Quite Noteworthy

I've found a new home!

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 02:42:00 +0000

This blog has moved to its new permanent address, http://www.jasonshah.com.
Please update your bookmarks and RSS readers today!

Why Android Tablets haven't gained traction in Enterprise

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 14:16:00 +0000

Apple is selling north of 10M iPads every quarter. Compare that to leading Android tablet manufacturers:

Motorola Xoom, the first real Android tablet, sold 250,000 in the first quarter of its release in 2011. No updated numbers are readily available since then, but given the lack anything resembling marketing coming from Motorola around the Xoom since then, along with increased competition from other manufacturers, I would guess that last quarter saw no more than 250,000 units sold in the past quarter as well.
Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 sales numbers are not broken out. However, a Lenovo executive claimed that the device's smaller cousin, the 7" model, has sold no more than 20,000 units at retail.
ASUS Transformer Prime, the best Android tablet that I have used, revealed in a court case that they had sold 80,000 units in the first few months (~2,000/month).

In short, sales of Android tablets are measured in tens to hundreds of thousands, where sales of iPads are measured in tens of millions.

We experience the enterprise divide every day at Mediafly. Many of our enterprise customers want to support Android tablets, but when pen comes to paper, the iPad is all that managers care about. This divide is further driven home by recent research from Good Technology, makers of enterprise email solutions. They find that 97.3% of enterprise activations for tablets in first quarter 2012 are iPad versions. The remaining 2.7% are for Android tablets.

The way this market is shaping out is quite depressing for an Android supporter like me. (As you may know, I've been recognized for my work building Android apps, and have built the popular Chicago Transit Tracker in the Android Market.). And there seems little that will change this in the near future. Below are my reasons for why Android tablets won't come to dominate enterprise tablet usage over the next few years.

No price advantage. While Android smartphones have a major price advantage to the iPhone ($99 for an unlocked entry-level Android smartphone, vs. $549 for the iPhone), the same price disparity can't be found with tablets. The Galaxy Tab 2 10.1, Xoom, and iPad 2 all hover around $399, while the Transformer Prime prices at around $499.
Phones are a necessity, tablets are not. If you are going to spring for a tablet, or if your company will buy a set of tablets for you and your coworkers, you/they will usually buy the market leaders, the safe option. This means the iPad.
The iPad (3) is, frankly, better. I've used the Kindle Fire, NOOK Color, Samsung Galaxy Tab 7", Motorola Xoom, Sony Tablet S, and ASUS Transformer Prime. Of all of these, the only tablet that comes close to the usability and smoothness of the iPad is the ASUS Transformer Prime. And that device falls short as well: the keyboard is awful, the display is not a retina display, and there is no cellular capability. And let's not forget that ASUS's marketing is hopelessly outmatched by Apple's marketing.

You will notice that I don't mention apps. Are apps important? For the consumer, absolutely. For the enterprise, less so. That will be a topic of another blog post.

Comments welcome.

Evernote is fantastic

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 22:09:00 +0000

I was very skeptical when I first learned about Evernote, a service whose mission is to help you "remember everything".

This seemed like another Web 2.0 company so focused on Free that they wouldn't last.
Their product sounded hoaky - a glorified notepad for (initially) iPhone. I already had alternatives to that: emails that I send to myself or leave in draft form, Google Docs, and Word + Dropbox.
I like taking notes in a notebook - when you need to scribble something down or draw something, nothing is faster. Granted, the ability to search your notes is nonexistent, but I have my own rudimentary method of organization honed during my time as a consultant at Bain.

After a coworker showed me how he uses Evernote to take notes during meetings, and all the interesting features that go with it, I thought I would dip my toe in (while keeping my paper notebook close at hand for safety).

Now, 45 days and 74 notes later, I can safely say that this service is fantastic.

I use Evernote on whatever device I'm closest to. This is the Number One selling point to me: whether I have my phone, laptop or tablet(s) with me, I have all of my notes in one location.
I organize notes into (currently) 11 different Notebooks, which are similar to GMail's labels, loose associations of individual notes. I have differente Notebooks for each of our customers at Mediafly, another for Prospect meetings, and a couple for other functional areas (Product, Marketing, Engineering, etc.). I also have a few Notebooks for personal areas.
Oftentimes, as a part of product management, engineering, or marketing, we will have long whiteboard sessions. These will often result in a series of block diagrams, sketches, and notes on the whiteboard. In the past, I would have to manually transcribe these into the notebook. Now, I simply take a photo with my phone or tablet and drop it into a Note in the correct Notebook, and I'm set.
Finally, Evernote has gotten me to write more. In the past I struggled with where to jot down interesting stories about daily life. Do I send an email to myself? I would never find it again. Do I create a Google or Word doc? Those are still too cumbersome. With Evernote, I simply create a new Note in my personal Stories Notebook and jot it down. A recent entry:

Biking to work today, I pull up to Milwaukee and Grand. While stopped, another biker pulls up next to me.
"Hey, can I ask you a question?"
"Sure," I reply.
"Where can I buy some cheese?"
"Uhh.... there is a Jewel right up there.... what an odd question."
"Well, I need to buy cheese for lunch."

If you are on the fence, give it a try. It's free to start and easy to shut down if you decide that it isn't right for you.

Amazon uses Akamai

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 16:35:00 +0000

This post is for those of you who are intrigued by web services infrastructure providers. For the rest of you, apologies.

