Grace Hopper Tribute

Grace Hopper: Google doodle for creator of Cobol computer language

9 Dec 2013 11:31
 

The American computer scientist was born 107 years ago and her pioneering work from the 1950s remains important to this day

Pioneer: Computer whiz Grace Hopper was born 107 years ago today

Today's Google doodle commemorates computer pioneer Grace Hopper.
Born Grace Brewster Murray in New York in 1906, she studied at Vassar College and later became the first woman in the 233-year history of Yale University to earn a doctorate in maths.
She wed Vincent Foster Hopper, a New York University professor, in 1930.
They divorced in 1945 although she kept his surname for the rest of her life.
During the Second World War, she served as a US military researcher.
She worked on a device called the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, which worked out flight trajectories for rockets.
It was ultimately used by Manhattan Project scientists to build the atomic bomb.
It was in the 50s, however, that Hopper invented key software technologies that paved the way for modern day computer languages.
Her powers of persuasion were sufficiently strong to get government agencies and industry to agree on a common business programming language, named Cobol.
Hopper believed that programs should be written in a language that was close to English rather than in machine code or languages close to machine code.
She later served as director of the US Navy Programming Languages Group in the Navy's Office of Information Systems Planning and ultimately rose to the rank of rear admiral.
Hopper died in January 1992 and was buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery.
Her work, however, remains part of everyday life, for when you withdraw money from a cash machine a Cobol program is used.

My blog post about Microsoft Store on first page of google

Check it out my blog was No. 5 on first page of Google.

Microsoft Store

Microsoft Store VS Apple Store

Here's the Microsoft Store:

Photo by Matthew Yglesias

This is not a trick of the camera. There were zero shoppers in the store. At noon. On a Sunday in December at peak retail shopping season.

And here's the Apple Store:

Photo by Matthew Yglesias

It is crowded.

Of course Microsoft operated for many years as a fantastic company without any retail stores at all, so it's not as if the failure to build successful stores is the problem per se. The real issue is that there's nothing wrong with the store. It's a great place to shop. Much better than the Apple Store, really, because the Apple Store is crowded, and it's a little hard to get an employee's attention. At the Microsoft Store you get a very pleasant physical environment and a helpful staff. It's just that nobody wants to buy their stuff.

It's still a very profitable company thanks to its enormous strengths in the enterprise market. But enterprises are made of people. If nobody wants to buy Microsoft's stuff, that will trickle up into the enterprise.

Matthew Yglesias is Slate's business and economics correspondent. He is the author of The Rent Is Too Damn High.

Monday

Code.org Unveils 'Hour of Code' Campaign To Promote Computer Science

Hour of code

code.org, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting computer science education, has unveiled a new campaign it calls “Hour of Code” targeting 10 million students in the United States. From December 9-15, 2013, Code.org is asking schools, teachers, and parents for their help in motivating students to look into what lies ahead with computer programming.
What is an “Hour of Code”? It’s challenging educators to teach their students one-hour lessons designed to “demystify ‘code’” and show that anyone can do it. The campaign is joined by companies and industry professionals like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, LinkedIn CEO Reid Hoffman, and Twitter chairman and Square CEO Jack Dorsey.
Using its own platform, Code.org will provide online tutorials, which students can complete across any platform. Each lesson has been curated through the help of educational groups and industry companies.
But it’s not just an educational activity that you can pick up anytime — it’s also a competition. Code.org is awarding prizes to classrooms that participate, including 10GB of free storage from Dropbox for the first 100,000 educators that “host an Hour of Code for their classroom or club”.
Additionally, 50 schools who participate will win a full class-set of computers with one winner in each state. 50 classrooms will win a group video conference with a “technology titan” such as Gates, Dorsey, and Google’s Susan Wojcicki. Students that take follow-up courses online could also win other prizes like Skype credits or iTunes gift cards.
Code.org’s co-founder and CEO Hadi Partovi says:

Thanks to the amazing support of new partners and donors, the Hour of Code campaign will launch our long-term mission to give every student the opportunity to learn computer science. This isn’t just about the tremendous job opportunities in software — every 21st century child can benefit from learning this foundational field.

At Automattic’s office in San Francisco, Partovi announced the launch of the campaign. He was joined on stage by Microsoft’s Brad Smith, HVF’s and PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, Google’s Maggie Johnson, California State Superintendent Tom Torklakson, and the University of Washington’s Helene Martin.

