Apple‘s biggest announcements at WWDC 2013

Apple on Monday unveiled new mobile software that it described as the most revolutionary overhaul of its operating system since the iPhone was introduced in 2007, sporting a revamped layout with fresh colors, new animation and more depth to its display.

As Apple kicked off its annual conference in San Francisco for its developers, executives also showed off a new line of Mac computers and said that updated Siri voice software used on the iPhone now incorporates Microsoft's Bing search engine.

Called iOS 7, the smartphone and tablet platform redesigned by resident creative honcho Jonny Ive comes with a new edge-to-edge look that uses translucency to highlight underlying content, new typefaces, and new icons.

Kleiner Perkins venture capitalist Matt Murphy, who runs the firm's iFund, tweeted that the new iOS platform "Looks livelier, happier, approachable."

It will also support multitasking for all apps, executives said. "It's the biggest change to iOS since the iPhone," said CEO Tim Cook.

Apple also said that Siri, the voice-activated personal digital assistant, comes with all new male and female voices, a new look, and is now directly integrated with Bing.

Some industry experts have criticized Apple's mobile operating software, which has retained its general look and feel since its inception, for looking somewhat dated.

My ass

Marketing chief Phil Schiller offered the audience a sneak peek at Apple's upcoming new Mac Pro - its top-of-the-line computer with a sleek cylindrical chassis that he said will feature several times the processing and memory speed and power of the previous generation.

It will be released later this year and be assembled in the United States, Schiller said.

Apple's stock has fallen 37% after touching a high of $705 in September as competition in the key smartphone market escalated. Some investors believe the company that invented the iPhone is struggling to come up with original new products after co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs died in 2011.

"Can't innovate any more, my ass," Schiller said as he showed off the new Mac Pro. "This is a machine unlike anything we've ever made."

Apple also announced a new operating system for the Mac PC called OSX Mavericks, moving away from its penchant for naming its computer software after big cats. The new OS can handle multiple display and "tagging" of documents, among other new features.

In an unusual move, Apple also shared the stage with little-known startup Anki, which was given the opportunity to show off a game.

The conference, whose tickets sold out in just over a minute when it opened up in April, comes as South Korean rival Samsung Electronics has solidified its lead in the smartphone market with a 33% share followed by Apple with 18% during the first quarter, according to market research firm IDC.

Cook is under pressure to show that the company that created the smartphone and tablet markets is not slowing down as deep-pocketed competitors such as Samsung and Google encroach on its share.

Investor concerns center around whether Apple will be able to come up with more groundbreaking products as smartphone and tablet market gets more crowded.

In April, Apple reported its first quarterly profit decline in over a decade.

Cook told the audience of developers at the Moscone Center in San Francisco that Apple's App Store now has 900,000 apps, which have been downloaded a total of 50 billion times.

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Microsoft India names Karan Bajwa as MD

The Indian arm of the world's largest software company, Microsoft, named its head of enterprise business as managing director, replacing Sanket Akerkar, who has been in the role for over two years. 

In a statement on Monday, Microsoft India said Karan Bajwa will take over as MD (sales and marketing) from Akerkar, who will move back to the United States and take up another assignment for the company. 

Bajwa's appointment comes at a time when Microsoft India has been facing a churn in its top deck, with over three business heads leaving the company due to alleged differences with the leadership team, which includes Akerkar and chairman Bhaskar Pramanik. 

Sathya Prasad Rai, head of Microsoft's small- to mid-market solutions and Sushant Dwivedi, head of small and medium businesses solutions had left the firm about three months back. 

India is one of the fastest growing markets for Microsoft, where it has over 5,000 employees and two research and development centres. In 2012, Microsoft raked in Rs 5,417 crore in revenues from the country.