Amazon is arguably the leading cloud infrastructure provider, through its Amazon Web Services subsidiary. Tens of thousands of companies, from startups to global giants use or have used AWS. In fact, the largest users of AWS include banks, pharmaceutical companies, and technology companies like Netflix (and of course Mediafly). Amazon.com itself makes use of AWS, as a way of eating their own dog food.

But apparently not everything has made that transition. In the process of installing the Amazon App Store onto a new ASUS Transformer Prime tablet, I was sent an email from Amazon with a link to download the App Store application to the tablet. The link is:

https://www.amazon.com/app-email
which redirects to:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/mas/get-appstore/android/ref=mas_em_dl?dl=1
which redirects to:
https://amznadsi-a.akamaihd.net/public/Amazon_Appstore-release.apk

Even Amazon App Store, one of Amazon's most visible new initiatives, is using Akamai's CDN to distribute media over the web, and not Amazon's own Cloudfront CDN.

Mediafly's Predictions for 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 15:14:00 +0000

(Cross-posted at Mediafly.com.)
We at Mediafly have a unique perspective on media consumption. We have straddled consumer- and business-targeted media the entire year, and our conversations with customers and peers have given us a unique perspective on what each kind of customer wants. Looking back, our predictions were fairly accurate, though they were made in private.
This year we’d like to change that. Below are Mediafly’s predictions for 2012.

1.) iPad will continue to dominate as an enterprise sales tool, but Android tablets will finally start making inroads.

Nearly every tablet-adoption-in-the-enterprise story today centers around the iPad. Our own data justifies that; while enterprise talk about wanting to be able to support Android, up through 2011 this hasn’t yet become a priority. We believe that in 2012 this will start to change, as Android’s latest Ice Cream Sandwich operating system and beyond close the ‘sexiness’ gap between Android and iOS.

2.) Sales and executives will continue to be the first recipients of tablet devices.

No surprises here. Mobile staff that interact with customers and decision makers have been, and will continue to be, the first to receive these devices within every organization.

2a.) These recipients will continue to carry around their laptops until they get a more robust feature set from their tablets.

While tablets today are fantastic for email, media consumption and gaming, their web browsers are mediocre and their enterprise app support is in its infancy. As enterprise software and service makers continue to evolve their products for tablets, the PC will become less necessary. But outside of a few key markets and their leading vendors (CRM: Salesforce, Presentation creation: Keynote, Business Media Presentation: Mediafly), we will not see the true migration in 2012.

3.) IT departments increasingly turn to vendor-supported solutions for enterprise apps.

For IT staff that typically work on backend systems, building an iPhone app is shiny and new. However, for IT managers with mandates of migrating to vendor-supported solutions, building an iPhone app in-house goes against the mandate and can be very costly. We expect to see internal IT groups increasingly migrate to vendor-supported app solutions for critical business functions over the course of 2012.

4.) IT departments continue to migrate to cloud-based solutions, as costs continue to drop, functionality continues to grow, and service providers continue to mature.

Cloud computing functionality and reliability are still raw, but improving steadily. 2011 saw some severe outages from nearly every major cloud vendor, against which each of these vendors have honed their architecture to improve. At the same time, each month reveals new features to make migrating to the cloud a little easier. As these outages are mitigated, and as the functionality improves, traditional IT departments will continue the steady migration of data and processing to the cloud.

5.) Live streaming to mobile and TV devices will become more reliable, as Android and BlackBerry finally adopt HTTP Live Streaming (HLS).

Displaying live streaming video to iOS, Roku, and Flash work like a charm. Live streaming to Android is clunky and awkward. We believe that Google will finally fix its broken implementation of HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) in Ice Cream Sandwich or its successor, and finally enable the hundreds of millions of Android devices to seamlessly play live streaming video.

6.) While HTML5 will make further inroads in the web and on TV devices, native apps will continue to dominate on mobile (iOS, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7).

Lots of talk has been made around HTML5 and how it will revolutionize cross-device development. Unfortunately, we are many years away from HTML5 apps providing as seamless a user experience as a native application. User interaction is less responsive, cross-device UI is inconsistent, support for advanced UI and CSS features is mixed, and other issues exist. While progress will be made towards HTML5 surpassing native as the platform of choice, 2012 will not be the year of the tipping point.

Upgrading from Dentrix 11 to Dentrix G4

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 19:36:00 +0000

Ah, the fun never stops with Dentrix.
As a part of the massive buildout of Complete Care Dental, we decided to upgrade from our aging Dentrix 11 to Dentrix G4 in order to better facilitate more than doubling the number of workstations that access the server.

A beautiful Saturday afternoon rolls around (one we've committed indoors to this upgrade). We met the system requirements, walked through the Ten Installation Tips, and are ready to go. We put the DVD in, cross our fingers, and press "Install Now".

After clicking 'Next' a few times, we are greeted with this.

It reads "Database Conflict. The version of the database does not match the version of the DENTRIX program files".

Since we had scheduled this upgrade on a Saturday afternoon, Dentrix Support was closed.

We were likely the first callers when Dentrix Support opened Monday morning. After walking through the situation, our tech support rep told us that the issue is due to a couple of missing *.idx or *.dat files in the Dentrix/data directory. We walked through every file that was supposed to be there (approximately 30), and, behold, it turns out that 3 were missing (LCM_Log.dat, LCM_Case.dat, LCM_Def.dat). We would have to use Dentrix 11's Selective Setup to install _only_ those three files. The good news was that these files related to Lab Case Manager, which was never used in the practice. The bad news was that this might destroy the entire database. After completing the Selective Setup, we were to run Rebuild to rebuild the entire database, the continue with the upgrade.

