Mustafa Isik has produced a system where two people can edit the same file in a chat like way. Conflict are resolved in real time. This, Real-Time Shared Editing, allows people to work together over the network, this could be a really good technology for when teams work from different sites on the same project. Technologies like these might allow teams to be worldwide, making the most of talent globally on the same software.
Programmers need all the help they can get. It can be a thankless task sometimes and language designers with the best intentions cause misleading behavior to occur even in the simplest of code. The authors of Java Puzzlers, have mined the Java specifications misleading problems that cause issues in production code. It makes interesting reading, it can also points to scary traps that could trip up the hapless programmer. They do however recommend a tool called findbugs that will literally find bugs in your software.
The UK Government's Power of Information Task Force have created a public competition to produce mashups of government and public data. The site Show us a better way offers a £20,000 prize fund to further develop the winning entry.
Last year I started to learn Chinese. But didn't get very far. I've found out that the eclipse-platform has been used to create a program to help with learning Chinese script. It is called Zhongwen Development Tool or ZDT. (Zhongwen is Chinese for Chinese). The program helps when learning Chinese characters and tests your chinese character and radical knowledge using a flashcard system.
