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News

  • Apache declares war on Oracle over Java

    Charging that Oracle has willfully disregarded the licensing terms for its own Java technology, the Apache Software Foundation has called upon other members of the Java Community Process (JCP) to vote against the next proposed version of the language, should Oracle continue to impose restrictions on open-source Java use.

  • Microsoft's Silverlight damage control intensifies

    More Microsoft executives are chiming in this week about the company's commitment to the Silverlight rich Internet application platform, after comments from another executive had raised questions about Silverlight's future.

  • HTML5 makes maths easy

    The W3C has updated its MathML standard for rendering mathematical notation on Web pages to better portray basic math symbols, as well as render mathematic symbols in more languages.

  • New Adobe Reader sandboxed, simplified

    Adobe has released the new version of its Reader PDF viewing software, and with it comes a number of changes: a new Roman-based numbering scheme ("Adobe Reader X"), tightened security and, for the browser version, a substantially reduced user interface. Adobe's flagship PDF creation software, Adobe Acrobat, has been upgraded as well.

  • Twitter solves its data formatting challenge

    Eschewing popular choices such as XML, CSV and JSON, Twitter has opted to format the back-end storage of its user and systems data with a relatively unknown format pioneered by Google, called Protocol Buffers.

  • Yahoo lays out road map for BOSS

    Yahoo's BOSS platform, which lets external developers build custom search engines on top of the company's search infrastructure, will shift to a fee-based model in early 2011.

  • Rhomobile brings iPhone app dev to Windows PCs

    Mobile application development tools vendor Rhomobile plans to unveil on Wednesday an extension to its software-as-a-service platform that will enable developers to build applications for Apple's iPhone via a Windows PC.

  • RIM shows off Web-based BlackBerry development platform

    While declining to discuss rumors of a planned pad computer, Research In Motion (RIM)  did roll out on Monday a Web-based application development platform for its BlackBerry smartphone, complementing the existing native development paradigm.

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