We started the entire process again at 6PM, after the last patients left and after we backed up the system. Selective Setup completed, Rebuild completed, and the data appeared sound. We then ran G4 installation, and after a tense 20 minutes, it completed successfully.

Or so we thought. Immediately after completion, I launched Appointment Book on the server. Crash. I launched Office Manager. Success. I clicked on Appointment Book from Office Manager. Crash. I wish I took a screenshot of that error that we got, because it was a scary looking one.

At this point the time read 6:58PM (Central time). Dentrix Support closes at 7PM. We called them immediately and thankfully they were open. We spoke to another tech, and learned that Windows Server 2008 R2 does not by default install .NET Framework 3.5.1, and we had to do this manually.

I ran Server Manager and clicked on Features, then Add Feature.

I clicked on the + next to .NET Framework 3.5.1 and clicked the checkbox next to .NET Framework 3.5.1. I specifically did NOT check WCF Activation (as indicated by the Dentrix Support tech).

I clicked Next and finished up the installation.
After completing this, Appointment Book opened successfully.

UPDATE:
Several days after the upgrade, everything seems to be running smoothly.

How to tether your Galaxy Tab (7") to your Mac OS X

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 15:23:00 +0000

Oh, how resourceful we can become!

Faced with an Internet connection reminiscent of the 56kbps dial-up days while at work, I dove into finding a way to tether the Galaxy Tab 7" with its unlimited data plan to my Mac OS X (Snow Leopard). It turned out to be easier than I expected.

Plug your Tab into your Mac.
On your Tab, navigate to Settings > Wireless and network > Tethering
Check "USB tethering"
On your Mac, open System Preferences > Network. You should see SAMSUNG Android in the left.

Select it and choose "Advanced...".

In Vendor, select Samsung. In Model, select GPRS (GSM/3G). In APN, enter the APN for your Tab. You can find the APN on the tab in Settings > Wireless and network > Mobile networks > Access Point Names. Click OK.

Back at the main screen, tap Connect. After a few seconds, the status next to SAMSUNG Android should turn green, and the Sent and Received bars should flicker green.

That's it! Now wasn't that easy?

Dropbox and Video are not a good fit

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 12:24:00 +0000

(This post is cross-posted on Mediafly's Blog)

Dropbox is a phenomenal service. Over 25 million users agree. We use the service extensively within Mediafly for file transfer and syncing of non-sensitive files, and it has become a part of our daily production workflow. Most of our partners and customers use Dropbox as well, to shuttle files back and forth with us. In fact, several team members have reached the referral limit because of the number of other users they have brought onto the service.

We have received a question from a few companies that produce a lot of video: "how is Mediafly different than Dropbox?" Specifically, these companies want to distribute pre-production dailies, rough cuts, studio cuts, and more, to their executives, producers and directors.

At a high level, this seems like a great use of the service:

Installation is easy - users simply need to download the app, sign up with a credit card, and start using.
Users can download for offline playback
Publishing consists of a user that has access to the shared folder dropping video into the folder

However, there are a lot of problems with this approach:

Security: Dropbox has had a fair number of security holes discovered. While most services will have issues that need to be found, addressed, and appropriately apologized for, the approach Dropbox seems to take is "simplicity over security". They prefer the service to be simple and easy to use, and if necessary security takes a back seat.
Content security: Dropbox is not built to keep your content secure. Video and documents are stored in exactly the same format that you place them into a Dropbox folder. The only form of device-level security is a four-digit PIN; beyond that, content can be easily retrieved from any rooted or hacked device.
Speed: Uploading a video to Dropbox's service is slooooow. Even over fast Wifi connections. Even on paid accounts. The company is clearly limiting bandwidth, in the interest of constraining costs. We have seen speeds as slow as 30kbps. This translates into ~10 hours to upload a 1GB file. The system was not created for speed, and as a result transferring large videos will take a long time.
Playback: Playing video via Dropbox uses the simplistic progressive download method. High-quality videos buffer constantly, or require a large amount of time to fully download prior to playback. Meanwhile, modern adaptive bitrate technology like HTTP Live Streaming or RTMP is nowhere to be found.
Control: Dropbox offers rudimentary support for permissions. A folder in a user's account is fully locked down. That user can share that folder to another Dropbox user. However, say you want to give 3 users read-only permissions to a folder? Or, worse yet, say you have two subfolders that should only be visible for one of your users? None of this is possible with Dropbox, and you are forced to constrain your choices to match the simplicity of the service. Worse yet, since there is no ability to give users "read-only" access, any user with whom you share files can then delete those files!
Branding: Dropbox's website and apps are always under Dropbox's name. There is no opportunity to use your own brand.

Best error message of the week

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 02:17:00 +0000

It reads "define is not defined."

I guess it depends on what the meaning of 'is' is.

Vernacular

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 12:53:00 +0000

We offer various different services to our customers.

The phrase various different is one I hear often amongst my coworkers. It doesn't bother me in the least (unlike, say, irregardless, which to me sounds like chewing with your mouth open). I always assumed that it was a phrase that was isolated to the Mediafly office.

Imagine my surprise when, yesterday, I hear a customer use the phrase various different in conversation. I spent the next minute or so pondering how our phrases spread like viruses throughout our society; most die quickly, a few thrive within small circles, and a handful permeate our culture entirely. I then snapped out of it and continued listening to the customer.

