Friday, December 16, 2005

Matts Mind

I promised a link to a more personal blog of mine that I'm writing in while I'm OS. Naturally I forgot. So here it is:

Matts Mind

I'm posting much more to that blog for the forseeable future but if I want to write any software-related posts it'll be done here.

Google Music Search...and maybe an iTunes killer?

Google just announced the addition of a music search feature. Now you can search for your favourite artist's name and get some enhanced information, not just web site links.

There are also some pretty significant rumours that Google are going to release some sort of iTunes Store competitor. Dave's regularly on the mark and he's far from the only one spouting that kind of story (just do a Google search!)

I'm all for competition in this space! I love my iPod but the online music options are underwhelming.

Thursday, December 15, 2005

C++/CLI now an International Standard!

Sooo, now there's officially a new language on the block! C /CLI was just approved as an international standard.

I like C /CLI but don't see it being used a great deal. Simply because it's more (!) complex than C (seeing as it's essentially a superset). However, for those times where you really need to interface transparently to a C or C++ library and/or performance is a significant issue then it'll find a home.

The Microsoft team did a great job fleshing out this spec - there's a lot of complexity in integrating the .NET aspects yet it feels quite natural to C++ developers.

Thank goodness we've seen the last of Managed C++. ;)