JKI News and Updates

Bay Area Denizens ? Don’t Miss NITS in Santa Clara, October 28

JKI Software — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 10:57:13 -0500

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If you missed NIWeek 2010 � or even if you didn’t � now’s your chance to explore NI’s latest trends in automation, design, and test in this free, full-day conference in Santa Clara on October 28,2010! The National Instruments Technical Symposium agenda features a keynote from John Graff, NI VP of Americas, Sales and Marketing, a variety of technical sessions, hands-on labs, and presentations, and this year, a special mini-presentation from Jim Kring about how JKI helped Fluxion Biosciences build and ship an R&D 100 Award-winning product in just five months.

In addition to the latest in NI hardware advances, you’ll learn about the new features in LabVIEW 2010, some of which were suggested by JKI engineers in the LabVIEW Idea Exchange (also check out NI�s LabVIEW Heroes Lead the Way video featuring JKI engineers� contributions to the Idea Exchange).

We’ll have a booth, so make sure to come by and visit with Jim and Philippe Guerit. We’d love to hear about your latest cool application, and we’re always happy to chat about LabVIEW and answer questions. Jim will even sign your copy of LabVIEW for Everyone, and if you don’t already have one, he’ll have a few available for a mere $60 ($22 less than the list price).

As always, NI feeds you breakfast and lunch, and you’ll have the chance to catch up with your local NI buddies. Come on by and say hello!

Register Now

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NIWeek 2010 Recap and Technical Session Slides

JKI Software — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 19:09:58 -0500

Wow! �What a great NIWeek! �The whole JKI team had a great time at NIWeek 2010, and it was completely worth all the sleep we lost running hard to get ready for it. �We hope all our friends around the LabVIEW Ecosystem enjoyed it as much as we did, and for those who weren’t able to make it to Austin, we’re sorry we missed you!

NIWeek 2010 was a big event for JKI. It was�probably our biggest NIWeek ever:

We released VIPM 2010, a huge update to VI Package Manager that dramatically expands its scope of LabVIEW add-ons VIPM can create. �It also makes VI Package building available in VIPM Community Edition so you can build and share your own LabVIEW add-ons for free.
We announced that VIPM 2010 is now the�official download vehicle of the LabVIEW Tools Network.
We�launched our new web site and logo (and got some sweet new polo shirts).
JKI Engineer Justin’s Popcorn Tweets demo was the hit of the LabVIEW Community Zone.
JKI Engineers led or participated in six different technical or hands-on sessions.
JKI Founder Jim Kring accepted the LabVIEW “Add-on of the Year” award on behalf of OpenG.

NIWeek 2010 JKI Technical Session Slides Now Available

Several people have asked us to post our NIWeek 2010 presentation slides so those who missed the talks can catch up. �Download the slides for these presentations below.

From Prototypes to Products — Building Commercial Instruments with LabVIEW by�Omar Mussa. �PDF (1.2 MB)
LabVIEW Object-Oriented Programming Design Patterns for Large Systems by Tomi Maila. PDF (180 KB) Example Code ZIP (532 KB)
Popcorn Tweets: LabVIEW Goes Viral by�Justin Goeres.�PDF (3.1 MB)
State Machine vs. State Machine by�Justin Goeres (JKI), Nancy Hollenback (The G Team), and Norm Kirchner (NI).�PDF (745 KB)

If you have questions or feedback on these slides, please don’t hesitate to post them in the comments below, or start a discussion in our forums.

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VIPM Powers the NI LabVIEW Tools Network

JKI Software — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 11:00:05 -0500

JKI is pleased to announce that VI Package Manager™ 2010 (VIPM) is the official download vehicle of National Instruments’ LabVIEW™ Tools Network (LVTN). This represents the culmination of a lot hard work, in collaboration with National Instruments, to make it easy for LabVIEW users everywhere to create, share, and sell LabVIEW Add-ons.

VIPM 2010 includes lots of great features specifically tailored to help users find and install LabVIEW Add-ons from the LVTN, and to help add-on developers distribute their products to thousands of users and customers around the world.

If you’re a LabVIEW User…

VIPM 2010 automatically connects you to the LVTN. You can use VIPM’s built-in search features to find the LabVIEW Add-ons you need and can install them into your LabVIEW environment in just a couple clicks. VIPM also notifies you when new versions of your add-ons are available and makes upgrading them a breeze.

