Google I/O 2012, keynote day 2: the highlights

This blog post describes the highlights of the second-day keynote of the Google I/O conference [1]. Just like last year [2], it was more Chrome-themed, as opposed to the Android-themed keynote yesterday.

Google I/O 2012, keynote day 1: the highlights

Update 2012-06-29: Google I/O 2012, keynote day 2: the highlights

This blog post describes the highlights of the keynote of the first day of the Google I/O conference [1]. It does so from the vantage point of a developer and Apple user, so don’t be surprised to see developer information and comparisons with Apple.

Mozilla’s next-generation web browser Servo is making progress

Servo is Mozilla’s next-generation web browser [1], with a focus on parallelism and security. It’s not much more than a technology demo and will remain so for a while, but it’s making progress nonetheless. Quoting Patrick Walton in a thread on Google Groups:

The iPhone 5 to support NFC?

It will happen eventually, but rumors are increasing that the next iPhone will support Near Field Communication (NFC). NFC would enable the following features:

Do we need a crisis to change?

French researcher Emmanuel Todd has interesting ideas on what might happen if the Euro collapses. The following are quotes from the article “What Will Happen if the Euro Collapses? A Few Scenarios” (by Bruce Crumley for TIME.com), along with comments of mine.

Asynchronous programming and continuation-passing style in JavaScript

In this blog post, we give a name to JavaScript’s callback-based asynchronous programming style: continuation-passing style (CPS). We explain how CPS works and give tips for using it.

Windows Phone Summit: the highlights

This blog post summarizes what Microsoft announced at the Windows Phone Summit.

Microsoft’s new tablets: overview and thoughts

Update 2012-06-20: More information on pen input, new section “More information on the web”.

Yesterday, Microsoft introduced two new “Surface” tablets: One ARM-based version and one Intel-based version. This blog post summarizes the introductions and mentions a few thoughts of mine.

GIMP 2.8.0 on Mac OS X

GIMP 2.8.0 has come out and Simone Karin has created packages for Mac OS X.

Reading RSS and Atom feeds on the iPad

For a long time, I have been very happy with Google Reader for RSS/Atom feed reading. But it has been in slow decline. For example, it is slightly buggy on Firefox and almost unusable on the iPad. This blog post describes alternatives for the iPad.

JavaScript: sparse arrays vs. dense arrays

In general, arrays in JavaScript are sparse – they can have holes in them, because an array is simply a map from indices to values. This blog post explains how to create dense arrays, arrays without holes.

Apple’s WWDC announcements: a summary

Update 2012-06-13: New section “More material on the web”.

This blog post summarizes what Apple has introduced at the World-Wide Developer Conference in San Francisco, yesterday.

ECMAScript.next: for-of, iterators, generators

Update 2012-11-02: Changed title, new section on iterating over objects.

ECMAScript.next’s for-of loop will provide a new and quirk-free way of iterating over all kinds of data. This blog post explains how it works and how you can try out a prototype implementation in Firefox 13 and later.

A wish list for iOS 6

Apple has been steadily improving iOS. With iOS 5, I especially liked how it made devices more independent of PCs. However, iOS still slows me down considerably compared to desktop operating systems with a real keyboard. This blog post contains a few ideas for fixing that.

A closer look at Underscore templates

Underscore.js is a highly useful complement to JavaScript’s rather sparse standard library. In a pinch, Underscore gives you simple templating, too. This post explains how it works and gives tips.

Notes from the Fluent JavaScript conference

Technical publisher O’Reilly organized their first JavaScript conference, called “Fluent”, May 29-31 in San Francisco. This blog post collects random impressions of mine from that conference. They should be interesting even if you haven’t attended Fluent (hint: links to videos).