How to find Google+ App in App Store
Google Plus has just released the long awaited Google+ App for iOS, something Android users have had for a while. The main attraction being that you can now upload photos off iOS devices with built-in cameras like the iPhone and iPad, which you can't do off the regular mobile HTML site (which, if you haven't checked out yet, is awesome!).
There's only a small problem - as of now, searching for either "Google Plus" or "Google+" or even just "Google" in the App Store app does not find the app. I'm sure this will be fixed, but for now if you want to find it search for "Google huddle" and it will be the only result shown.
Here's a direct link to app in iTunes: Google+.
Google+ Developers Group
If you're like me, you can't wait to get your hands on Google+ APIs to start building cool new things which run on Google's new social network. What's got me excited about G+ development is the robust range of offerings that Google can make available as part of the ecosystem for apps to run in, with single sign on across them all.
So how do you get in on the action? Right now there isn't much out there but Google has created a form on which you can sign up to be notified when new info is released:
To stay updated as the Google+ project develops and get a heads up when we have more details to share about Google+ developer opportunities, sign up here. Your email will be added to a Google group. In addition, we'd love to gather more information about you.
I was notified "Your information has been sent to Google and your email has been added to the Google+ Developers group" after filling it out. Knuckles cracked, sleeves rolled up and ready to build cool new things once APIs surface - bring it!
What will you build?
iPhone HDR photography passes Porsche test!
This has been reported in many a place before, and I will admit that it is in big part to showcase the picture I snapped of the new 2011 Porsche Boxster Spyder, a car that not only looks great but is also one of the best dynamic performance cars ever built. As in, built so far - remb, this is a technology blog and we're not big on nostalgia here; we're into things like the Porsche PDK automated dual-clutch transmission.
Photos were taken with an iPhone 4 running iOS 4.2.1 with HDR (High Dynamic Range) turned on. Roll over the image to see just how much more detail the HDR photo was able to pull in. In particular, check out the sky, the background buildings, the parking space stop, the car's brake discs, wheels, side and top. Pretty amazing that you can do this with your phone today!
Note: You need JavaScript enabled for this to work.
Facebook HipHop for PHP video
As previously reported, Facebook is getting ready to open source HipHop for PHP. Nothing at GitHub yet, but here's the video introducing the project at Facebook HQ in Palo Alto, CA:
Some of the tasty meat:
- single-process multithreading model in their own HTTP server allows sharing of DB connections between threads
- you can run directly in their own interpreter, HPHPi, for faster workflow
- they made some PHP extensions thread-safe, code to be released with HipHop
As an audience member said, can't wait to start playing with it!
Facebook releases HipHop for PHP tonight!
Haiping Zhao posts on developers.facebook.com that the long-awaited HipHop for PHP project will be released as open source tonight. Here's a description of it in Mr. Zhao's own words:
One of the key values at Facebook is to move fast. For the past six years, we have been able to accomplish a lot thanks to rapid pace of development that PHP offers. As a programming language, PHP is simple. Simple to learn, simple to write, simple to read, and simple to debug. We are able to get new engineers ramped up at Facebook a lot faster with PHP than with other languages, which allows us to innovate faster.
Today I'm excited to share the project a small team of amazing people and I have been working on for the past two years; HipHop for PHP. With HipHop we've reduced the CPU usage on our Web servers on average by about fifty percent, depending on the page. Less CPU means fewer servers, which means less overhead. This project has had a tremendous impact on Facebook. We feel the Web at large can benefit from HipHop, so we are releasing it as open source this evening in hope that it brings a new focus toward scaling large complex websites with PHP. While HipHop has shown us incredible results, it's certainly not complete and you should be comfortable with beta software before trying it out.
HipHop for PHP isn't technically a compiler itself. Rather it is a source code transformer. HipHop programmatically transforms your PHP source code into highly optimized C++ and then uses g++ to compile it. HipHop executes the source code in a semantically equivalent manner and sacrifices some rarely used features — such as eval() — in exchange for improved performance. HipHop includes a code transformer, a reimplementation of PHP's runtime system, and a rewrite of many common PHP Extensions to take advantage of these performance optimizations.
Some interesting facts: the project took nearly two years to come to fruition, and the idea for the project came at a Facebook Hackathon. PHP creator Rasmus Lerdorf posted this on Twitter today: "HipHop on simpler template-style PHP pages probably isn't going to help you too much. It's not going to make your SQL queries any faster."
Check the original post around 7:30 PM Pacific tonight, Feb 2nd, for the official release. Presumably, the project will be posted here, the place for all Facebook Open Source projects.
The Driving Blog – I drive, therefore I am
Just launched a new site, The Driving Blog [thedrivingblog.com]! God only knows how much I drive; I have always wanted to have a place to jot down what goes though my head when I'm "out there" - after all, it takes a lot of energy! Being someone who's keenly, sometimes painfully, aware of numbers, I do a lot of calculations and play all sorts of games like "guess the exact trip mileage the fuel light will go on" to keep from getting bored. It works, and it will be great to finally be able to share these thoughts (and tips) with others. So check it out!
Chrome for Linux is out!
This is one of those days when I can see the good in Google. Sure it's a big corporation, but it's great to see there's still some honest goodness, to see they haven't forgotten their roots. This is a day Google makes a lot of geeks happy by finally releasing Chrome for Linux! Sure it's only a beta, but it's been long enough and it's finally out! Here's the official mail I got from GOOG:
Hello everybody out there using Linux -
Google Chrome is go for beta on Linux! Thanks to the many Chromium and WebKit developers who helped make Google Chrome a lean, mean browsing machine. Here are a few fun facts from us on the Google Chrome for Linux team:
60,000 lines of Linux-specific code written
23 developer builds
2,713 Linux-specific bugs fixed
12 external committers and bug editors to the Google Chrome for Linux code base, 48 external code contributorsThanks for waiting and we hope that you enjoy using Google Chrome!
Google Chrome Team
That's pretty cool stuff, and the link to the release, which in of itself is geek-hip, contains a xkcd-style comic which is thoroughly enjoyable! So grab it while it's hot!
Top Blog Posts page
I've added the Top Blog Posts page today, check it out and watch for updates!