Will have to get this app. Thanks for the points, Bob!

I’d be interested in your thoughts on the possible security implications with widely connected devices. I know that there has been some talk around the potential for vulnerabilities that could open the way for malicious intent. Is there anything that can be addressed in the protocol? I must admit that I am not an expert on MQTT so my question may be a naive one since security must already be covered within systems using the protocol today. But as the press release highlights many systems don’t interface well with other systems hence the need for an open standard protocol. As more systems are able to be seamlessly connected, I wonder of the treat implications that raises.

It will be good to see the Eclipse working group vocally address any security issues, if only from an awareness point of view.

Happy birthday to Eclipse too. It has come a long way in its 10 years and has evolved as a result of solid foundations.

Thought provoking post. I think the issue goes a little deeper than Mobile Apps. The push-pull if you like is that developers want to use HTML/CSS/JavaScript to access “Native Device API’s”. So Phone Gap et al have created a run time web engine to allow you to do just that. However you have to build a specific web app for it to work.

Here’s what you really want to do (and what you talk about in your post) – you want a standards based browser to be able to access ANY device side API’s whilst protecting your privacy, and then surf the web to any web site and share that data in real time.

That actually already exists.

I can go to ibm.com right now and instantly your web sphere services will recognize my device’s capabilities, my real time geo-location, even my personal preferences all with nothing more than a simple “script” that reads the incoming “X headers”.

If you’d like to learn more (or download the browser for Android) please contact me offline.

Cheers,

Peter Cranstone
3PMobile

Also, have you looked at OGC’s Sensor Web enablement ? (http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects/groups/sensorwebdwg)

I recently had an interesting talk with a Japanese standards expert. After the Fukushima incident, the power company and developers created a very simple yet extremely useful API on power consumption / generation:
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/forecast/html/index-e.html
http://developer.yahoo.co.jp/webapi/shinsai/setsuden/v1/latestpowerusage.html

In this respect, it operates (irony warning!) more like adobe flash, in that after you have installed flash on your computer the first time, you never really need to deal with it again – use any browser you want and visit a site that requires flash. Tags in the HTML tell the browser to look for flash, which it finds and then renders the flash assets.

mobiUs works the same way. Once installed on your phone, you can use Dolphin, Safari, whatever, and when you hit a site that has mobiUs capability, it springs into action.

Thanks again for bringing this point to light.
Roy Smith – VP Marketing – appMobi

I am somewhat hopeful that Google+ will take what Google has learned from the Priority Inbox in Gmail and apply that to G+.

Everyone in the company understands and has to understand their value generation to the customer – and how their behavior affects it and the customer experience.

To be honest my moaning about IBM was unfair, as IBM is doing stellar job compared to numerous other players – who keep all the real information inside just their partner extranets and/or do not give anything substancial and actionable information about their products before customer commits into project purchase via a partner.

Fierce competition and protection of ipr are the normal understandable reasons why companies think they do need to behave like this. As long as they have good ratings in Gartner and Forrester reports, have vague big name client case studies and sufficient partner network as a channel to do implementation projects and sales – then business as usual looks good on the bottomline.

I’m currently doing project with another enterprise client with an exceptionally cool information management tool-suite and it’s maker behaves just like this. The tool is absolutely magnificent and after tinkering around with the APIs and documentation it also feels technically extremely solid, having good thinking and architectural patterns all around. However not even slightest bit of this information is available to outsiders, which means that marketing and even whitepapers are insanely high level — just like you said. Similarly pricing is not even discussed or hinted in any way, as it is calculated by red robed wizards based on magical formulas on project by project basis. List prices are only for reference and range from ridiculous to absurdly insane.

And even though I might exaggerate a bit, I truly wish that numerous enterprise IT-players would take your words to their heart. There are good reasons for the status quo, but the world is changing and we need to be more open, agile and innovate better together.

I didn’t want to pick on anyone in particular, but rather give some general guidance on how we can all improve.

this is insanely well timed posting – as I just moaned in Google+ about my experiences with – ehm – IBM websites and trying to understand, learn and get to try Websphere Process Server. The only reason why I bother to invest time to it, because certain customers have made commitments to Websphere platform and want to utilize existing investments.

There are really good ideas and nifty features in the platform, but it is impossible to get exited when all the good information is buried under enterprisey marketing speak and cornucopia of long documents. As a architect / consultant / developer type of character I want to get to the beef and testdrive and tinker with the product as soon as possible. Give me a good 10,000 ft picture and a working example – and let me get to work! I want to get excited!

Guys at Activiti ( BPMN project from Alfresco – http://www.activiti.org/ ) do it well, but then again they do not need to target to enterprisey folks – nor Enterprise Architects who fear coding. Their target audience is developers and people who want to make things happen and do not need same kind of artificial divisions of labour as in large enterprises – where you are not allowed to communicate otherwise than in UML diagrams and WS-BPELs.

And to be honest – like I said – there are interesting ideas and features available in the process server, once you get down to it, read samples and find the right places to look at. I am becoming mildly entertained about the idea of doing work with the software, or at least thinking that it can’t be worse than getting a root canal procedure. I am just annoyed that it took me hours to get into the state of being even mildly amused.

I’d like to get excited.

I’d like to feel empowered and see how I could be really efficient with the software.

I’d like to feel that someday also with commercial IBM software :-)