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  Never create Ruby strings longer than 23 characters

Looking at things through a microscopesometimes leads to surprising discoveries Obviously this is an utterly preposterous statement: it’s hard to think of a more ridiculous and esoteric coding requirement. I can just imagine all sorts of amusing conversations with designers and business sponsors: “No… the size of this <input> field should be 23… 24 is just too long!” Or: “We need to explain to users that their subject lines should be les...

   Ruby,Specification,String,Interpreter,Optimization,23     2012-01-05 07:58:07

   Move.Me Writing Your Own WebSocket Server

The WebSocket protocol has applications beyond plain vanilla web development.  I will explain how the protocol works, how to implement your own server and share some insights I had along the way. Before we get down and dirty, I will explain what I’ve been doing with it. At this point I expect many of you are saying “I’m not working on a web game this doesn’t seem relevant to me.” Well, neither am I. I embed a WebSocket server into my game engine and wit...

   Socket,NetWorking,WebSocket,Server development     2012-01-28 07:06:43

  Feature: The History Of Mobile Gaming

Mobile phones have come a long way since the unsightly bricks of the 1980s. The sleek handsets of today are a fraction the size of their ancestors, yet exponentially more powerful. While the implications for communication have been profound, there have been many other applications for this technology. Modern devices are capable of supporting increasingly complex software, innovative interfaces and networking capabilities, and the gaming sector has been one of the biggest benefactors of this.Much...

   Game,Mobile,History,Feature, Game on mobile device     2011-10-12 11:44:30

  Developing Game Audio with the Web Audio API

Caution: This article discusses APIs that are not yet fully standardized and still in flux. Be cautious when using experimental APIs in your own projects. Introduction Audio is a huge part of what makes multimedia experiences so compelling. If you've ever tried watching a movie with the sound off, you've probably noticed this. Games are no exception! My fondest video game memories are of the music and sound effects. Now, in many cases nearly two decades after playing my favorites, I still c...

   Web Audio,HTML5,Game audio     2012-04-15 01:25:23

  Windows 8 Possible Features: Ribbon, Metro, Apps, Cloud Integration

Microsoft may still be plugging away at selling Windows 7 to consumers and the enterprise, but rumors have already started about the next version of the popular operating system—dubbed "Windows 8" by many in the media. Rafael Rivera and Paul Thurrott, two bloggers with a track record of delving into Microsoft's proprietary code base, recently sparked a fresh round of chatter with a dissection of a supposed Windows 8 early build, adding their voices to a discussion that extends back to 201...

   Windows 8,New features,Touch,Metro     2011-04-11 02:10:12

  How to choose a jQuery plug-in?

jQuery plug-in provides a good way to save time and simplify the development, programmers don't need to write each component from scratch. However, the plug-in will also be a destabilizing factor in your code library. A plug-in saves countless development time, but a poor quality plug-in will cost more than the actual time to write your own component from scratch. Luckily, usually you have many pls to choose from, but even if you have only one plug-in, you also need to know whether it's worth us...

   jQuery, plug-in     2012-10-27 03:51:40

  How to Be an Optimist in a Pessimistic Time: A Techonomy Manifesto

Gapminder WorldIt’s no secret that technology is changing the world. Unfortunately, there are a surprising number of people who don’t get it. Many of them, even more unfortunately, are important leaders in business, other powerful instutitions, and governments. To meet the challenges that face us—whether as leaders of organizations, as leaders of countries, or as the global community addressing our collective challenge—we will only be successful if we unreservedly emb...

   Technology,World,Evolution,Dominant     2011-11-21 03:00:33

  5 things my 4-year-old taught me about technology

One of the great things about being a parent is that you get to see how kids use technology. I have a 4 year-old daughter who loves to mess around with my phone, watch videos on YouTube and play Angry Birds.It’s fun to watch her interact with these things, not only because she’s already better at some of the games than me. The really interesting stuff happens when stuff doesn’t work the way she expects it to, or when she finds ways to use tech that I hadn’t thought of...

   Learning,Children,Siri,Voice,Tech,Course     2011-10-26 07:07:48

  Design Secrets for Engineers

If you are a designer like me, you must be asked on a regular basis to “make it look pretty.” The request can stroke your designer ego, making you feel like a design rockstar with super powers to make this world a more beautiful place. This is especially true at startups, where you are one of the few, maybe the only designer there. However, it can also be really annoying–almost degrading at times. Thoughts like “why the hell can’t engineers do this on their o...

   Design,UI,pretty,engineer,designer font     2011-10-24 11:18:25

  True Scala complexity

Update 2: Sorry for the downtime. Leave it to the distributed systems guy to make his blog unavailable. Nginx saves the day.It’s always frustrating reading rants about Scala because they never articulate the actual complexities in the core language.Understandable—this post is intended fill that gap, and it wasn’t exactly easy to put together. But there’s been so much resistance to the very thought that the complexity exists at all, even from on up high, that I thou...

   Scala,Complexity     2012-01-10 07:17:07

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