XRDS Español Dear XRDS Team, I contact you in order to ask for an article by Jorge Quiané and Jorge Manjarrez: “Developing Voice Interfaces for Legacy Web Applications.” It appeared as an “On-line Features, Crossroads ACM, Issue 10. 1 Fall 2003.” Why isn’t it available anymore? JM, Email

“XRDSshowed up unexpected on my doorstep;
what a pleasant surprise! I love everything about
the redesign, the XRDSteam did a great job.”
Dennis Ideler, Email

Batenkov. Cheers. Dennis Ideler, Email

Editor’s reply: Thanks for your email. The article you mentioned appeared on our old web site in a section dedicated to Spanish translations of articles. While we have not been able to port them over yet, we hope to make them available again online soon. Thanks for reading!

Recebi uma revista da ACM hoje, muito bacana, o tema da capa é “XRDS the future of interaction” Translation: I received a magazine from ACM today, very nice, the theme on the cover is “XRDS the future of interaction” Raphael Lopes (raphaeljlps), Twitter

Comments on XRDS.ACM.ORG What a great article, Dr. Lee [“In Search of a Natural Gesture,” June 2010; available at: http:// xrds.acm.org/article. cfm?aid=1764853]! I’ve written a short post on my site talking about one aspect of the article if anyone is interested. How many spare cycles is enough? Good Enough Computing and HPC : http://wp.me/pXtX6-1A Blake Gonzales, Comment on XRDS.acm.org

September 2010; available at: http://xrds.acm.org/ article.cfm?aid=1836548]. These probably are the first 10 sentences in a programmer’s bible. My two cents:

1. With the usage of IDEs, indentation is being taken care of in a way. Once a template is set at the organizational level, the ide takes care of the rest. Languages like Python help in a way, as they divide blocks based on the indentation that we provide. So, the programmer is indeed forced to indent, for putting his logic down into code.

2. Many languages now don’t have a restriction (realistic) on the number of characters one can use for a variable name. And with technologies like IntelliSense in IDEs, the pain of typing in large variable names is also lessened. So it might be better in cases to declare variables of the length of a sentence (though the code looks a bit unclean).

3. In case one really needs
some global variables,
it’s better to add some
indication of what kind
of variable it is (global,
local) etc in its name. In
C conventionally, capital
letters are used for global
variables. And in Python,
we need to explicitly write
“global” when we are
trying to access a global
variable. Overall, it’s
better to start using an
IDE (eclipse, visual studio
etc.) for programming.
Some of the best
practices (comments,
indentation) implicitly
get into one’s mind while
programming. Also, it is
easier to undo mistakes
like, renaming variables
after 1000 lines of code
are written.

Who Knew? The XRDS magazine (Summer 2010 issue) showed up unexpectedly on my doorstep one day; what a pleasant surprise. I love everything about the redesign, the XRDS team did a great job. I also really liked Johnny Lee’s article and the computer vision DIY article by Dmitry

こういうページ数が多いpdf 配布のフリー雑誌は、綺麗に 小冊子印刷して読みたくなる よね。 http://xrds.acm.org/ archives.cfm?iid=1764848 Translation: With the large number of pages from this freely distributed PDF version of the magazine, wouldn’t it be nice to have a cleanly printed booklet to read? Ryohei Suzuki (quolc), Twitter

ACMからXRDSが届いた! Translation: I just received XRDS magazine from ACM!

[Thanks to Dan Hyun of New York for his help with translations.] brainfs, Twitter

Good work Jason [on the article “Five Programming Tips,” by Jason Thibodeau,

How to contact XRDS: Send a letter to the editors, an amazing photo that highlights your work or something interesting on your campus, or other feedback by email ( [e-mail]), on Facebook by posting to our group page ( http://tinyurl.com/XRDS-Facebook), via Twitter by using #xrds or @XRD_ACM in any message, or by post to ACM Attn: XRDS, 2 Penn Plaza, Suite 701, ne w york, ny 10121, U. S.