Blogging Tips 101

10 steps to building a best selling App

 

1. Get a Feel for the Market

2. Align Your Ideas with Successful Apps

3. Design Your App's Experience

4. Register as a Developer

5. Find Prospective Programmers

6. Sign NDA, Share Your Idea, Hire Your Programmer

7. Start Coding

8. Test Your App

9. Post Your App to the Market

10. Market Your App

 

Distribution and monetization in the Windows Store

Windows Store apps sell in more than 200 markets, with support for local currencies in over 120 markets, and developers can localize their apps in more than 100 languages. Windows Store also offers full platform support for free apps, trials (time-based and feature-based) and paid apps, including in-app purchase. The revenue share base is 70%, but when an app achieves $25,000 USD in revenue—aggregated across all sales in every market—that app moves to 80% revenue share for the lifetime of that app.

Windows Phone 7 development platform to build on VS 2010

Windows 7 development platform 

Ready to build WP7 development environment on your computer?

First, install VS2010, upgrade to SP1 , and install the Windows Phone SDK 7.1 RC , you can start writing WP7 program. Here we have to write a simple Hello World program.

Open VS2010, choose File-> New-> Project ... to open the New Project dialog box. Select the Windows Phone Application.

In the screen below, you can choose to develop based on WP 7.0 or 7.1, we take 7.0 for example.

You can see, our system automatically generates two xaml files, and two corresponding cs files. MainPage.xaml in the main interface of the program is, we may need to add content.

In MainPage.xaml, specifies the main interface design. Interface design through a hierarchical structure of XML-like exhibit. All the main interface elements are LayoutRoot under. Now we want to display a text box and a button on the main interface, you can add the following code to ContentPanel:

  <Grid X:Name="ContentPanel" Grid.Row="1" Margin="12,0,12,0">
  <Grid.RowDefinitions>
   <RowDefinition Height="Auto" />
   <RowDefinition Height="Auto" />
   <RowDefinition Height="Auto" />
  </ Grid.RowDefinitions>
  <TextBlock Text="Name" />
  <TextBox X:Name="TxtName" Grid.Row="1" Text="" />
  <Button Grid.Row="2">
   <TextBlock Text="Submit"/>
  </ Button>
 </ Grid> 

Effect is shown:

After clicking the relevant buttons , you need to add an event handler in the Button. To define event handlers, there are two ways: one is defined in xaml directly, other is to add an event response function in the C # code. Here we used the former. 

Button's about to change the definition of the statement:

  <Button Grid.Row="2" Click="BtnSubmitClick">
  <TextBlock Text="Submit"/>
 </ Button> 

And add an event handler in the MainPage.xaml.cs:

  private void BtnSubmitClick (object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
 {
  MessageBox.Show ("Hello" + TxtName.Text + ", welcome to the fatanstic WP7 world!");
 } 

Use Windows Phone Emulator running, you can see the results:

 

Google is investing in Robotics companies

Google quietly acquired seven robotics companies, and the appointment of the original Android project leader Andy Rubin (Andy Rubin) is responsible for the robot project. According to media reports, probably in a few years, you'll see Google robot car drive to the scene of the delivery to the user.   However, this has also put forward different views. Massachusetts Institute of Technology "Technology Review" (Technology Review) web editor Will Knight (Will Knight) yesterday wrote that he doubted whether Google will be so full of sci-fi ideas. Knight believes that unmanned vehicle project and the Google Android robot project should be similar with the previous. In other words, the goal of this project is to help Google dominate the data coming into fast-growing markets.  Google did not "invent" that technology, when Google entered the field of unmanned car when most car manufacturers have long been studying the automation of the system, and academic researchers have made significant progress. Google saw the development of the automotive industry and realized automation, developing telematics and communication technologies will lead the field of data. Since almost all of Google's profits come from the data Google decided to enter the field. As most Americans spend at least a few hours a day driving, that data can help Google to learn more about the user, in order to better improve their products. Similarly, Knight believes Google's decision to develop a robot because it is found to be more intelligent and safer. New generation of industrial robots is developing rapidly, and the robot will affect those people's work and life. No matter who is able to develop control and management,  robot software can get double the benefits. One can obtain wealth by selling software, it also can get large amounts of data with the people living and working closely related. From that point, Google robot project to determine its objectives that "organize the world's information" is correct. And the amount of data in this increasingly networked world, the organization of information means that people's lives every aspect can be organized.  Fortunately, Google may soon be able to build a robot team to help it so everything is well organized.

Better than Kindle?

Steve Jobs would be proud!

  Good times..