If you’re a LabVIEW Add-on Developer…

VIPM’s “VI Package” format is the fastest, most efficient, and lowest-risk way to put your product in front of thousands of LabVIEW users on the LVTN.

VIPM’s built-in features like palette generation, platform requirements settings, and dynamic license and activation binding (via NI’s Licensing and Activation Toolkit) make it easy to comply with all the requirements to submit your add-on to the LVTN. This means that your add-on will be less likely to be rejected by NI on review.

Once your add-on is published to the LVTN, it will appear automatically in the package list of every VIPM user. Thousands of LabVIEW users will immediately be able to install and evaluate (and buy!) your LabVIEW Add-on.

These reasons and more are why National Instruments recommends VIPM for building LabVIEW Add-ons for the LabVIEW Tools Network. Visit our VIPM product page to learn more about VIPM and get started downloading, creating, and sharing LabVIEW Add-ons today!

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VIPM 2010 Private Beta is Live

JKI Software — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 15:13:01 -0500

VIPM 2010 has entered beta testing…

and we need your help!

VIPM 2010 has lots of cool improvements like major performance boosts, better configuration management tools, and support for 64-bit LabVIEW. �But more importantly, it sports a completely redesigned Package Builder that lets you package any type of LabVIEW Add-on you can think of.

Can you�prove us wrong?��Is there a special kind of package you’ve been unable to build because VIPM (until now) didn’t support what you needed? �Are you an enthusiastic VIPM user and you want to help us improve the product before we ship it?

If any of those apply to you, please go here and sign up for the VIPM 2010 Beta Program.

We’re looking forward to hearing your feedback!

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NI LabVIEW Virtual User Group: LabVIEW Code Reuse 101

JKI Software — Tue, 04 May 2010 16:26:13 -0500

Tomorrow, �Wednesday�May 5th, NI has invited me to present at a Live LabVIEW Virtual User Group meeting. I will be doing a presentation on code reuse.

Learn about methodologies and tools to implement code reuse techniques with LabVIEW, presented by experts. Review use cases on internal code reuse libraries and add-on development for creating a product based on LabVIEW. Example demos include how to build a reusable library from your existing VIs and have them show up in your palettes.

Title: NI LabVIEW Virtual User Group: LabVIEW Code Reuse 101

Date: Wednesday, May 5th, 2010

Time: 11:00 AM [US Central Time]

Location: Online Registration (Click Here)

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Popcorn Tweets at Raleigh Users Group, Tuesday, May 4th

JKI Software — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 14:30:37 -0500

Next Tuesday, May 4th, I will be doing a presentation at Seneca5’s monthly user group meeting. The topic will be Popcorn Tweets: Going Viral with LabVIEW and JKI. Dave Britt (Popcorn Tweets co-creator) and I will be there with the Popcorn Tweets hardware to discuss why we built it & how it all came together, and also to demonstrate & discuss the underlying software architecture of the machine. There will be plenty of time for questions, too!

This is a great opportunity to get a real-life behind-the-scenes look at how a JKI engineer uses the free JKI State Machine to create robust, maintainable (and sometimes fun!) applications using LabVIEW, and how you can do the same. There’s even pizza!

Title: Popcorn Tweets: Going Viral with LabVIEW and JKI

Date: Tuesday, May 4th, 2010

Time: 6:30 PM Pizza / 7:00 Meeting

Location: Seneca5 / 419 N. Boylan Ave. / Raleigh, NC

If you’re in the Raleigh area, we hope to see you there!

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Introducing GTweet: Twitter-Driven, Crowd-Sourced LabVIEW Development

JKI Software — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 22:15:53 -0500

Today, the Social LabVIEW Revolution begins.

JKI is proud to announce GTweet: the world’s first Twitter-driven, crowd-sourced LabVIEW software development tool!

A Revolution in Dataflow!

GTweet harnesses the combined powers of Twitter and LabVIEW Scripting to open the door to a whole new way of creating software. No longer is LabVIEW constrained to a single engineer at a single computer. Anyone can collaborate with any number of friends and strangers, to create LabVIEW software together.

Simple, Yet Profound!

