31Aug 2017 by richard@baronsoftware.com

Amazon’s Alexa and Microsoft’s Cortana are going to work together

Microsoft Development, Software Events
Amazon’s Alexa and Microsoft’s Cortana are going to work together Amazon and Microsoft announced on Wednesday that they’ve been working on a partnership to allow their respective voice assistants, Alexa and Cortana, to speak to one another. Starting later this year, owners of Amazon Echos and other Alexa-powered devices will be able to say: “Alexa, open Cortana” to start querying Microsoft’s voice assistant. Owners of devices running Microsoft’s Windows 10 operating system will be able to summon Alexa via Cortana in a similar manner. Why would customers want that — especially with the relatively clunky nature of the necessary voice command? The companies say that each voice assistant has its strengths — features like Microsoft Outlook and Exchange email integration for Cortana and smart-home controls or shopping for Alexa — and that…
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25Aug 2017 by richard@baronsoftware.com

Expert Delphi by Paweł Głowacki

Book Reviews, Rad Studio Delphi Development
Expert Delphi by Paweł Głowacki   After reading the latest book from Author Pawel Glowacki the feeling of fresh FireMonkey Delphi material left an excellent karma.  It should be part of anyone's Delphi Library since it has great reference material.  The book was written by Pawel Glowacki whom is Embarcadero's European Technical Lead for Developer Tools. The book begins with a basic primer on Delphi helping you get accustomed to the IDE and the Object Pascal language.  It quickly moves into advanced concepts dealing with FireMonkey.  You should be able to build server-side services, create new Internet of Things (IOT) and integrate your applet with web services to deploy them to market. As always the pricing from PackT is on the mark.  The writing is very clear at 506 pages and…
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23Aug 2017 by richard@baronsoftware.com

HotFix for RAD Studio 10.2.1 and iOS

Rad Studio Delphi Development
RAD Studio 10.2.1 HotFix for iOS AdHoc Deployment Embarcadero released a hotfix to address a regression (reported as https://quality.embarcadero.com/browse/RSP-18813) in RAD Studio Tokyo Release 1 related with AdHoc deployment for iOS. The fix available for download is at:  https://cc.embarcadero.com/item/30797 The fix (which is a single file to add to your system) provides support for building iOS Ad Hoc Applications.  Only using RAD Studio 10.2.1 and Xcode 8.2, 8.3.2 or 8.3.3. Extremely important if you are developing for the iOS platform with Delphi.
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18Feb 2017 by richard@baronsoftware.com

Majority of smartphones run either Android or iOS

Software Events
Majority of smartphones run either Android or iOS Gartner has released their latest findings that most smartphone users have known, you are using Android or iOS.   Android and iOS accounted for 99.6 percent of all smartphone sales in the fourth quarter of 2016. The scale is inching more in favor with Android but it is a pretty bleak picture for Blackberry and Windows Phone.   Google and Apple are dominating the industry and with these types of numbers it is next to impossible for any other firm to compete with them. Of the 432 million smartphones sold in the last quarter, 352 million ran Android (81.7 percent) and 77 million ran iOS (17.9 percent), but what happened to the other players? Well, in the same quarter, Windows Phone managed…
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14Feb 2017 by richard@baronsoftware.com

Happy Birthday to Delphi at 22 years and counting

Rad Studio Delphi Development
Happy Birthday to Delphi at 22 years and counting Well with the next release, "Godzilla - Tokyo" currently in beta testing and getting prepared to support Linux servers, there is no better way then to shout out a happy birthday to Delphi. Delphi History Delphi was originally developed by Borland as a rapid application development tool for Windows as the successor of Turbo Pascal. Delphi added full object-orientation to the existing language, and since then the language has grown and supports many other modern language features, including generics and anonymous methods, as well as unusual features such as inbuilt string types and native COM support. Delphi and its C++ counterpart, C++Builder, share many core components, notably the IDE, the Visual Component Library (VCL), and much of the RTL, and are…
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