BlueStacks Systems has presented a free alpha-version of its new solution for convenient launching mobile applications, originally intended for Android mobile devices, on the computers with the Windows operating system. The alpha-version of BlueStacks App Player allows launching Android applications on any Windows machines including personal computers, laptops, netbooks and tablets. In fact, using BlueStacks App Player users can launch Android apps without any additional efforts and modifications.
Apart from the direct benefit for Android app developers, end-users and corporate customers will also benefit from using BlueStacks App Player. The potential field of application of this technology covers practically all spheres of activity – from educational application development for children to corporate mobile applications at any available computer.

According to the representatives of the company BlueStacks, the openness of the Android platform gives an impulse for innovations – this openness has helped to create the solution for launching these apps on ‘non-native’ platform. To some extent, such openness removes the inequality between the people from developed countries and the Third World countries – now even those who can’t afford a smartphone in the nearest future will be able to get acquainted with mobile applications.

Apart from the BlueStacks App Player, the company BlueStacks has presented the Cloud Connect Technology – a special service that lets a Windows device become the continuation of the mobile device. Using the Cloud Connect Technology, the Android application can be moved on the screen of the Windows device in three simple steps: choose, click and synchronize.

The alpha-version of the BlueStacks App Player can be downloaded for free from the site of the producer.

Intel has announced the release of the new versions of its software development packages Intel Parallel Studio XE 2011 and Intel Cluster Studio 2011 for the platforms Linux and Windows. These new products contain the best compilers for C/C++ and Fortran, the libraries for increasing the productivity and the application parallelization, the analysers of code consistency and profilers. In addition to the functions of Intel Parallel Studio XE 2011, the Intel Cluster Studio package includes additional options for programming the distributed memory using the MPI technologies.

The emergence of the Linux versions became a very important event in the development of the Intel Parallel Studio 2011 package – now software developers can check the memory and the standard parallel programming models even in Linux. The utility Intel Inspector XE 2011 has replaced the former utility Intel Thread Checker which is responsible for checking the memory.

The new function of Ideal Interconnect Simulator in the utility Intel Trace Analyzer and Collector helps model the application behavior in the ideal communication environment. What concerns the support of the Fortran programming language, which is very popular in the projects with intensive calculations, Intel provided a special interface for the Microsoft Visual Studio environment (you don’t have to purchase an additional license for Visual Studio) and the utilities Intel Composer XE and Intel Amplifier XE work directly via this interface.

Novell has released the new version of its cross platform development environment Mono 2.8 for web application development based on the .NET architecture. The new version of the platform Mono is a final step on the way to the release of the next version Mono 3.0.

The development environment Mono is an open alternative to the Microsoft tools for the development of .NET applications. Here web developers get all the necessary tools for writing and moving .NET applications oriented not only to the Windows operating system but to the various modifications of Linux or Solaris.

What is new in Mono 2.8? Firstly, its improved productivity of the SGen mechanism for collecting ‘garbage’ in the memory with the dynamic compression of the used memory. Secondly, Mono 2.8 contains a powerful Low Level Virtual Machine used in scientific and financial applications where large volumes of calculations are required. Thirdly, now Mono 2.8 has full support of the new specification of the programming language C# 4.0.

The Engine Yard Company has introduced a new version of its platform called JRuby 1.5. The new version empowers extension of Java-based applications using the popular Ruby language. In particular, the JRuby technology allows quick development of new interfaces for Java-applications to work in SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) and WOA (Web Service Architecture). JRuby is an implementation of the Ruby development platform for Java. The language JRuby allows you to write only 20% of code compared to traditional Java applications development. It has a good integration with the most popular components of Java platform (integration with the core Java libraries, etc.). Moreover the JRuby 1.5 platform provides more efficient use of memory and processor.

During the five last months (the period of JRuby 1.5 development) about 30 volunteers made more than 1000 edits to improve the code. In fact, the main advantage of JRuby is the significant increase in productivity in the development of Java-based applications. In particular, java developers can now deploy Ruby code on the same server, using the same library as for the previous Java-based applications, but Ruby is fully integrated with the already working code and Java-applications using RIA development.

In the previous post we briefly reviewed the simplest software applications that help people to solve the problem of hair loss. This software will be effective when alopecia was caused by nutrition, invalid food, stresses and other subjective factors. So facing with hair loss people can act under the direction of these programs: change their eating behavior, take care of hair and skin, get rid of stress and add some more relaxing factors in their life. For example, freeware Hair Loss 1.0 for Windows gives fast and easy access to the information hair loss products (special shampoos and conditioners). The application based e-commerce platform and works only with the Internet connection.

But as regards the objective factors of alopecia here is the other situation. Such software won’t work. Medical intervention is necessary. But software can control the results of medical treatment.

Programmers from CSIRO have developed impressive technology that can show how well hair loss treatment methods are working. New software can measure hair on different parts of the (also it can be used to assess the results of depilation).

“Our software uses images captured by a small flatbed scanner pressed onto the skin. It the numbers to analyse the image of skin and hairs…Then, almost instantly, it reports information about the length and number of hairs in the picture…”, explain Leader of Biotech Imaging at CSIRO, Dr Pascal Valloton.

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.

Microsoft DevDays is one of the largest developer conferences in Europe. It is visited by thousands of developers and becomes more popular each year. Today it was held in Minsk. There were reported several topics naturally related to Microsoft solutions:

• Usage of SilverLight 2;
• Introduction to Windows 7 for developers;
• Development of applications using Live Services;
• Visual Studio Team System 2010: first view.

High qualified specialists announced their products and answered our questions. It is very pleasant that such conferences become a good tradition. Thank to Microsoft for the provided information and for sure, thanks to us, developers, their products become even more popular, and customers will have no doubts in a platform choice.

More details about conference topics in next posts…