Dimensional Data

Windows 11 is coming. It’s a fact – and it’s a gorgeous visual tweaking of the Windows desktop, start menu, taskbar and even the rendering of things like your application’s window borders and “non client area”. It’s Microsoft’s new glorious shooting star launching itself at the unwary peoples of the world from out of the clouds… and it’s going to wipe out the dinosaurs. Are you one of the technology dinosaurs? The new Windows 11 “Hello” screen – not massively different from Windows 10 Microsoft’s beautiful unfurling flower of Windows 11 wowed those of us watching that slightly shaky live Windows 11 launch video feed. It had lots of eye candy. Hidden among the schmoozing of rounded corners for all apps and semi-transparent acrylic everywhere were a few signs that Windows 11 is going to also be a coming Armageddon for lots of older PC hardware and a good few existing applications too. The Windows 11 widget panel replaces the pariah that is Windows live tiles Windows 11 is visually stunning Search in Windows 11 I’ve been waving the Fluent UI flag at anyone who would listen for a few years now. We’ve talked about Project Reunion and UI 3 in a few places. Well, with this latest announcement, Project Reunion gets renamed to the slightly less inspiring “Windows App SDK”. There’s a name produced by a group-think committee if I ever saw one. Apart from being about as exciting as an Arizona weather forecast it’s also unhelpfully close to the existing “Windows SDK”. There’s going to be some great moments in podcasts and webinars where presenters discuss “using the Windows SDK” and then having to clarify they actually meant “Windows App SDK which used to be Project Reunion”. The new Windows 11 app launch screen LOTS of semi-transparent acrylic in Windows 11 along with a centered task bar (I’m not a fan of this I have to say) as well as a much less cluttered look which is an achievement since that was one of the key selling points of Windows 10. Windows 11 has a new app store – how will that affect my Windows and mobile apps? The all new Windows 11 app store Tucked in between the massive amounts of semi-transparent acrylic “widget” panels that replace the existing Windows Live Tiles – which were almost entirely shunned by all developers not directly employed by Microsoft – there was an announcement more directly affecting developers using RAD Studio Delphi and C++ Builder. Microsoft are launching a completely re-vamped Windows App Store. The new Windows 11 App Store appears to be a total re-think on Microsoft’s original aims for the Windows Store when it first debuted. In the past the old Microsoft Store had fairly limited success. It’s possible this was due to the way apps had to be packaged for it, the technology your apps needed to employ and the whole delivery mechanism. This new app store is going to be a real game-changer. Microsoft are allowing virtually all packaging mechanisms and, boldest of all, it will contain Android apps which will run natively in Windows 11 without any apparent changes. This new “Windows Subsystem for Android” seems to borrow from the lessons learned with the astounding success of WSL, the Windows Subsystem for Linux. Amazon, your […]

Do you harbor a secret inner desire to be the next Professor Robert Langdon zooming around exotic tourist destinations and the world’s most beautiful landmark cities solving anagrams and saving The World from ancient secret societies? If so, you’d need to enjoy unscrambling fiendishly difficult word tangles to reveal their original form. It’s not easy, but anagrams have existed as pastimes and diversions for as long as society has been able to read and write so we humans must enjoy the challenge. An Android Anagram solver, written in Delphi Don’t worry, luckily your burgeoning aspirations at becoming world anagram champ have a little help from Arizona-based developer ASW Software. Lead by Anthony West, ASW have produced a beautiful Android app which rapidly helps you solve anagrams without having to go to the trouble of obtaining a Professorship in Linguistics. Floccipender is an optimized word descrambler with a simple interface which allows for super-quick solving of scrambled text. Written in RAD Studio Delphi using the powerful cross-platform FireMonkey FMX framework the app looks great and, thanks to the native code generation of RAD Studio, works at the full speed of the user’s mobile device. More on Floccipender Floccipender can solve single word anagrams, scrambled word games and newspaper quiz page anagrams. Here’s what ASW have to say about Floccipender: “the features include the ability to force the app to use all of the letters that are scrambled, or you can specify the minimum word length and Floccipender will find all words that can be created from the scrambled text. The results of the descrambled text is provided in less than a second as Floccipender has been optimized to unscramble words in just a matter of seconds“. Less than a second…on a mobile device. That’s pretty impressive! Website Floccipender Google Play Floccipender Screenshot Gallery

