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Journalists Cover Microsoft, Using Macs

It’s not an easy time for Microsoft — with Steve Ballmer having to field questions about being “buffoons” and an “evil empire”  at the shareholder’s meeting (.doc) — so when they get together “the world’s most influential technology pundits and online writers” (nb: we weren’t invited) for Mobius to discuss super-secret mobile tech you’d think [...]

Guide To Black Friday Apple Bargains: Cheap MacBooks, iPods and Accessories Galore

Here’s a guide for finding the best bargains on Apple-related gear during the infamous Black Friday sales on November 27. We’ve compiled a comprehensive list of gear from leaked photos of sales flyers and descriptions of sales.
The bargains include a 2.26 GHz MacBook + $150 gift card at Best Buy for $999.99 ; a 32GB [...]

Review: Voices Is Today’s Best Thing Ever, Grab It Now While It’s Cheap

New on the App Store is Voices from the clever folk at Tap Tap Tap. You can guess what it does.

Open it up, pick a silly voice. Helium is pretty silly. A microphone appears and the app even clears your throat for you (try it, you’ll see what I mean). Now speak your brains, and [...]

Review: Sony Walkman S540 Series Video MP3 Player

Press releases, you will hardly be surprised to hear, are rarely very interesting. But one arrived in my inbox a couple of weeks ago that made me double-take.
“Sony’s S Series Walkman,” it chattered, “is a serious challenger to the iPod Nano.” Gosh, really? Perhaps the Cult had better have a look at one, then, despite [...]

Cappuccino Serves Up Strong New Web App Framework

cappuccino-icon.pngStartup 280 North on Thursday released a new online programming language that promises to bring Mac-like software to the web.

Called Cappuccino, the programing language will allow developers to bring the look and feel of Mac OS X desktop apps to online apps. 280 North promises that online apps will have drag ‘n drop, copy and paste, undo and redo, and document saving functionality simply by pointing your browser at a URL.

A major trend in the development of Web 2.0 functionality is toward applications that work within your browser as opposed to relying on desktop programs that live on your hard drive and use up CPU resources every time you call on them. Cappuccino will let designers create apps like 280 Slides, the highly regarded presentation application the 280 North shop released in June to showcase the framework’s robust capabilities.

Unlike existing web app development frameworks, such as Prototype or Sproutcore, Cappuccino doesn’t expect its developers to know any HTML, CSS, and JavaScript – the languages used traditionally for standards-based web development. Cappuccino’s Objective-J works in every major browser, is completely extendable and comes with useful language features not available in JavaScript.

280 North co-founder Ross Boucher says “Cappuccino is an attempt to restore control of the language and basic building blocks of web development to the developers” and is quick to point out that it’s not about building web pages. “Cappuccino is about building applications – think 280 Slides, GMail, Meebo,” he says. “We believe the future of the core technologies of the web should not be in the hands of a select minority and that no one company [should] control the destiny of any other.”

Cappuccino is being released as open source software under the lesser general public license which Boucher and his colleagues hope will build a strong open source community around the development platform. “We believe in the importance of getting the entire community involved, so that we can experiment and move forward at our own pace.”

In addition to the 280 Slides site, Cappuccino developers have a Flickr Photo Demo and a Puzzle Demo to showcase the platform’s capabilities.

280 Slides Site Cappuccino Flickr Photo Demo
Cappuccino Puzzle Demo Cappuccino Site

About the author

Lonnie Lazar

Lonnie Lazar is a writer, musician, web designer attorney. He writes about Apple for Cult of Mac and Mac|Life, and about VoIP and telecommunications for Voxilla. Follow Lonnie on Twitter @LonnieLazar, join the Cult of Mac on Facebook, and find Lonnie's photos on Flickr.

Email the author | Read more posts by Lonnie Lazar.

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