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			    <title>Programming | Technology | Seek4News.com</title> 
				<link>http://seek4news.com/technology/programming</link> 
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			<title>Runscope Lands $1.1M From True Ventures And Andreessen Horowitz For Tools That Address The Broken API Plague</title>
			<link>http://seek4news.com/news/runscope-lands-11m-from-true-ventures-and-andreessen-horowitz-for-tools-that-address-the-broken-api-plague</link>
			<description><![CDATA[Runscope launched at the Glue conference today with $1.1 million in seed funding from True Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz for its tools that monitor API traffic and address the problems with broken APIs. Also participating were Lerer Ventures, and a group of prominent angel investors.
The Runscope tools come as software is scaling everywhere. And with software comes APIs, which are just a natural way to connect services. When web services ruled back in the IT glory age, software integrations were complex and expensive. Today REST-based APIs make it easy to connect apps. The problem is in the complexity of the distributed nature of building them.
Distributed apps have their own code. It may work across on-premise servers and a cloud provider’s network and servers. It will also use the API providers’ set of code and servers of their own.
It’s from this premise that Runscope built its tools. Designed initially for test and development, the tools will be offered for use in production in the coming months.
“The first thing we want to do is to start to give visibility into the conversations an app is having with other services,” said John Sheehan, Runscope’s CEO. This means building a tool that watches the API traffic and makes problems really visible.
“The real true promise is an app that has multiple distributed pieces but acts as one coherent application,” Sheehan said. “We are starting to realize it but the tools are geared toward building old style applications. For example, performance monitoring tools expect thart code issues are happening on your own servers.”
Runscope is built on Amazon Web Services EC2 and programmed in Python. The CTO, Frank Statton, was lead engineer at Twilio. The system is fault tolerant and was built by Ryan Park who comes from Pinterest. Sheehan worked at IFTTT before co-founding the company with Statton. Prior to IFTTT, Sheehan also worked at Twilio as the company’s developer evangelist.
The business model will in part stem from Runscope’s runtime, which generates data about API traffic. That data can be used for business intelligence. There is also the resilience the service can offer for customers and the assurance that mission-critical apps and their APIs can be watched and issues resolved before they become a major issue.
New Relic looks at the issues that Rusncope addresses from a performance standpoint, especially with a mobile SDK. API management providers such as Apigee and Layer7 are also playing in the space.
   
     
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			<pubDate>Wed, 22 May 2013 13:15:01 CDT</pubDate>
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			<title>See man grapple with 18-foot python</title>
			<link>http://seek4news.com/news/see-man-grapple-with-18foot-python</link>
			<description><![CDATA[One lucky hunter catches the longest Burmese python recorded in Florida.
    
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			<pubDate>Wed, 22 May 2013 07:10:02 CDT</pubDate>
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			<title>CTIA 2013: Heads up, Ludacris: GM wants you to check out this Cadillac&#039;s 4G thrills</title>
			<link>http://seek4news.com/news/ctia-2013-heads-up-ludacris-gm-wants-you-to-check-out-this-cadillacs-4g-thrills</link>
			<description><![CDATA[What does a car with built-in 4G feel like? GM, in partnership with AT&amp;T, set out to answer such a question, showing off a conceptual cook-up of what a connected vehicular future might look like during CTIA 2013. The car is a 2014 Cadillac ATS, the company&#039;s current flagship and winner of the Detroit Auto Show&#039;s Car of the Year award. The connectivity is AT&amp;T 4G, of course. In February, the companies announced a partnership to bring the high-speed waves to GM cars starting in 2014, with the end game to eventually have all vehicles coming off the car maker&#039;s production lines armed with 4G. Attendees of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona got a taste of this connected concept car, but this is the first time this 4G ATS has been shown on North American soil. Equipped with 4G, a GM car could, for example, stream videos to passengers, provide in-vehicle Wi-Fi hot spots, allow for speedier hook up to custom apps and give car owners views from cameras mounted on the vehicle. Imagine, a GM rep asked us, working late and wanting to know if there was a stranger lurking around your vehicle. Cameras, and 4G, would let you hop on your phone or tablet and instantly get four-sided views of the environment around your car. The vehicle on display had cameras mounted on the front, rear and both sides, providing real time images of what was going on outside the ATS to a tablet. Internally, the demoed ATS was equipped with internal cameras as well, perfect for spying on passengers you suspect are leaving crumbs in your whip. GM is developing its own HTML 5-based app ecosystem, and we were told the company is looking to court more developers as the 2014 launch time frame approaches. The first vehicles to see these types of services will be 2015 Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac models available in the U.S. and Canada. The features shown may have been prototypes, but they provided a glimpse at what a connected car future could be quite well.    ]]></description>
			<pubDate>Wed, 22 May 2013 01:05:02 CDT</pubDate>
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			<title>College student snares record long Burmese python near Miami</title>
			<link>http://seek4news.com/news/college-student-snares-record-long-burmese-python-near-miami</link>
			<description><![CDATA[ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - An 18-foot, 8-inch Burmese python set a record for the longest snake ever captured in South Florida, where the exotic species has taken up residence.
  
