Unity is a multi-platform game engine that is capable of producing games for consoles, PCs, touch devices, and the web. In particular, the engine has been used to create some of the most popular mobile games in recent years, such as Rovio’s Bad Piggies.

David Helgason, CEO of Unity, announced in a blog post on Tuesday that the company has stopped selling Flash development licenses.

Unity will continue to support its existing Flash customers “throughout the 4.x cycle.” Bug fixes will be made in future Unity 4.x iterations, but further development for the Unity engine on the platform has ceased.

The decision was made, Helgason stated, because of Adobe. Helgason called recent versions of Flash unstable and stated that, “We don’t see Adobe being firmly committed to the future development of Flash.” He also pointed out that Adobe has cancelled the Flash Player Next project.

Instead of Flash, Unity will be concentrating its development on its own Unity Web Player. Helgason stated that the Unity Web Player is installed on over 200 million computers and is used by one-third of all “Facebook gamers.”

Speaking of Open Graph, Facebook has finally caught up on reviewing Open Graph submissions in their backlog. They are working on reducing their response time, but sorting through thousands of submissions takes a while. They ask developers to complete their new Open Graph checklist before submitting their request.

Facebook is retiring three parts of the Facebook development platform on April 1. If you have any applications that uses any of the following tools, better change them now:

Removing support to claim Domains using Page ID
We will remove the ability to claim domains with a Page ID. The recommended option for claiming domains is with an App ID or User ID and existing domains that have been claimed will continue to work fine. After claiming domains, owners are able to view insights or run Domain Sponsored Stories. See the Insights documentation for more on the updated domain claiming flow.

Making deprecated SDK repositories private
We will make the Python and C# SDK repositories on GitHub private. These repositories are deprecated and may not work as expected due to changes in our auth system.

Removing canvas_name field from application object
We will be removing the canvas_name field in favor of namespace field on the application object.

The bug report is always the most fascinating part of the Facebook developer recap. Over the last week, Facebook has had 236 bug reports. Out of those 236 bug reports, 43 bugs were accepted, 12 were by design, 28 were fixed and 81 were duplicates, invalid or need more information.

To see the full list of bug fixes, check out the platform update page.

Facebook is a constantly evolving service that needs to be transparent for developers to make the magic happen. The site is a shining example of close interaction with developers to make sure the site remains active and bug free. This week’s bug fixes should make things go smoother for everybody – developers and users.

The release notes for Linux 3.3 is pretty big, but here’s the summary that should give you all the important details before we dive into the nitty gritty of it all:

This release features as the most important change the merge of kernel code from the Android project. But there is more, it also includes support for a new architecture (TI C6X), much improved balancing and the ability to restripe between different RAID profiles in Btrfs, and several network improvements: a virtual switch implementation (Open vSwitch) designed for virtualization scenarios, a faster and more scalable alternative to the “bonding” driver, a configurable limit to the transmission queue of the network devices to fight bufferbloat, a network priority control group and per-cgroup TCP buffer limits. There are also many small features and new drivers and fixes are also available.

The biggest change is definitely the Android merge. While Android is built on a version of Linux, the two were separate entities from the start. The release notes claim this was from developers on both projects not being able to agree on several differences. This is just the start of the merger with more Android features making their way into Linux with future updates.

The Open vSwitch addition is not meant to replace the current Linux bridge switch. It’s simply meant to help Linux handle more complex scenarios. It also supports standard management interfaces like sFlow, Netflow, RSPAN and CLI.

They are also implementing byte queue limits which is a “configurable limit of packet data that can be put in the transmission queue of a network device.” This will allow users to make sure high priority packets receive reasonable amounts of latency.

A super cool addition is a new Linux architecture that supports the Texas Instruments C6X. This opens up Linux to the TI family of C64x single and multicore DSPs.

The rest of the document details the massive amounts of changes coming to drivers, cores, memory management, file systems, networking, virtualization, crypto, security and tracing/profiling. You can check out the full release at the Linux page.

