DBA in space!

Folks, this is your chance! Red Gate is holding a contest where the winner gets to go to space (technically, at least, by flying 62 miles high). You do not even need to be a DBA, despite the name of the contest.

Google engineer blasts Google for making products, not platforms

You may have already heard the hoopla around Google engineer Steve Yegge and his now-famous tirade tearing Google+ to shreds. Unfortunately, most of the coverage is focused on the “man bites dog” aspect of the article, about how Google+ is like an “afterthought.” What they are missing here is Yegge’s much more interesting critique about how Google does not concentrate on its platform. Yegge was pretty clear, but his post was long, and it was easy to overlook things. His main point is that Google doesn’t design platforms, and because of that, it’s having a harder and harder time executing on its vision. (Also read: Google faults exposed in employee memo.)

Language/library updates

Google Dart: does JavaScript need a replacement?

Google recently unveiled a preview of Dart, and new language for client-side Web programming. Right now, Dart compiles down to JavaScript, so it is already universally supported. Google’s contention is that JavaScript has some key weaknesses, and Dart aims to correct them. For example, the prototype-based class system is something that Dart changes. I’m not convinced that people are clamoring for a JavaScript replacement (though it does have many issues that are exposed as projects get bigger), but since Dart emits JavaScript, it will be both easy to adopt and difficult to measure the adoption.

ZURB Joyride for showing users around your apps

ZURB released Joyride, a jQuery plugin that lets you create pointers to functionality for users. It’s really neat, and I am curious if I can integrate it into some of my applications.

Typesafe Stack 1.1

Typsesafe released version 1.1 of its Typesafe Stack product, which combines the Scala language, the Akka parallel processing system, and an Eclipse plugin with commercial support. It definitely is something to look into if you do parallel development in the Java ecosystem.

HTC courts developers

HTC is now reaching a hand out to developers to make modifications to its Android phones.

Axe gets feedback from tablet users

ZURB also released Axe, a system for letting tablet users provide feedback directly in your applications.

JavaFX 2.0 released

JavaFX 2.0 has been released. JavaFX is a Java-based technology similar to Silverlight or AIR.

IronPython 2.7.1 Beta 3

The march to the IronPython 2.7.1 release continues on; this third beta should be the last stop before the final release.

BlackBerry Analytics Service 1.0

RIM announced the availability of the BlackBerry Analytics Service 1.0, which uses Webtrends to provide free analysis of application usage.

Tools and products

SOASTA adds Selenium

SOASTA, known for cloud-based testing tools, now also offers the Selenium test system on its platform.

Bitbucket supports Git

Bitbucket, known as a free/low cost Mercurial provider, now also offers Git as well. I think that Bitbucket is a good company, and if I used Git, I’d be interested in its offering.

Totango adds SaaS Executive Dashboard

Totango, which captures events from SaaS applications for reporting purposes, announced the availability of its SaaS Executive Dashboard, which turns those captured events into useful metrics.

Dennis Ritchie tributes

Chad Perrin and I wrote tributes to Dennis Ritchie. Here’s an excerpt of what I wrote: “To put it simply, nearly every system you use, just about every piece of consumer and professional electronics on the market, depends upon Dennis Ritchie’s contribution to the world of computing: the C programming language.”

Editorial and commentary

Ninja economics!

Dilbert shows you how to keep bad requests from turning into work for yourself.

Tips and tricks

8 traits of great Windows 8 apps

Bart Reed at Simple Talk has a top-flight article about what goes into making a great Metro/WinRT application, and along the way he highlights many of the new features for developers in Metro/WinRT.

Load balancing across the globe in Azure

Brian Hitney has a good tutorial showing how to use the Azure Traffic Manager to perform geography-based load balancing.

Preventing CRSF attacks in AJAX requests in ASP.NET MVC

Phil Haack wrote a good article demonstrating how to write AJAX against ASP.NET MVC applications that will not be vulnerable to CRSF attacks.

Events

M3 Conference in Columbus, OH

The first M3 conference will be held November 18 in Columbus, OH. It will be all about mobile development.

Eclipse’s 10th birthday

Eclipse is celebrating its 10 year anniversary at DemoCamps worldwide in November.

PHP’n Rio

There’s a PHP conference in Rio de Janeiro on November 5.

Appcelerator Codestrong 2011 videos

If you couldn’t make it to the Appcelerator Codestrong event, the company now has video from the event posted online.

J.Ja