Android will be launched into space

Mobile Application Development | Posted: January 25th, 2011 | krivitskayats
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Engineers from SSTL and the Surrey Space Centre in Guildford have embarked on rather an uncommon, thus even more compelling project – to launch a mobile device to the orbit. Modern mobile gadgets have become very powerful and multitasking devices, therefore, British scientists have set a goal to challenge the capabilities of smartphones and check the efficiency of their work and their performance in a hostile environment.
The mobile phone, which is supposed to set off for space trip, will be powered by Android OS and will be mounted on a satellite, which is 30 cm in length. The overall aim of STRaND-1 mobile space project is to find more economical and resource-efficient ways to control complex spacecrafts and satellites.
Android-powered mobile device will partially control the satellite as well as take photos of our planet. In order to protect the “mobile astronaut” from disruptive impact of the environment it will be embraced by the satellite case.
It is not the first similar venture, undertaken by Google. Before the company showcased the capabilities of Nexus S devices powered by Android OS, which were flying high on balloons.
Who knows… Maybe this bold space project will usher software development companies into the new era of professional mobile app development for space industry.

PHP bug patched

Programming PHP, Web development | Posted: January 19th, 2011 | krivitskayats
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PHP bug #53632 in floating point numbers has been dealt with. The bug is deemed to be a fault in the x87 floating point unit, which showed up on PHP 32-bit systems. It was detected by a computer scientist Rick Regan, who described the flaw in his blog.
This flaw issue made PHP security systems vulnerable to potential DOS attack and could have complicated the process of serving PHP-based pages. Though, Andi Gutmans, CEO of Zend Technologies, reassured that this PHP bug was unlikely to cause severe problems on a large scale as major PHP running systems are 64-bit.
The PHP language developers have come up with the solution to this problem, which they bypassed in the new PHP releases (PHP 5.3.5 and 5.2.17), while Zend technologies provided for Zend Server users prompt response to the problem until the bug was fully fixed by the PHP development team.
PHP is frequently used by software companies in web application development projects and new PHP 5.3.5 and 5.2.17 versions allow web application developers to sidestep the problems, connected with the floating point bug in the previous PHP releases.

Ecommerce blossom due to heavy snowfalls

Web development | Posted: January 11th, 2011 | krivitskayats
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According to the recent survey held by Web metrics firm comScore, heavy snowfalls on the East Coast of the USA contributed to the increase in online retailer sales over the last week before Christmas. The total sales of online stores during this period soared by 17 % in comparison with the same period last year. On the whole the revenue gained by online retailers during the holiday season amounted to almost $31 billion.
The holiday season was launched on Cyber Monday after Thanksgiving and proceeded well into Free Shipping Day (last Friday before Christmas with free delivery offers) when the online shoppers enjoyed their purchases on free delivery terms.
Apart from blizzards and free shipping offers there are other incentives and reasons to make ecommerce thrive. Today with hustle and bustle of the modern life many of the customers are simply pressed for time and would prefer to go on the Christmas shopping spree on the Internet, where they can find everything at hand, rather than shop around at physical stores and trade centers. Moreover, this way of shopping saves not only energy and time but may turn out to be economical as well.
The boost in credibility of online retail business among shoppers fosters the growth of web app development segment and creates ever growing demand for ecommerce app development services, offered by software companies.

First days of New Year with iPhone alarm glitch

Mobile Application Development | Posted: January 4th, 2011 | krivitskayats
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Many iPhone users complained that their alarms hadn’t gone off on the first days of New Year. People all over the world faced New Year with a malfunction of their iPhone devices, which entailed disruptions in working schedules and holiday plans.
This bug was reported to have affected iPhone4 and earlier versions of Apple’s handsets with software updates and caused a glitch only for single set alarms. Apple administration admits the existence of software errors and advises to set recurring alarms to avoid iPhone malfunctioning until this software bug is absolutely tackled by Apple’s developers.
The iPhone owners express their outrage in various social networks and blogs complaining that they had to bear excessive expenses for travel fares or were late for work because they had failed to wake up on time. The users are even more irritated as it was not the first time that a similar glitch took place. In November when clocks changed in order to switch to a daylight saving mode, many iPhone users were affected by the same malfunction in the gadget’s alarm and overslept their planned raising hour, which caused lots of inconvenience.
Apple spokeswoman Natalie Harrison said that the company was working on tackling the problem and promised that it would be fixed by 3rd January, though some users still claim that their iPhone alarm doesn’t go off. Despite the recent events iPhones still remain one of the dominating powers on the mobile phone and mobile app development market.