I am often by parents how they can get their kids interested in technology and programming in a fun and educational way. When I was a kid growing up I played with erector sets, built my own crystal radio, used my Edmund Scientific kit to create microscopes and telescopes. I used to show my Lego Mindstorms kit, my IMSAI 8080 computer that I build from a kit in 1974, my Arduino boards and now my RaspberryPi 2 device. There are many other computer programming education systems including Alice,...
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Blog posts tagged in Hardware
I am often by parents how they can get their kids interested in technology and programming in a fun and educational way. When I was a kid growing up I played with erector sets, built my own crystal radio, used my Edmund Scientific kit to create microscopes and telescopes. I used to show my Lego Mindstorms kit, my IMSAI 8080 computer that I build from a kit in 1974, my Arduino boards and now my RaspberryPi 2 device. There are many other computer programming education systems including Alice,...
I finally got a 7 port USB hub for my MacBook Pro (Targus 7-port USB 3.0 Combo Hub. Jim McKeeth has the Anker USB 3.0 7 port hub) so that I can keep all of my target platform devices connected and switch between them when I am demoing RAD Studio XE5 for Delphi and C++. With this hubba bubba I have my iPhone4S, iPad4, Galaxy S4, Nexus 7(2012) and Google Glass all connected and showing up in the IDE (see bitmap below).
Same Delphi app running on all 5 devices! Developer life is wonderful th...
During January we are blogging, writing, demoing and webinaring about Devices and Gadgets and the need for developers to help make it all work. On Wednesday, January 22 during 3 webinars, Jim McKeeth, David I and guests will be presenting "Programming Devices and Gadgets with RAD Studio" at 6am, 11am and 5pm Pacific Time. While some of the devices and gadgets we will be using support alternate user interfaces (Google Glass, Leap Motion 3D input and Emotiv EPOC brain computer interface), others a...
We are now into the single digits for the number of days before CodeRage 8 Delphi Conference starts. The anticipation is building and the presenters are completing their session preparations. Nine more days until the CodeRage 8 Delphi Conference starts on Tuesday, October 15. Delphi XE5 allows you to create iOS, Android, Windows and Mac OSX applications using one codebase and true native optimized machine code. Join Embarcadero and software development experts from around the world at the CodeRa...
This RAD Studio XE3 video showcases FireMonkey 2's new sensor non-visual components for Location (TLocationSensor - Windows/Mac) and Motion (TMotionSensor - Windows). These new components inherit from TCustomSensor and are built on top of the new System.Sensors unit (http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/Libraries/XE3/en/System.Sensors). For FireMonkey projects, these new components appear in the Sensors tab of the Tool Palette. Sensor APIs (TSensorCategory) supported by XE3 include:
Location
...
Platform is one the most overloaded terms in computer technology. When someone talks about supporting a platform they might be referring to an operating system platform, hardware platform, mobile platform, database platform, graphics hardware and software platform, service based platform, application based platform, a framework, or an architecture. Operating system platforms in use today include Windows (desktop, server, and Mobile), Linux, OS X, iOS, Android, Blackberry OS, Unix (and it's vari...
Quintus Arrius, in the movie Ben Hur, implores the rowers to give him "Battle speed!... Attack speed!... Ramming speed!" On October 15, 1997, the rocket powered car, ThrustSSC, driven by Andy Green, set a world land speed record of 763 mph. ThrustSSC is the first car to break the sound barrier on land. The qote, "I feel the need, the need for speed", from the movie Top Gun, says a lot about what drives our native code compiler team.
Who doesn't want more speed and fast optimizing compilers? ...
One of the cool and useful presentations at the recent Australian Delphi User Group (ADUG) Autumn (Spring in the northern hemisphere) Symposium help in Melbourne and Sydney, I sat in on a technical session given by Jason Tolley of ROK Technology. ROK Technology is a privately owned Australian company. One of their core competencies is building embedded and real time systems.
Jason's talk was about how to convert Delphi native code applications so that they run on hardware/software appliances...
What factors are driving software systems development? Economic and business SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis drives some of the decisions to build, modify, update, and retire the systems we build and use. There are new platforms (what's the latest overloaded use of the term "platform" these days?), new languages, new API(s)/Frameworks, new architectures, new methods, growing collections of best practices, new hardware, and new operating systems that drive syst...
Last year I took part in the One Laptop Per Child "Give One, Get One" program. Sitting on my desk at work is the XO notebook computer. OLPC is doing it again starting today, November 17th, in the US. The details are available at the 2008 Give One, Get One site on Amazon.com.
The deal: $199 to give a laptop to a child in the developing world and/or $399 to give a laptop to a child in the developing world and get a laptop. The laptops use the Sugar GUI desktop on a Linux-based Fedora Core opera...