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Personalized Email Becomes a Reality with the Launch of Email.biz

An email address of your choice, fully customized, easy to remember with a personal touch is now a reality with the launch of Email.biz, a premium and personalized email service from Guava Softs Pvt. Ltd. Email.biz comes at an opportune time when email has become an intrinsic part of both personal and business communications. Following are some of the differentiating features of Email.biz; 

-- Registered users of Email.biz can choose from over 20000 premium domains and effortlessly create an email address by incorporating their name, company’s name or even their nickname. (e.g anshul@anshul.biz; anshul@cool.biz; or anshul.cool@coolanshul.biz) 
-- This innovative service comes packed with unlimited storage 
-- Sms alerts for every new mail received 
-- Unmatched security 
-- User can create world’s shortest email address (eg.a@7.biz) 
-- User can send in upto 500 MB attachment 
-- Universal login: Users can also check mail from all of their accounts at other services from withintheir Email.biz account, making it a one stop solution 

The company unveiled this premium service at the hands of its brand ambassador – yaana. As the brand ambassador, yaana believes that 'personalization is the need of the hour. Every individual has its own tastes and preferences and Email.biz caters to these needs in a very distinctive manner.' 

Speaking about this innovative service, Mr. Anshul Goyal, Founder & CEO, Email.biz said, “In a world where almost every imaginable business idea has already been thought and tried out, the only way to beat the competition is to think in new direction. I am extremely glad to launch our brand Email.biz with a host of unique features and we are sure it has the potential to revolutionize the webmail experience.” 

Email.biz offers a unique email of your choice including single and double letter domains, round the clock customer support, multiple tab option, 20 GB of mail storage and much more. With Cloud based Login and Multiple Login System, Email.biz will give a safe and secure access to users’ POP / IMAP email accounts. Registered users can access their email with any Web Browser, PDA or Mobile phone from anywhere in the world. Users get enhanced security features and their email will be protected with EV SSL certificate, which ensures that there is never an intrusion into their account or information. The creators of this unique service have ensured optimum safety of data as none of the mails or information is stored on their servers. Further information can be found at www.Email.biz or one can call the premium support number : +91-1 666 666 666.

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Google launches world‘s first tablet cafe

Among the washer women, carpenters, busy waiters and squabbling children sweltering under the midday sun on this dusty Dakar street an internet revolution is taking place in the world's first tablet cafe. Next to the workshops, meat stores and barbershops on what could be any bustling street in sub-Saharan Africa, a grey concrete building stands out with a garish sign advertising the Tablette Cafe. 

"This is the first tablet cafe in the world, a cafe that works with tablets," said Tidiane Deme, the head of Google in French-speaking Africa. The concept, introduced by the internet search giant, is a simple twist on the traditional cyber cafes which have been springing up across Africa as the internet boom takes hold, ditching PCs for tablet computers. 

When Medoune Seck, 33, opened his Equinoxe cyber cafe six years ago, he quickly discovered that frequent power cuts and exorbitant electricity bills were a major headache for him and his customers. Then along comes Google which offered funding last year to turn one cyber cafe in Africa into a pilot tablet cafe. Seck applied and his cuber cafe was picked as their guinea pig. 

While tablets have taken advanced industrialised countries by storm and pushed cyber cafes further to the margins, in the developing world they could lead to their renaissance. Tablet cafes could take hold in Africa because most people cannot afford to buy the devices, and tablets use batteries and mobile data connections which make them immune to power cuts. 

The Equinoxe now sports 15 tablets and has installed cabins for private video chats. Three PCs stand in a corner, but they do not generate much interest among clients, who recline on the cafe's bright orange and blue sofas, jabbing at their touch screens. Seck says his tablets cost more than PCs but they save on power bills as they consume 25 times less electricity. 

He believes they can help revive cyber cafes which, according to Google, are in something of a slump precisely because of the high cost of electricity and frequent power failures cutting into business. 

"Tablet computers will revolutionize Africa, and Senegal," said Seck. The simplicity of using the touchscreen devices could help bring computing to scores of new people. The Tablette Cafe charges the same price as its predecessor did for PCs: 300 CFA francs (80 US cents) per hour. 

"Our hope is that cyber cafes attract new customers interested in a more simple and interactive way of going online, and make significant savings on their number one operating expense: electricity," Alex Grouet, Google's business development manager in Francophone Africa, said in a blog post. 

Cafe owners should be able to invest the savings on electricity costs into improving their connection speeds, he suggested, thereby boosting their clients' experience.