With the release of Linux 3.3 and its merging with Android, it will make Linux even more desirable for developers. Are you excited to use 3.3? Are you already using it? How is it? Let us know in the comments.

[Lead image: tortugoc/Flickr]

If you want to learn how to use Simple Workflow either with new applications or existing applications, Amazon is offering a brief seminar on Tuesday, March 13th. It will be held between 10 and 11am consisting of a 40 minute presentation followed by a brief Q&A session.

Here’s a little about what Amazon promises with the service and functionality of the product:

Using Amazon SWF to manage workflows within your application is easy. The Amazon SWF service acts as the coordination hub for all of the different components of your application:

*Maintaining application state

*Controlling which tasks each of your application hosts will be assigned to execute

To use Amazon SWF you simply:

*Use the AWS Management Console or the Amazon SWF APIs to specify the names of workflows.

*Monitor the status and progress of workflow executions and their associated tasks in the AWS Management Console.

Here are Service Highlights according to Amazon:

Simple – Amazon SWF replaces the complexity of custom-coded workflow solutions and process automation software with a fully managed web service. This eliminates the need for developers to manage the infrastructure plumbing of process automation so they can focus their energy on the unique functionality of their application.

Flexible – Amazon SWF lets you write your application components and coordination logic in any programming language and run them in the cloud or on-premises.

If You Are Interested:

It sounds like this could be a real time saver for a lot of developers. Hopefully it doesn’t put anybody out of work. The best thing is that Amazon will do most of this work for free. You can get started right away with Simple Workflow or you can wait to take the webinar in mid March and learn more about it first.

The Linux Foundation and Dice has partnered to compile the “2012 Linux Jobs Report.” The subtitle for the study, “Strong demand drives higher salaries, more perks for Linux professionals” says it all, but the study is worth diving into for those Linux professionals looking for work.

The study begins by saying that the IT job market is “a bright spot in otherwise uneven economies.” The unemployment for IT professionals is just at 3.8 percent, which is a major improvement from the rate of 5.3 percent last year. They feel that the decrease in unemployment is due to the increased adoption of Linux in the IT workplace.

They went out to find answers by surveying more than 2,000 hiring managers at corporations, small and medium businesses, government organizations and staffing agencies around the world.

The first section of the survey is titled, “Demand for Linux talent exceeds supply.” They have found that eight in 10 survey respondents say that hiring Linux talent is a priority in 2012. With that in mind, nearly half of hiring managers questioned expect to add more Linux professionals to their staff in the first half of 2012 compared to the first six months last year.

A lot of jobs in the tech industry have become part-time or contract work, but they’ve found that 56 percent of respondents say that Linux positions will be full-time. They find that Linux professionals are in a better position to secure full-time positions than others.

The only problem is that Linux professionals are hard to find according to hiring managers. In fact, 85 percent of them say that finding Linux talent is “somewhat to very” difficult.

To make up for the shortage, 49 percent of companies will continue searching until they find the right person; 39 percent will seek to train their existing employees; and 31 percent will hire a consultant.

The question this all brings, however, is what’s driving this need for Linux professionals? Forty-nine percent say their company is growing while 48 percent say that they are increasing their use of Linux and need new talent to support it. Thirty percent interestingly say that Linux has become core to their business and they need to increase participation in the Linux community.

Now then, if you’re one of these Linux professionals who just got hired on at a company for your expertise, what kind of benefits can you expect?

Sixty-six percent of respondents said that they are taking “aggressive steps” to retain and reward top Linux professionals.

The average pay increase for IT professionals was two percent last year. Linux professionals saw a pay increase of five percent year-over-year as well as a 15 percent jump in bonus payouts.

Here’s a graph detailing what else Linux professionals can expect from potential employers:

Now that all this information has been revealed, what is the aspiring Linux developer going to find work in?