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			<pubDate>Tue, 21 May 2013 16:20:01 CDT</pubDate>
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			<title>19-Foot Python Caught in FL</title>
			<link>http://seek4news.com/news/19foot-python-caught-in-fl</link>
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			<pubDate>Tue, 21 May 2013 07:15:01 CDT</pubDate>
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			<title>Florida Man Bags Record Python</title>
			<link>http://seek4news.com/news/florida-man-bags-record-python</link>
			<description><![CDATA[After a fierce battle near the Everglades, a Florida man bagged a record 18-foot, 8-inch python, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Jason Leon, an amateur python collector, said he was driving in the northwestern part of Miami-Dade County – where the...    ]]></description>
			<pubDate>Tue, 21 May 2013 05:15:01 CDT</pubDate>
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			<title>Legacy upload limit bug tumbles Flickr&#039;s new 1TB capacity</title>
			<link>http://seek4news.com/news/legacy-upload-limit-bug-tumbles-flickrs-new-1tb-capacity</link>
			<description><![CDATA[Yahoo may have made Flickr awesome again by giving every user a massive terabyte of storage space today, but in its excitement to get the launch out the door, Yahoo forgot to switch off its legacy monthly upload limit.Despite its new FAQ page stating that users can upload photos up to 200MB in size to the photo sharing service, customers keen to back up their photo library discovered that the 300MB monthly upload limit is still in place.As some more mathematically inclined Flickr users were quick to point out, that 300MB restriction would mean it would take 277 years to fill 1TB of space online.A glitch in the systemThere was every indication that the upload limit wasn&#039;t a nefarious ploy from Yahoo to limit uploads to the new Flickr.For a start, users who hit the limit were greeted with a message to sign up to Flickr&#039;s now retired Pro plans.There&#039;s also the common sense approach that asks why Yahoo would offer the 1TB of storage if nobody would ever be able to fill it in their lifetimes?Fortunately, Javascript engineer at Flickr Stephen Woods took to Twitter to let complaining customers know that it was just a bug.Can&#039;t keep everyone happyBut despite initial uploading issues, it seems that many legacy Pro users are less than content by the new structure for Flickr.While free Flickr customers are now getting many of the benefits older users had to pay for, Pro customers are now being faced with double the cost to go ad-free.Yahoo has a program in place for these customers to continue paying the current rate for Pro membership, but is also offering refunds on a pro-rata basis for those customers whose needs are now met by the free service.    ]]></description>
			<pubDate>Mon, 20 May 2013 23:40:00 CDT</pubDate>
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			<title>Man kills biggest Burmese python ever in Florida</title>
			<link>http://seek4news.com/news/man-kills-biggest-burmese-python-ever-in-florida</link>
			<description><![CDATA[Just call him Python Dundee.A Miami man pulled an 18-foot Burmese python out of roadside brush and wrestled with it for 10 minutes before cutting its head off with a knife.The 128-pound specimen turned out to be the biggest Burmese python ever captured in Florida, besting the previous record by more than a foot, wildlife officials said.&quot;I was pretty exhausted and I didn&#039;t want to get bit,&quot; Jason L...    ]]></description>
			<pubDate>Mon, 20 May 2013 20:45:01 CDT</pubDate>
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			<title>Laptop Week Review: The Dell XPS 13 Developers Edition With Ubuntu</title>
			<link>http://seek4news.com/news/laptop-week-review-the-dell-xps-13-developers-edition-with-ubuntu</link>
			<description><![CDATA[Features:

Runs Ubuntu out of the box
13.3-inch screen
256 GB SSD
Intel Core i7 Processor
MSRP: $1,549 with rebate

Pros:

Excellent Ubuntu performance out of the box
Thin and light
12 second boot time

Cons:

No SD card slot
Limited software choices
Graphics card slightly underpowered

Dude, you got a Linux-powered Dell! In all the years I’ve reviewed laptops I’ve never been as pleasantly surprised by an Ultrabook as I was with the Dell XPS 13 Developers Edition. This ultrathin, ultralight SSD laptop originally came in Windows flavor but, much to my surprise, I far prefer the Ubuntu edition of this device. It is solidly built, acceptably priced given the solid state drive, and surprisingly powerful.
Rewind
I’ve been using some form of POSIX-compliant operating system for over a decade but I must admit that I have been remiss in my Ubuntu installations. Whereas I was once a KDE kid with some Gnome leanings, my distro knowledge stopped at about Mandrake and picked up again as Ubuntu began its rise to glory. That said, I was curious to see what Linux looks like these days. In short, it looks great.
The laptop itself is well-made. An aluminum top and pane of Gorilla Glass protects the 13-inch screen and it weighs a little less than 3 pounds. The entire package is self-contained, solid, and quite portable.

The laptop, codenamed Sputnik, is a concerted effort by Dell to make sure everything on the device works well. It includes a number of Dell-specific packages – you can see a list here – but it supports most updates to the OS and attendant software and seamlessly upgraded to the latest version, 13.04, on top of the stock 12.04 Dell provides.
If you haven’t used Linux on a desktop you’ll be surprised at how uneventful it is. Everything “just works,” from the camera to the disk encryption to the update downloads, and there is little of the traditional futzing around with scripts and drivers when attempting to add hardware or fix broken peripherals. As a non-power-user who once wrote a script to re-initialize my audio chip every time I woke my computer from sleep, it was a pleasure to see the XPS 13 boot up without issue and worked quite seamlessly with most devices I tried with it. Arguably, with only two USB ports (one 3.0, one 2.0) and a DisplayPort jack, you’re not going to be adding much to the mix.



The GeekBench score for this particular model hovered at around 5,500, which is solid performance. The MacBook Air, for example, gets about 6,600 on a good day and the Core i7 hits about 7,000 although it can top out at about 10,000 depending on the machine. 5,500, while not ideal, is still solid. The laptop lasted for 7 hours of standard use, about par for the course for a laptop of this size.
Using the laptop was a dream. I was able to set up my environment quite quickly and seamlessly and after a few hours I quickly picked up a workflow that allowed me to write, edit photos, and post from the field. The lack of an SD card was quite disheartening, to be sure, but an external dongle helped me make short work of that issue. I used GIMP to crop and resize photos, Vim to edit my posts and writing, and connected to web-based versions of my favorite cloud services if I needed access to files or social media.
The best part about the XPS 13 Developers Edition, however, is Dell’s own support offerings. It’s clear that releasing an Ubuntu into the wild without good support would be suicide for the product. To that end, the company is offering one year of “ProSupport” that includes round-the-clock North American tech support and next-day on-site servicing. While Dell Hell is still a fresh memory in my mind, at least, this offering is more in line with corporate support than end-user Windows management.

Who is it for?

Designers
No. Unless you’re a GIMP master, this probably isn’t the laptop for you. To be fair it’s surprisingly thin and light but it has no SD card slot, making it a hard sell for the designers among you. Working solely on the web? Sure, you could feasibly get away with doing a little CSS or HTML on this thing, but you’re probably better served with a laptop running more photo-editing applications.
Writers will also be a little put off by the lack of native support for some of their tools. However, if you’re a markdown/plain text editor kind of person, this laptop connected with a revision control system could be a winner. It obviously depends on your workflow and, although I was able to pick it up fairly quickly, Ubuntu might not be the place to look for absolute ease-of-use.