Top 10 social media statistics

By content writer Belle Beth Cooper

1. The fastest growing demographic on Twitter is the 55-64 year age bracket.

2. 189 million of Facebook's users are 'mobile only'

3. YouTube reaches more U.S. adults aged 18-34 than any cable network

4. Every second 2 new members join LinkedIn

5. Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the web

6. LinkedIn has a lower percentage of active users than Pinterest, Google+, Twitter and Facebook

7. 93% of marketers use social media for business Only

8. 25% of smartphone owners ages 18-44 say they can't recall the last time their smartphone wasn't next to them

9. Even though 62% of marketers blog or plan to blog in 2013, only 9% of US marketing companies employ a full-time blogger

10. 25% of Facebook users don't bother with privacy settings

 

Ebay Black Friday deals

The online auction site is offering daily sales this week of all kinds of items, from tech to toys to clothing. The deals start on Thursday, and each lasts one day or until the item sells out. eBay's plan is similar to what Amazon has been doing for Black Friday this year.

eBay has a lot to live up to, as the site did particularly well on Cyber Monday last year, sending its stock to its highest price since 2005.

Even Yahoo! don't use Yahoo! mail !!!

Yahoo employees say no to Yahoo mail.... What!! 

You know what it says about your product when your own employees don't use company email.... 

Yahoo is having a difficult time getting its employees to switch to Yahoo Mail, according to a funny internal memo obtained by All Things Digital's Kara Swisher on Sunday. 
 

Yahoo's SVP of Communications Products Jeff Bonforte and CIO Randy Roumillat , thanked the 25 percent (just 25 percent!) who have already made the change to its "feature rich" Yahoo Mail service from Outlook. 
 The rest can't give up Outlook, and Yahoo's memo offers one reason why that may be: Employees who use Yahoo Mail apparently can't get corporate emails on the Yahoo Mail app on their phones.

Now if Yahoo! did let employees work from home imagine what they would use without anyone noticing.

iPhone 5S or Galaxy S4?

  

How about none of them, that's right... stick with your Galaxy s3 or iPhone 4. Wait till the holiday season is over and if you haven't received one as a gift then look for a deal on amazon. 
It's not like Apple or Samsung has drastically changed anything that will be so hard to resist on the new phones. 
Well, the truth is unless Google or Microsoft comes up with some new revolutionary product Samsung and Apple will keep milking this cash cow- for sure.

Keyword Search

 

5 ways to search for hot keywords

Google Trends 

 Google Auto-complete

WordStream  suggestion tool

WordPress Analytics tool through the "Jetpack" program.

Google Analytics

PayPal accepts Prepaid Gift Cards!

PayPal will now accept prepaid gift cards through PayPal Checkout.

 

Research firm First Data estimated that more than $43 billion worth of gift cards were purchased during the 2012 holiday season–they can be difficult to use on e-commerce sites because most don't have a billing address attached to them. In fact, 60% of people who received gift cards told First Data they preferred to use them at brick-and-mortar locations. 

So this holiday season put the gift card to good use on PayPal..... I know I will.

Google Chrome hands-free earch

Google has brought the Moto X's excellent hands-free voice control feature to the desktop.

With the Google Voice Search Hotword extension, users can now say "OK, Google" to instruct the browser to search for anything they need, including measurements, weather, and directions. The app is currently in beta, and can be downloaded from the Chrome Web Store.

Xbox One or PlayStation 4?

Xbox One or PlayStation 4? Both of the new game consoles are now available. Which should you buy?        

Now if you stayed up all night in the cold and got the console you wanted--- good for you. 
But if you are not one of those hard core gamers or just lazy then it’s time for us to make our decision. 

Xbox One, PlayStation 4  look the same!  A couple of big black rectangles. They’ll play the exact same games.
Unless Microsoft and Sony are going out and paying big bucks to keep a game off the other guy’s platform, publishers are going to get their games into as many channels as possible.

 So if you mostly play games like Assassin’s Creed, Madden or Call of Duty, the software libraries aren’t going to be the deciding factor for you.

“If it’s running at 720p vs 1080p, you’re going to notice the difference, by far,” said a Ubisoft producer in a recent blog post. So if you’re looking for the absolute prettiest graphics for your massive TV, buy a PS4. 

 Halo itself remains an Xbox-only franchise and will not be switching teams anytime soon but the Halo developer Bungie has split off from Microsoft and will be making multiplatform games.
 
 Besides being $100 more expensive than PlayStation 4, Xbox One has another hidden cost: 
Most of its features are actually locked behind the $60-per-year Xbox Live Gold paywall. 

The TV guide, apps like Skype and Netflix, the Game DVR feature that lets you record and share clips, and of course online multiplayer gameplay — none of it will work unless you’re paying Microsoft $60 a year.

If You’ve Read All of This And You Still Don’t Know

If you’ve gotten to this point and you still aren’t sure whether you want a PS4 or an Xbox One, I think I know what advice to give you: Buy both.