Category Technology

Objective-C 2.0: The Garbage Collector

Before Java was conceived (let alone used), before C++ became the de facto application development language — certainly before it got STL and compilers worthy of mention — NeXT Inc. licensed Objective-C, a Smalltalk resembling, object oriented true C-superset, as the main language for its NeXTSTEP operating system. Objective-C and the (typically) accompanying APIs built […]

RSS Feed Ελληνικών άρθρων.

Επειδή βλέπω πως αρκετοί από τους έλληνες αναγνώστες του τόπου αυτού ασχολείστε κυρίως με τα άρθρα γραμμένα στα ελληνικά, και καθότι δεν χρησιμοποιώ κατηγοριοποίηση βάσει της γλώσσας, έφτιαξα ένα πρόχειρο Yahoo! Pipe ώστε να μπορείτε να ενημερώνεστε μόνον για τα ελληνικά άρθρα.

HOL eVoice. Τρομερή ιδέα, ελλιπής υλοποίηση

Εδώ και αρκετούς μήνες έχω αποκτήσει έναν λογαριασμό VoIP τηλεφωνίας από την Ηellas On Line, και συγκεκριμένα από την υπηρεσία της eVoice. Η ιδέα είναι πρωτοποριακή για τα ελληνικά δεδομένα: η HOL σου παρέχει αριθμό τηλεφώνου στην Ελλάδα εντελώς δωρεάν, χωρίς πάγιο ή άλλο κόστος εγγραφής, και από εκεί και πέρα πληρώνεις τα τηλεφωνήματα αν […]

If we fail, it is because we positioned PS3 as the Mercedes of the video game field

An interview with Howard Stringer, CEO and President of Sony Corporation of America. Most of the info there is well known: How Sony's departments and engineering efforts were too fragmented for years, how politics made or broke products, how it lost the digital music media war before it even started. What really caught my attention is the fact that they still don't seem to know what's wrong with them. Take the PS3 quote from Stringer, for example. My response to it would be: I don't think so. If you fail, it'll be because you were arrogant enough to promise the world and didn't deliver, too late to respond and frighteningly incompetent with your marketing. Technically the PS3 is the Mercedes of the video game field. And if you are really keen on automobile metaphors, part of the problem is that it's too expensive and has a rev limiter at 2500 RPM despite its 700 horsepower, bi-turbo engine.

Google SoC 2007 and the projects that I care about.

It’s the third year that Google sponsors students to work on Open Source projects during their summer vacation. The programme is called ‘Google Summer of Code‘ or GSoC and attracts the attention of many of the most prominent open source projects around; projects that are typically non-commercial and that would otherwise have little chance of […]

We have the opportunity for an all-new automotive DNA based on electric motors and fuel cells

A short interview with GM's vice president for R&D, Larry Burns, on the reinvention of the motor and by extension the car. GM sees 2010-2015 as the window for low-volume commercialisation of cars powered by electric motors and fuel cells. I find it interesting to see how the 'ethanol craze' is going to compete with fuel cells in the US, Europe and --- most importantly --- China, where emissions are skyrocketing.

SciGen: Automated CS Paper Generation

Getting a research paper accepted at a conference or journal can be a very funny process, if you don't take it seriously. Politics, abused-postgraduates forced to review papers they don't understand, senior academics who don't care and who are obliged to review papers they don't understand and so on, make modern academia the surreal experience it is. Some of us at Imperial, have been joking about having an automated paper generator for many years. Well, it seems some guys at MIT did it and one of their 'generated' papers was accepted as a 'non-reviewed paper' at a conference. :)

e-Passports and the RFID Chaos.

Ever since I first travelled abroad on an airplane as a young boy, I found it interesting to observe the screening and security procedures at airports, train stations and borders. Customs/Immigration officers typically peruse a travel document, be it a passport or visa for less than 20 seconds before handing it back to its owner. […]

The job history of Jens Alfke

A developer of AppleScript, Stickies, MRJ, iChat and Safari RSS. You'll find some clues as to why iChat seemed so promising at first, and ended up being such a disappointment ever since. Let's hope that Jens' ideas for Leopard got approved and are more exciting than what we've seen in the WWDC'06 preview and the numerous rumour sites ever since. Otherwise Leopard seems to be a very, very minor release for users --- Objective-C 2.0, significant improvements in the kernel and API additions make it quite interesting for developers anyway!

The trick would have been finding it

An interesting podcast featuring a discussion on BBC's Digital Planet about the 'end of broadcast', user generated content and the role of mainstream media in a world where (some) users can and do cover general and special topics as well as current and historical events faster and more accurately than mainstream media. What I found really interesting was the possibility of the BBC adopting the additional role of a user-generated media search engine and filtering service, pinpointing user-generated content worth listening/seeing/reading. Interesting times! [also available on iTunes]