Google has updated and re-released open-source software for cleaning, analyzing and transforming data sets, now called Google Refine. The software, originally called Freebase Gridworks, came with Metaweb, a company Google purchased in July. Google Refine is a collection of tools that could come in handy when wrangling useful information from a data set, particularly ones [...]
Archive for December, 2010
Why HP’s Slate isn’t anything like the iPad
HP released its Slate 500 tablet this week. Immediately, everyone started comparing it with Apple’s iPad. But the two devices have nothing significant in common. They are in entirely different device categories and can even be thought of as opposites. Some of my fellow journalists, industry watchers, Wall Street types and others seem to have [...]
How to hire a programmer when you’re not a programmer
How do you hire a programmer if you’re not one yourself? Some things to look for… 1. How opinionated are they? Ask them about a juicy programming topic (e.g. Ruby or Python?). The tone and reasoning of the answer will reveal a lot. In our recent podcast on programming, Jeff said, “When people have strong [...]
Common Security Mistakes in Web Applications
Web application developers today need to be skilled in a multitude of disciplines. It’s necessary to build an application that is user friendly, highly performant, accessible and secure, all while executing partially in an untrusted environment that you, the developer, have no control over. I speak, of course, about the User Agent. Most commonly seen [...]
Telstra unveils machine to machine portal
It’s not just humans who use Telstra’s Next G mobile network to place calls and share data. Increasingly, inanimate objects — cars, vending machines and even digital photo frames are doing the same. And Telstra hopes they will do it even more. The company has launched a new control centre allowing customers to more easily [...]
6 useful Wi-Fi tools for Windows
We live in a mobile world; if you have a laptop (and who doesn’t?), that means constantly connecting to the Internet via Wi-Fi. You most likely use Wi-Fi not just when you’re on the road at cafés, airports or hotels, but to connect to your home network too. You might even connect to a wireless [...]
Supercomputing: There’s an App for That
What if you could perform supercomputing calculations in real-time, on your smartphone, in any location? Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), collaborating with staff at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), have created an application that does just that. The team performed a series of expensive high-fidelity simulations on the Ranger supercomputer to [...]
P vs. NP for Dummies
A reader named Darren commented on my last post: I have this feeling that this whole P and NP thing is not only a profound problem that needs solving, but something that can be infinitely curious to try and wrap your mind around… Thing is- there’s a whole world of great minded, genius hackers out [...]
Inside Facebook’s Open Source Infrastructure
Facebook connects its 500 million users using an array of open source software to enable social networking as well as data intelligence. Facebook’s open source Web serving infrastructure has a lot more than just the traditional LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) stack behind it. During a keynote session at the OSCON open source conference, David Recordon, the senior [...]
Common Programmer Health Problems
I’m currently working on the last few lessons in Learn Python The Hard Way and I want to include a lesson on general health problems programmers run into during their careers. I find many programmers seem to ignore their body’s physical state when they’re coding, most likely due to the intense concentration required. I’m hoping [...]