True Gryc

The Ghost of SAE Convergence

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Gryc) — Mon, 27 Oct 2014 15:24:00 +0000

I've started to post my blogs over on LinkedIn because I have so many more readers there! But for those of you loyal followers, I'll keep this blog up to date with my activities (even if they are in some cases links to my LinkedIn post)...

Here's my latest: The Ghost of SAE Convergence

And if you want to see the last several, visit my LinkedIn Author page.

Robot recognition and the arms race of spam

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Gryc) — Mon, 28 Jul 2014 16:34:00 +0000

I have two blogs: this one, and one over at byteblacksmith. I'll admit I'm not as prolific as I need to be to attract and retain followers. (Not like my friend Roger Lanctot who blogs to his personal and company blogs, posts four articles to LinkedIn, then tweets them all before he has his morning coffee.)

Since I don't have a lot of followers, I get rather excited when I get emails saying there's a new comment on one of my blogs. However, the comment often looks like this:

If you want to be set up barricades outside the funeral supplier may be difficult in the majority of our sites are mobile responsive, meaning how your own arrangements, unless some of you. First key to getting traffic as long as you are experiencing the sadness of a complete mess. That way, you may need to be so-so at best and everyone's going to be disposed of in a timelier manner than if the deceased. Just having a negative review with no money?

Take a look at my web-site ... http://a.b.c.com...

I've got most of the moderation and spam rejection turned on, but I still get these lame-ass attempts at BlackHat SEO coming through. Sigh.

Now I really hate CAPTCHA although it exists to screen out these terrible automated spam attempts. Half of the tests are unreadable by humans. I'll often decode a CAPTCHA only to get it wrong multiple times in a row. The "Top 10 Worst Captchas" has some entertaining examples; here are my two favourites:

Good thing they didn't use Chinese.

Are you seriously thinking I can solve this better than a computer?

However CAPTCHA done well is actually pleasant. I appreciate what those fine people are doing to keep evil spammers at bay. Here are two great examples of CAPTCHA done right:

Areyouahuman: You run a little game that makes you sort images based on a verbal description. Ow.ly uses it for URL shortening.

Actually fun to do, and no misinterpreted results.

ASIRRA: This has the user pick pictures of adoptable cats or dogs from the millions of animals on Petfinder.com. (A "live" example is at the bottom of this blog.)

Fun, cute, and socially responsible!

Let me offer a great big thank you to all those industrious people trying to keep my blog's comments actually relevant!

Believe it or not, I suspect that most comment spam is unintentional. Many naive or technically unsophisticated people are desperate for their website to rank high and they don't know what they need. They don't know or can't create great linkable content nor can they intelligently promote it. Instead, they stumble upon a service that promises they can "magically" improve their page rank.

Guess what? THERE IS NO FREE SEO LUNCH. If you don't have any content, you can't magically improve your SEO. To do SEO without any content, someone has to generate links to your page. And they do that by spamming blogs all around the world with your web link.

Why do I know this? Because I look at the links that comment spambots are trying to insert. Some are for casinos or male enhancement drugs, but many seem to be legitimate small businesses. Clearly, here are people who are clueless what happens when they ask someone else to improve their SEO.

If you're trying to improve your rank, don't contribute to world evil. Create good content instead.

Android Auto + CarPlay: Makers and Destroyers

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Gryc) — Thu, 24 Jul 2014 12:17:00 +0000

Everyone recognizes that Google and Apple are going to change the infotainment game. There's been some distressed discussion on the potential damage that Android Auto's free software platform will do to the Tier ones by commoditizing their existing infotainment business. However, there's an industry subsegment that is going to benefit immensely from these competing consumer electronic giants that seems to be overlooked.

And that's the Aftermarket space.

Of course, there are some interesting things going on aftermarket today independent of Apple and Google's direct influence. A new crop of startups are forging a link between the car's OBDII, your smartphone, and their cloud services. Companies like Dash, Carvoyant and mojio have a great opportunity to build a new category of aftermarket devices that are using your smartphone to augment your car.