Backing up Dentrix Image 4.5's database

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 23:40:00 +0000

This is a followup to the earlier post, Migrating Dentrix Image 4.5's database to another computer. Please see that post to understand how I got here in the first place.

Now that we have successfully migrated, we want to begin the process of performing nightly backups of this data. As expected, Dentrix does not provide consistent, reliable documentation of how to do this, particularly for older platforms such as this. My goal here is to illustrate what I have done and solicit comments from others out there to understand their approach.

First, our setup.

Main Dentrix 11 and all DXImage files are running on Windows 2008 Server
DXImage database is running on Windows XP
We have a 2-disk RAID NAS in our network
We also subscribe to an offsite backup service, CrashPlan

We currently back up Dentrix Image's database in two ways.

With Dentrix's internal backup. If you dig deep on the server where your image database is housed, you will see a folder called ViperDataBackup. In our case, this is in \Dentrix\DXImage\MSDE\MSSQL$VIPER\Backup\ViperData . This folder grows with two new files each day:
ViperData_db_[date].BAK
ViperData_tlog_[date].TRN
These files seem to represent nightly backups. We use Cobian Backup on the server to copy all files from this directory to the NAS each night. The main issue, as illustrated below, is that I have no idea how to restore from these files currently.
With our own scripts. DXImage database is running on Microsoft SQL Server Embedded, in a database called VIPER. We created a script that essentially backs up the VIPER database each night to a file, then copies that file to the NAS. The two main lines of this script are:
osql -S SERVER2\VIPER -E -i SqlFullBackup.sql
copy /Y /Z /V *.* X:\backup\
where SqlFullBackup.sql is as follows:
BACKUP LOG MASTER WITH TRUNCATE_ONLY
BACKUP LOG MODEL WITH TRUNCATE_ONLY
BACKUP LOG MSDB WITH TRUNCATE_ONLY
BACKUP LOG VIPER WITH TRUNCATE_ONLY
BACKUP DATABASE MASTER TO DISK ='C:\backup\MASTER-nightly-backup.bak'
BACKUP DATABASE MODEL TO DISK ='C:\backup\MODEL-nightly-backup.bak'
BACKUP DATABASE MSDB TO DISK ='C:\backup\MSDB-nightly-backup.bak'
BACKUP DATABASE VIPER TO DISK ='C:\backup\VIPER-nightly-backup.bak'
We then backup the entire contents of this c:\backup directory to the NAS.

We have not had the opportunity to test the restore procedure for this backup method. However, I feel fairly confident that, by backing up in two methods, we will be covered should disaster strike our poor little DXImage database. I particularly trust the second method, as it does not rely on having to contact Dentrix Image Support at all.

How I hate April 1

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 14:45:00 +0000

My morning and late day ritual usually consists of checking email then logging into Google Reader and scanning through RSS feeds to which I subscribe. Given my interests, most of these RSS feeds tend to be technology-oriented in nature.

April 1 invariably ruins this ritual. For some unknown reason, tech news sites and blogs simply love posting fake news articles on April 1, mixed in with their normal articles. They seem to think their audience loves this sort of idiotic bantering. I would link to them, but I don't want to support this endeavor in the least; you can, however, witness the lunacy on TechCrunch, Slashdot, and even reputable news sites like CNET and NPR. Even sites I normally enjoy specifically for their straightforwardness, like Signal vs. Noise, join the fray, with terribly awkward results.

Come on people, stop the madness.

HTTP Live Streaming and Android

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 17:02:00 +0000

(This post is cross-posted on Mediafly's Blog.)

Google finalized Android 3.0 ("Honeycomb")'s SDK only last week. Also last week, Motorola released the Xoom, the first Android 3.0 tablet, and a number of other manufacturers have announced their own Android 3.0 tablets.

One of the key missing features of the Android platform had been the support of HTTP Live Streaming (also known as HLS). HLS is a media streaming protocol that has been made popular by Apple. Apple rolled out the requirement that any app streaming over cellular networks must do so using HTTP Live Streaming about a year ago, and this change has resulted in a dramatic adoption of HLS by video distributors.

With Android 3.0, Google has taken steps to close that gap. From the Android 3.0 Platform Highlights page: "The media framework supports most of the HTTP Live streaming specification, including adaptive bit rate."

Despite the "most" disclaimer, this is a major step forward for video delivery to the Android platform. HLS is a relatively simple streaming protocol that enables:

Dynamic bitrate switching: if you drop into a network with lower bandwidth, your video stream will gracefully switch to the lower quality stream. Conversely, if you switch to a higher bandwidth network, your player will adjust to use a higher quality stream.
Support for open implementations: HLS has been submitted to the IETF as a proposed Internet standard.

Scalability: HLS streams (particularly for on-demand content) can be powered purely by a web server. This means that HLS can make use of all of the recent advancements in caching and scaling that web servers have built over the years.

Currently, the only support for a live streaming technology in Android has been through Adobe Flash Player and RTMP. This has proven very challenging to integrate, because:

At $4,500, Flash Media Server is not cheap. HLS technology is included with every installation of OS X.
Flash Media Server does not scale as well as HLS out of the box. As mentioned above, HLS can be powered purely by a web server. RTMP, however, requires a proprietary server that keeps active connections open in order to maintain connections to clients.
Flash Player on Android only works when surrounded by the browser. This means that, as a developer, you must embed a WebView, and within that the Flash Player will operate. This additional overhead is enough to bring resource-limited phones to their knees.
While great improvements have taken place, Flash Player on Android remains buggy. Mediafly has taken steps to ensure its Flash Player apps and RTMP streams work smoothly over Android, but not everyone has.