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Samsung Galaxy Ace 3 goes official

Samsung has unveiled the third smartphone in its Galaxy Ace series, in single as well as dual sim variants. The company has launched two versions of the phone, one compatible with 3G networks and the other with 4G for different markets. The new phone, named Galaxy Ace 3, had been rumoured for long and its leaked photo had recently surfaced on the internet. 

The new Samsung Galaxy Ace 3 has a 4-inch TFT touchscreen with 800x480p resolution and 233ppi pixel density. The phone is powered by Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean), the latest version of Google's free mobile operating system, topped with TouchWiz UI. It packs a 1GHz dual-core processor with 1GB RAM under the hood and comes with 4GB internal storage and microSD support up to 64GB. 

Just like its predecessors, Galaxy Ace 3 has a 5MP rear camera with LED flash, whereas a VGA unit is placed in front. Connectivity options in the smartphone include 2G, 3G, optional 4G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 and microUSB 2.0. A 1,500mAh battery powers this device, which has proprietary Samsung software, like Hub, S Travel, S Translator, S Voice, Smart Stay etc. 

Key specs: 

Display: 4-inch TFT touchscreen with 800x480p resolution and 233ppi pixel density Operating system: Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean) with TouchWiz UI Processor and RAM: 1GHz dual-core processor with 1GB RAM Storage: 4GB internal storage and microSD support up to 64GB Connectivity: 2G, 3G, optional 4G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 and microUSB 2.0 Camera: 5MP camera with LED flash on the back, VGA front unit Battery: 1,500mAh

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100% rise in jobs for mobile app developers

To bridge the significant gap in demand and availability of skilled mobile app developers, several large organisations are tapping global talent hotspots like India, China, Israel and Europe, says a study. 

Job postings for mobile developers has doubled in the last two years, but supply is growing only at 13 per cent, the study by Talent Neuron, a web-based talent planning and management platform from Zinnov LLC, said. 

To address the gaps, companies are following a three- pronged approach -- acquisitions, leveraging global talent hotspots by expanding their R&D footprint and vendor partnerships -- to take advantage of available talent, the study said. 

"Several large organisations are leveraging global talent 'hotspots' such as India, China, Israel and Europe," it said. 

The majority of mobile application talent is located in EMEA region (Europe, the Middle East and Africa), where 42 per cent of the global top 25 cities for mobile development are located, with Finland, Tel Aviv and Moscow emerging as key locations. 

Interestingly, APAC (Asia Pacific) is a hotspot for talent that works on Android platform, while iOS and Blackberry developers are less prevalent in the region. 

The study found tremendous demand for HTML 5 development skills, which witnessed a 149 per cent increase in job postings in 2013, followed by job posts for Android app developers (146 per cent rise) and iOS developers (132 per cent rise). 

Commenting on the findings, Talent Neuron Co-Founder and CEO Vijay Swami said, "There is an intense war for mobile development talent, fuelled by low availability and the dynamic nature of the industry which requires constantly updated skillsets." 

"Rather than waiting for the perfect candidate, companies should aggressively leverage global locations to expand their catchment area, analyse skills of niche mobile first organisations before M&A and opportunistically leverage partners for talent (not cost)," Swami added. 

The report further noted that regions like the San Francisco Bay Area, New York, London and Tel Aviv can take on high-end work, while cities like Sydney, Tokyo, Munich, Sao Paolo are 'challengers' where talent predominantly works on testing and development. 

The ecosystem is still nascent in emerging cities like Beijing, Bangalore, Shanghai, Dublin and Madrid, it added.

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Look, where Google, Facebook store your data

Internet companies such as Apple, Facebook and Google have vast amounts of data on you.

These include the photos and video you share, the email you send and receive and the musings you broadcast to friends on what you are thinking or eating. Internet companies store all this information at data centers they run around the world. When you're ready to read your email, the message gets pulled from a computer at one of these centers. When you're sharing a photo, the image gets transmitted to one of these computers and stored there until someone else views it.

When the government requests information on a customer, with the presentation of a subpoena or court order, the internet service company taps these same computers to access the data.

Now comes a report on a clandestine program code-named "PRISM." As described by The Washington Post, PRISM gives the US government access to email, documents, audio, video, photographs and other data belonging to foreigners on foreign soil who are under investigation. The newspaper said participating companies and services include AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Skype, YouTube and Paltalk. Companies that responded to Associated Press inquiries say they only provide the government with user data required under the law.