In 2012, 67 percent of hiring managers are looking for Linux developers whereas 55 percent are looking for systems administrators. Twenty percent are also looking for IT managers and 15 percent are looking to hire outside consultants. Of course, to get these jobs, you will need experience as 75 percent of respondents want applicants to have three to five years of Linux experience.

The large companies (500 or more employees) are looking for a different set of skills. Forty-nine percent of large companies are looking for Linux application developers whereas 46 percent want employees with kernel development skills. This is due to companies relying more on Linux-based systems to run their business, but they are also becoming more involved with Linux kernel development.

The survey also looked at how companies are teaching their employees how to use Linux. Self-directed learning is at the forefront with 68 percent of respondents using the method.

The two biggest markets for Linux developers right now are North America and Asia. Nearly half of all North American companies are citing company growth as the reason behind Linux job creation with 71 percent of them looking specifically for Linux developers.

The Asian market sees nine out of 10 respondents saying that hiring Linux developers is a priority in the year ahead.

For those that want to read the full report, you can do so here.

PC Mag is reporting that the update will apply to the desktop formats as well as the mobile edition for Android. For those “people,” who never upgraded to Firefox 4, version 3.6 will be updated to version 3.6.9 which only adds security and stability fixes.

During a meeting today, Firefox announced a new hire for Mozilla’s marketing team. Pete Scanlon, who previously worked for Google’s campaigns for Chrome, is now working for Mozilla.

As with the past few full version updates to Firefox, there’s not much going on for consumers. The new capabilities are mostly for developers.

A big improvement from previous versions is how Firefox 10 handles extensions. Instead of rejecting extensions not specifically made for Firefox 10, it will assume extensions are compatible unless otherwise noted. Most extensions compatible with Firefox 4 will work fine on Firefox 10.

Interestingly, Mozilla reported that 75 percent of all extensions in use were not acquired from their own addon site. They have updated the browser to support those extensions as well.

The update will also allow users to hotfix update extensions themselves to address minor issues.

The Android version of Firefox 10 will get multitouch gesture support. Firefox Sync will also be updated to allow users to sync their phone or table with Firefox without having to be at their desktop computer.

The changes for developers are more robust featuring enhancements to code editors and anti-aliasing for WebGL content. CSS3D Transforms will bring 3D animation to 2D objects. They will also add in support for full-screen Web applications.

Firefox 10 will also be the first Extended Support Release version. The program was made for enterprise IT professionals who were concerned that the more-frequent Firefox updates were unsupportable in a business environment.

Firefox 12, which is a few more weeks out, will finally add a tab page that users of Chrome and Opera enjoy now.

Gil Elbaz, the CEO and founder of Factual, is trying to raise awareness about this issue and is also working to build a platform to simplify the process. On a side note, the name Elbaz might sound familiar to you since his former company Applied Semantics was sold to Google and later turned into Google AdSense.

He told us that data needed to be accessible for further development, which is what Factual is trying to do.

“One of the things we’re working is, ‘how do we build a platform to make data simply accessible to the developers, so they can do all sorts of cool things, so they can innovate, [and] they can build apps on top of data mashups?’” he said.

Elbaz is also advocating an open data model with his efforts because not only does it make data more accessible, but it also reduces costs. Although a lot of companies are doing better about opening up their APIs, the terms of service can often be hard to understand and can take a long time to interpret. For this reason, Elbaz believes these processes should be simplified.

“We want the world and consumers to enjoy good data,” he said.

Despite the challenges, he pointed out that now was still a very exciting time for developers with all the social sites and innovations that have emerged in recent years. He told us that there are “better than ever opportunities” to build new services on top of the current offerings.

Elbaz has even proposed an “iTunes for data” model that would allow developers to get a single record or single usage of data, which is similar to getting a single song from iTunes. He thinks this would be effective since most developers only need a specific area and not a large amount that they would have to sort through.

