An Early Fourth: Welcome To ReadWrite 4.0 |
- An Early Fourth: Welcome To ReadWrite 4.0
- Microsoft Joins AllSeen Alliance To Get In On Internet Of Things Action
- Prepare For Cameras To Invade Your Car
- How To Win Friends And Make Pull Requests On GitHub
| An Early Fourth: Welcome To ReadWrite 4.0 Posted: 02 Jul 2014 10:36 AM PDT You may notice that the site you love has a new look. But the visual refresh, while substantial and welcome, is just the tip of the iceberg. We've changed far more in the deep infrastructure of ReadWrite.  Since its earliest days, one of ReadWrite's core obsessions has been the tools used to create the Web. And yet for most of our history, we didn't have the resources to make the most of those technologies ourselves. That changed two and a half years ago, when Say Media acquired ReadWrite. Say Media is a media company and a technology company. Some organizations struggle to reconcile those identities, but one of the things that makes this place special is that we don't see a contradiction. Since Say became ReadWrite's publisher, we've released three new versions of the site. You can call this one ReadWrite 4.0. And the best news is that the software underpinning the site will let us engage in even more rapid change in the future.  The Fourth Is Strong With This OneReadWrite is now running on Tempest, Say Media's internally developed publishing system. As a result, while it looks like a website, it's really a Web app—a single-page application, if you want to use the technical term, like Gmail or Twitter. This doesn't change the goal of the site, which is to deliver a great reading experience. Expectations of readers have changed in the past 11 years, though. It's no longer about serving up a static mix of text and images for a desktop computer monitor. A great reading experience must adapt to different devices, screen sizes, and environments—as well as learning about readers and giving them information suited to their needs. As a result, it makes more sense to deliver a compact Web app in the browser which then fetches and displays the text, images, and other elements of a story, and arranges them intelligently. That's what Tempest does. And it's a radical change from the past two decades of how Web servers have worked, particularly for content sites. Tempest uses Web technologies ReadWrite has written about frequently, like AngularJS and Node.js. Say Media engineers have extended those software libraries further and contributed the code to the public as open source: For example, software engineer Martin Atkins built angularjs-server, a specialized tool for making Angular sites friendly to search engines, which are peculiarly old-fashioned in how they expect Web servers to work. As a result of this new, modern infrastructure, ReadWrite's pages should load quickly and look good on a variety of devices. One particular benefit will be an ability to move very quickly from page to page within the site. I hope that will encourage readers to take a deep dive on topics they are passionate about, and spend more time with our rich and illuminating archive. Moving our substantial body of work from 11 years of continuous publication was itself arduous, especially with our habit of testing the boundaries of what one could do in the canvas of HTML. While we've carried all but a tiny fraction of our articles over, a few are still being migrated. If you encounter a missing article or any other bugs with the site, please let us know at bugs@readwrite.com.
 Now, To Take ActionAs part of this redesign, we've renamed two of our sections. Enterprise is now Work. Small Biz is now Start. With every article we write, we hope to inform you about new aspects of technology—the Web, cloud, mobile, and social. But we also aim to inspire you to take action. To work more effectively. To play with more joy. To hack new things. To start your own adventure. And so those are ReadWrite's sections: Web, Cloud, Mobile, Social. Work, Play, Hack, Start. They don't limit or contain our coverage, but they help define it. We describe the world of technology. And we help you figure out what to do with it. Extending The Web To All Who Need ItBy "you," we mean all of you. Everyone in the world. With ReadWrite 4.0, we're also beginning a new focus on our longtime cause: the democratization of technology. Technology is only useful if everyone can participate in its benefits and its future direction. We will continue to champion those left behind and left out, and advocate for their inclusion in technology. To be a support for them, we require a sturdy platform of our own. You need a Web server to serve the Web. ReadWrite thanks all of the Say Media engineering, design, and product team members who worked on our relaunch on Tempest, including but by no means limited to Adrian Cleave, Antoine Imbert, Brad Choate, James Cabrera, John Vars, Paul Devine, Pradheap Babu, Ross Hattori, Shane Dosch, Steven Cook, Ben Trott, Dave Lerman, Bryan Wyman, Franck Cuny, Matt Matson, Smith Schwartz, Michael Hunter, Shanna Chambers, Madeleine Weiss, and Alex Schleifer.          