In any case, like pieces of a puzzle, the bits and bytes left behind from people's electronic interactions can be cobbled together to draw conclusions about their habits, friendships and preferences using data-mining formulas and increasingly powerful computers.

It's all part of a phenomenon known as " Big Data," a catchphrase increasingly used to describe the science of analyzing the vast amount of information collected through mobile devices, web browsers and check-out stands. Analysts use powerful computers to detect trends and create digital dossiers about people.

It all starts with the data you make available to store at these data centers. Each center has clusters of computers and large internet pipelines to connect the machines to the rest of the world. Each company typically has several of these centres around the world, helping to meet growing demand for its services and guard against service disruptions should one site fail.

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How technology is changing your travel experience

Goodbye, plastic hotel room key. So long, wallet. Farewell, camera. These days you don't need any of the above to unlock a hotel room, buy a mojito or snap a vacation photo. All you need is, well - you. At hotels like Alma Barcelona in Spain, a scan of your fingertips opens the door to your room. At Ushuaia Ibiza Beach Hotel in the Mediterranean, you can buy suntan lotion and a sarong with a tap of two fingers. 

On some Disney Cruise Line ships, facial recognition technology enables onboard photographers to easily group every candid picture they take of you so that you can later browse (read: buy) them. Like it or not, we are living in an age of human holograms that welcome us to airport security checkpoints and luggage tags capable of texting us when our bags are lost. 

Technology and travel are becoming ever more fused, even at hotels where for centuries the basic demand has remained unchanged: a safe place to lay one's head. Today, your head could spin from some of the amenities. At Hotel 1000 in Seattle the rooms have infrared signals that scan and detect body heat to ensure that the housekeeping staff doesn't knock or barge in, while at Starwood's Aloft Hotel chain, radio frequency identification allows you to skip the front desk and check in with your smartphone instead (the chain said that more than 10,000 guests have already tried it). 

Arguably, the most compelling and unnerving of these technologies is biometrics -- the measurement of physical or behavioral traits to verify identity. Once strictly in the realm of spy novels and science fiction flicks, biometrics are increasingly being used by real-world hotels, resorts and cruise ships. For some travellers, it signals a new era of convenience: no more inadvertently demagnetizing your room key or hiding your wallet in your shoe at the pool. 

For others, it's yet another zone that Big Brother is penetrating (not to mention making "Mad Men" -style rendezvous less clandestine). Biometric technology has been around for decades. Hotels in chains like the Four Seasons and Hyatt have used them to track their employees' hours and whereabouts and to increase security on their properties. And a handful of hotels in the vanguard— Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Murano Resort and Kube, both in Paris — introduced biometric room keys years ago. 

(In Boston, Kimpton's Nine Zero Hotel has a penthouse suite that opens with a flash of your iris.) Even so, many travellers were unaware that biometrics were being deployed. Now, after years in the background, biometrics are slowly becoming a part of everyday life, popping up in stores, clubs, gyms. 

One of the most visible travel examples is evident at airports: Frequent fliers who have undergone background checks as part of US programs like Global Entry and Clear can now be seen sailing through security after pausing at kiosks to verify their biometric information through fingerprint and iris scans. Millions of travellers who want to be fast and unfettered have willingly paid the price, both in terms of money ($100 for five years for Global Entry; $179 a year for Clear) and privacy (the applications require personal information like your passport number, fingerprints and photos).

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All about Apple‘s new iTunes Radio service

Apple on Monday unveiled its hotly anticipated iTunes Radio service, as the iconic maker of the iPhone moved to challenge streaming music operators like Pandora and Spotify.

The free internet radio service features over 200 stations "and an incredible catalogue of music from the iTunes Store," Apple said in a statement as it opened its annual developers conference in San Francisco.

The ad-supported free music service is set to launch later this year and "offers music fans access to thousands of new songs every week, as well as serving up exclusive music from new and popular artists before you hear them anywhere else," an Apple statement said.

The service will be integrated with Apple's personal voice-assistant software programme Siri, so users will be able to find out "Who plays that song?" or ask the digital assistant to "Play more like this."

