Apple News: Apple rumor mill buzzes to life over iWatch ‘joke’
Many in the tech world spent Friday clutching their wrists as word emerged that Apple might launch its rumored iWatch in September. Unfortunately, for those looking forward to an Apple smartwatch, this prediction was apparently made in jest. On Friday, influential Apple blogger John Gruber weighed in on an article from The Verge about Motorola’s upcoming Moto 360 smartwatch, saying: “It looks like Motorola’s designers tried to draw as much attention as they could to the 360’s stupid flat-tire display shape. The only way this could get funnier would be if it doesn’t even ship until after Apple announces their wrist wearable thing next month.”
Read full story => c|net
Technology News: The World Of Everything-As-A-Service
Over the last few years, it’s become dramatically more simple and capital-efficient to launch and grow Internet businesses. In particular, “X-as-a-Service” providers help startups get off the ground with only a few hundred dollars. Amazon and Rackspace provide on-demand servers that scale to meet hosting requirements, Mailchimp and Sendgrid run high-performance mail servers at very low cost, while Stripe, Braintree and PayPal make payment processing straightforward. As companies become more comfortable using these outsourced services, more specialized and niche services can flourish, and so the process of launching startups becomes faster and cheaper. It’s become possible to build billion-dollar companies with a handful of engineers. Thanks to these services and tools, we’ve “decoupled the technical ability and experience needed to write tricky software from the ability to solve problems for people.” In the brick-and-mortar world, it’s a different story.
Read full story => TechCrunch
Programming News: The New NSA-Funded Code Rolls All Programming Languages Into One
Hey, web developer dudes and dudettes: What’s your favorite programming language? Is it CSS? Is it JavaScript? Is it PHP, HTML5, or something else? Why choose? A new programming language developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University is all of those and more—one of the world’s first “polyglot” programming languages. Sound cool? It is, except its development is partially funded by the National Security Agency, so let’s look at it with a skeptical eye.
Read full story => Motherboard
Photography News: How to Capture Amazing Photos of Piers Using 3 Key Elements of Composition
Ahh, the romance of piers in photographs, novels and movies. They evoke many memories – of storms, sunsets, family vacations, loneliness and the power of the ocean. Piers can be warm and inviting. They can also be mysterious and haunting. The same pier captured at the same time by two photographers can have completely different moods. The mood and atmosphere depends on the perspective at the time of capture and that produced during post-processing.
Read full story => LightStalking