If you are interested in learning more about HTTP Live Streaming, Flash, and Mediafly's business media delivery offerings, please contact us.

Notes on Buenos Aires

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 13:36:00 +0000

We recently completed a wonderful trip to Argentina, consisting of 5 days in Buenos Aires and 5 days in Patagonia. In Buenos Aires, we walked a lot, and over that time I developed a few insights about Porteños (what BA residents call themselves) and Buenos Aires in general.

Look around on most busy streets, and you will find Porteños waiting patiently in single file lines for a remise (bus).
The sidewalks are horrendous. I almost bit cement multiple times.
Walking during hot weather requires an umbrella. Without it, you are constantly getting dripped on by air conditioner juice.
Drinking mate is not just a stereotype, or something only elderly people do. It really is a national drink.

Overall, the trip was wonderful. We had a great time.

Handling Android 2.3 WebView's broken AddJavascriptInterface

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 14:54:00 +0000

(Apologies in advance to my normal readers for this technical topic.)

The Google Android team released the Android 2.3 ("Gingerbread") SDK two days ago, to much fanfare. This has sent the tech blogging world into a publishing frenzy, as it usually does. However, a potentially disastrous bug has surfaced that could crash literally thousands of apps in the Android Market immediately after opening the app.

The problem is described succintly here:
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=12987
In short:
Many apps show all or part of their UI with embedded WebViews that can render HTML.
Those WebViews make use of a great feature that bridges JavaScript (in the HTML) to the native Java code that "surrounds" the WebView.
This bridge is completely broken in Android 2.3. Trying to make even a basic call breaks the WebView immediately and crashes the app.

I believe members of the Android team are aware of the problem, and from early reports, it does not affect the Nexus S (the first Android 2.3 phone). This doesn't really help those of us working against the emulator, however.

Here is a simple solution to work around this.

1.) In onCreate, check to see if the bridge is broken, and add the JavaScript interface only if not broken.


// Determine if JavaScript interface is broken.
// For now, until we have further clarification from the Android team,
// use version number.
try {
if ("2.3".equals(Build.VERSION.RELEASE)) {
 javascriptInterfaceBroken = true;
}
} catch (Exception e) {
// Ignore, and assume user javascript interface is working correctly.
}

// Add javascript interface only if it's not broken
if (!javascriptInterfaceBroken) {
webView.addJavascriptInterface(this, "jshandler");
}

2.) Create a WebViewClient that passes in a new JavaScript object with the same name as your JavaScript interface object.


@Override
public void onPageFinished(WebView view, String url) {
super.onPageFinished(view, url);
finishLoading();

// If running on 2.3, send javascript to the WebView to handle the function(s)
// we used to use in the Javascript-to-Java bridge.
if (javascriptInterfaceBroken) {
 String handleGingerbreadStupidity=
    "javascript:function openQuestion(id) { window.location='http://jshandler:openQuestion:'+id; }; "
  + "javascript: function handler() { this.openQuestion=openQuestion; }; "
  + "javascript: var jshandler = new handler();";
 view.loadUrl(handleGingerbreadStupidity);
}
}

NOTE: for each of the Javascript-to-Java functions that you use, you will need to add a new Javascript function and pass it in as part of the loadUrl, like the defined below.

"javascript:function openQuestion(id) { window.location='http://jshandler:openQuestion:'+id; }; "

3.) In the same WebViewClient, override the URL handling portion to handle the URLs defined in step 2. After catching the URL, parse out the function and parameters, then use reflection to actually call the method.


@Override
public boolean shouldOverrideUrlLoading(WebView view, String url) {
if (javascriptInterfaceBroken) {
 if (url.contains("jshandler")) {
  // We override URL handling to parse out the function and its parameter.
  // TODO: this code can only handle a single parameter. Need to generalize it for multiple.
 
  // Parse out the function and its parameter from the URL.
  StringTokenizer st = new StringTokenizer(url, ":");
  st.nextToken(); // remove the 'http:' portion
  st.nextToken(); // remove the '//jshandler' portion
  String function = st.nextToken();
  String parameter = st.nextToken();
  // Now, invoke the local function with reflection
  try {
   if (sMethod == null) {
    sMethod = MyActivity.class.getMethod(function, new Class[] { String.class });
   }
   sMethod.invoke(MyActivity.this, parameter);
  } catch (SecurityException e) {
   e.printStackTrace();
  } catch (NoSuchMethodException e) {
   e.printStackTrace();
  } catch (IllegalArgumentException e) {
   e.printStackTrace();
  } catch (IllegalAccessException e) {
   e.printStackTrace();
  } catch (InvocationTargetException e) {
   e.printStackTrace();
  }
 }
 return true;
}
return false;
}

With this solution, you only need to make a few Android code changes and do not need to modify server output.

Comments welcome.

Why Google Hates Android

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 13:15:00 +0000

First, some facts.

Android is native operating system for phones (and now Tablets), Chrome (or Chrome OS) is a primarily web-based operating system that will be targeted for "devices, tablets and TVs".
Android has the Android Market, on the surface similar to the Apple App Store to distribute/sell apps to devices. Both Android Market and App Store take a 30% cut of sales. Apple keeps its 30%, while Google distributes its 30% to handset manufacturers and/or telcos.
Chrome OS will have the Chrome OS (web app) Store, which, even in closed beta, seems to have solid discoverability and organization built in.

