February 2012 Summaries

The Game Developers Conference (GDC), a major event for gaming professionals, will be held in San Francisco, where GitHub will be present with their "Octobooth" from March 7th to 9th, offering attendees the chance to collect GitHub swag. Additionally, GitHub is holding a contest to win free expo passes, inviting participants to comment on their favorite game-related repositories on GitHub and explain their significance or use. Entries for the contest are open until March 4th, with winners announced on March 5th, and participants must be over 18 and able to collect their passes in person at GitHub's San Francisco office. Lee Reilly, a Senior Program Manager at GitHub, authored this announcement, highlighting his roles in developer relations and community support.

GitHub hosted the first CoderDojo session in the United States, where around twenty-three children, their parents, and twelve mentors gathered to learn basic HTML and game development using Game Maker. During the session, the children created personal web pages and progressed to programming a Pac-Man-inspired game, which proved to be the highlight as they eagerly learned to make the character move and interact with the game environment. The event was well-received due to the high mentor-to-student ratio, which ensured that assistance was readily available, fostering a positive and engaging learning atmosphere. Future sessions are planned to occur bi-weekly starting March 31st, with updates to be provided through the CoderDojo website, Twitter, and a Google Group.

Every year, Microsoft hosts the Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Summit in the Seattle area, bringing together tech enthusiasts and professionals. To coincide with this event, a social gathering called a "Drinkup" is organized, welcoming not just official MVPs but anyone interested in mingling with fellow developers. This event takes place at the Tap House Grill in Bellevue, Washington, offering an opportunity for attendees to network and enjoy complimentary beers together. Phil Haack encourages participation by emphasizing that everyone is considered an MVP in their eyes, fostering an inclusive and welcoming atmosphere.

GitHub has introduced a new feature called the blob contributions box, which is visible on every file view on the platform. This feature displays the last commit made to a file and identifies the contributors involved, providing users with an immediate sense of who is participating in a project. The contributions box aims to enhance social coding by offering a quick overview of project involvement, as highlighted by examples such as Sinatra's main.rb and Backbone.js's Gauges. This update, announced by Kyle Neath, is designed to enrich the collaborative experience on GitHub.

Zach and Ben Bleikamp, following their enthusiasm from PyCodeConf, will be returning to Miami for SuperConf and are hosting a GitHub Drinkup on Friday at Lost Weekend and Kill Your Idol, two interconnected bars. The event is open to all GitHub users, regardless of their SuperConf attendance, and offers an opportunity to socialize over drinks provided by the hosts. The gathering is scheduled for February 24th at 8:00 PM at the specified location on Espanola Way in Miami Beach, Florida.

Gaug.es for Android, now available in the Android Market, offers users a comprehensive overview of their website analytics, including traffic, top content, referrers, and real-time visitor tracking through its AirTraffic feature. Compatible with Android versions from Froyo to Ice Cream Sandwich, the app provides a user-friendly dashboard with list views, enabling users to monitor their website activity comprehensively. It is free to download and also open-source under the Apache 2.0 license, with its source code accessible online. The app is constructed using the Gaug.es API and several notable Android development projects, including ActionBarSherlock for consistent headers, ViewPagerIndicator for navigation, NineOldAndroids for animations, and android-maven-plugin for building and testing. Users can try the app free for seven days to evaluate its suitability for their needs.

GitHub has introduced a new feature designed to simplify the creation of Pull Requests by allowing users to see their newly pushed branches at the top of their repository page, accompanied by options to create a Pull Request or compare it with the master branch. This enhancement aims to streamline the workflow for users and underscores the importance of Pull Requests in both GitHub's internal processes and open-source project management. The feature reflects GitHub's ongoing commitment to improving user experience, as emphasized by Jake Boxer, who announced the update.

A newly redesigned feature has been introduced that displays language statistics on repository home pages, providing users with a quick overview of the languages used within a repository before examining the code. This feature utilizes Linguist to gather language statistics, which is intelligent enough to exclude common files and directories like jquery or vendor from the final count. Users are encouraged to report any unrecognized languages by Linguist to improve its accuracy.

A redesigned settings page has been introduced to simplify the process of locating and modifying settings for both personal accounts and organizations owned by users. The primary enhancement is the improved accessibility of organization settings, which previously required users to submit sensitive personal documents such as social security numbers, driver's license photos, and passport copies via fax and mail. This update eliminates these cumbersome requirements, placing the organization settings link directly alongside other settings. For GitHub Enterprise customers, the changes will be included in the next regular release, as noted by Ben Bleikamp.

GitHub is collaborating with CoderDojo to introduce coding classes for children in the United States, starting in San Francisco, with the goal of teaching kids aged 7-18 programming skills such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. These free sessions are conducted by professional instructors and offer a mentor for every three participants to foster a supportive environment for learning and inquiries. The inaugural session will be held at GitHub's San Francisco office, emphasizing the importance of being enthusiastic and respectful, encapsulated in the requirement to "be cool." Laptops are available for those who need them, and spaces are limited due to expected high demand.

A letter addressed to a mother from her child, who is living in San Francisco, expresses that things are going well and includes a personal update about their daily collaborations and social plans. The writer conveys that they miss their family but are staying connected through social outings with friends, specifically mentioning plans to go out on Thursday night. The letter is signed off affectionately with "XOXO, Your little coder" and is accompanied by factual details about an event on February 9th at 8:00 pm, possibly related to the mentioned social plans, and includes tags like "events" and the author's name, Kami Richey, with the handle @kamzilla.

GitHub and Heroku are collaborating to host a social event at the King St Brewhouse in Sydney on Wednesday, February 8th, at 8:00 PM. This gathering, organized by Tim Sharpe, invites attendees to enjoy a drink and engage with others in a casual setting at the venue located on King Street Wharf.

The GitHub Reflog, curated by Kenneth Reitz, highlights notable repositories and community activities on GitHub, welcoming new members like Goldman Sachs and Google, and introducing emoji support. The featured repository is visionmedia/uikit, a minimalistic web components library that emphasizes structure-only styling. Among the amusing projects is joho/7XX-rfc, which humorously proposes new HTTP status codes for common developer errors. Other highlighted projects include crateio/crate-site, aiming to enhance the Python Package Index; ileitch/hijack, a Ruby debugging tool; Olivine-Labs/Alchemy-Websockets, an efficient C# WebSocket server; and ngmoco/falcore, a Go framework for building modular HTTP servers with unique upstream and downstream pipelines.

A snowstorm disrupted the initial attempt at hosting a Git-focused event in January, prompting a rescheduling to April 9th to avoid weather-related issues. Organized by ThoughtWorks Chicago and GitHub Training, this free event is ideal for Chicago locals with an interest in Git and a background in SVN. Attendees will have the opportunity to hear Matthew J. McCullough discuss transitioning from SVN to Git on GitHub and pose challenging questions. The event is set to take place at the ThoughtWorks Office in Chicago from 6:30 pm to 8:00 pm, with an RSVP required for participation.