Web services development - News, Features, and Slideshows

News

• Microsoft enlists Bing to enhance Windows 8.1 apps

  In its ongoing challenge to attract more users to Windows 8, Microsoft is offering bits of its Bing Internet search service to boost the functionality of third-party Windows Store applications.

• Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch resigns to work at Apple

  Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch is leaving the company to take a job at Apple, a one-time close partner of Adobe that became the most vociferous critic of its Flash technology.

• IBM makes big mobile push with MobileFirst

  IBM is making a renewed push into the burgeoning market for all things mobile, saying it can help its corporate customers grow revenue and become more competitive through mobile app development.

• Opera moves to the WebKit rendering engine

  Creating some consternation in the Web development community, Opera Software is switching from a home-built rendering engine to the more widely used open-source WebKit, now employed in the Apple Safari and Google Chrome browsers.

• Ruby on Rails receives the third security patch in less than a month

  Developers of the Ruby on Rails Web development framework released versions 3.0.20 and 2.3.16 of the software on Monday in order to address a critical remote code execution vulnerability.

• Amazon connects node.js to AWS services

  Amazon is providing a way for one of the most popular JavaScript extensions, node.js, to easily access the Amazon Web Service collection of cloud computing capabilities.

• Bloomberg opens platform for third-party apps

  Bloomberg has launched an app portal that will allow subscribers of its financial information service to access additional third-party functionality, and even contribute apps of their own.

• Windows 8 presses developers to update their skills

  Microsoft likes to talk about Windows 8 as being Windows "reimagined," and in many ways it is quite a departure from its predecessors. To allow the operating system's use across a range of touchscreen devices, Microsoft radically redesigned the look and feel of the OS.

• Microsoft launches hosted ALM service

  After a year in beta, Microsoft has launched its Team Foundation Service, a hosted version of its application lifecycle management (ALM) software. Its usage, for the time being, has been limited to five or fewer users, however.

• Ericsson lays groundwork for calls from mobile browsers with Bowser

  Ericsson has launched the world's first WebRTC-compatible browser for mobile devices, which will allow developers to integrate voice and video communications in their Web-based applications.

• Facebook releases a PHP just-in-time compiler

  In its continuing endeavor to serve its 800 million users as quickly as possible, Facebook is once again revamping the way it handles its PHP-based Web pages.

• Yahoo simplifies developer access to BOSS search development platform

  Yahoo will introduce on Wednesday several new features in its Search BOSS application development platform intended to make it easier for programmers and web publishers to adopt and use.

• PHP 5.4 emerges from the collapse of PHP 6.0

  With the pending release of PHP version 5.4, due early next year, the creators behind the popular Web scripting language are including the best parts of the now-abandoned PHP 6.0 project.

• Adobe donates Flex to Apache

  In a move that appears to be another step away from its Flash platform, Adobe has submitted the code for its Flash-based Flex framework to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) to be managed as an independent<strong> </strong>project.

• Citrix exposes APIs for its collaborative software

  Hoping to spark closer integration with third-party applications, Citrix has exposed a number of APIs (application programming interfaces) for three of its collaborative services, GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar and GoToTraining.