Next, my hypothesis: Google wants Chrome OS to beat Android. There are lots of reasons for this.

History: Google's history is web software, and they excel at quickly creating simple, scalable web applications. Android is native software (i.e. software that is stored and executed on your device), which they historically have eschewed. Consider the Google Voice Desktop App saga. If true, Google pulled a potentially killer desktop product because it was not 'web' enough.

Control: Android is almost fully open source, while Chrome OS's web underpinnings inherently make it closed source* Chrome OS's user experience is loaded over the wire after Chrome OS gets onto the Internet, ensuring that closed web apps take top billing on the OS. Because Android's source code is readily available, other developers and device makers can fork it, customize it, even go so far as to rip out Google as the default search engine and drop Yahoo or Microsoft in its place. ~~The same (likely) can't be done to Chrome OS, because the guts of the operating system are loaded from Google's servers when you turn the machine on.~~ UPDATE: struck out the incorrect bits. Thanks, Mark.

Economics: Google's decision to deliver the 30% cut of Android Market app sales to telecom companies, instead of keeping it for itself, results in a lack of incentive for Google to invest in the Android Market. Why would they? They make no money on it. This manifests itself in many ways:

Android Market pales in comparison to iTunes and (at least by the screenshot) Chrome's upcoming Web Store. 2+ years and 100K apps after the first Android phone was released, there is still no web presence (outside of a couple hundred apps) for the Android Market, while the other two have (or will have) robust ways to navigate and discover new apps from your PC.
The developer console to the Android Market is plagued with repeated, significant problems. Most recent: developers with multiple apps have not been able to see all of their apps for many days now.

Having built such a success in Android, Google has no choice but to continue building upon it. But that doesn't mean they need to be committed to it. I believe they will continue to invest the bare minimum to show progress and appease their wireless and handset partners. I believe this will result in the following outcomes:

Google will lengthen Android's release cycle from every 6 months to every 1 year... oh wait, they have already announced this. Increasing the cycle length reduces the speed at which features and functionality will be built into Android, and allows its competitors to catch up or keep moving past Android's feature set.
Google's press/blog entries for Chrome OS will increasingly talk about how it will power phones.
Google will fast-track Chrome OS to try to beat Android on tablet devices. The Galaxy Tab sold a reported 600K units in its first month. While solid, this number is still low enough to allow Chrome OS to supplant Android as the non-Apple dominant tablet OS. Google has to act quickly for this, however, as the momentum behind Android by device makers is very significant.
Having considered Android, and the smartphone space as a whole, 'conquered', Google's senior Android engineers will increasingly be allocated to Chrome OS.
Unless Chrome OS dies out of the gate, future Android releases will be underwhelming in both user features and developer tools.

* Yes, Google released the source code of Chrome OS. However, much like Android, the key bits are either going to be closed-source (GMail, Calendar, Android Market), or hosted on Google's servers where they are untouchable to outside developers.

Thoughts? Other points? Factual inaccuracies? I'd love to hear from you.

Side box scourge

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 13:38:00 +0000

Ever notice those websites that have "Feedback" in sideways text on the web, driven far and wide by GetSatisfaction? I hate those buttons. They completely ruin the aesthetic that site designers struggle to bring to their web pages, by forcing my eyes to this giant block of text.

That was just the start, apparently. Other sites now are taking it to the next level. They layer increasingly complex Javascript-loaded toolbars onto the page, forcing your laptop's fan on and bringing scrolling and navigation to a crawl.

The worst I have seen in a while is this site by Brad Feld, a venture capitalist with a fairly popular blog.

I get it - he probably invested in Highlighter and wants to eat his own dog food. But, my god, it makes his page (which is already overly complicated) look like a pile of dog food. Outside of the brilliant XtraNormal video, I'm incredibly confused about where to look next. In fact, the little Highlighter boxes to the top, left and right all faded in after the page loaded and when I moved my mouse, further distracting me from the true content on the page.

Where have all the clean, fast-loading, simple websites gone? Why are they being replaced by battery-chewing, fan-inducing, slow-moving piles of garbage? And, most infuriatingly, why does the "Feedback" or "Highlighter" text have to be sideways?

Microsoft Office default pie chart

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 22:14:00 +0000

When you create a pie chart in MS Office 2007, the default data creates a chart that looks like this.

If your sales chart actually looked like this, you should be fired.

A Chair

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 22:54:00 +0000

Drawn by Jason Shah in AutoCad SketchBook on the iPad.
Be kind, this is my first drawing (more or less ever), and I did it while watching TV.

Craigslist/FCC scam by phone

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 18:53:00 +0000

I received a call on my home line (of which 99% of calls are telemarketers, and I rarely answer). The caller listed himself as "Tom from the FCC", and he was calling to validate my entry in the Do Not Call list. He had a very thick Indian accent and was talking from a scratchy phone line (clearly VoIP overseas). He said that I would receive a second call right after his with "important account information", then he would call back.

Tom hung up, then two minutes later I received an automated call. It was a simple call saying "Your Craiglist telephone passcode is ", then it listed a 6-digit number.