Using a special Twitter hashtag, GTweet listens for commands from the global Twitter feed. These commands enable users around the globe to tell LabVIEW exactly which nodes to drop where, which terminals to wire, and any other programming tasks.

And since everyone can GTweet together, GTweet is limited only by the power of your social LabVIEW network!

Social Dataflow has arrived. Click to enlarge.

A New Paradigm in Software Development!

GTweet isn’t just LabVIEW-by-Twitter. It’s a whole new way to think about programming.

It enables your development team to bring the modern thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters theory of software engineering to LabVIEW. By using GTweet, you never have to worry about who is working on a particular VI. Everyone can edit the same VIs in parallel!

More eyes on the code means fewer bugs! More engineers means faster progress!

Social Media, Social LabVIEW!

GTweet merely scratches the surface of social collaboration in LabVIEW. Like Twitter itself, GTweet is merely the gateway to a novel concept that JKI calls social dataflow.

As the social media landscape continues to grow and change, JKI is making sure that LabVIEW, and GTweet, will set the standard. Why just ReTweet, when you can GTweet?

How will GTweet change your life? Tell us in the comments. Or better yet, tweet about it!

Follow JKI on Twitter!

If you use Twitter and you use LabVIEW, you should definitely follow JKI! You can follow the main JKI Software account, and you can also follow some of the individual JKI engineers: Jim, Justin, Michael, Omar, or Tomi. If you pay close attention, you might catch us using GTweet to invent The Next Big Thing in dataflow!

Special Thanks!

JKI would like to thank Darren Nattinger for providing the grammar for GTweet, and also some of the other secret sauce.

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EasyXML 2.0 Released, Brings Performance Improvements and Fixes

JKI Software — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 13:15:08 -0500

We’ve just released EasyXML 2.0, a major update to the tool that makes generating and parsing XML data with LabVIEW as easy as creating a cluster!

What’s New in EasyXML 2.0?

EasyXML 2.0 includes major performance improvements when parsing XML. �It also fixes several bugs. �See the�EasyXML 2.0 Release Notes for full details.

Download EasyXML

You can download & install the demo version of EasyXML using VI Package Manager.� Just press the “Check the Network for Available Packages” button to refresh your package list, and then install the�jki_lib_easyxml-2.0-1 package. �The demo version of EasyXML is fully functional, but periodically displays a reminder dialog urging you to upgrade to the paid version.

Purchase EasyXML

If you try EasyXML and like it, you can purchase the full version of EasyXML in our store.

Special Discount for Existing EasyXML Customers

JKI is pleased to offer a free upgrade to EasyXML 2.0 for any customers who purchased EasyXML on or after January 1, 2010. �We also offer a 35% discount on EasyXML 2.0 to all other previous EasyXML customers. �If you are an existing EasyXML customer, you should be receiving an email with instructions on how to redeem these discounts. �If you don’t, please send an email to customer-service@jkisoft.com with your original Order # or the email address you used to place the order,�and let us know!

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Bay Area LabVIEW User Group Presentation: Recursion in LabVIEW

JKI Software — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:21:52 -0600

A couple weeks ago (24 Feb 2010), I gave a presentation to the Bay Area LabVIEW User Group on recursion techniques in LabVIEW.

Title: Recursion in LabVIEW

Abstract: Many software engineering challenges can be solved efficiently using recursion.� Learn about several ways to implement both recursive algorithms and recursive data structures in LabVIEW�and learn how to leverage the full power of multicore CPUs with parallelly recursive algorithm design.

Slides: Recursion-in-LabVIEW-Maila.pdf (362 KB)

Example Code: Recursion-in-LabVIEW-Examples.zip (134 KB; requires LabVIEW 2009 or higher)

Do you have comments or questions about this presentation, or do you have a topic you’d like to see JKI do a presentation on?� Post your ideas in the comments!

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VIPM 3.0 is Incompatible with LabVIEW 2010 Beta ? Fix is on the Way!

JKI Software — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 10:42:59 -0600

There is a known issue using VIPM 3.0 that prevents VIPM from managing VI Packages installed in LabVIEW 2010 beta.� We’ve identified the cause and will have a new version of VIPM (3.0.1) out soon that fixes the issue.� If you need this fix immediately and/or would like to help test the release candidate, please contact us.

Bug photo courtesy of spakattacks.

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