Blogs

Developer tools are now rising allowing programmers to now choose software they are comfortable with to assist them during the development and testing process. I highlight some for you below.

Recently, I used a tool called PhoneGap, which combines a focus on pure JavaScript and HTML for phones.

If your business is building large-scale applications in which plenty of data will be processed, the Hadoop framework is equipped to process this together with Hive, which is file system that executes the SQL-like queries.

Eclipse is a fine IDE for building and debugging java applications, and can be used while building a website.

The NetBeans IDE, which works fast and well with multiple languages, expands its C/C++ capabilities with some new features and enables unit testing in PHP.

OpenStreetMap is open source version of popular mapping services.

With these developer tools, programmers can do more to achieve top software or websites with minimal effort.

We have recently witnessed strong advancement in the field of website layout and design. Everything evolves. Flash movies, gigantic animations and other graphic media have become increasingly widespread over the years.

However, in the effort to have the ‘coolest' website layout design, website owners tend to forget to whom they are creating their website for: their target audience.

The target audience consists of the people you want to visit your website. And this is one of the crucial areas to consider. Moreover, the goal is to increase visitors, make them stay for an extended period of time, purchase items or select your business' service, return to your website in the future, become a regular visitor or customer, and even recommend you to others.

The success or failure of your website is significantly determined by your audience. Hence, when designing for your target audience, consider the demographics of the people who you want to visit your site. These demographics include gender, ethnicity, race, age, education level, and even fiscal siatuation.

This is where market research is of help, to identify your audience.

Then, there are tools to determine the exact numbers and statistics once the website is launched, allowing you to see if you are attracting your audience as expected. These are tools like Google Analytics, Alexa, Quantcast, Goingup and others that provide detailed reports of the types of people that cover your REAL audience.

This is a great way to make sure your target audience is actually the audience that is viewing your website. You cannot always make everyone who visits your website stay or return, but when your website is concentrated on the correct target audience, then you increase repeat visitor chances greatly.

Every self-respecting geek would tell you that what he would like in a friend are one, that he's very rich, two, he's able to keep up with the intellectual barter that happens whenever technology or any intelligent conversations would come up. Lastly, he should really be good with the ladies, considering that majority of us geeks are female free (since birth).

If you feel the same way as millions of other geeks in the world, there's only one person in the entire universe that has to be your friend; Tony Stark, also known as Iron Man.

As the head of Stark Industries, he commands a fleet of engineers and scientists to develop the ultra-cool defence and ammunition systems that can literally "blow" enemies away. As a side project, he developed this ultra cool "hot rod red and yellow" inspired armour that wreaks havoc anywhere and to anyone he wishes. In short, the perfect war armour.

As the literature says (meaning comic books), Iron Man is nothing more than a pigment of one artist's imagination, or is he?

Somewhere across Utah, Steve Jacobsen is already building the first (and hopefully not the last because I really want a cool armor) of many armour that's going to be used by the U.S. Military in the coming future.

Enter the XOS Skeleton.

The XOS Skeleton, like it's counterpart in the comic books, gives the wearer that oh so good light feeling and "enhanced" human strength. As Rex Jameson, pilot of the first ever "wearable" enhancement is demonstrating on the XOS Skeleton, he can lift quite heavy objects seamlessly as the armour gives its wearers the extra boost of strength that you need.

The original creator of the XOS Skeleton is Sacros, which has been purchased by a bigger defence company Raytheon. Being funded by the Pentagon's Defence Advanced Research Projects (DARPA), they're turning the military's 40-year old fantasy of "mechanically enhanced" humans for war into reality.

Personally, I think that the way it works is that there are pneumatic actuators or pistons built into the armour that's helping with the load of doing heavy stuff (imagine a car jack that can be commanded and can react fast to commands to go up and down), not to mention if you got hit by a punch coming from a guy wearing the armour, you'd likely be missing a couple of ribs if ever you'll be alive to even be interviewed. As far as tests go, the pilot can throw jabs seamlessly wearing the 150 pound skeleton, lift 200 pounds (not sure, maybe a rumour).

The exoskeleton definitely needs a good battery pack though, as you can see on the picture, the pilot is still wired (since it's just the initial stages), and I think the battery pack wouldn't last long for the missions intended to those who will use it.

Adi Granov, one of the illustrators of Iron Man and a consultant on the Iron Man films, saw the XOS at work and he can't believe that Sacros is almost close to the comic book counter part. "I knew that's where we were heading, but I didn't realise we were this close," Granov told Popular Science. Aside from the lack of flight and weapons, he adds, "that's Iron Man".

I can't wait till I see the first of those armours go into battle. It would really be moment to remember seeing a fleet of "Iron Men" rolling out and doing skirmishes on a desert somewhere. Just give it a good battery pack, and a tricked out shell, it could possibly pass for Iron Man armour.