Two minutes after that, "Tom" called me back. He asked me to read the passcode from the previous call. I told him to stop trying to scam people. He flustered back with "No, no, you misunderstand me. I'm Tom with the FCC, and I am simply trying to verify your registration in the Do Not Call list", and asked for that passcode again. I asked him multiple questions:

What's your last name? (answer: "Jericho")
What's your phone number? (answer: "1-888-CALL-FCC" or something like that)
Why are you trying to scam people? (answer, again: "You misunderstand me sir!")

I hung up the phone at this point. I dialed *69, but as expected, the number is unknown.
I'm surprised he kept trying to convince me. I would expect that, at the first sign I would be hostile, he would hang up and try again with a less suspecting target.

It turns out that this is a derivative of a Do Not Call List scam that has been reported on the Internet. Though, what they are going to do with a Craiglist account, I really have no idea. It seems like a lot of effort for very little gain.

Wall Street actions are a result of incentives

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:06:00 +0000

How can the financial crisis be a result of anything other than the incentives created by incomplete regulation and incorrect company structure?

People will always respond to the strongest incentives they see and are able to take on. The strongest incentives are so far-reaching across financial firms and the government:

Complete lack of either oversight or transparency of the derivatives market creates the incentive to build supposedly market-neutral bets that are orders of magnitudes larger than what capital reserve requirements dictate
Compensation packages that pay bonuses now on trades that can blow up later creates incentives for employees to take risks now; if the house falls down, they will be laid off, but will also be much wealthier.
The tacit understanding that the largest banks and hedge funds will be rescued no matter how stupid the actions that got them there to begin with creates the incentive to take on increasingly risky positions. If you aren't playing with house money, you will be playing with taxpayer money.
The SEC's inability to regulate Wall Street, because Congress told them not to, because they were told that regulation hampers innovation by a Wall Street lobbyist, creates the incentive to continue doing what you are doing, as no one from the government will bother you.

I am sure I am missing probably 3-4 other causes for these incentives, but to me these are the biggest.

The financial regulation bill reaching Congress today is a step in the right directly, but will likely introduce or leave behind holes. This will create additional incentives that financial firms will rush to fill. I don't know what those holes are, as I haven't read any part of the bill, but I know they will be picked apart by the blogs I do read (mentioned below).

Any argument that talks about morals (e.g. "Wall Street is too greedy") is doomed to fail. Spend five minutes with a trader from one of these firms, and economic morals is generally completely lost on them. They wouldn't be successful traders if this wasn't the case, as their jobs are to take advantage of these kinds of inefficiency.

This post was inspired by this summary from Russ Roberts on Marginal Revolution, as well as from two years of reading Naked Capitalism and Marginal Revolution

"1. It isn't "too big to fail" that's the problem, it's the rescue of creditors going back to 1984, encouraged imprudent lending and allowed large financial institutions to become highly leveraged.

2. Shareholder losses do not reduce the problem even when shareholders are the executives making the decisions

3. These incentives allowed execs to justify and fund enormous bonuses until they blew up their firms. Whether they planned on that or not doesn't matter. The incentives remain as long as creditors get bailed out.

4. Changes in regulations encouraged risk-taking by artificially encouraging the attractiveness of AAA-rated securities.

5. Changes in US housing policy helped inflate the housing bubble, particularly the expansion of Fannie and Freddie into low downpayment loans.

6. The increased demand for housing resulting from Fanne and Freddie's expansion pushed up the price of housing and helped make subprime attractive to banks. But the ultimate driver of destruction was leverage. Either lenders were irrationally exuberant or were lulled into that exuberance by the persistent rescues of the previous three decades."

(Side note: I use the term Wall Street quite loosely here. In reality, many firms that contributed are not physically on Wall Street, and many that are on Wall Street did not contribute in meaningful ways.)

Leaving a dentist near you...

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 00:19:00 +0000

UPDATE 4/22/2010: And like that, the ridiculous program requirements that Align Technologies put into place has been removed. Fortunately I did not follow through on that short - the stock is up almost double since this program was announced.

ORIGINAL 7/9/2009:

.. Invisalign.

In what could be the dumbest business decision I've heard of in a long time, Align Technologies (NASDAQ: ALGN), makers of Invisalign® has decreed that all dentists offering Invisalign must start 10 cases per year and complete 10 CE credits related to Invisalign per year (copy of letter sent to one dentist here).

What this means for the consumer:

The consumer experience will undoubtedly improve. Those who truly want Invisalign will now have a limited set of very experienced dentists to choose from.
However, competitive pressure may change that - see notes on ClearCorrect below.

What this means for the dentist:

The national average for a case is $5,000/year(source). Convincing 10 patients per year to fork over $5,000/year for a truly elective procedure is very, very hard in the vast majority of markets out there. Only the ones that market heavily and whose business consists of a very high percentage of cosmetic dentistry will make this quota.
Every dentist who became certified in the past 5+ years was required to pay $1K-2K to become certified. This, combined with a mandatory reduction in services, is going to lead to a large number of very unhappy dentists at this decision (I know a few myself). And, you can be sure that unhappy dentists across the country will do whatever is in their power to keep a patient in the door. A few choice quotes from the online dental community DentalTown:
- "Absolute idiots IMHO !!! I wonder if they will be refunding doctors certification costs as they decided to change the rules in the middle of the game?"
- "While there are many doctors that may not submit many cases to Invisalign, I suspect these same doctors talk alot about invisalign and are a terrific advertising/referral source for high volume invisalign offices or orthodontists. I'm sure many of us won't have very many nice things to say about Align right now."