But I'm really talking about the aftermarket old guard: folks like Pioneer, JVC Kenwood, Alpine, and Clarion. It hasn't been an easy run for these guys over the last few years. Functionality is continually migrating either down into the OEM infotainment or telematics systems or up into the smart phone. The aftermarket makers are continually playing catch up, making a consumer aftermarket purchase less and less likely.

Do you remember when systems like this were all the rage?

Have you seen one lately? No? Exactly.

But with Car Play and Android Auto, Apple and Google are creating an opportunity to make aftermarket not only relevant again, but potentially displace the automaker head units. Aftermarket companies have an ability to move faster and update the technology as soon as it evolves. The OEMs, no matter how fast they can trim their development lifecycle, will still be tied to releasing products coincident with vehicle shipping schedules.

Pioneer is a first mover with their CarPlay solution (shown below). But expect that all of the big aftermarket brands will offer CarPlay, Android Auto, or combined solutions in short order.

What do you think: can a revitalized aftermarket compete again in the head unit space? Will the differences between aftermarket and Tier1 head units be erased?

Small Business Infrastructure

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Gryc) — Thu, 01 May 2014 13:20:00 +0000

I just talked to a friend who left her company to start her own business, so we shared on the joys of incorporation. I gave her some advice that I've learned over the last couple months. And a lot of that was on tools. Why cobble together your own systems when you can use real tools? Plus there are a lot of services that cater to the small business.

Here is a list of the services we're using and have been happy with, and a couple that we haven't.

GoDaddy - Yes, they're everywhere, and yes they tend to nickle and dime you on new features. But I do have to say that I've been really quite pleased with their hosted account and the plethora of options you get for free. And for the couple of support questions I had, very prompt service.
Assembla - Easy peasy source code management. I don't need this for much, but I used it for ByteBlacksmith when I was writing Ablative Air, and I'm using it for CX3 to maintain a shadow of our website.
DropBox - The king of file sharing. Need I say more? Yes I do. Many people don't realize you can get backups of old files. This is a lifesaver if you accidentally overwrite your master copy of a file or if you're working with someone else and you're not in sync. That "pseudo-version control" has come in handy twice already.
Toggl - Time management. All online, free, can deal with multiple people and gives you lots of options for reporting where your week's efforts have gone.
Doodle - Are you trying to find a good conference time between a number of people? Doodle to the rescue: it sends an email to the participants and everyone can pick their favourite times.
Sugar CRM - CRM management, it’s free (you can pay for more features as you grow, but right now there’s already way more than I need). If you're using GoDaddy, they have a simple one-click installer to get it up & running. Handles contact lists, email blasts, prospect management, history/notes, etc.
Expensify - Makes expense reports almost pleasurable. Okay, maybe not, but certainly way better than any of my previous company's expense "systems". Plus it automatically hooks up to QuickBooks.
Quickbooks - Online hosted, quite easy to use (other than I don’t understand accounting, but I’m learning) and relatively cheap.
VistaPrint - For traditional paper business cards, I used VistaPrint—it’s easy to do, fully automated & online, and inexpensive. The card quality is good, but I’ll warn you that we had two boxes of cards printed, and the color registration wasn’t identical. If you only need one box, it probably won’t matter. It really helps color registration if you select the same cardstock. Doh! New cards are on their way...
OverAir - They're a little more pricy than plain paper, but I also got NFC-enabled business cards printed. Our business is high-tech marketing, after all :-) There aren’t a lot of places that do it yet--this one is "local" for us in Canada. I’ve been quite pleased with the result. It’s a little more “hands on” as they’re not yet fully automated (despite their online store), but we got quality PVC business cards that look like a Visa card and have our info baked into the NFC. You can slap it on the back of a Android or BlackBerry phone (won't work on Apple phones yet) and enter all your contact info automatically. Since they’re not widespread yet, they make a very cool impression!
Envato - Tons of options for creative resources: web templates, graphics, photography, audio, video, etc. It's like an open source/open community iStock or Veer.
United Conferencing - Free world-wide conferencing. Sounds awesome, but my experience on this is hit & miss. First time it worked great. Second time all the participants had the same conference bridge #, but different countries appeared to log into different servers so we never connected. You get what you pay for. I'll probably be using webex or some other "real" conference bridge next time.
TimeAndDate - I'm sure everybody already knows about this, but still--handy tool for dealing with world-wide meetings.
WorldCard Pro - Little (and portable) business card scanner for $150. It went through my boxes and boxes of business cards in a few hours. It gets great online ratings and is one of the very few business card scanners that works on either Mac or Windows. I had a few highly designed or unusual texture/finished cards that it really couldn't deal with. The OCR usually works pretty well, but in the end you'll have lots of cleanup to do. Thankfully it keeps the images of the cards in the database so the cleanup can be done all on the Mac. Overall, it saved me huge amounts of time compared to entering 2000+ business cards manually.