Chatbots are the unctuous umami flavoring to modern enterprise-grade apps. The AI in the chatbot is the secret sauce. What you need is the recipe. A chatbot adds that extra polish to your app, if it’s appropriate to your user base and the app’s purpose. At the most fundamental level the chatbot is simply a computer program which simulates human conversation and is used to engage with your users, taking your app’s human interaction to your user in a very personal way. Implemented correctly, we are able to automate repetitive and bureaucratic tasks which leaves we developers free to focus on – and hopefully solve – the more complex problems. Why add a chatbot to my app? Many companies are examining various processes, such as frequently asked questions and initial trouble-shooting or triaging of support inquiries which they then to put in a flow diagram and structure the requests and responses in the form of a written, or sometimes spoken, dialogue. When chatbots go rogue – “let’s eat Grandma” The hard part about chatting is understanding what is being meant, not what is actually being said. The best and most successful chatbots employ artificial intelligence to help us with the tricky job of understanding whether “let’s eat Grandma” or “let’s eat, Grandma” is an appropriate thing to say prior to a family meal, or an invitation to casual cannibalism. Poor Grandma. Adding scalable AI can help make your app make sense of the nonsense Joking aside, the AI still needs to work out what the intent of a sentence is. If I type “my internet is not working” the AI needs to understand that “the internet” is something that may or may not function and that the internet not working means it is not functioning but the phase “my dad does not work” means he is not currently employed rather than he is non-functional. In a conversation, there are many ways to ask the same thing and it is impossible to prepare your chatbot manually, to predict all of them. Here is where Artificial Intelligence takes our apps to the next level. With it, even asking in a way you did not predict, you get correct answers. You could create your own AI, but far better to use an external tool like Watson (IBM), Google Ai, or Wit.Ai (Facebook). Let’s summarize a menu of a few key ingredients (Grandma is not on the list) which, when combined, will allow you to add a fully-functioning chatbot, with Ai, using Delphi. AI Chatbot Ingredient Number 1: The RESTful API The first is step is to know how to consume and offer API endpoints in  Delphi. The majority of the platforms that you will use to talk with someone are external. This means that you need to send the message from your ChatBot to them. Usually, you will need a Rest API server. Also, you will probably need to consume their REST API endpoints. A great tool to offer API endpoints and create your REST API server is Delphi MVC Framework. It is simple, but robust at the same time. You can check the full implementation of the Delphi MVC Framework here. Consume REST API endpoints are easy with Delphi, you can use the Delphi REST Debugger. You can check a simple way […]

In the next TCoffeeAndCode session at noon CDT on June 30th, we are taking a look at Delphi 10.4.2 on the new desktop Arm based Apple M1 CPU with both MacOS and Windows 10, with a little look at the recently announced Windows 11. I’ll be updating this post with more details of working with the Apple M1 processor and ARM on the desktop. I have an M1 powered Mac Mini running the latest Mac OS and the Windows 10 for ARM in a virtual machine. If you are familiar with the RAD Studio Roadmap you know that the next major release of Delphi will include native support for the Arm based Apple M1 processor. We won’t be covering any of the unreleased versions of Delphi, but instead looking at the compatibility and interoperability of 10.4.2 today.

