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Smalltalk Digest: April Edition

Posted on by Author Jeremy Jordan in Categories Cincom Smalltalk Digest Newsletter Archive

Smalltalk Digest

Welcome to the April 2020 edition of the Cincom Smalltalk™ Digest.  In this valuable edition, we will talk about the following:

CUSTOMERS and PARTNERS

We are still here for you! Read about Cincom’s response to COVID-19 here.

  • How Customer Communication Is Cincom’s Priority
  • Looking for Hidden Value in Your Business?

NEWBIES, FREELANCERS and DEVELOPERS

  • Looking for a New Hobby or Side Hustle while Working from Home?
  • How to Handle Date, Time and Timestamp Data Types with SQLite in Cincom® VisualWorks®
  • Fonts for Applications – a Hidden Gems Screencast
  • How Is Cincom Smalltalk Using Social Media to Bring Together a Community?
  • Have You Seen the Smalltalk Balloon Lately?
  • The UK Smalltalk User Group Meeting Is Back!
  • What Changes Have Been Made to Upcoming Developer Events?
  • FAQ of the Month: “How do I opt-in or re-subscribe so I can receive the Personal Use License (PUL) download email?”
  • Popular Product Resources

ACADEMIA

  • Who Should Use the Academic Personal Use License Version of Cincom Smalltalk?

Snippets for these articles can be found below:

CUSTOMERS and PARTNERS

How Customer Communication Is Cincom’s Priority

Current changes in our world have forced us as a society to do things differently, and many people are now forced to work in environments that are much different than they are used to.  Many Cincom Smalltalk customers are being asked to do things at their companies for the first time and may not know the numerous ways to communicate with us, nor what resources are available to them through Cincom.

We are here to help you!  

For your reference, we want to provide a rundown of the various ways we currently communicate, as well as some of the resources we have available to you. From upgrading your product to Cincom® ObjectStudio® 9.0 or Cincom VisualWorks 9.0 to customer programs and services, tutorials, videos and helpful newsletters like the Cincom Smalltalk Resolutions newsletter, we have everything listed in one handy guide.

Looking for Hidden Value in Your Business?

Maintaining revenue streams and creatively seeking growth opportunities during this unusual and unprecedented time is at the forefront of the minds of many company leaders.  Maximizing productivity and efficiency is critical right now as companies seek to not only survive our new, shared reality but maybe even set themselves up for growth. 

As demonstrated above, the Cincom Smalltalk product team makes the success of our customers and partners our number one priority. Not only does our product team strive for this, but our Services team has the same goal, having decades of experience in discovering and maximizing productivity and making our customers successful. Even during this time when many companies are working from home, our Services team can still assist you with your needs. We have the knowledge and creativity to discover opportunities for growth, productivity and added value in your application and business and can do so remotely.

Here are some of the ways we can help you find new potential in your application:

  • Product Upgrades
  • Mentoring
  • Troubleshooting
  • Performance Enhancement
  • Migrations
  • Proof of Concept

Interested?  See more details, and learn how to get started discovering the hidden value waiting to be found here.

Cincom Discovery Zone for Customer and Partner Services

NEWBIES, FREELANCERS and DEVELOPERS

Looking for a New Hobby or Side Hustle while Working from Home?

Many people have been safely working from home for several weeks.  Having already blown through their watch lists on their streaming services, they’re going a bit stir crazy and looking for something worthwhile and meaningful to do other than making trips to the refrigerator. Sound familiar?

Maybe you can use this time to think of the next great idea that can change society, or maybe you’d like to use your creativity to develop an idea you have for a successful business. You are not alone!

