One interesting corner of HTML5 development is web-based games. With a few well placed canvases and a healthy does of Javascript, you can create just about any game you can dream. However, the complex nature of Javascript has created the need for a few companies to release game engines built entirely in Javascript and HTML5. This is where Pulse comes in.

HTML5 is pretty much the web 3.0 standard these days, and there are plenty of neat neat HTML5 tutorials out there to prove it. In fact, there are even a few game engines out there that are built for HTML5. A recent development in this area was the release of the Pulse developer preview. Here is a short demo of what is possible with pulse:

For the past few years Switch On The Code has been bringing you tutorials and news in the world of programming. Last week we expanded our repertoire to include video games by launching Avoid The Grind. We've assembled an excellent team of writers to bring you the best video game news, guides, reviews, and media.

For the last few years we've been using a dedicated server for all of our hosting needs, but recently we decided to choose something a little more flexible and extensible and Amazon's EC2 seemed like a perfect fit. Amazon offers a free micro instance for a year, so off we went - building our latest project. It wasn't until the server started getting a little use that we noticed something important - a micro instance could end up costing us a significant amount of money.

As we sat down today to do some performance profiling in Shark, we came to a sudden realization - it doesn't work anymore with iOS4. After some quick Google searching I came across a thread in Apple's developer forum (registration required) that indicated there were no plans to bring iOS4 support to Shark.

So we were contacted by M80, who is currently trying to build some momentum around Visual Studio 2010, and they wanted us to tell our readers about a YouTube channel called Developer Stories. I checked out some of the videos and they're not all that bad - mostly interviews with developers about their lives and why they do what they do. We definitely weren't paid to pass along this info, although I wish we were, but I thought it was interesting and worth checking out.

Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference has just wrapped up and I've decided to run through an account of what happened and some of the major announcements that have been made.

I've strayed outside of Google only a couple of times in my professional career as a programmer, and every time I've raced back shivering and scared at how bad the world is outside of Google's house. When it comes to programming related queries, it's amazing at how unhelpful search engines can be. With the launch of Bing, I've crept outside once again, and I can proudly report that it doesn't suck as much as I expected.

Lately I've been doing a lot of work with Notepad++ and Subversion, however I was surprised to find that there are no plugins available that integrate the two. At least, no plugins Google could easily find for me. Due to the nature of my project, a lot of commits are required, and I was wasting a lot of time switching between Notepad++ and Windows Explorer in order to commit changes. Being a software engineer, I figured out a good solution: I'll write my own Subversion plugin for Notepad++.

Geeks are notoriously difficult to shop for, and programmers are some of the biggest geeks around. Below are a few options that a typical code slinger might enjoy unwrapping this holiday season.