Founders
Yes. To paraphrase Justin Timberlake, a laptop isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? An Ubuntu laptop. While you may annoy most of your co-workers with your insistence on running LibreOffice, this laptop is more than enough to run a few spreadsheets on and, in addition, build a business with. Seamless connectivity to most cloud services is a large benefit and thanks to Dell’s CloudLauncher app you can quickly and easily spin up nodes with a few keystrokes. Best of all, you’re not going to be another me-too entrepreneur with a MacBook Air and a dream (and you don’t have to use Windows 8), which is a great feeling

Programmers
Yes. This is a more-than-capable programmer’s machine and all of the care Dell put into this laptop really helps it shine as a developer’s device. For example, Dell has added Profile Tool, a method for “cloning” a workspace between laptops. This allows you to manage dependencies, preferred system tools, and tool chains. An Ars reviewer notes that these Profiles could become a way to “share” setups between programmers as well as a method to see how programming “superstars” have set up their machines. In short, Dell wants to make it clear that they care about developers with this device.
Bottom Line
It doesn’t get much cooler than the XPS 13 – and that’s high praise coming from an unreformed Apple addict. While I’m not sure this would become my everyday carry laptop, I could definitely see it replacing a similarly outfitted Windows machine and, if I ever felt the need to go full Doctorow when it comes to encryption, open software, and paranoia, this is the device I’d choose.

   
     
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			<pubDate>Mon, 20 May 2013 14:00:02 CDT</pubDate>
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			<title>Sensopia Raises $1.2 Million Series A For “Magical” Floor Plan Capturing Application, MagicPlan</title>
			<link>http://seek4news.com/news/sensopia-raises-12-million-series-a-for-“magical”-floor-plan-capturing-application-magicplan</link>
			<description><![CDATA[Sensopia, a company which actually uncovered a practical application for augmented reality, has raised a $1.2 million Series A round for its floor plan capturing application called “MagicPlan.” The app allows users to hold up their phone and then scan the dimensions of the room around them in order to create an instant floor plan that can be exported to various formats, including DXF, PDF, JPEG and HTML, the latter for viewing the plan on the web.
To perform the scan, the app “sees” the room in the camera’s viewfinder, and then you tap on the screen to label things like corners and doors.
Participating in the new round were Partech International, Tekton Ventures, Normandy Ventures, and other private investors. The company says it will use the funding to accelerate growth and further develop the application, making the software easier to use and allowing for the capture of rooms in three dimensions.

The startup had released an updated version of the MagicPlan app around a year ago, which at the time had introduced an upgraded user interface, a full HD iPad version, and improvements to the “MagicPlan Cloud” service – a web service that allows for data-sharing with partners. Although consumers are, of course, welcome to use the app themselves for free (for non-commercial use), Sensopia’s revenue comes from its subscription plans and enterprise adoption.

The company had previously formed agreements with Seloger (France’s Zillow), RTV (Real Tour Vision – a provider of real estate tours in the U.S.), Moobz (the Century 21 technology provider), and Cocontest (a crowd-sourced platform for interior design).
This March, it rolled out version 3.0 of the MagicPlan software, and announced a key partnership with Home Depot. Through this agreement, users could share their floor plan with Home Depot and make an appointment with an associate who would then use the plan to better assist the customer while in the store.
To reach its preferred market (i.e., paying customers), Sensopia is also releasing its MagicPlan software development kit today, which will allow MagicPlan’s technology to be integrated into other applications. The first customer to launch using this SDK is Symbility, a software company that makes claims processing applications for insurance companies.
Symbility will allow its inspectors to create floor plans while on site, while completing a claims adjustment using their iPad.
“It would not be a stretch to imagine that, in the future, claim management data for smaller cases could be generated by consumers, rather than the adjusters, and sent to the insurance company directly,” says Richard Adair, President and COO of Symbility. ”This would, of course, lead to significant savings in both time and money,” he adds.
Until now, Sensopia had been operating as a bootstrapped company. CEO Pierre Gaubil explains, “we wanted to reach real traction before raising money.” Today, he thinks it’s there. The app now has over 4 million downloads and over 20,000 floor plans created per day, Gaubil also notes – up from a million when the version 2.0 was released last April.
MagicPlan is available in the App Store here.
   
     
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			<pubDate>Mon, 20 May 2013 08:50:04 CDT</pubDate>
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