If I come across any other great small business timesavers, I'll share.

Repairing a HP41CX

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Gryc) — Wed, 26 Mar 2014 16:12:00 +0000

Our cat is only trained on algebraic entry system. I don't otherwise know how to explain why he threw my vintage HP 41CX on the floor. Doesn't he look frustrated and confused by RPN entry? Unfortunately after a dive from the table onto the floor, my HP41CX wouldn't boot.

This wasn't the first repair I've done to it. I originally rescued it from my Dad who was going to contribute it to his township's unneeded electronics drive.

VINTAGE CALCULATOR GOING IN THE GARBAGE? Sweet Baby Jesus. I love old calculators! Probably because once upon a time I used to work for HP in the calculator lab. This shabby treatment of a highly prized relic would not do, even though it was dead.

After cleaning the corroded battery compartment from long drained and oozing batteries, the foil touching the battery tips was eaten through. I inserted a strategic bit of aluminum foil to bridge the worn down battery contacts and...it fired up to life!

That was about a year ago, and she was a trusty old friend until the cat incident. My poor old HP41CX has been sitting around again for a while, dead to the world and patiently waiting for me to get up the nerve to crack it open and see what was wrong. In light of my recent success repairing a sea-soaked Z10, I decided to give it a go.

First, I looked at the HP Calculator Museum on disassembly and repair tips. I popped open the battery compartment, removed the rubber feet, unscrewed the back, and pulled it apart.

The thing I was most worried about was broken screw posts, which seems to be a common occurrence with this model. However, everything looked in order--no broken posts. All the other components were solidly attached. There was still a lot of corrosion on the interconnect left over from my first cleaning. I cleaned that thoroughly with rubbing alcohol and a Q-tip, and then slightly squeezed the interconnect flex strip. That compression was to bow the contact strip outwards more, allowing it to more solidly touch when I reassembled the unit.

I put it back together, and it worked first time, another TINY VICTORY!

Maybe I should start an electronics repair company! Okay, maybe not. But I'm still quite happy that I've saved two of my devices from the landfill. Just so it won't happen again, I'll start teaching the cat how to use RPN. Wish me luck.

Saving a drowned Z10

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Gryc) — Wed, 26 Mar 2014 15:05:00 +0000

The BB Z10 for all its great features is not waterproof nor saltwater-proof. This probably won't be a surprise to you, but it might be if you forgot it was in your pocket when you took a dip in the ocean. You probably see where this is going, and it's not good.

Other lessons to learn if your electronics has taken a swim: wash it right away in distilled water (or at least fresh water from the tap), and don't try turning it on until absolutely positively dry. Otherwise, if you did try to dry it and turn it on without rinsing it, you might get one or two random boots with the camera's flash LED blasting on and off erratically followed by nothing at all. Completely and unretrievably dead. Yes, despite knowing better, I made that mistake too.

However, even if you do everything wrong like I did, you'll be happy to know that there's still a chance you can get your device back to life. I had nothing to lose from completely disassembling it, giving it a good clean, and putting back together. Either that, or spring for a new phone. So once we were back from our Costa Rica vacation, here's what I did.

