Cooperative network supercomputing is becoming increasingly popular for harnessing the power of the global Internet computing platform. A typical Internet supercomputer consists of a master computer or server and a large number of computers called workers, performing computation on behalf of the master. Despite the simplicity and benefits of...

I first began developing social applications when Facebook opened up its developer platform in 2007, giving people like me a taste of the extensive social data that an application can use to improve growth and target personalization settings. At the time, I was building social fantasy sports applications for CBSSports.com, pulling user...

This book is about writing real-world applications for the Android platform primarily using the Python language and a little bit of JavaScript. While there is nothing wrong with Java, it really is overkill when all you need to do is turn on or off a handful of settings on your Android device. The Scripting Layer for Android (SL4A)...

I still remember deploying my first Microsoft Access application 10 years ago for a head hunting agency. They had a user base of about 200 users (I can already hear some of you groan) and they needed a system to manage job applicants and the companies that want to hire them. And they tossed my meager development team of two an...

Drupal is a great content management system, a powerful framework for web applications, and a cutting edge social publishing platform. Above all, Drupal is more than software—it is a vibrant community of developers, designers, project managers, business innovators, technology strategists, user experience professionals, standards...

Real time 3D games have been around for well over ten years now. We’ve played them, created assets in the style of our favorites, and maybe even “mod”ed a few of them. But until recently, the cost of licensing one of the premier game engines has ranged from several hundred thousand to several million dollars per title...

Numerical analysis is the branch of mathematics that is used to find approximations to difficult problems such as finding the roots of non-linear equations, integration involving complex expressions and solving differential equations for which analytical solutions do not exist. It is applied to a wide variety of disciplines such as...

Every new version of SQL Server brings with it new tools and features for database administrators (DBAs), developers, and architects, for them to be able to provide an effective solution for the end users in a simpler and more efficient manner. The terms effective and efficiency can be measured in a technical perspective as High Availability...