"iTunes Radio is an incredible way to listen to personalized radio stations which have been created just for you," said Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of internet software and services.

"It's the music you love most and the music you're going to love, and you can easily buy it from the iTunes Store with just one click."

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Alien-hunting telescope may be ready by 2018

Astronomers are planning a massive 250-foot telescope that will search for extraterrestrial life by detecting the heat that alien civilizations may produce. 

The proposed instrument -- called Colossus -- would measure 77-metre, which is more than double the aperture of any telescope yet constructed. It is expected to cost $1 billion. 

The telescope would be sensitive enough to spot cities or other signs of aliens for planets as far as 60 to 70 light-years from Earth, astronomers said. 

"If we had an investor come and say 'look, here are the resources you need', we could have the telescope built within five years," said Jeff Kuhn, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy, who is on the proposal team. 

In searches for extraterrestrial intelligence, astronomers generally focus on seeking out beamed signals from other civilisations. In four decades of searching, nothing definitive has been found, Space.com reported. 

There are limitations with this method, however. Perhaps the aliens might not send out signals themselves. Perhaps they broadcast in channels humans wouldn't think of using. 

Moreover, humans should perhaps be cautious about sending out signals and alerting more advanced civilisations to their presence, as physicist Stephen Hawking has said. 

This is where Colossus can shine, Kuhn said. The telescope is a passive receiver that allows astronomers to seek out extraterrestrials without alerting them to the search. 

Kuhn's team builds on a concept first proposed by physicist Freeman Dyson in the 1960s. Humans can capture only a fraction of the energy sent out by the Sun, but a more advanced civilisation would want to grab as much as possible. 

Dyson suggested an extraterrestrial civilisation would surround their star with a structure - now known as a "Dyson sphere" - that would capture the energy needed and then bleed the rest off into space. 

From Earth, a star that is faint optically but very strong in the infrared could be an indication of such a sphere, Dyson mused. 

Kuhn's team, rather than focusing on stars, is instead looking at the surfaces of alien planets. 

"Similarly, an exoplanet that was optically dark, but thermally bright, would be evidence of extraterrestrial civilisation," Kuhn said. 

"The biggest telescopes that we're likely to see in the next 100 years or so will not be able to directly image cities or organised structures on the planet," he said. Still, he added, local heat sources could be visible. 

There's no firm location yet for the telescope, but Kuhn suggested it could be built in the San Pedro Martir mountainous area of Baja California in Mexico, close to the location of one partner in the project: the National University of Mexico in Ensenada.

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TCS, Canadian NGO team up on educational programme

Country's largest software services firm TCS said it has partnered with Canada's Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC) to develop a programme to get high school students interested in pursuing higher education in fields like science and mathematics. 

ICTC is a not-for-profit organisation that conducts research, and develops and implements solutions to help Canadians take advantage of the digital economy. 

Under its goIT initiative in Canada, Tata Consultancy Services has been working with ICTC to develop a program to get grade 7-10 students in Canada interested in pursuing higher education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields, TCS said in a statement. 

The programme will be initially rolled out to 10 schools within the Greater Toronto area starting in the 2013-14 school year, with the intent to expand to more school boards and regions across Canada, it added. 

It will be led by TCS professionals and involve multiple in-school workshops throughout the entire school season on some of the latest technology topics. 

In the first year, the program will target over 1,000 students. 

"Building on a long history of working with Canadian universities, TCS is delighted to introduce our goIT program which is designed specifically for students at the stage that they most likely start making career choices," TCS Canada Marketing Head and local goIT Program Owner Loucas Saites said. 

Canada needs to attract more students into ICT and TCS is proud to partner with ICTC to further this cause, he added. 

In 2009, TCS launched the goIT program within the US to address the issue of decreasing university enrolment in careers related to science, technology, engineering and mathematics. 

The TCS Canada goIT program is designed to encourage students to take up ICT as a career choice to solve the long term skills shortage in the country. 

"Preparing the workforce of the future will be critical to our economy and who better to bring on board than our youth, we're thrilled to see TCS' leadership in this arena striving to be part of the solution," ICTC President and CEO Namir Anani said. 

This program brings emerging technologies into the classroom and gives students direct interaction with some of today's leading experts, he added.