1) Acquire a very tiny Torq screwdriver - T4. In Ottawa, very few places carry it, but one that does and is super helpful besides is Canada Computers and Electronics. They have the iCAN32 toolkit, a handy little driver kit that has the needed T4 and a ton of other cool electronics bits for a mere $9. Peanuts compared to a new phone.

(Lee Valley is the first place I thought to go, but they won't have what you need. Their electronics screwdriver kit doesn't have the T4 or smaller bits. And Ottawa Fastener Supply is super cool, but they won't have a T4 either.)

2) Disassemble the Z10 according to these youtube videos:

BlackBerry Z10 disassembly tutorial

Blackberry Z10 Complete Disassembly with LCD screen

I referenced both, but I preferred the first. I didn't pull the screen (it wasn't necessary)--just popped off the case and extracted the motherboard.

3) Scrub out all visible corrosion with rubbing alcohol and a Q-Tip. Even though it was just in the sea for a minute or two, there was quite a bit of surface rust, salt, and copper oxide. Most of it was around the battery contacts and camera, but it was on some of the shielded chips too. I was able to get most of it off, but not all.

4) Bathe it in distilled water. I gave it about a 10 minute soak and gently agitated it (swished it back and forth) in a small bowl of distilled water to try to get any salt that may have been underneath the shielded chips to dissolve.

5) Gently shake it off, then pack it in a bowl of white rice overnight to extract any excess water.

6) Reassemble it and plug in the battery.

I had my fingers crossed and held my breath for the seemingly long time before the screen lit up, but... IT WORKED! I ran the BlackBerry Virtual Expert and I only had one casualty--the camera. While the "selfie" camera worked, the main front-facing camera was completely dead. It was probably giving itself a nice shorting out while it going berserk flashing on and off after I turned it on. Whoops. (Anybody have an otherwise dead or defunct Z10 that I can salvage the camera from?)

Everything else worked perfectly! Especially rewarding as I never backed it up, so would have lost everything on the internal flash.

The moral of the story is even if you soak your phone in a conductive sea-water bath, and try to turn it on and it's dead, you may still be okay with a little work and a lot of luck. Don't lose heart!

Three things to love about the Z30

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Gryc) — Wed, 05 Feb 2014 13:54:00 +0000

It's been a while since I've blogged, and those who are following my @truegryc Twitter or LinkedIn profiles know that I've now left QNX to start my own venture, CX3 Marketing. I'm sure I'll have lots to say about that, but the first thing I wanted to blog about was switching my phone.

I've had a BlackBerry Z30 for the last few months, and I loved it. Problem is that it was a prototype device--I got it by volunteering as a beta tester--and as a prototype, I couldn't keep it after leaving QNX. QNX did however let me keep my Z10, so this last weekend I made the process of downgrading back to the Z10.

Don't get me wrong: I still love the Z10. I used to have a personal iPhone and a work BlackBerry. When I got a Z10 as a new work phone, I realized that I preferred it to the iPhone, and I dropped the two-phone-juggling act. But I really miss my Z30. Why? The Z30 runs the same BB10 OS and isn't that much different is it? No--I'm not going through complete withdrawal. Just a little bit! Here are my top three Z30 features that I'm sad to be without.

1) The screen. Yes, this one is obvious from the specs, since the Z30 has a bigger 5" screen than the Z10's 4.2". It's not that much bigger when you lay the phones on top of each other, but it's enough that typing now seems more cramped than I'm used to. The Z30 has a Super AMOLED that's brighter and has more contrast. Overall, just a lot nicer to look at when you're spending a lot of time looking at the screen.

2) The radio. This is not at all obvious, since you probably wouldn't know the Z30 had a FM radio. But with the latest OS release, they added radio support to the Music player. I listen to music on my phone a lot while working, while biking/jogging, and while driving. And having a radio built in lets me switch to CBC when I'm bored of the 32GB of music on my SD card. I had been testing that release for a while, and I loved the radio feature. Unfortunately, the Z10 doesn't have a radio in the hardware, so I'm back to listening to radio in the car only.

