Kotlin project adds another language option to JVM
Just when it seemed like developers already had a plethora of language options on the Java Virtual Machine, JetBrains with Project Kotlin is readying a general-purpose statically typed language for the JVM that is geared to performance-critical applications. Kotlin was revealed last month at the JVM Language Summit in Silicon Valley, and JetBrains is seeking feedback on it, with documentation accessible at the Kotlin website.
InfoWorld Editor at Large Paul Krill recently interviewed Dmitry Jemerov, JetBrains development lead, to discuss Kotlin and why the company is working on it. Although he is not personally involved in design of the language, Jemerov is involved in discussions on the language. Read more...
Hardware-happy HP has swallowed a Sun death pill
Analysis Leo Apotheker has joined a long line of Silicon Valley CEOs who have struggled to stop their hardware-centric tech companies slipping into the dustbin of history.
Hewlett-Packard's chief executive has unveiled an audacious plan to turn his company from the planet's single biggest maker of PCs into, er, a software company.
To achieve this, Apotheker will buy the relatively small enterprise search specialist Autonomy, software poster child of Britain's tech biz, while looking to sell HP's PC business at the height of its success.
As a step towards exiting PCs Apotheker is killing the unwanted TouchPad, HP's titular challenger to Steve Jobs' uberselling iPad tablet, and HP's webOS phones. Ironically, that signals the death of webOS, the operating system bought amid a flurry of talk for $1.2bn last year. Read more...
Skype acquiring startup GroupMe for group text messaging
Internet calling company Skype said Sunday that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire GroupMe, a startup that offers a free group text messaging and conference call service on mobile phones.
Skype did not disclose how much it is paying for GroupMe in New York.
Set up in 2010, GroupMe offers its application on Apple's iPhone, Research In Motion's BlackBerry, and phones running the Android operating system. It also launched in July a version of its application for Microsoft's Windows Phone 7. A short message service (SMS) version for users without smartphones is also available in the U.S. Read more...
Chinese developers take a bite of the Apple
If you've ever gone to Apple's mobile app store and purchased games like High Noon, Gamebox1 or Doodletruck, then you've downloaded an app from the burgeoning Chinese software development community.
Software developers in China had historically been faced with a number of hurdles when it came to selling products in the U.S., included distribution, marketing, payment, and a host of cultural issues.
But the emergence of Apple's app store cleared away most of this hurdles, sparking a new wave of software development, mostly focused on games.
Take "High Noon," a fighting game developed by Happylatte, a division of Beijing-based game design company Exoweb. It was recently ranked as the 14th most-purchased app at in the U.S. app store, according to Beijing-based research firm App Annie, which tracks sales and market statistics for App Store publishers. Read more...
Disaster hits Japan’s semiconductor demand
The March earthquake and disaster in Japan are still affecting the global semiconductor market and may continue to do so for months to come.
But one industry analyst said that, unlike the months immediately following the disaster, the problem now isn't that Japan can't keep up with supply needs. Shane Rau, an analyst with IDC, said the problem now is on the demand side.
"The supply chain [in Japan] was able to adapt fairly quickly to any disruptions," Rau said. "The longer-term issue has been more on the demand side ... This has affected people's ability to function and survive. When they're trying to find homes and necessities, they're not thinking about buying PCs." Read more...
Cisco announces plan to buy Axioss management software
Cisco Systems has agreed to acquire service fulfillment software assets from the U.K. subsidiary of Comptel, in an effort to help operators speed up the launch of new services, the networking company said on Monday.
The deal is expected to close in September, and Cisco will pay about $31 million in cash for the Axioss software, according to statements from the two companies.
Cisco will use the Axioss software to add automated ordering and fulfillment to its Prime platform, which allows operators to automate the management of network services. Operators will be able to quickly launch new video, data, mobility, and cloud services to their customers, according to Cisco. Read more...
Firefox 7 reaches beta, promises faster browsing
Mozilla yesterday released a beta of Firefox 7, putting the lighter-weight browser in front of a large number of users for the first time.
According to Mozilla, Firefox 7 uses significantly less memory than Firefox 4 through Firefox 6, cutting consumption by as much as 50%.
The savings come courtesy of a two-month-old project dubbed "MemShrink" designed to drive down Firefox's memory consumption and close "memory leaks," bugs that prevent memory from being released to the system when tabs are closed. Over time, those bugs can degrade the browser's performance, or in extreme cases, cause it to crash or lock up.
In a blog post 10 days ago, Nicholas Nethercote, the Mozilla engineer who manages MemShrink, said that Firefox 7 "uses less memory..., often 20% to 30% less, and sometimes as much as 50% less" than earlier versions.
Nethercote also claimed that the memory changes make Firefox 7 faster than its predecessors. Read more...
Claim: ’83% of Google+ users are inactive’ Reality? Nope
'83 percent of Google+ users are inactive' screams a headline on a well-known tech site. But where does that number come from? How is inactive defined? Is it accurate?
The answer to that last question looks to be a resounding no. But that hasn't stopped several well-respected Web sites and social media players from passing it along.
I first came across the story on Friday via IT World blogger Peter Smith on Plus, and he was not one of those forwarding it along as if it were true. Instead, he complained that if there had really been a survey of 10 million Google+ users, surely someone he knew would have been asked.
A survey of 10 million Google+ users? That would be quite an undertaking; I know how much work we go through to poll fewer than 10,000 for Computerworld original research. Could that have happened under the radar, without any of the journalists on Plus hearing of it in progress? That didn't sound right. Read more...
Internet restored briefly as rebels close in on Tripoli
Local Internet access in Tripoli was strangely restored for a while late Saturday local time after months of disruption, according to reports on Twitter, as rebels closed in on the capital city of Libya. But it was down again for most of the city by Sunday.
At one point a majority of the country's international routes were also down, reported Renesys, a firm that studies Internet traffic flows.
Internet through DSL (digital subscriber line) was momentarily unblocked for Tripoli in the late hours of Saturday local time, a resident Ahmed Shreef said in an e-mail on Sunday. But the Internet was once again blocked by Sunday, he said.
Shreef was unwilling to discuss how he had access to Google's Gmail after the Internet service was blocked again. "I cannot discuss that," he said. Read more...
Big businesses take a small bite of the Apple
On the surface, USAA looks like a prime example of how Apple is making new inroads into large enterprises. The financial services company has deployed more than 500 iPhones and 300 iPads, has about 200 Macintosh computers, and it's considering bringing in more Macs to displace some of its Windows desktops.
San Antonio-based USAA has also released a customer-facing app for iPhones and iPads, and it's considering developing others for internal use. "There seems to be a simmering demand for them, and some good business cases," says Mike Pansini, assistant vice president of IT infrastructure architecture at USAA.
But as is the case at many large companies, USAA's relationship with Apple is more measured than it might first appear. Read more...