This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Microsoft Joins AllSeen Alliance To Get In On Internet Of Things Action Posted: 02 Jul 2014 09:55 AM PDT Microsoft just made its ambitions in the smart home and other connected devices evident: The Windows maker has now joined the AllSeen Alliance, a group banded together to set a common language for the Internet of Things—namely Qualcomm's AllJoyn standard. AllSeen, which boasts members such as Haier, Sears, LG, Panasonic and Qualcomm, among others, appears to be Microsoft's answer to Apple's recently announced HomeKit protocol and Google's recent moves to put Android everywhere, from TVs and wrists to cars. Google didn't announce any specific connected home or IoT plans at its developer conference last week, but its interest in the sector has been quite clear after it acquired smart thermostat maker Nest and connected home camera startup Dropcam. Microsoft has been quietly and subtly approaching the smart home market, most recently supporting the Staples Connect platform on Windows 8 devices and selling Insteon connected home devices on a retail basis. The AllSeen Alliance wants to make a wireless standard and communications platform for all smart home connected devices. AllJoyn is an open source product that provides a common communication language for all connected home apps and was originally developed in the Qualcomm Innovation Center. Image of Windows Surface tablet, running Staples Connnect smart home app, courtesy of Staples   This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Prepare For Cameras To Invade Your Car Posted: 01 Jul 2014 12:40 PM PDT  The smartphone revolution has relatively little to do with using your mobile device as a phone. Arguable, the killer app of mobile computing is the camera: the ability to take and share photography. Now that cars are increasingly becoming computers on wheels, there is mounting evidence that cameras will be essential vehicular hardware. Are we far off from choosing a car based on focal length and resolution—as well as horsepower and transmissions? Will car selfies become more important than self-driving? I started asking myself these question after seeing last week's announcement that Mini Cooper will allow drivers to use the car's joystick to shoot videos and take photos with a GoPro camera. Of course, you could always use a GoPro in the car, but now everybody's favorite tiny action camera is controllable within the Mini's native operating system (if the car is properly equipped). BMW, the maker of Mini Cooper cars, said that putting camera functions directly on the high-resolution color dashboard display, and operating them from the joystick, will enable to drivers to concentrate more on the road. Yeah, right. InstaCrashMeanwhile, a 26-year-old old Missouri woman was killed in a car crash, moments after snapping a selfie (the last photo of her alive). She was traveling to her bachelorette party. In May, the U.K.'s Daily Mail reported that two girls crashed while recording a video clip of their in-car Karaoke sessions, zooming down the road with hands off the wheel. The pair was taken to the hospital for treatment, where they uploaded the video of the crash. It went viral on social media—so they uploaded more images of their bruised faces and bodies. Is it just those crazy digital kids living life on the edge with car selfies? Nope. Two octogenarian drivers last week took an assisted selfie after flipping their blue Honda on its side in Bel Air, Calif. It's a great shot, because the snap shows the wife posing while still trapped in the car. The selfie, in this case, wasn't the cause of the accident—but nonetheless the boundaries between cars, cameras, safety, mobile self-portraits and social media are becoming blurred. The Mini announcement is not likely to be the last connected car-plus-GoPro mashup. Good Looking OutCar-based cameras aren't just good ol' dangerous fun. In fact, automakers are utilizing them primarily to enhance safety. As we reported a couple months ago, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) ruled on March 31 that all new cars must be equipped with back-up cameras by May 2018. The use of inexpensive back-up cameras—often about $50—are a small price to prevent the 15,000 or so injuries that happen every year, when drivers don't see people (usually small children) in the rear-view mirror.  In another example, last summer in Germany, when I was driving the sporty diesel-powered Volkswagen Golf GTD on the Autobahn, I didn't have to think about which sections had speed restrictions. The car's camera aimed at the roadside and, aided by recognition software, detected speed limit signs and displayed the legal top speed on the dash (in front of the steering wheel). It was effective. Your future car may also have a camera aimed at your head—with face detection determining if your head is up, and your eyes are open and looking at the road. If your head drops, you'll get a warning or perhaps the brakes will be automatically applied.  Cameras are already ubiquitous on roadsides and intersections, aimed at cars breaking through red lights for robo-ticketing. Cameras and image recognition are also essential to self-driving automobiles—along with radar, sonar and Lidar. And I suspect that side-view mirrors will go the way of the dinosaur. Those side appendages are bad for aerodynamics and prone to getting snapped off by careless drivers—not only the ones trying to get the perfect mobile selfie. Tracking ShotsIf you want a glimpse of the car-camera future, visit Russia. Apparently, car crashes are so prevalent—and police corruption so widespread—that nearly every driver needs to keep a dashcam running—just in case there's an accident and verifiable evidence is required. YouTube is filled with dashcam-recorded crashes, trucks tipping over and roadside brawls, not only from Russian citizens. That's not just a Russian phenomenon. U.S. law enforcement officers who also commonly use dashcams.  