3) The battery. You know how everyone has a ritual about plugging their phone at night to start the day topped up? I had gotten lazy with the Z30, because it would last two days on a charge--easy. The Z10 can't do that. End of day, and it's whimpering about needing some juice. I don't know the milliamp difference between the two batteries, but it was hugely noticeable when I switched back because I had to go back to my nightly plugging habits.

Maybe if my new company is successful, I'll spring for a Z30. Or maybe there will be something even better by then. Heck, maybe I'll even consider the painful process of switching families. But for now, I'm back to my trusty old Z10.

Ablative Air

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Gryc) — Sun, 06 Oct 2013 15:32:00 +0000

I've been working nights and weekends on creating a game for the BlackBerry Z10, and it's finally done! It's called Ablative Air, and the objective is to destroy orbital debris before it destroys the ISS.

Completely unintentionally my game posted the same week that Gravity the movie started showing. The plot of Gravity is pretty much the theme of my game. I promise, I didn't know about Gravity before I started development. In fact, I heard about it the first day my app was up for sale. I am pretty sure that the producers of Gravity didn't know about me, either. Everybody is jumping on the orbital debris bandwagon these days.

App on BlackBerry World
Review and video by CrackBerry
Facebook page for my fans & friends
Developer blog up where I'm sharing the trials and tribulations of doing game development

Oh, and in case you were wondering, "to ablate" is to destroy through vapourization. Like what happens to meteors superheated by the atmosphere.

Who's got the best HTML5 score?

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Gryc) — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 19:04:00 +0000

Take a look for yourself. 485 + 11 bonus points.

Is it Chrome? Nope. Android devices? Them neither. Safari? Hardly. Microsoft? Uh--no.

It's the browser on the BlackBerry Z10. Yep, that's right--a mobile phone with a more compatible browser than any other desktop or phone or tablet out there.

It's a continual race, so we probably won't be on the top long. But it's pretty exciting to be in such rarefied air right now, so I'll just enjoy it while I can.

Driving with the Invisible Man

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Gryc) — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 16:32:00 +0000

A little more than a week ago, I had the pleasure of visiting Professor Alberto Broggi of Vislab and of University of Parma, Italy. Dr. Broggi and I talked about autonomous cars and what they're doing to advance that field--all extremely interesting stuff. I got to see one of the famous orange vans that they took on an autonomous driving tour from Parma to Shanghai.

The best part though, was when he offered to take me for a drive in their current test vehicle. Of course, I jumped at the chance! Here's a short video of a piece of the experience. To set the stage, we headed out on this test run: the prof and I in the rear seat, and one of his grad students in the driver's seat. We were following a lead vehicle driven by another student. The "driver" wasn't driving, but monitoring the system, and I could see that he wasn't using the steering wheel, brake or gas. Impressive!

What really made an impact was when we stopped. Professor Broggi's student got out, walked over to the lead vehicle, hopped in, and they took off. He had set our car to follow the lead car, and we drove off in a leisurely pursuit of the lead vehicle. With nobody in the front seat.

It was a rush! It was an amazingly strange feeling, watching the car take us down the road, adjusting speed up and down smoothly, moving over from the shoulder to avoid pedestrians on the side of the road, and "observing" the traffic laws. Quite a unique experience, to be sure.

An experience I'm sure will be experienced by many people sooner than we think.

The Art Of The Possible, and why it drives me nuts

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Gryc) — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 20:37:00 +0000

There are lots of phrases people misuse, and plenty deep is the corporate lingo cesspool. Art of the Possible is my latest favourite. It actually means something akin to "compromised effort", in that you're achieving what's barely possible, instead of something which should be an aspiration. For example, "Politics is the art of the possible" quoted from Otto Von Bismarck. I'm pretty sure he wasn't saying that politics is a wonder-world of delight.

