What's coming in the April 'Icehouse' release of OpenStack
Icehouse, the next release of the OpenStack open source cloud, will be coming in April 2014. Icehouse will bring automated installation (TripleO), bare metal provisioning (Ironic), a queuing and notification service (Marconi) and database as a service (Trove) as integrated services. Better support for Hadoop (Savanna) will be put into incubation.
Rust 0.9 Released With Revised Threading Model
The Rust team has released the latest version of its next generation programming language. New in this release is a redesigned threading system and several refinements as the language moves towards its 1.0 release.
Upcoming Book by Gojko Adzic on Improving User Stories
Would better user stories improve software delivery? Gojko Adzic thinks applying small changes to the way teams manage their user stories can have a huge impact on the actual outcomes of their software delivery. He announced that he wants to write a book about improving user stories if at least 5000 people show that they are interested by pre-registering themselves in January.
Twitter Open-Sources its MapReduce Streaming Framework Summingbird
Twitter has open sourced their MapReduce streaming framework, called Summingbird. Available under the Apache 2 license, Summingbird is a large-scale data processing system enabling developers to uniformly execute code in either batch-mode (Hadoop/MapReduce-based) or stream-mode (Storm-based) or a combination thereof, called hybrid mode.
Webix 1.4 Released with WebSocket, IndexedDB, Data and Grid Suggest
Webix has been updated with support for data-suggest which enables you to make use of images as options. It also adds grid-suggest to select data from a table including support for WebSocket and IndexedDB.
Oracle Seeks Further Feedback on Java EE 8 Plans
Oracle has launched the second part of its Java EE 8 community survey with cloud, security, logging, deployment, testability, pruning, and profiles amongst the topics.
New Education Opportunities for Data Scientists
2013 has been rich in announcements for new programs, degrees and grants for aspiring data scientists and Big Data practitioners.
Combining an Agile and Lean Approach
Several approaches exist to improve software development, among them are agile and lean. Managers have to decide which approaches to deploy in their organization. Approaches can also be combined depending on the problems that need to be solved. InfoQ interviewed Régis Medina about combining agile and lean, focusing on people and learning.
Effektif, Tom Baeyens' Latest BPM Venture, Launches Cloud-Based Tool
Effektif is launching version 1 of its cloud-based BPM product today. Effektif was started and is lead by Tom Baeyens, the original creator of JBoss' jBPM (acquired by Red Hat) and Activiti, owned by Alfresco. It was set up in partnership with Signavio who invested €1.2m to accelerate development, and who will also be selling the product using their existing channels.
Stimulsoft Reports.Fx 2013.3 Adds Email, AutoPageScale Support Along with Funnel Weighted Slices
Stimulsoft Reports.Fx 2013.3 has been released with support for delivering reports through e-mail with e-mail address, subject and text options in addition to a new chart type, Funnel Weighted Slices. It also includes AutoPageScale and a new bands filter option with which you can apply relevant filter to the report in CSV format.
AppFuse 3.0 - Java 7, Spring 4, PrimeFaces, Mockito, Bootstrap 3, Wicket
AppFuse 3.0 has been released. AppFuse uses the Maven Archetype plugin to generate a starter Java project, which allows you to quickly get started with a full-stack Java EE application. Version 3.0 is using Mojarra and PrimeFaces for its JSF framework and library, Mockito for its test mocking framework, Bootstrap 3 for its front-end framework, and added Apache Wicket as a Web Framework option.
Chef Sugar Aims to Enhance Chef's Recipes Authoring Experience
Chef Sugar is an extension to Chef that offers DSL methods to make more readable recipes. Seth Vargo, Chef Sugar's author, recently wrote about his motivations for creating Chef Sugar, highlighting them with examples. InfoQ interviewed Seth to know more about his views on syntactic sugar and the benefits of a plug-in architecture in the context of Chef.
Windows Phone App Certification Errors and the Steps to Avoid Them
In order to release Windows Phone apps faster you need to build them by incorporating the tips suggested by Windows Phone Store certification and policy team. These tips are mostly scenarios which cause the app approval to fail.
Google Play Services 4.1 Adds Drive Support
Google has updated Play Services to include support for Drive, turn-based multiplayer games and more ad networks.
Rackspace Aiding the Introduction of DevOps by Extending Their Managed Cloud Service Levels
Rackspace, cloud computing platform provider and founder of OpenStack, is currently introducing its new DevOps Automation Service. They offer managed support for things like infrastructure and workflow automation, monitoring and log aggregation, and source control for infrastructure code.