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PS4 Will Cost $399 — Undercuts Xbox One by $100

If you’re still debating between the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, Sony may have made the decision a little easier for you.

During its press conference at E3 Monday night, the company announced that the PS4 will cost just $399 — $100 less than Microsoft’s Xbox One.

While Sony officially announced the PS4 this February, Monday marked the first time we were able to see the console.

The PS4 has an X86 processor, enhanced PC GPU and 8GB of high-speed unified memory. It also features a dual-shock controller that includes a touchpad, headphone jack and share button.

Upon release, a number of big titles will make their way to the console, including Destiny, Watch Dogs, Batman: Arkham Origins, and Kingdom Hearts 3.

If you’re still debating between the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, Sony may have made the decision a little easier for you.

During its press conference at E3 Monday night, the company announced that the PS4 will cost just $399 — $100 less than Microsoft’s Xbox One.

While Sony officially announced the PS4 this February, Monday marked the first time we were able to see the console.

The PS4 has an X86 processor, enhanced PC GPU and 8GB of high-speed unified memory. It also features a dual-shock controller that includes a touchpad, headphone jack and share button.

Upon release, a number of big titles will make their way to the console, including Destiny, Watch Dogs, Batman: Arkham Origins, and Kingdom Hearts 3.

The PlayStation 4 will hit store shelves this holiday season.

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Share your coding story. - GameDev.net

I started coding when I was 11 an a wire wrap computer my dad built that only had a calculator screen. We just had a keypad an had to code in machine language(there wasn't even assembly language on this z80 computer- all hex) Later I received a Timex Sinclair 1000 to program on and it had a membrane keyboard that hurt my fingers after hours of programming so I bought a keyboard from Radio Shack, modified its circuitry to make it compatible and screwed it and the motherboard to some plywood and soldered them together. At school, we used Apple IIs and I always wowed my teachers. A friend in my electronics class loaned me his Apple IIc and I coded on that quit a bit all BASIC. One Christmas, I received an Atari 800lx which I coded like a fiend on mostly BASIC and some Assembly because I had a cartridge for that!

Share your coding story.
GameDev.net
I promptly earned an Associate's Degree in computer science(the college paid me to tutor Visual Basic) and became an A+ Certified computer repair technician.
I then got away from computers for a long time- like 10 years. I got back in to them in 1999 when I first got on the internet. I promptly earned an Associate's Degree in computer science(the college paid me to tutor Visual Basic) and became an A+ Certified computer repair technician. I struck out on my own and have been self employed for 8 years now. Most of my coding has been geared toward robotics and interfacing the real world though I have accomplished mostly nothing in that endeavour other than exposure to several languages. I have dabbled in the following languages in order of time used each: Basic, Visual Basic, Python, B4A, C, WXEuphoria, PHP, java, C++.

2010 I was heavy into Python and thereafter made the transition over to Linux where I ported several of my VB and Python programs over to C. Most of that was just playing but some things have the potential to be pretty useful. I wrote a program that read the webcam, picks out the edges on the image and differentiates the vertical lines from everything else(robot eyes that can see doorways and wall edges) in both VB and C(actually this was a mixture of Linux command line programming and my C code and a few utilities- I like to tech chain stuff together).

Last year I wrote FlaTank(based on a game I wrote in college in VB and Atari's Combat and Bally's Tron tank game) for Android and released it on BlackBerry PlayBook also. Now I have 30 apps on BB(I wrote or ported these for the port a thons for a paltry $3000)- some useless and some excellent and I have ~20 published on Google Play. It's finally starting to pay a little.

I'm currently learning HTML5 and SEO and am working on a nongame app which I will keep to myself for the time being.

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DB2 LUW To Get MongoDB Hooks--Will DB2/400 Be Next? - IT Jungle

IBM and 10gen, the company behind the open-source MongoDB NoSQL database, announced a partnership last week that will lead to closer integration between MongoDB and DB2 for Linux, Unix, and Windows (LUW), as well as WebSphere middleware. The work will allow developers to build compelling Web and mobile applications on DB2 that utilize NoSQL storage and query concepts. The question for IBM i shops is whether Big Blue sees fit to add the same capabilities to the DB2 for i database that is integrated with the operating system.