However, I've seen it (and heard it) many times when trying to evoke some grand vision or a construction where anything is imaginable. Technology people seem especially prone to this--maybe because "possible" for an engineer is a much broader space. It always makes me cringe. For me it not only sounds like grandstanding, but it makes me immediately think of exactly the opposite of what the speaker was intending. It makes me think that the speaker is talking about something that barely works!

If I ever send you a link to this little old blog post of mine, it just means you've triggered my Art of the Possible abuse alarm.

Open source software in auto: a time that’s come (and gone)?

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Gryc) — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 14:44:00 +0000

-->

The panel

As mentioned in my previous post, Paul Hansen of the Hansen Report held an OEM panel at SAE Convergence. The panel was international in scope, with North America, Europe, and Japan equally represented through GM, Ford, Audi, Fiat, Nissan, and Toyota. Paul asked the participants to raise their hands if they would have any significant GENIVI products in production within the next five years.

The one punch

None of the panelists raised their hands. The answer caught me off guard so of course I immediately tweeted it (@truegryc). Though GM and Nissan are members of GENIVI, they don’t have any GENIVI project with enough volume worth talking about. The other panelists aren’t planning to use GENIVI, either. (If BMW was on the panel, the total hands may not have been zero, but their singular stance would still be telling.)

The two punch

A similar question, about how OEMs could best utilize open source software, created an uncomfortably pregnant pause, with panelist members furtively looking at each other. Eventually, Ricky Hudi from Audi decided to tackle the issue directly. I’m paraphrasing his answer, but he said that open source software has not paid off as much as anticipated and that the risks of using it within automotive are still underappreciated.

Why not?

The sheer number of GENIVI members lends an impression of vitality. Despite that, we’ve seen them coming up as a competitor in automotive RFIs, RFQs, and RFPs less and less.

I have a few speculations as to why GENIVI hasn’t taken off as anticipated. No OEM wants to spend tons of time and engineering effort to build something that helps every one of their competitors, and I don’t believe IP rights were clearly delineated from the beginning. As a committee-run organization, GENIVI seems to have responded sluggishly to new technologies; it also seems to have a conspicuously absent HMI strategy. And I think that people have figured out by now that building a production infotainment system is a hell of a lot harder than simply bolting a media player on top of your favourite OS.

Building communities

Does the lukewarm OEM response signal a rough road ahead for automotive open source software in general? Or for other up-and-coming replacements like Automotive Grade Linux? For the record, although I work for QNX Software Sysems and our software isn’t open source, I definitely see value for open source in certain situations for automotive. Open source provides a lot of value in broad efforts like building developer communities and fleshing out ecosystems. But open source isn’t the only way to accomplish this; it can also be achieved through open standards, which is how we achieve it at QNX. In fact, shortly after Mr. Hansen’s OEM panel, QNX’s Andrew Poliak held a Convergence session that focused on this exact point.

"Free" isn’t free

Car companies often pursue open source with a single-minded goal of “getting software for free”. But within automotive, at least, using open source is not free. There are a lot of costs in producing software; licensing is just the part that impacts the Bill Of Materials. Non-recurring engineering costs, training, expertise creation, expertise retention, support, and licensing compliance add up: these items can easily overwhelm runtime license costs. Unfortunately, some companies have learned this lesson the hard way.

Can I Get A Roadmap? Amen!

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Gryc) — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 14:21:00 +0000

I attended SAE Convergence in Detroit last week, and I've got a couple observations that I'll be blogging about. Here’s the first.

The Panel
The second day of the show, there was a very informative OEM panel. The moderator, Paul Hansen, asked the automakers what their suppliers could do to help them build their infotainment systems. Alan Amici from Fiat said, "I would like suppliers to share their roadmaps," to which the other OEMs nodded in agreement. On the surface, this seems like a rather gentle, generic request. However, I think it's actually quite a powerful insight that signals a fundamental change in our industry. Mr Amici took a cue from our former president Theodore Roosevelt, speaking softly but carrying a big stick. Let me elaborate.

