Spotify announced a new API platform for publisher a few days ago, which will give users a lot of great new applications to find and recommend new music. The new version of Spotify with the applications is yet to launch as official release, but if you want to test out the new application you can do so already.
All you need to do is select from these beta clients:
It seems as though Twitter biting the hand that feeds it. Twitter seemed to grow quite quickly due to a lot of third party developers jumping onto the platform. Now, Twitter is saying to developers not to build Twitter clients.
Twitter’s Ryan Sarver states: “Developers ask us if they should build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience. The answer is no.”
Sarver says: “Our user research shows that consumers continue to be confused by the different ways that a fractured landscape of third-party Twitter clients display tweets and let users interact with core Twitter functions. For example, people get confused by websites or clients that display tweets in a way that doesn’t follow our design guidelines, or when services put their own verbs on tweets instead of the ones used on Twitter.”
Twitter will now hold their party clients to extremely high standards.
SlashGear is reporting that Nokia has sent out an email to Nokia Launchpad program members which details on the company offering free Nokia E7 handsets.
Email sent to developers, detailed:
We are also excited to offer you one free admission to the next Nokia World/Nokia Developer Summit later this year. We will take care of the registration costs.
To assist you with your development activities in the near-term, we will ship one free Nokia E7 device to all program members. Additionally, we will send to you one free Nokia WP7 device, as soon as it becomes available.
To accelerate your mobile app development, we will provide free tech support on all Nokia technologies for the next three months (up to 10 tickets). Equally, if you would like to take advantage of a free User Experience evaluation of one of your apps, please let us know and we will work with you to make those arrangements.
I might have to quickly become a Nokia developer!
Channel 9, one of the most known Microsoft’s Internet channel with thousands of interesting videos, created a very complete guide regarding Windows Phone 7 Development: Step-by-step guides for absolute beginners.
There are almost 70 different videos, available for free, covering all you need to know if you want to start working with the development of Windows Phone 7 applications and if you don’t have any experience working with development.
Microsoft also invites you to use free tools to achieve this like Visual Studio 2010 Express and the Windows Phone 7 Emulator (included in Windows Phone Developer Tools).
These videos also include the possibility to download in different versions: High quality WMV, MP3, MP4 (compatible with iPod and ZuneHD), and medium quality WMV.
It’s a great day when Internet giant Google open sources the programs it uses to build well-known favourites such as GMail, Docs and Google Maps. It announced on its blog that it will be making a lot of it’s own development software available to developers all over the world. This release comes as Google are undoubtedly upgrading their own tools especially with the upcoming launch of Google Wave.
The first of the three tools they released is called Closure Compiler which helps developers trim down code and optimize it for better performance. There is also a plug-in for Firefox released alongside this so they can view heir Java Script code in the browser.
The second one is called Library which is a tool to help build Java Script Apps. Here is what Google said on their official blog about the program:
The Closure Library is a JavaScript library that provides many features that are useful for building web applications across browsers. It helps to abstract browser differences and provides clean class and function interfaces for common tasks. Besides DOM interaction and UI tools, the library includes tools for arrays, objects, string manipulation and much more. The library also implements a name spacing and import standard, which helps keep scripts small and load fast when used with the Closure Compiler.
The third and final release until further notice was Templates. This is an app that is for creating HTML elements that can be used within Java Script.
Closure Templates simplify the task of dynamically creating HTML and have an easy-to-read syntax. They allow you to write templates for reusable HTML and UI elements that can be used within JavaScript or on the server side in Java. They also have excellent run-time performance because they are never parsed on the client side.
Over the next month or so there is undoubtedly going to be a big rush of new Java apps and programs onto the market thanks to the Google outsourcing. Be sure to stay in touch with Crenk to stay informed!
So you want an app, where do you go? The Apple App Store of Course. It’s been running now for a little over a year and there has already been over 50,000 apps added with over one billion downloads. Without any shred of doubt, it’s the market leader in the app world. However, now, Verizon have announced that they too will be launching an App store in the fourth quarter of this year to compete with Apple.
They, in the past, have been criticized for blocking certain apps and having limited selections for their phones. They have indeed seen the error of their ways. Speaking at their first ever developers conference in San Jose, California.
“It’s a new day (in wireless),” McAdam, Verizon CEO said in the opening address of the developer conference which was also Webcast. “And our future success is no longer in the walled-garden. Our success is tied to you (developers).
This would make for a nice touch to the current Verizon services. By giving users an app store you’re giving them one more reason to stay with you rather than search for greener pastures. I can’t see there being as many apps as the Apple App Store simply because Verizon don’t have the same kind of image that Apple has –sleek, cool and ultra-modern. However, their users will most certainly be impressed. Let’s hope us critics are too when it launches. Keep checking Crenk for updates on this story.
Disclaimer: These books are available to download for a short period of time, so you better hurry!
Microsoft Press guys are celebrating their 25th anniversary by giving away free e-books every month. This time the books that you can download completely free are:
For the IT guys, Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services Resource Kit.
And for those geek programmers, a nice “best-practices” book: The Practical Guide to Defect Prevention.
There’s no catch to get the PDF file, just click on the links and sign-up with a Passport account.
Enjoy!
