Five in Five: Most Expected Innovations

IBM has released the annual list of ‘Five in Five’ where the most expected innovations of the nearest future are presented.
The first forecast is connected with ‘green’ energy: according to the IBM specialists, in the nearest 5 years the energy for our gadgets, houses and towns will be produced from man’s vital processes.  As a result, for example, man’s movements, the water used in the house and other renewable sources can play the role of an energy source.

The next innovation deals with cyber security – IBM claims that by the year 2016 mankind will be able to do without passwords for getting an access to various resources. Passwords will be replaced by multi- factor biometrics. For example, voice scanning will replace a passport while a fingerprint will replace a password to e-mail. According to professional software developers, unique biological data scanning will assist in solving the problem of data stealing.

‘Mind reading’ or the connection between a computer or a smartphone and a person’s mind can be another expected innovation. Just imagine, you only have to think about a call to a friend and this call will be realized.

One more innovation, according to IBM, is the reduction of digital gap using mobile devices. Mobile solutions will provide an access to information and services of online commerce, e-government, and medical care for the residents the Third World countries and distant regions.

And finally, the fifth innovation is connected with the optimization of analytical technologies, which will allow a person to get only relevant and interesting information. It will increase the range of IT development services offered by software development companies.

IBM released social business applications for tablets

Tablet computers are being used more and more by employees of various companies as a functional working tool. Software development companies try to keep up with the modern tendencies and offer new mobile applications that let use iPads and other modern devices for collective work, social interactions in the real time mode and business communication. The new products can boast of high productivity and compact sizes and allow users of portable devices to get a safe access to corporate communication platforms.

Some business applications will provide a mobile access to the corporate database, while another application, named LotusLive Meeting, will allow the users of modern smartphones and tablets (including iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and iPad) to take part in meetings, carried out in the global network.

For example, the IBM Corporation has announced a special business application. Thanks to the mobile client for the IBM Sametime platform, employees can exchange direct text messages in the mode of personal or group chat, while another application – Unified Telephony – can be used for making telephone calls. The optimized version of the product Lotus Symphony Viewer will provide a possibility to view office documents in the ODF format (including text files, tables and presentations) on the screen of the device.

The new applications are distributed for free among the owners of licensed copies of the IBM products. In the nearest future business software development will become more and more popular and the announced programs will be available in the official app stores, such as the Apple App Store and the Android Market.

Microsoft Roslyn: New Type of Compilers

Microsoft has presented an interesting project named Roslyn. Within the framework of this project, all the concept of compilers and compilable programming languages itself has been reconsidered. Apart from the realization of completely new functions, such as .NET-tools, C#, Visual Basic and the Visual Studio development environment, the Roslyn project offers the completely new concept ‘compiler as a service’, laying a road to the .NET platform to the most promising area – into clouds.

Once Microsoft gave many professional software developers the hope for well-off and predictable future, having moved the development of its own and third party technologies on the .NET development platform. So far, the Visual Studio development environment and the .NET platform are the most popular and convenient development tools, having adopted the best features of java technologies and having made some important steps ahead. When Microsoft presented the new development tools for writing apps with the help of JavaScript and HTML5, many software development companies started to worry that the .Net development had been folded up. However, the reality has exceeded all expectations – the presented project Roslyn has proved that the .NET platform has exciting future.

The Roslyn technology can be described as ‘compilation by request through the providing service’, although this description is a bit complicated. Technically, the new technology is not a service in comparison with such cloud solutions as SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) or PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service). The Roslyn technology is more similar to the Windows system services that offer completely new principles of compiling .NET applications – each phase of compilation is presented in the form of service that can be requested by other applications.

Usual compilers throw away all intermediate data while getting ready-made files and in Roslyn compilers all intermediate data is available via standard .NET API-interfaces. For example, the request to one single API will retrieve the whole syntax tree for the given code fragment in the form of an object. The request to another API can return the number of methods in code.

So far, one can’t predict how soon the Roslyn technology will find its place among standard development tools  – now only the trial version for C# and Visual Basic is available.

Honeywell Developer Program

Honeywell Company announced the release of the Honeywell Developer Program oriented on mobile software developers who design mobile applications for Android-based devices. The aim of this program is to provide independent software developers and end-users with an opportunity to contribute to the creation of Honeywell mobile computers that will function under Android OS. The participants of the program can develop and test Android applications for new Honeywell mobile computers before their official release.

The results of the recent research in the smartphone market, conducted by the company Honeywell, show that the leaders of various software development companies where mobile devices are used in their work, include Android OS in their general technological strategy. Mainly that’s because Android OS has wide options for customizing and thanks to its huge success in the smartphone market it is popular with mobile users.

The participants of the Honeywell program get the access to the online store selling software for Honeywell devices (isvstore.com) and take part in joint marketing and advertising campaigns of Honeywell. Moreover, their apps will be demonstrated with other Honeywell products at the next conferences.

At the same time, due to the flexibility of Android OS, the participants of the program will be able to ensure maximum productivity and convenience in use for Honeywell mobile devices.  Among the independent software providers and end users registered in the program there are Aldata, ALK Technologies, Apacheta Corporation, Astea, ClickSoftware, Cornell Mayo, Countermind, Mobile Tornado, RetailPro and Vodafone.

Samsung Developers: New Application Development Center

Samsung has announced the launch of the new site intended for simplifying the process of mobile application development. The development of applications for Samsung phones, smartphones and communicators has become a popular project for individual users as well as for large software development companies.  

Finding applications for various platforms and devices at one big and rapidly growing resource is very convenient. It has changed the conventional views on the online application support all over the world. Millions of users taking part in software development have made the company think over more exciting and advanced opportunities in future.

Samsung Developers has announced about the new site for mobile developers working with Samsung devices where everyone can get the latest news and updates, rich content and the forum for obtaining the technical support and it doesn’t matter at all whether you develop for Windows Mobile, Java platform or just simple widgets. Samsung Developers combines all the platforms into one unified resource with the latest SDK versions, training videos, hardware and software updates.

Software for hair loss treatment: high-tech way to save beauty and dignity

Nowadays software development companies offer us PC applications for all cases: tax calculation, make up and food selection and, of course, healthcare. And among the most unusual programs for health recovering stands software for hair loss treatment.
According to statistics about 30% of people suffer from hair loss (alopecia) by age 30 years, and about 50% – by age 50 years. This problem became so common that most of us consider it as a normal variation, but not a disease. But healthcare professionals and programmers are trying to make us change our mind.
The most popular (and the most simple software products) focused on hair loss treatment are eBooks for Windows and MacOS. They have small differences from usual books. For example, developers of the first version of Natural Hair Loss Treatment published in their software generally known causes of hair loss (alopecia): malnutrition or wrong nourishment; life under stress; different diseases and general problems with health; insufficient hair care and other factors. The central idea of the software is herbal hair loss treatment. The same approach was popularized in the other freeware program Natural Hair Loss Tips v1.0. It is possible that, such applications for hair loss treatment can help to take the disease under control or even solve the problem, making a complete recovery from alopecia.
But what if people have a strain of alopecia (hair loss) in the family? Inheritance and hormones are much more serious problems; they require quite different approaches and more advanced software, that will be reviewed in the next post.