Adobe to ship Flash 11 and AIR 3, repositions Flash vs HTML 5

By tim, on September 21st, 2011 Follow tim on Twitter

Adobe has announced that Flash 11 and AIR 3 will ship in early October.

There are significant changes in this release.

Flash gets Stage 3D (previously codenamed Molehill), a set of low-level 3D APIs, GPU accelerated where hardware allows, which will make console-like 3D graphics and games possible in Flash. Stage 3D wraps DirectX

…continue reading Adobe to ship Flash 11 and AIR 3, repositions Flash vs HTML 5

Windows Live Messenger error message hell

By tim, on August 27th, 2011 Follow tim on Twitter

Recently I tried to sign into Live Messenger on Windows 7, only to be informed of what appears to be a temporary interruption in service.

Show details, by the way, shows Error code: 80040154

I retried and got the same message, so I clicked the Get more information link, which took me here:

…continue reading Windows Live Messenger error message hell

HP discontinues WebOS, considers PC spin-off. Should have stuck with Microsoft

By tim, on August 18th, 2011 Follow tim on Twitter

Oh yes, and buys Autonomy, a fast-growing specialist in enterprise knowledge management.

Here’s the news from HP’s announcement:

As part of the transformation, HP announced that its board of directors has authorized the exploration of strategic alternatives for the company’s Personal Systems Group. HP will consider a broad range of options that may include,

…continue reading HP discontinues WebOS, considers PC spin-off. Should have stuck with Microsoft

Living in an App Store world: what are the implications?

By tim, on July 25th, 2011 Follow tim on Twitter

A few recent events prompt some reflections on the rise of app stores and the implications for developers and for the IT industry.

One is Apple’s OS X Lion release, available only through the Mac App Store; and the removal of the optical drive on the Mac Mini, making it hard to install shrink-wrap

…continue reading Living in an App Store world: what are the implications?

Adobe releases 64-bit Flash Player 11 beta, AIR 3 with packager for Windows, Mac, Android

By tim, on July 14th, 2011 Follow tim on Twitter

Adobe has released a beta version of Flash Player 11 and AIR 3. The AIR release is of limited interest since as yet there is no public SDK; Adobe mainly wants to test compatibility. That said, the announcement describes a key new feature, the ability to package AIR applications as standalone executables on Windows,

…continue reading Adobe releases 64-bit Flash Player 11 beta, AIR 3 with packager for Windows, Mac, Android

Adobe announces strong results though much of the business looks flat

By tim, on June 22nd, 2011 Follow tim on Twitter

Adobe has announced its financial results for its second quarter. Revenue is up 9% year on year, and profits are up too, so it looks like a strong quarter. However, the success is really limited to a couple of business segments.

Here is the comparison with the equivalent quarter last year:

…continue reading Adobe announces strong results though much of the business looks flat

C# vs C++ and .NET vs Mono vs Compact Framework performance tests

By tim, on June 21st, 2011 Follow tim on Twitter

A detailed benchmark posted on codeproject investigates the performance of basic operations including string handling, hash tables, math generics, simple arithmetic, sorting, file scanning and (for C#) platform invoke of native code. These are the conclusions:

There is only a small performance penalty for C# on the desktop versus C++. Mono is generally slower

…continue reading C# vs C++ and .NET vs Mono vs Compact Framework performance tests

SharePoint Workspace 2010 – what a mess

By tim, on May 25th, 2011 Follow tim on Twitter

For some time I have been meaning to post about SharePoint Workspace 2010. This application was introduced as part of Office 2010, though it is partly based on the older Office Groove software. Its purpose is to allow users to work with documents stored on SharePoint servers even when they are offline. I regard

…continue reading SharePoint Workspace 2010 – what a mess

Updated SQLite wrapper for Embarcadero Delphi (and Free Pascal)

By tim, on February 4th, 2011 Follow tim on Twitter

A while back I worked on a Delphi wrapper for SQLite 3, which I published on this site as an open source project. Others amended it to support Free Pascal and Lazarus, so you can use it on Linux and on the Mac. I’ve not touched it for a couple of years; but recently

…continue reading Updated SQLite wrapper for Embarcadero Delphi (and Free Pascal)

Delphi and C++ Builder XE Starter Editions announced

By tim, on January 31st, 2011 Follow tim on Twitter

Embarcadero has announced Starter Editions for both Delphi XE and C++ Builder XE, rapid development environments for native Windows applications.

These are not toy versions. The main technical difference between the Starter editions and the Professional versions are the absence of UML modelling, Class Explorer and Resource Manager tools. You also miss out on

…continue reading Delphi and C++ Builder XE Starter Editions announced

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