New Products

The raison d'être for Black Duck Software's new Black Duck Export 5.0 is to confront the issue of often undetected encryption algorithms found in the open-source software that developers integrate into their development process. A component of the Black Duck Suite, Export helps companies comply with export regulations by scanning software and identifying the presence of encryption algorithms that might affect a product's legal compliance in various markets. The new version 5.0 covers more than 450 different algorithms. Black Duck also offers a new companion publication, “The Guide to Encryption Export Compliance in an Open Source World”, which can be downloaded at no cost from the company's Web site.

www.blackducksoftware.com

Instantiations concurrently released updates to two popular Eclipse-based GUI development tools, namely WindowTester Pro and WindowBuilder Pro, advancing to versions 4.0 and 7.2, respectively. The new features in WindowTester Pro v4.0 are designed to help developers easily automate recording, test generation, code coverage and playback of GUI interactions. Version 4.0 also provides improvements for test recording; fine-tuning of assertions functionality, including improved Swing assertions support; and improved Linux support and preliminary support for 64-bit Cocoa. WindowBuilder Pro's new features include code generation and parsing improvements to optimize performance, API support for customizing properties, enhanced JFace and RCP support, improved support for Riena and expanded data binding support to make it easier to tie a user interface to an underlying datastore.

www.instantiations.com

In its new ActiveStor Series 9 parallel storage system, Panasas claims to have “the highest-performance file storage system in the world”, a system that combines solid-state drive (SSD) technology with traditional disk drives “to produce a system with breakthrough performance and consolidation capabilities”. Panasas further says that its synchronized hybrid architecture produces both high-bandwidth performance and optimized IOPS and is capable of delivering an estimated 80,000 NFS operations per second, as well as 6 gigabytes per second of throughput. ActiveStor users can save money by consolidating a wider variety of applications and workloads in a single storage architecture, including high-performance clustered applications, single-client applications and technical and commercial applications running NFS and CIFS file protocols.

www.panasas.com

Version 5.1 of MontaVista Carrier Grade Edition (CGE) Linux is now available, adding support for next-generation LTE and WiMAX 4G wireless networks. The product is a commercial-grade Linux development platform for network equipment developers working with off-the-shelf or custom hardware who require extensive support and want to build on open source. Other additions to CGE 5.1 include full integration of the OpenSAF high-availability middleware consistent with Service Availability Forum specifications and virtual routing and forwarding (VRF) capabilities for secure wireless networks. MontaVista also claims that CGE 5.1 remains the only carrier grade Linux to be compliant with Carrier Grade Linux, IPv6 and Linux Standard Base certifications.

www.mvista.com

“Can you focus—really focus—for 25 minutes?” queries author Staffan Nöteberg as the subtitle of his new book, Pomodoro Technique Illustrated from the Pragmatic Bookshelf. We all know the pressure of needing to be productive—the to-do list is a mile long and you find yourself getting interrupted every other minute. You'd like to tell everyone to leave you alone, but most of the interruptions are coming from you! You think of a phone call you need to make or a Web site you need to check, and before you know it, you're answering e-mail, checking Twitter and finding a million other things to occupy your time. Author Nöteberg says that the Pomodoro Technique can put you back in charge of your day. You'll apply successful techniques from software engineering to identify what you should be doing today and to help you achieve your goals. Your mind won't wander when it is fully engaged in short bursts of focused activity. You'll learn to work less and accomplish more using nothing more than paper, pencil and a simple kitchen timer. This book is filled with advice on how to get started and how to tailor the method to your own needs.

www.pragprog.com