MongoDB is the most popular NoSQL database, which is gaining popularity as a way to store massive (or humongous) amounts of unstructured documents and make them easily accessible to developers working with the latest HTML5 and JavaScript tools. Developers pull documents from MongoDB by writing BSON, a binary version of JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) that adds the capability to create dynamic schemas. NoSQL databases like MongDB don't enforce relational database constructs like SQL and tables, and are hailed for their capability to store and access rich N-dimensional documents, and for better human readability.

IBM is going to support the MongoDB query language and the BSON wire protocol with DB2 and the elastic, in-memory WebSphere eXtreme Scale data grid platform. IBM says it will work with 10gen and others to create "standards" that will allow developers to query JSON documents stored in DB2 for LUW.

This will give applications that were written to run against MongoDB the capability to run against existing DB2 for LUW stores, opening up a vast array of corporate data to the latest Web and mobile applications. IBM says developers will be able to leverage the new standards from their standard Eclipse and Worklight Studio environments (the latter being a tool for mobile app development), and that customers may begin using the new technology by the third quarter of 2013.

"Through its support of MongoDB, IBM is marrying the database world with the new world of mobile app development," says Jerry Cuomo, chief technology officer for WebSphere and an IBM Fellow. "Now, millions of developers will be able to deliver new, engaging enterprise apps that leverage the vast data resources managed by organizations around the world."

Mongo Good

MongoDB has been adopted by the likes of SourceForge and Craigslist to store and archive vast archives of Web documents. SAP also uses MongoDB for its Java platform as a service (PaaS) offering. Google uses a NoSQL backend (not MongoDB) for its Google App Engine (GAE) platform as a service PaaS cloud offering, too, and other cloud providers have similar NoSQL data stores.

Hooking up with MongoDB is undeniably a smart move for IBM, which trails Oracle 11g andMySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, and PostgreSQL in the database race, and is only two places ahead of seventh-place MongoDB on the DB-Engines Ranking.

The question for IBM i shops is whether IBM is planning to extend the standards work it is undertaking with 10gen and MongoDB to DB2 for i, or DB2/400 as it is still colloquially known. An IBM spokesperson said the company "may consider this capability for additional platforms, but have nothing to announce at this time."

DB2 for i shares some components with DB2 for LUW, as well as with DB2 for z/OS, the implementation for IBM's System z mainframe. It is unclear how much additional work it would take to support the BSON line protocol and the MongoDB query language in DB2 for i.

There is definitely a precedent to expanding DB2 for i to support additional databases, and it is called MySQL. Way back in 2007IBM worked with MySQL to support the open source database on the System i server, and to enabling DB2/400 to function as one of the storage engines for MySQL. This work has been stymied a bit by Oracle, which acquired MySQL via Sun Microsystems in 2010, and subsequently dropped support for running MySQL on IBM i less than a year later.

The IBM i version of MySQL lives on as DBi, a project managed by PHP backer Zend Technologies. Because so many PHP apps were written to use MySQL, keeping a version of MySQL running on the IBM i platform was deemed important enough to undertake the project. Zend's DBi, which became available a year ago, is managed through a partnership with Percona.

The success that Zend and IBM have had with running PHP/MySQL apps on the IBM i server shows that there is demand among IBM i shops for an alternative to the traditional stack of applications written in RPG and COBOL (and Java to a lesser extent) and storing relational data in the straight-laced DB2 for i. The Web and mobile development worlds are evolving quickly, and NoSQL databases like MongoDB are important components of those worlds.

The IBM i platform could use the injection of new blood that a MongoDB hook could bring. Consider that DB2/400 and DB2 for i are not even listed among the 170-plus data stores listed on DB-Engines. (For what it's worth, DB2 for z/OS isn't either.)

IBM i shops today are adopting third-party middleware products that present DB2 for i data using the latest HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS technologies. There is an obvious demand for tools to build modern looking Web and mobile applications that run on IBM i and utilize the vast stores of data kept in DB2 for i. IBM has taken the first step to supporting the new generation of MongoDB apps on its DB2 for LUW database. Whether it will do the same for IBM i depends on whether IBM i shops want it, and how loudly they ask IBM for it.

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