We’ve seen a recent surge in our Personal Use License downloads, as well as eager developers who are  jumping on board and partnering with us through our REV Program.  We want to offer you those same opportunities:

  1. Try Cincom Smalltalk ─ A great opportunity to try something new! The Personal Use License of Cincom Smalltalk makes it easy for someone to learn and become familiar with our technology. The Personal Use License is free for you to use for your own private use. Curious?  Click here to start exploring Cincom Smalltalk and all that it can do for you.
  2. Buy Cincom Smalltalk ─ A great opportunity to take your idea to the next level and create your own business! This popular program is an affordable investment of $500 that was created to give you a low-cost opportunity to partner with Cincom and receive all the benefits of being a customer. As a Cincom Smalltalk customer, you receive:
    • Access to the full product and all releases for 1 year/12 months
    • Full support for the product during the 1 year/12 months
    • An opportunity to join the Developer Program to get early beta releases of our product to see where we are taking it and comment to help us build out the future of commercial Smalltalk
    • An opportunity to join the Partner Promotion Program to promote your application, help you develop the right markets or find the smartest space to promote what you have been working on

Interested? Join the other entrepreneurs like you and get started in this very popular program today! Click here to start your partnership for only $500.

REV Up Your Business with Cincom Smalltalk™

How to Handle Date, Time and Timestamp Data Types with SQLite in Cincom VisualWorks

SQLite does not support built-in date, time and timestamp storage classes. Users normally make use of its built-in date and time functions to handle these data types.

In this article, we’ll demonstrate two ways to process date, time and timestamp data.  One way is to take advantage of Glorp’s conversion methods, and the other way is to use SQLite’s built-in functions to achieve the same goal.

Let’s start with Glorp’s way. But before doing that, please note that in addition to loading SQLite3EXDI into your image, you need to load StoreForSQLite3 as well.

Learn more and see the code example:

How to Handle Date, Time and Timestamp Data Types with SQLite in Cincom® VisualWorks®

Fonts for Applications – a Hidden Gems Screencast

One of the most successful video series we publish is the Hidden Gems Screencast, a series produced by Arden Thomas, the Cincom Smalltalk Product Manager. Arden created this series for developers who are passionate about their use of Cincom Smalltalk and want to learn more about its productivity and ease of use. This brand-new Hidden Gems shows developers some basic tips and examples for application fonts, named fonts and font usage, sizing, setting and specifying.

It will show developers where to see what named fonts exist and what they are set to (NamedFontSelector) and will also demonstrate two ways to specify your widget fonts:

  1. Through Property settings
  2. Programmatically

In addition, we will identify and demonstrate two “hooks” for setting an application’s fonts along with their programmatic and declarative techniques.

  1. loadNamedFonts
  2. definedNamedFonts

In specifying fonts, we will demonstrate

  • setting the size,
  • setting the size and suggested family, and
  • other properties, such as italics.

We also show how to find the current skin in use and how to specify fonts for it.

We will end up with a true “hidden” gem for quickly changing the font size in the code editor.

Watch this screencast below:

Please send comments, questions and suggestions to the Cincom Smalltalk Product Team at CSSTARTeam@cincom.com. 

How Is Cincom Smalltalk Using Social Media to Bring Together a Community?

Given the current global circumstances we are all undergoing, studies show that 66% of users believe their social media usage habits will increase significantly. As more consumers are working from home, there will be a significant surge of social media content creation and consumption. 

In the Cincom Smalltalk showcase at Cincom World Headquarters, we have many documents, magazines, newsletters and books from the decades of Smalltalk’s history, leading up to and continuing through Cincom’s acquisition of ObjectStudio and VisualWorks. These items have been seen by many people over the years and represent a lot of memories. 

Just prior to our work-from-home order, we had begun sharing one random item each Thursday on social media, and calling it our #BlastFromthePast.

These Thursday updates are becoming our most engaging social posts of the week and bring a lot of conversation, both on social media and by comments that people send us via email.  Be sure to check out this example below on Twitter and scroll through our timeline to see others.

How Is Cincom Smalltalk Using Social Media to Bring Together a Community?

Have You Seen the Smalltalk Balloon Lately?

