I've mentioned Google's Native client before, and thought I'd take a look and see how easy it is (or not!) to get started. It's quite involved when you consider it requires these technologies: cygwin, python, subversion, git, nacl_sdk, naclports, depot_tools and that's before even writing a line of code.

So I've started working my way through these and writing them up as a How to Set Up to Develop Native Client Apps in C and C++.

After nearly a thousand words I hit a snag with a version clash in the Subversion client. Once I've resolved that, I'll carry on and get Super Snake working with Native Client.

Meanwhile if anyone else has hit this Subversion client is too old error (it's not!) and yes I have seen the error message on the Apache Subversion website, let me know how you fixed it!

There was a slight bug in tracks.txt which I've amended so hopefully it will be a little bit easier (the track join without a switch at line 10, column 47) and because the month end isn't on a Sunday, the deadline is extended to the Sunday after. That's February 5.

C++ Working Draft

If you want a copy of the current ISO standard you have to pay a few hundred Swiss Francs. However the draft of the next one (Look for the N3337 link) is similar and can be downloaded free.

• Link to Programming Contest Fifty Four Fastest Railroad Route

One of my favorite Apps for my iPhone is Next Bus which uses the published London bus movement data. Many bus stops in London have a digital display showing how far away the next buses are. Having this information improved the service when it first came out because though they couldn't make buses run faster or more frequently, knowing that the bus you need is just three minutes away is very handy. "Have I time to nip into a nearby shop etc?"

Last year this data became publicly available and several iPhone Apps appeared. I bought Next Bus for 69p (about $0.99). Living two minutes walk away from a bus stop and now knowing exactly how long I have to lie in has improved my life and it's a easy to use App but it has a slight bug. It can use location services to identify the nearest bus stops but if those services are disabled it puts up a few error messages. As I have my favorite bus stops marked (the App lets you do that), I keep Location Services switched off and get the error messages each time. That's a little tedious.

So I emailed the company who put put Next Bus suggesting an improvement and within ten minutes got a nice reply from the developer. The developer then found the bug, fixed it and has submitted it to the App Store all within 30 minutes of my first email. That impressed me so kudos to Jeevan Takhar of nextbusapp.com. If you look at their website you can see every London bus stop on a Google Map and see the live times by clicking any bus stop.

Supporting customers can be a pain but get them on your side with good service and they can be very effective sales people for you by word of mouth. I got great service and felt it deserved a mention...

And still they come! This tutorial looks at ElementAt(), use of Where() for subqueries, the not too useful Range and Repeat, All and Any for checking if a condition is true plus the four set operators. That's all in Linq tutorial five.

One thing stands above all else, if you understand the filtering ability of Lambda Expression, you'll pick up Linq fairly easily. It's just handy for doing a loop in a line to filter one sequence into another. For example if you have a sequence of integer numbers and use this Lambda Expression in the Where(n => n%2 ==0) that will only include those numbers n, where (n % 2 == 0) (i.e. the even numbers) in the sequence.

There's still one or two more tutorials to come. Aggregates, joining, grouping and one or two more.