ReadWriteHack

Google has long provided an API for automating Google Analytics, but it required developers to jump through a few more hoops than many would like. Yesterday, the company announced its Easy Dashboard Library, which should let developers speed up custom-tailored dashboards and reports.

As Windows 8 approaches, Mozilla developers have been working hard on a Metro version. If you're using Windows 8 on the desktop, no problem. Tablet users, however, are going to be denied a fully functional Firefox - and will face restrictions on many other third-party applications. In the name of security, Microsoft is forcing them into a "sandbox" on ARM devices. The lockdown renegs on the company's prior promises, and it's going to have some far-reaching effects on many applications.

It's a valid question: "Why has all the data the government has been collecting turned out to be too big to handle?" The results of a U.S. and state government IT survey released this week by the public sector IT community MeriTalk sheds a bright, halogen spotlight on the answer: It's because it's being collected in an unfiltered format and is waiting for someone - anyone - to claim it and write viable applications for it.

Congratulations, you’ve finally convinced the powers that be that your next Web-design project needs to be responsive. It was tough work convincing them, but you can’t rest on your laurels now. The most critical decision of the project remains: how is your team going to build it?

Having data available electronically is not the same thing as the data being useful. Campaign finance disclosures provided electronically by the Federal Elections Commission (FEC), are a good example of that. The New York Times's Fech (not "fetch") is a RubyGem - a packaged application - designed to help journalists and public interest organizations access and make sense of FEC filings.

We all know about those authentication blocks of text called CAPTCHAs, perhaps too well. (Today's fun trivia: The acronym stands for Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart.). A new idea from PlayThru is to embed a small Flash or HTML5-based game that a human plays with a mouse to prove he or she really is a carbon-based life form. It is intriguing, potentially less annoying, and has captured (if you will excuse the pun) a few supporters already. The service is just getting started, and it is free to try out.

News of a potential security leak in Skype’s network protocols may be overblown, an investigation by ReadWriteWeb reveals today. Though it is possible for a program to expose IP addresses that have, at some point in history, been utilized by Skype users, this particular program is not Skype itself or anything that exploits a flaw in Skype.

Rather, it’s a separate, nonendorsed, reverse-engineered form of Skype 5.5. Though the reverse engineering project responsible for this program calls itself “open source,” in actuality, its proprietors appear to have merely de-obfuscated Skype’s proprietary code, made adjustments to it, and recompiled it. Those adjustments can, we discovered, produce human-readable IP addresses.

One benefit many developers perceive from working with a proprietary platform is that its components are generally updated and deployed according to a single agenda. (Sometimes that agenda is so slow that this fact becomes undeniable.)  By contrast, the tremendous pace of open source development can be overwhelming for some. Back in 2007 the Open Source Census noted one big problem, especially among enterprises: Development teams have continually demonstrated an inability to manage the multitude of dependencies that OSS components have upon one another, and to use the proper or most secure components for their projects. A new Sonatype survey confirms that things haven't really changed that much since then.

Haven't we seen this before: IBM making a big acquisition of a “V” company in the big data space? Indeed, last April 13, IBM purchased analytics software maker Varicent for an undisclosed amount. And then this morning, IBM announced its acquisition of enterprise search facilitator Vivisimo. 

IBM usually doesn’t acquire applications software makers unless it has something very specific in mind for them. IBM is clearly piecing together a “big data” platform - a comprehensive package for storing, accessing and analyzing unstructured data.

Tickets to Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) sold out in a record two hours this morning. The conference will be held in San Francisco from June 11-15.

"Sorry, tickets are sold out," the site says. It explains that Apple will post videos of the sessions shortly after the conference, making it available to the Internet public at large. While the event always sells out, this is the fastest conference sellout in Apple's history.