Archive for February, 2005
February 9, 2005 at 11:22 am · Filed under General
So, google has just released their Maps product maps.google.com and what can I say other than, it’s awesome.
They know how to consistently raise the bar with web based application development. The maps are snappy, easy to view, and use nice visual effects (shadows, good color scheme and contrast).
One interesting thing to note is their map provider. Although they own Keyhole, they are using data from NAVTEQ. It probably makes sense since the NAVTEQ data is much better with street info.
They are my new default map provider. Hopefully Google will use themselves as their own map provider. Currently when you search for an address, it still points to Yahoo maps and map quest.
February 8, 2005 at 11:07 am · Filed under General
I heard about the new Cell microprocessor announcement from IBM, Sony, and Toshiba.
Wow. I don’t think they should call that chip a microprocessor. It should be called a micro-multiprocessor (MMP). Amazing work.
Now, the trick to these announcements is the execution. They better ship that thing this summer or they will have some serious competition on their tail in no time flat. If the past is any indicator, this could be very difficult for these guys.
What do I mean about execution? I mean having quantities ready on time. Being clear about target platforms. Don’t talk about a business PC until they have the OS and toolchain there. If they do come out with a chip for enthusiasts, have an inexpensive motherboard that they can purchase. After shipping the motherboard, continue to support it and improve it until the platform supports itself.
So, what happens if they do pull it off? They get to lead the next fundamental change in computing. These chips are designed for heavy signal processing and computing. This is not a spreadsheet, database, or web-server chip. This is built for hight bit-rate media processing (encoding, encryption, decompression, transformation). I look forward to the day that I get to experience what one of these powerhouse chips can deliver. I want to see them render the vast majority of systems as obsolete.
Things are getting interesting again, but only if they really ship.
February 4, 2005 at 11:28 am · Filed under General
For quite a while now, I’ve been noticing that a lot of interesting apps on Windows are written in Borland Delphi. For example, Skype and Copernic are written in Delphi.
I looked at the package a while ago, and I was impressed. The language has some form of garbage collection and a healthy add-in market (VCL extensions). These extensions are a lot better than your typical Active-X or C++ libs that are out there. Delphi also interfaces with Microsoft COM really well. In fact it can even become a COM add-in for other apps. The super nice feature is that it deploys as a single .exe file. This means you don’t need to ship your app with a bunch of runtime DLL’s like other systems do (Visual Basic, .Net or even C++). Also, their runtime requires no per-user licensing.
Still, I won’t use the system because of the language syntax. If they had a different syntax, then I would happily use their system (a javascript, java, algol like syntax). “Yet another syntax” is a big hurdle for me, especially when their syntax is old and dying out.
Suppossedly, they have a new syntax based on C#, but I think that it requires the .Net runtime. This undermines all of the good stuff that the previous version had (lack of target machine runtime requirements.)
I’ll try to contact them to see what their thoughts are on this…
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