable the "Internet of Things." Essentially, they're rolling out a Developer and Inventor toolkit to the public. Put simply, SmartThings helps turn your smartphone into the remote control for your everyday life. With the toolkit, developers can now build applications for the physical world that solve real problems and inventors can create new types of connected devices that integrate with the SmartThings platform. The SmartThings platform can already help solve practical...
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Is the world really ready to shift from native apps to HTML5 Web apps? Probably not, at least not in North America, but developing nations may see it differently. That's the hope with Firefox OS, a web-based operating system that's (in theory) a lot more open. Of course, one needs only look at Microsoft's battle to get Windows Phone into a place of competition to realize that gaining market share is no easy task, which is why Mozilla will soon be handing out Firefox OS developer phones in order to bolster that. The goal is to get app builders to build for Firefox OS, so Mozilla is sending out free Preview handsets for folks to tinker with. Here's the pitch: "When Firefox OS phones become available...
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Believe it or not, Facebook is much more than a social network. It's an advertising company, a search company, a discovery company, and increasingly, an engineering company. It's quickly becoming obvious that one of Facebook's biggest strengths is its engineering muscle, and Facebook Home is proof of that. That's a huge, huge effort to fork Android, and while it was no doubt expensive to devote resources to doing it, it could grow the Facebook network tremendously in due time. And now, Facebook's making another investment in engineering by acquiring Parse. The goal here is to make it even easier to build mobile apps with Facebook Platform. Parse is a cloud-based platform that "provides scalable...
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From June 13 - 16, 2011, the first AMD Fusion Developer Summit, or AFDS, is being held at the Maydenbauer Center in Bellevue, Washington. According to AMD, attendees of the inaugural AMD Fusion Developer Summit “will have direct access to pioneers in heterogeneous computing, software developers, and top minds at AMD for learning opportunities and open dialogue on heterogeneous computing and the enhanced performance and processing efficiencies it enables.” Sound like fun? It sure does to us and we’d love to take a few of you along with us, so AMD has made it possible for team HotHardware to bring along 60 of our friends to the very first AFDS! Before we explain how to grab...
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Microsoft's Surface never really became the next generation of tables. But it's 2011, and people are not only not flying around in Jetsons vehicles, but they're still driving the same cars they did a decade ago. Sometimes things move fast, and other times, well, you get the Surface. There's no question that the Surface is an amazing idea -- a touch screen table definitely sounds like something we could all use -- but prohibitive pricing and questionable development leads haven't helped. Instead, most newsworthy development is happening in the mobile space. But that might change. Microsoft's new Surface Input Simulator enables consumers and developers to write Surface applications on any Windows...
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Microsoft Kicks Off Competition for Developers Who “Dare to Dream Different”Contest provides developers with opportunity to create simple yet powerful embedded devices based on the .NET Micro Framework. REDMOND, Wash. - Microsoft Corp. today announced a call for entries for the Microsoft Dare to Dream Different challenge, a skills-based competition for software developers to design and build innovative devices on the Microsoft .NET Micro Framework, Microsoft’s smallest embedded platform for resource-constrained devices. The Microsoft Dare to Dream Different competition is designed to recognize the many unique and creative ways that developers can use the .NET Micro Framework to spur the innovation...
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If you are an Apple iPhone or iPod touch owner, you've likely noticed that nearly every time you check out the App Store, there are several updates available for applications you've downloaded. At first, this makes sense, as the iPhone/iPod touch is still a relatively new platform for developers, which puts them still early on the learning curve--bugs needs to be squashed and new features added. But many users are finding that these "updated apps" neither fix bugs nor add new features. So then what is the purpose of the updates? As TouchMeme developer, Krishna Vegesna, points out in his blog, developers have been "gaming the system" in order to get their apps to show up as "new applications":...
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While Bill Gates claims that Vista is selling well, the big question is how many customers out there are requesting software with Vista specific technology. The answer came in a recent survey of developers claimed that less than 1 in 12 developers were actively developing software that was Vista-specific.Is the continued existence of XP causing this? Or is it something deeper? The answer probably has a lot to do with both."None of our customers are saying, 'G******it, we need those WPF controls now!'" said Julian Bucknall, CTO for Windows programming tools maker Developer Express Inc. , referring to one of Vista's most highly-touted features, its new graphical subsystem, Windows Presentation...
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Not only did Id Games announce today that it is hard at work on the next installment of the first-person shooter DOOM series, DOOM 4, but the company is looking to hire designers, artists, animators, and programmers to develop the new title."DOOM is part of the id Software DNA and demands the greatest talent and brightest minds in the industry to bring the next installment of our flagship franchise to Earth," said Todd Hollenshead, CEO, id Software. "It's critical for id Software to have the best creative minds in-house to develop games that meet the standards synonymous with our titles."No less than 15 positions were listed on the Id Software job listings page at the time of this news post....
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Sometimes it pays to keep a low profile. Navy and Air Force pilots refer to it as flying under the radar, but IT people refer to the concept as security via obscurity. No matter what you call it, the idea is simple: if you don't draw attention to yourself, you should end up with less problems.In the world of malware this more or less means that it's not worth a developer's time to attack anything but Windows operating systems because of the research/development time versus the potential installed base. Now that Mac OS X is picking up popularity, it seems that it is finally a blip on some radars.“In some cases, attackers will seek to exploit vulnerabilities such as currently...
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Recently CMP Game Group, a market research company that focuses on the professional game industry, compiled a census report on nearly 600 companies in North America. CMP has determined that there are over 39,000 professional developers and publishers of games in the U.S., and over 8,000 in Canada. A whopping 46% of professional game developers in the U.S. are situated in California, whereas Washington State is home base for about 12%, and about 7% in Texas. New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, Florida, and the previously mentioned top three states have over 1,000 professionals in each. The stats describe people who strictly publish and/or develop the games and does not include marketers, PR, or...
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New Intel Tools Help Developers Create, Debug And Tune Applications For Windows Vista And Latest Multi-Core Processors SANTA CLARA, Calif., Apr. 16, 2007 – Intel Corporation today announced the availability of new versions of its Intel Thread Checker, Intel Thread Profiler, Intel VTune Performance Analyzer and Intel Threading Building Blocks. These software development products enable developers to create more reliable, scalable applications, and have now been enhanced for the latest multi-core processors – Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6800 and Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 – and newest operating systems - Microsoft Vista, Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise, Red Hat Enterprise Linux*...
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The folks over at FiringSquad.com have gotten some comments from a few game developers concerning their thoughts for 2006, and what 2007 might bring. What was Michael Capps, President of Epic Games, favorite game of 2006? "FiringSquad: What do you think was the most important trend or issue that affected the video-PC game industry as a whole in 2006? Michael Capps: Of course the shift to next-generation consoles was a big deal. Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony have all dived in to show that digital game distribution is a viable model - Xbox Live Arcade is spawning a new industry."...
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