You can become part of the car camera craze, even if you don't have a Mini. In March, Wirecutter did a rundown of the top half-dozen dash cams. The reviewer's top pick was the G1W, capable of capturing 1080p video at 30 frames per second and available on Amazon for about $40. I doubt George Orwell, as prophetic as he was, anticipated that Big Brother would be the hipster in his Mini at the stoplight, aiming his GoPro at you. Lead image via CameraVan.com   This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| How To Win Friends And Make Pull Requests On GitHub Posted: 02 Jul 2014 10:50 AM PDT I'll never forget how nervous I was when I submitted my first pull request. If you are unfamiliar with a pull request, it is a suggested edit for a fix in somebody else's code in GitHub. Even though I was submitting tweaks to a friend's GitHub repository and not a stranger's, the fact remained that he does this kind of thing for a living and I don't. Even though I'd scoured my code for errors, I feared that my submission neglected a key part of GitHub etiquette. See also: GitHub For Beginners: Don't Get Scared, Get Started My pull request was accepted without a hitch, but first time worries are common. Web developer Rachel Nabors described her first attempt at a pull request thus:
Fortunately, there are some established protocols for submitting a pull request that makes it through. Here's everything a beginning GitHub user needs to know about pull requests. Why Submit A Pull RequestWhat is a pull request? This is GitHub's official definition:
Put simply, a pull request is nothing more than the official way of telling another GitHub user, "Hey, I think you missed a spot." When you see errors in another person's repository, or have suggestions for how they could improve, you can submit your edits in a pull request. See also: GitHub For Beginners: Commit, Push And Go According to Matthew McCullough, a teacher at GitHub, submitting a pull request is the best educational experience possible for beginners on GitHub. "It's a huge opportunity to learn from some of the best people in the industry," he said in a video. "You're essentially getting mentoring for free in benefit of trade for your time and thought and investment in fixing and improving and tuning up pieces of software used worldwide." You might be thinking, "If you're still a beginner, should you really be submitting pull requests? Other GitHub users probably know better than you what they're doing." However, the whole point of GitHub is that everyone has something to contribute—that's why it's open source. On the chance your pull request is accepted, you can feel good knowing you contributed to a piece of software you care about. On the other hand, if it's denied, polite developers will write back to explain why and at least you'll get a lesson out of the experience. It's win-win. Etiquette Tips For Making A Pull RequestLet's say you've found an error in somebody's code and you know exactly how to fix it. Here's how you can submit your first pull request with confidence: Be Clear And Specific Technically, GitHub allows you to submit a pull request with no comment at all. But there's a comment box for a reason. Carefully explain what the problem is and how your change fixes it. It's also helpful to explain how the developer can recreate the problem you're seeing. You can also include screenshots to show the tests and improvements you've done. Keep Changes SmallYou might see more than one bug that you'd like to fix. Be sure that if you do, submit them as two separate pull requests. A lengthy pull request is unlikely to be dealt with quickly. It could be difficult for the original developer to try and follow your steps. Stick To Existing ConventionsIs the original developer putting spaces between functions, or putting CSS curly brackets each on their own line? Has she provided a style guide for future pull requests to follow? If so, you'll save the creator a lot of trouble by sticking to the code style they've already established. Never Copy-And-Paste CodeThe point of pull requests is to fix bugs, not to add new ones. And, as I've learned the hard way, copying and pasting code does nothing but add bugs. Computers can be very finicky about reading the spaces in code, and copy-paste adds new spaces you can't even see. Read The DocumentationThere's also a GitHub Guide on contributing to open source like a pro, including some of their best practices for submitting pull requests. At the very least, you could read GitHub's suggestions for how to have positive interactions on GitHub.  Etiquette Tips For Receiving A Pull RequestYou may also find yourself on the other end of the interaction. If you have a public repository on GitHub (and all repositories are public if you have a free account), that means anyone can stumble upon your code and suggest changes. Here's how you can accept or deny pull requests graciously: Don't Fix Their Mistakes YourselfIf you get a pull request with only a slight answer, it may be tempting to just fix it and push the change. But it's much more polite to send the request back and explain why you did so. The author might have a reason for writing it the way they did, a Quora discussion suggests. Don't Be RudeThis should be obvious. If somebody submits a pull request, that means they're trying to help your project. But not everyone remembers this golden rule, and it can cause a lot of trouble. Case in point: when a Joyent engineer rejected a community member's pull request for changing programmer pronouns from "he" to "they," his curt response started a firestorm. Using GitHub's walkthrough, anybody can go through the motions of submitting a pull request that's technically correct. But by sticking to generally accepted modes of etiquette, you can handle pull requests with the assurance that you've gone above and beyond.
  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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