Google Coming to your Idiot Box?

Google is set to invade your living room as the company puts its finishing touches on technology that lets software developers build applications for televisions in much the same way as they do for smartphones. Google is planning to unveil an Android-based 'Google TV' at the Google I/O conference, which open in May, San Francisco. Intel and Sony are also involved in the platform, which is rumoured to be open source, in keeping with the Android operating system. "(Google) hopes the move will spur the same outpouring of creativity that consumers have seen in applications for cellphones."

Symbian to Fully Endorse HTML 5

Symbian has released a set of web application development tools for the recently open-sourced Symbian platform. These tools aim to aid the development, distribution and installation of web applications on Symbian devices, using technologies such as HTML, JavaScript and CSS. "Symbian Foundation is fully embracing HTML5. Symbian^4 will take a big step forward and we’re encouraging our contributors to move as fast as possible. Check this out for a snapshot of the progress," says the Development Tools Manager at Symbian Foundation.

SugarCRM Now on Windows Azure

Microsoft and SugarCRM began working together in 2006 to deliver Sugar applications on top of Microsoft technology. SugarCRM supports IIS as well as Active Directory, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Office Outlook and Microsoft Exchange Server. The two companies have continued to collaborate as part of the Interop Vendor Alliance. In August, SugarCRM announced Sugar Community Edition on the Microsoft Web Platform, a framework for developing, deploying and hosting Web applications.

RIM Updates for Java and Web Tools Make Blackberry App Development Easier

The BlackBerry Java Plug-In for Eclipse v1.1 and the BlackBerry Web Plug-in v2.0 offer new capabilities that make it even easier to create feature-rich applications. The BlackBerry Widget SDK (Software Development Kit) v1.0 and the BlackBerry(R) Java SDK v5.0, which includes more than 20,000 APIs, provide unparalleled access to BlackBerry(R) smartphone hardware features, native BlackBerry software applications and other unique system capabilities of the BlackBerry Application Platform.

GPUs Revving Up to Obliterate the CPU

The computing functionality and horsepower of GPUs has grown over the last few years. So the role of the GPU is rapidly expanding to game tasks beyond rasterization-based graphics. Now GPU computing can be used for solving a variety of problems in game computing including game physics, artificial intelligence, animation, post-processing effects and others. Rev Lebaredian, Director of Engineering in Nvidia, says that as GPUs grow and become more general purpose, more and more of the game is going to be shifting over to the GPU. The final goal is to have the whole game run on the GPU. The Director of Engineering in Nvidia, Rev Lebaredian, says we are not able to depend on the same speed ups that we are getting year after year with traditional CPU architectures. So GPUs will obliterate the CPU.

Game Development Spawns cool Engineers

The computer game and hardware industry is advancing at a rapid pace, both in terms of technical innovation and sales. Nvidia is working towards expanding the market reach for games and to continually advance the state-of-the-art in visual computing. Saltmarch Media spoke to Nvidia's Ashu Rege and Keita Iida about the much awaited release of Nvidia’s Fermi architecture based GPUs. Nvidia's latest graphics card, based on Fermi architecture, is the company's first DirectX 11 graphics card. DirectX 11 is the next generation of graphics technology. Ashu firmly believes the Fermi architecture can truly exploit the possibilities of Direct X 11. Ashu and Keita share their thoughts on optimal Direct X 11 support becoming a deciding factor in terms of GPU sales in the coming years, how Fermi will fare against ATI’s HD5800 series, the most significant result of the AEGIA acquisition and whether modern games getting too dependant on high end hardware. When quizzed on the main skills Indian game developers should equip themselves with to gain a sizable share of the global game development work Ashu says Indian developers should develop a passion for being involved with game development to be truly successful. They should also look at going into high end game development, because what has actually become a critical bottleneck for studios worldwide is talent.

Blue Frog's Varun Nair Gives Sound a 15 on 10 Rating

Varun Nair has been a part of sound industry for the past four and half years and has dabbled in most areas of sound during this period. He started his career in the music industry and moved onto post production for commercials & feature films. His foray into game sound began after joining Blue Frog in 2008. He expectedly gives sound an importance rating of 15 on a scale of 10 since he believes the effect sound has on a player at the subconscious level cannot be substituted by any other sensory medium. Sound to him is one of the key emotional drivers in an audio-visual media piece across all formats – be it a game, a commercial or a feature film.

Storyboarding Key to Mobile Game Development Lifecycle

Dayanidhi, Vice President - Customer Delivery at Digital Chocolate, is an engineering and management graduate with over 17 years of experience in IT with expertise in delivery management. With the omnipresent swell in the area of mobile games development, Saltmarch Media caught up with Dayanidhi on the sidelines of the India Game Developer Summit 2010.

JBoss Fights to Retain Its Title in the Testing Tools Category

Testing is emerging into a healthy industry and an established discipline. The global software testing market is worth USD $13 billion. The number of tools available in the current market can be rather disillusioning. The Great Indian Developer Awards intends to put things into perspective. Here is a look at the final list of nominees in the Testing Tools category.

Aesthetics and End User Focus Key to Game Development Success

Saltmarch Media caught up with Harish for an informal chat on the sidelines of the India Game Developer Summit 2010. Harish Sivaramakrishnan is a computer scientist and a platform evangelist at Adobe Systems with over 10 years of experience working on the Adobe Flash platform. Read on to find out his views on the important aspects of game development and where India stands in the big picture.

CA, Microsoft, IBM and CollabNet Lock Horns in the Change & Configuration Management Tools Category

Enterprise-level Change and Configuration Management Tools have been gaining popularity in recent times but guru’s of this domain say that its all about picking the right tool for the right enterprise. The Indian developer ecosystem has chosen their top 5 tools in this category for the Developer Summit Awards 2010. Read on to find out more.