SPARK Pro is a product jointly developed by Altran Praxis and AdaCore that provides the language, toolset and design discipline for engineering high-assurance software. The developers say that the new version 11 of SPARK Pro offers many enhancements related to the way that functions and proof functions are handled. These changes are said to improve project efficiency by eliminating the vast majority of rules that previously were encoded manually. The main changes include a more powerful language for specifying proof functions and the ability to use the functions in any proof context. This greatly simplifies the task of writing and maintaining functional contracts for critical software, providing high assurance at lower cost. SPARK Pro combines Altran Praxis' SPARK language and verification tools with AdaCore's GNAT Programming Studio and GNATbench Integrated Development Environments. There are SPARK versions based on Ada 83, Ada 95 and Ada 2005, so all standard Ada compilers and tools work out of the box with SPARK, say the companies.
Wolfram Research calls its Mathematica application, recently upgraded to version 9, “the broadest, deepest computation system in the world”. Mathematica 9 adds more than 400 functions in new and expanding application areas and also introduces the Wolfram Predictive Interface. The latter, intended to help users fully utilize Mathematica's vast scope and depth, is a suite of features that intelligently suggests what to try next based on sophisticated heuristics and data from millions of queries from the Wolfram|Alpha site. Other new features include highly integrated units support; major new data science, probability and statistics functionality; full R integration into the Mathematica workflow; 3-D volumetric image processing and others. Supported platforms include Linux x86, Windows and Mac OS X.
Improving the management of critical infrastructure in remote locations is what the new Opengear ACM5504-5-G-W-I Remote Infrastructure Management (RIM) Gateway is all about. A new member of Opengear's ACM5500 product family, this sibling offers IT managers a wide range of connectivity options with its new integrated wireless access point (Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n) to complement the cellular, wired and wireless access already present in other gateways. Besides enabling direct management of Wi-Fi-enabled devices, the solution provides the option of convenient wireless access to the management network using mobile devices, such as tablets and smartphones. All RIM gateways in the ACM5500 product family provide serial console-port connectivity, environmental monitoring, power management and monitoring and remote site storage of off-line logs and running configuration files.
Those in our midst who look after enterprise-wide IT planning should sneak a peek into Jon William Toigo's new book Office Automation 2.0. The Apress title is an essential guide to office automation in the post-PC era and helps businesses assess such technologies as virtual desktop infrastructure, mobile clients and cloud services in terms of their practical applications to streamlining workload. Toigo emphasizes that rollouts of the latest enterprise-class technologies cannot produce business value unless management ensures that the front office is trained to use them correctly, and that end-user practices and IT processes are dynamically and efficiently coupled in the organizational culture. Toigo also provides practical guidance for innovative managers who are seeking to make every automation investment dollar count toward the three key metrics of business value: cost-containment, risk reduction and improved productivity.
Traditional extension cords can waste you a lot of time, either by having to unwind and rewind them repeatedly, or worse, when you struggle trying to untangle a mess of wire. The answer to this struggle, says Philatron Wire and Cable, is not in the numerous cord reeling and wrapping devices on the market, but rather in the company's new Flexy CordT, which it bills as the “21st Century extension cord”. Flexy CordT line of extension cords are designed with a reduced cord and increased coil diameters, which gives them suppleness properties similar to the Slinky toys. In addition, Flexy Cords are developed with specially engineered materials with “memory” (so they “remember” their original retracted length) and are tangle-proof and kink-proof. Flexy Cords are available in different compact lengths: 4 inches (extending to 8 feet), 5 inches (extending to 10 feet), 10 inches (extending to 20 feet) and 20 inches (extending to 45 feet).
The new v5.0 release of MetaEdit+ from MetaCase's adds a wide range of features to the company's flagship software development tool. MetaEdit+ is aimed at expert developers who seek to create graphical domain-specific languages and code generators rapidly. MataCase states that the rich graphical notations go beyond plain icons and links; they can change on the fly depending on model data, be nested to unlimited depth, retrieved from libraries and have a fixed or dynamically varying number of ports to which to connect. These new features allow domain-specific models to mimic closely the problem domains they describe. The new version integrates into programming tools like Visual Studio and Eclipse. Software developers get one-click access from their IDE to MetaEdit+ models, can integrate generated code with hand-written code and libraries, and automate their build process. Versions for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X are available.
TeamViewer is a popular remote control and on-line meetings application for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. The most notable feature in the new version 8 is the TeamViewer Management Console, a cloud-based administration tool that offers a wide range of capabilities that addresses the needs of corporate environments, with emphasis on accountability, stricter security guidelines and the need for central control of user accounts. Other major new capabilities of TeamViewer 8 include connection reporting of all sessions and browser-based single-click connections. New features that reflect the latest demands of telecommuters include session handover, remote printing, deeper Microsoft Outlook integration, transmission of remote sound and video and enhanced session recordings.
You might call Investintech.com's Able2Extract PDF Converter the Swiss army knife of PDF converters. Not only is Able2Extract's able to convert PDFs to a wide range of formats accurately, but it also features the unique ability to work across Linux (Ubuntu and Fedora), Mac OS X and Windows platforms. Investintech.com boasts that Able2Extract keeps intact all aspects—images, colors, formatting and fonts—regardless of file format. Supported formats include converting PDF to OpenOffice.org, MS-Office, AutoCAD and commonly used image formats. In addition, users can focus on the content they need by selecting conversion down to a single sentence.