Original Article: Google has open sourced its own programming language, which it simply calls "Go." The company still calls Go experimental. Google’s Go Team describes the language:

Go combines the development speed of working in a dynamic language like Python with the performance and safety of a compiled language like C or C++. Typical builds feel instantaneous; even large binaries compile in just a few seconds. And the compiled code runs close to the speed of C. Go lets you move fast.

Go is a great language for systems programming with support for multi-processing, a fresh and lightweight take on object-oriented design, plus some cool features like true closures and reflection.

Go comes with built-in support for concurrency, what Google calls a "novel" type system, and as mentioned above, it is apparently really fast. Google says most builds take well under a second.

The following clip provides some more info about the language:

The Go site offers a number of documents, such as a tutorial, a FAQ page, a tech talk, language specification, memory model, and more. There are how-tos for installing Go and contributing code. There is command documentation, package documentation, and source files. If you’re a developer itching to mess around with a new language, go dig in.

Related Articles:

> Google Developers Produce New Programming Language

> Open Android Alliance Poses Problem For Google

> Google Gives Android Developers a Donut

Consistency in the HTML specification helped webmasters build sites that anyone with a browser could visit. When Microsoft began playing around with non-standard ways of handling HTML in its Internet Explorer browser, the Internet suffered a bit as developers were forced to build sites to display themselves one way for IE, and a different way for every other browser.

Microsoft cleaned up its act over the years, with IE 8 being as close to hewing to universal specifications on handling HTML and CSS. But the annoyances of several years of creating workarounds to cater to Microsoft likely played a role in the building of a mobile web specification by the W3C.

“The recommendations refer to delivered content and not to the processes by which it is created, nor to the devices or user agents to which it is delivered,” said the opening of this latest best practices document. “It is primarily directed at creators, maintainers and operators of Web sites.”

As more webmasters seek out mobile web users, especially in the competitive market for local business customers, they will want to embrace such consistency. No one wants to put a barrier in front of a potential customer.

To keep the mobile web open and inviting, W3C suggested minimal navigation for the top of pages, and consistent navigation methods throughout mobile sites. Since many webmasters practice SEO and redirection of links, W3C said using 3xx HTTP codes instead of markup to redirect pages should be the method here.

Skip the frames and the tables for organizing mobile content too. And when there is a non-text element on a page, a text equivalent should be provided too.

Reaching the growing number of web-capable mobile devices promises a long-term payoff. There is room for first-movers to seize a place on the mobile web with their content, where a similar opportunity may not exist on the conventional PC. Develop to reach as many mobile users as possible, for a chance at achieving this.

Since the end of January, Google received reports about its Android SDK possessing a number of security flaws. As Google released the SDK to the open source community, bug detection would be an expected part of the development process.

Security vendor Core Security provided a lengthy advisory about the Android SDK, which to us indicates the open source process worked. The prototype Android phones seen already won’t be a reality until the software bugs receive the attention they need.

Google made this statement, listed in the advisory, about Core’s findings:

“The current version of the Android SDK is an early look release to the open source community, provided so that developers can begin working with the platform to inform and shape our development of Android toward production readiness. The Open Handset Alliance welcomes input from the security community throughout this process. There will be many changes and updates to the platform before Android is ready for end users, including a full security review.”

The trio of vulnerabilities detected by Core all concerned the processing of images by Android’s web browser. Core said the flaws in processing GIF, BMP, and PNG images could have enabled a malicious website to attack the platform and ultimately execute arbitrary code.

A little sloppiness, not on Google’s part, could be to blame for the problems Core found. They noted the use of an outdated libpng reference library for handling PNG images in a library used by Android. Google has since updated Android with a current version of libpng that should eliminate that particular problem.

Fixes for the GIF and BMP issues arrived with newer SDK releases. However, followup research by Core found the root account arriving without a password by default. “Unprivileged users with shell access can simply use the su program to gain privileges,” said Core.