One of the most difficult questions when creating a new product is how to ensure that the product has a chance to attract a large user base. The good news is that the big players in the technology market such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter let developers create applications that can access…
Read MoreThe importance of software patents has increased dramatically in recent years. The high profile patent disputes between Apple, Google, and other smartphone companies have attracted the most attention in the press, but patent battles are being waged all across the software industry. As a computer scientist who has been retained as an…
Read MoreOver the years, we’ve seen plenty of intellectual property lawsuits involving Apple Inc. (who, ahem, does not like to be called Apple, Inc.). Apple went after Digital Research and Microsoft during the ’80s and ’90s for copying the “look and feel” of the Macintosh OS. But in the last five years, Apple…
Read MoreThe Joint 10th Working IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software Architecture & 6th European Conference on Software Architecture (WICSA/ECSA 2012) was held this week in Helsinki, Finland. Along with keynote addresses and research presentations, the conference included a panel discussion of the impact of software architecture research on software architecture practice. The panel included…
Read MoreA new research study to be published in September suggests a novel approach to designing computer systems that facilitate collaboration in large groups. The research leverages computer simulations of large “socio-technical” systems, such as social networks and wiki communities, to investigate how technology helps people collaborate effectively. This information can then be…
Read MoreA research team composed of computer scientists at the University of Southern California, the University of Washington, and Quandary Peak Research has developed a new architecture for software modeling and analysis tools. The proposed architecture, implemented in a prototype tool suite called LIGHT, allows users to customize the appearance and content of…
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