What this means for Align Technologies:

I would expect that this knocks out 50-75% of their dentists (by number), but only knocks out 10% of revenue in year 1*. They can align sales/admin costs against this expected reduction in revenue to minimize the impact to net income. This, however, does not include the general softness expected in their business due to offering an expensive, elective procedure during a severe recession, which analysts have already identified.
Beyond intentionally cutting revenue during the recession, their timing is poor. Between being found as violating patents by one competitor (Ormco Corporation) and seeing another upstart invade their turf (ClearCorrect), they are leaving dentists with plenty of options that are not Invisalign.

How long will they have until this newfound exclusivity takes a toll on their brand strength and share price? I don't think their 2Q earnings will reflect the change, as the few fringe dentists are likely pushing Invisalign hard to hit their quota, but I would be surprised if they don't have to lower guidance again in future quarters, partially as a result of this policy.

Comments? Thoughts?

*These are gut-feel numbers, not based on financial analysis.

Toxic Assets

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 20:43:00 +0000

After listening to the Planet Money team at NPR buy a toxic asset, I wonder if our mortgage is a part of a toxic asset also...

Listen here.

Migrating Dentrix Image 4.5's database to another computer

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 22:32:00 +0000

This post is way off-topic for those who read me regularly, but it should be helpful for those looking for this information via a web search.

Our original server was a very old (1999ish), very slow Pentium running Windows XP Professional, Dentrix 11, and Dentrix Image 4.5.
We decided to upgrade, and bought a new Dell PowerEdge server with a Dual Core Intel Xeon processor and Windows Server 2008 64-bit edition.

Installing Dentrix, Image, and the other required applications went fairly smoothly, with only a possible hiccup with installing .NET Framework 1.1, required for Dentrix. I say possible because it was only a warning, and we don't know if it will manifest into any problems down the road.

After installation came the hard part - moving the data.

Pulling the Dentrix data (ledger, chart, schedule, etc.; about 300MB) over was simply a matter of copying the data into the appropriate Data directory.
Pulling images (35GB) over took longer, given the amount of data, but it was as simple.
Figuring out how to transfer the Dentrix Image SQL Server database, the database that contains a mapping between patients and images, took an absurd amount of time.

I tried:

Stopping the SQL Servers on both source (old server) and destination (new server) and copying the .mdf/.ldf files from source to destination. This resulted in Chart showing "Cannot initialize image database".
Using the seemingly-useful DXImage/bin/IDImage application, which ultimately failed.

The key to figuring out was this Microsoft Support article describing moving databases using sp_detach_db and sp_attach_db. To fix,

Open a command line on the source and type 'osql -E -Q' to get into SQL command line
Type:

use master
go
sp_detach_db 'Viper'
go

Copy 'Dentrix\DXImage\MSDE\MSSQL$VIPER\Viper.mdf' and 'Dentrix\DXImage\MSDE\MSSQL$VIPER\Viper_log.ldf' to the same location on the server as 'Viper_2.mdf' and 'Viper_log_2.mdf'
Open a command line on the destination and type 'osql -E -Q' to get into SQL command line
Type:

use master
go
drop viper
go
sp_attach_db 'viper','C:\Dentrix\DXImage\MSDE\MSSQL$VIPER\Viper_2.mdf','C:\Dentrix\DXImage\MSDE\MSSQL$VIPER\Viper_log_2.ldf'
go

Make sure to change your firewall settings on your new server to enable SQL Server to access it.

This did it. Oh, how I wish Dentrix Image had better (or any, for that matter) documentation, except for this site which looks like it was written by someone in high school.

UPDATE: In all likelihood, the first method (copy .mdf and .ldf) might have worked had I tried changing the firewall settings sooner!

UPDATE 2: After a massive meltdown of our servers and a long technical session with the good people at Dentrix Image, we learned a few things:

Windows Server 2008 is NOT supported for Dentrix Image 4.5. It was practically sheer luck that enabled it to work. Windows XP and (I believe) Server 2003 are the only supported environments. The issue lies with the embedded Microsoft SQL Server used in Dentrix Image itself, which is incompatible with Server 2008.
However, since we already migrated Dentrix to Server 2008, and still had our workstations on XP, there is a solution: leave the actual images on our fast new Server 2008, and host the image database itself on a workstation running XP.
The caveat here is that both machines must be accessible by network names (e.g. "server1", "server2"), and not just by IP address (e.g. "192.168.1.10"). So, if I ping "server1", I would get a proper response. It is beyond the scope of this entry to explain how to make this work, but a hint to get you down that path: static IPs and the hosts file.

To get this hybrid system (image files on "dentrix server", image database on "idb server") to work:

Install Dentrix Image as a server install on a Windows XP machine. We'll call this machine "idb server" below.
On the old server, run [DXImage]\bin\IDBAdmin
Choose Export Database and choose a path. Move the resulting exported database to the idb server.
On the idb server, run [DXImage]\bin\IDBAdmin
Choose Import Database and choose the file you just copied over.
Choose Initialize Database.
On the dentrix server, open [DXImage]\images\rtx.con . Change the file to point to the new server's network name. This is the missing link: workstations will look at this file to figure out where to find the image database.

UPDATE 3: We have posted our backup process for the lowly Windows XP IDB Admin server in a follow-up, Backing up Dentrix Image 4.5's database.

Photo of the Day

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:56:00 +0000

Courtesy of Marginal Revolution.