Wood and timber has been a flourishing industry for thousands of years. Some of the oldest traces of early mankind include evidence that we were using wood to make our lives easier; as tables, for leverage on the slabs of Stonehenge, bridge pillars in ancient muddy causeways. Even arrows to helps us obtain meat and food bowls in which to prepare and consume it. The dragon-headed Viking long ships and the more curlicue Mayflower which braved towering seas, the vast beams of old English Tudor houses, and even the great William Shakespeare’s original Globe theater were all made from this versatile material which, quite literally, grows on trees. It’s a relationship which has stood the test of time with very little change while the world around it began to buzz with the sound of electricity and engines. Into this dominion of wood and its products there is room for some modernity. The business of wood, like any, has bills to pay and inventory to manage and what better way to do that down in the wilds of a lumber yard than to have a handheld mobile device which can go where more clunky desktops and laptops might be a hinderance rather than a help. 3LOG LIMS integrates the LIMS System into easy, powerful mobile access LIMS is powerful business management software for the timber and wood products industries. As stated by the developer, “It combines the features of a log or timber accounting system with support for silviculture, wood procurement, contractor payables, vendor and contract management, log and wood products inventory, sales and consumption, business planning, querying, reporting, and accounting. LIMS has proven its capabilities at over 500 sites in North America. Companies from single mills to big names in the forestry industry are using 3LOG software every day. With LIMS, you can configure the system to work the way your company works, and then easily add new business activities without additional programming. For example, if you decide to start trading logs or fiber from a mill that previously only consumed wood, you simply add the customer and your contract and accounting rules, and start entering transactions. The features are already in the system, without additional programming.” Of course, it’s written using RAD Studio Delphi with the flexible yet powerful FireMonkey FMX framework. The 3Log Website Website 3LOG LIMS Apple App Store 3LOG LIMS Google Play 3LOG LIMS Screenshot Gallery RAD Studio Delphi makes writing cross-platform apps much easier and allows you maximum code-reuse to harness the full native power of your user’s devices. Why not download a trial today?

Did you know how easy it is with RAD Studio Delphi to add powerful, enterprise-grade real-time streaming to and from IoT devices? We’re going to show you how to get your apps to talk to IoT devices securely and in a robust fashion in just a few easy steps. IoT and Delphi – linking the “internet of things” IoT is very popular these days and the number of connected devices are growing at unprecedented rate. We can find “things” connected to the internet and used for all sorts of applications in our homes, offices, industry and commerce. In fact, they’re so ubiquitous we sometimes don’t even notice them and the form factor they take can be non-obvious too, taking such ephemera as ‘smart’ dog collars, luggage tags, or even automated egg monitors in chicken farms. These physical devices usually have integrated software to allow them to communicate with each other and of course to provide useful information to humans. Many are designed to do that with little to no human intervention. I took a look at a small internet search for “connected devices” to see what would come up: Google Home Voice Controller Amazon Echo Plus Voice Controller Amazon Dash Button August Doorbell Cam August Smart Lock Kuri Mobile Robot Belkin WeMo Smart Light Switch Footbot Air Quality Monitor Flow by Plume Labs Air Pollution Monitor Nest Smoke Alarm IoT devices have a common theme IoT devices have two things in common: Capability to connect to the internet. After all, it’s the “I” in “IoT”. Having some inbuilt technology to provide their functionality such as sensors, functional software and the connectivity. The market for IoT devices is increasing surprisingly. We have now reached the stage where there are more IoT devices than humans. What is IPWorks IoT? IPWorks IoT is a light-weight library which you can use in your Delphi and C++ builder applications to easily integrate IoT communication protocols. It supports all of the common protocols. IPWorks has a long history and has been a very reliable framework for over 25 years now. These IoT components are based on those IPWorks framework so you don’t have to worry about their security and reliability. Another great feature is the components do not depend on any external libraries or similar dependencies. Also the components are thread safe which is an added bonus when dealing with multiple devices with potentially simultaneous flows of real-time data. The icing on the cake is that IPWorks has a great active online knowledge base. Where can I get IoT components for Delphi? You can get IPWorkis IoT from Getit libraries: https://getitnow.embarcadero.com/trial-ipworks-iot-2020-delphi-edition/ How do I implement MQTT with IPWorks IoT? MQTT stands for MQ Telemetry Transport. MQTT is the OASIS standard for IoT messaging. MQTT is basically designed for low resources scenarios such as microcontrollers. MQTT use less bandwidth than other protocols such as HTTP. Message headers are smaller and the overhead in sending/receiving them is correspondingly lightweight too. MQTT is bidirectional. Also it allows message broadcasting. Messaging is very reliable. There are three levels of QoS. At most once (0) At least once (1) Exactly once (2) MQTT is very useful in unreliable networks. With MQTT persistent sessions, you can reduce the bandwidth and response time. Also you can setup TLS and transfer data securely. IPWorks […]