“With millions of people being forced to stay home and work, many have found creative ways to virtually stay social through happy hours, trivia nights and birthday parties. And Zoom, one of the dozens of video conferencing services, has quickly become the top driver for this media consumption.” – CNCB.com

According to CNBC.com and data from Apptopia, Zoom’s daily active user count was up 378% from 2019, while monthly active users were up 186% from the end of 2019, indicating that the rush of new users could be largely due to the ballooning work-from-home trend brought about by COVID-19, rather than traditional business growth.

So what does this have to do with the Smalltalk Community?

The Verge recently published a story about what movie producers are doing now to promote their properties. Movie posters and billboards are useless right now, so marketing teams all seem to have come to the same solution: Zoom backgrounds. 

The Smalltalk balloon is a very iconic symbol, not just within the Smalltalk community, but in the larger developer community. Even developers who don’t use Smalltalk recognize the universal symbol (check out this tweet as an example).  Because it’s so recognizable and also an easy object to place within many scenes, the Cincom Smalltalk team began creating PC, mobile and Zoom backgrounds for our social media platforms with the legendary Smalltalk balloon in it.  

Are you interested in checking out these other backgrounds to use yourself? Go to our Twitter account to see these and others.

Have You Seen the Smalltalk Balloon Lately?

The UK Smalltalk User Group Meeting Is Back!

The next meeting of the UK Smalltalk User Group will be on Wednesday, April 29th. Given the current COVID-19 restrictions, this will be an online meeting from home.
 
If you’d like to join this group, please sign up in advance on the meeting’s Meetup page. Don’t forget to bring your laptop and drinks! 

What Changes Have Been Made to Upcoming  Developer Events?

In light of the global changes that have occurred recently, and the ever-changing circumstances that accompany it, we have a few updates for some upcoming events. Please adjust your plans and calendars accordingly:

  • April 29, 2020 — UK Smalltalk User Group Meeting (London, UK) ─ Online meeting

  • April 29-May 1, 2020 — deliver:Agile 2020 (Columbus, Ohio)  Currently postponed to a date in the future that has yet to be determined

You can monitor other future meetups and conferences, as well as any changes to their scheduling on our Events page here.

https://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/main/events/

FAQ of the Month: “How do I opt-in or re-subscribe so I can receive the Personal Use License (PUL) download email?”

Regardless of where you live, privacy laws are shaping the way companies do business now, and we are no exception to that rule. Privacy is very important to Cincom, and we’ve put in some measures to ensure that we keep your data safe.

Because of this, we are unable to send any emails, including the download email for the PUL of Cincom ObjectStudio or Cincom VisualWorks, without your consent. Whether you remember doing this or not, if you have previously unsubscribed from receiving emails from Cincom Smalltalk and have tried to request a copy of the PUL, our system will not deliver the email to you. There are two steps you’ll need to take to resolve this. Click here to find the quick fix for this.

For other frequently asked questions, visit our FAQs section where we answer “How do I…?” and other questions here.

Popular Product Resources

As mentioned in the customer section above, with our current work-from-home environment, many people are being forced to take on new and different responsibilities at their businesses. Maybe you are new to Cincom Smalltalk or just need help finding something specific on our website. We’re taking advantage of the new year and new trends, and you’ll begin to see website updates if you haven’t already. 

Here’s a quick guide to the popular resources we currently have available on our website:

ACADEMIA

Who Should Use the Academic Personal Use License Version of Cincom Smalltalk?

Most college and university campuses are shut down around the world, but that doesn’t stop professors from teaching their classes remotely. We’ve recently had an uptick in our Academic Personal Use License downloads as more professors are encouraging their eager developers to try out new programming languages.

Our software is free for students and professors to use personally for their studies or class projects, but does require a form to be filled out to receive the link to download it. If you (or another classmate) would like to use our software for personal academic use, we have it available to you. 

To learn about the Cincom Smalltalk Academic Personal Use License (APUL):

Try the Student License Version of Cincom Smalltalk™

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