Goodnight Ray

About 10 years ago while waiting for a friend I was sitting in a hotel lobby on one of those circular benches with a planter in the center. At first I didn't really notice the older gentleman sitting next to me. After a minute or so, I glanced to my right and I couldn't believe my eyes. It was Ray Charles. He was wearing his dark sunglasses and looked like just a little older version of the trademark Ray Charles I remembered. I wasn't quite sure how to address him or, honestly, whether he even knew I was sitting there. So I just said "Mr. Charles?", he said "yes"... and we began to chat. He asked me a little bit about myself. Then we just talked about music. I asked him something about Willie Nelson's cover of "Georgia". Just small talk about music, but I couldn't believe I was sitting there talking with Ray Charles, one of the most recognizable and talented musicians of all time. He was wonderfully friendly and seemed genuinely interested in our conversation. I was amazed there weren't a hundred people crowded around. He talked to me with a big smile and he swayed back and forth a bit, just as I remembered from TV. I've met famous musicians and celebrities, but a quiet conversation with a living legend is something different altogether. After a few minutes of just chatting about music and what Ray was up to, I told him what a pleasure it was to meet him. He shook my hand, smiled and thanked me. As I walked away, someone finally noticed he was sitting there and a crowd gathered around the bench. I certainly didn't know Ray Charles, but I was fortunate to meet him once.

Ray Charles
1930-2004

A Month Left to Save $300 on Borcon

Borcon 2004 is three months and two days away so there's a little over a month left to qualify for the $300 early registration discount. In addition to the early reg discount once again there is a 50% discount on Borland products purchased at the conference. Last year there was a feeding frenzy on Delphi 8 pre-orders. Of course the idea of Borcon isn't just to get great a great price on your Delphi boxes. It's the largest annual event focused on Borland products and technologies in the world. If you're a Delphi developer or manager you'll be in great company among thousands of others sharing similar interests. Sessions, events, keynotes, and roundtables are all designed to help you harness the latest technologies and features to build great software. This year's U.S. Borland conference will be held in San Jose, California, just a short drive from the famous Scotts Valley campus where the Delphi team lives. So throughout the conference you'll be sure to see and meet plenty of us from the Delphi team presenting, eating, drinking, and walking around. For us, it's a genuinely terrific opportunity to meet developers in person and chat about all things Delphi. There will be lots to learn, lots to see, and many to meet. And rest assured you will most definitely see awsome up and coming future Delphi stuff. So take advantage of the early discount, it may pay for your airfare or put a serious dent in it if you're flying over an ocean. Hope to see you there!

eBay and Delphi

Borland and eBay recently announced a partnership that will provide developers with tools for integrating Delphi applications with the eBay marketplace. The first step of this program is the availability of eBay .NET SDK. Expect future Delphi releases to ship with the SDK in the box. With the SDK and Delphi 8 you can seamlessly integrate your applications, inventories, and sales systems into eBay. So if your customers or end users have goods or services running through your Delphi applications, you can now offer those goods and services conveniently and cost effectively into a whole new marketplace, and a particularly popular one at that. There is also an SDK available for PayPal.

John Kaster has kindly posted several helpful Delphi/eBay SDK sample applications on Code Central: (1) and (2). Cool note: he used babel code to help with the port of these from C#. John has been playing with the eBay SDK for a little while now and I think he has a few more useful eBay things up his sleeve. Thanks John!