The History
Stepping in our way-back machine to three years ago or earlier, you'd find a persistent pattern. Every OEM would fully spec every software feature of every module. Which meant that every Tier 1 and software supplier (including QNX) would have to jump through hoops trying to cut, fold and tear their existing software to meet those custom specs. And it also meant building tons of new software on top to fill the gaps. The reasoning here is pretty simple—an automaker is building a custom system, so why not build something that reflects exactly what they want? In this environment, we always presented our software roadmap and the OEMs would look politely, but it rarely influenced their designs. Instead, we ended up providing a completely bespoke version of our software stack.

The Change
About two years ago, we started to notice a powerful undercurrent in automotive that bucks this trend. Why the change? OEMs absolutely need to create consumer relevant products, and reduce the time required to release them. That means they will need to—more and more—reuse instead of re-invent. Several OEMs at the forefront of this trend have been already exploring this. How? By working directly with the Tier 1 and suppliers to design the system with a eye towards heavy reuse of existing technologies, instead of trying to design each system from the ground up.

The Apps
This effort to reuse instead of recreate will be necessary not just to reduce the time of delivery, but also to enable any type of cross-brand app experience. Apps that live in app stores require a consistent set of APIs. It’s very hard to do that if every single OEM is busy customizing and recreating every aspect of the system software. The “we’ll design our own” approach will result in fragmentation even worse than that experienced by the Android community. Unconstrained, it carries the threat of creating dozens of independent silos, with no ability to share apps between car makers. It means dilution of the already small automotive volume into even tinier markets—one for each automaker—which doesn’t bode well for anyone building automotive apps. OEMs will need to buck the desire to customize everything if they want to build a thriving app community.

The Punchline
When automakers are focused on their value-add, like HMI designs and custom features, instead of reinventing plumbing, it helps everyone. The OEMs, the Tier 1’s, and the software suppliers benefit from using a consistent platform amongst themselves. So Mr/Ms Carmaker: would you like to see our roadmaps? We would absolutely love to share them. We’d even like to help build them with you!

HMI Tools Revisited

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Gryc) — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 20:12:00 +0000

A little while ago, I wrote a blog about HMI design tools. I made the point that I thought many of these tools had challenges, from ease of use to code maintainability. I asked for feedback on that blog, and I got some. Some agreed with my viewpoint and some didn’t.

For example, I received some feedback about Elektrobit GUIDE from a QNX-er who used to work at Elektrobit. My colleague has direct knowledge of EB GUIDE, whereas admittedly I have none, so his feedback helps illuminate the other side of the story.

Sample of EB GUIDE design with visual state machine

EB GUIDE is probably the best known and most widely used tool in automotive HMI development. According to my colleague, here are some of the features that make it a good fit for automotive:

State-machine based. EB GUIDE lets you build the entire HMI without resorting to code. Constructing the HMI through state machines is more often closer to how the OEM supplies the specification. And it makes the final design more testable.
Integration of speech. EB GUIDE provides options to fully integrate speech recognition into the HMI—it can be coupled directly with the state machine. This is a pretty unique capability.
Simulation and testing. The ability to instantly simulate any model that you build is especially powerful, especially for designers. Most times, designers are left out of the loop—they need an engineer to see the realization of their work. Simulation gives them the ability to be self-sufficient. And test frameworks allow an OEM to guarantee that an implemented design is exactly as they’ve specified.

Good feedback! Any other thoughts anyone wants to contribute?

The Pace of High Tech Life

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Gryc) — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 16:47:00 +0000

How many times have you heard yourself or a colleague or a customer or a business partner say things like the following:

I'm up to my eyeballs in work
I'll have to get back to you once I get a breather
I'm triple-booked; can you reschedule?
Sorry--I dropped the ball on that
I'm using lunch to dig myself out of email

Not to mention all the work emails timestamped after 10:00pm, or the fact your inbox already has 40 new emails when you get into work although you stopped checking it after dinner. Its starting to become an unsustainable pace.

Here's a quintessential example--a picture taken of a colleague's inbox. It's a little blurry, but if you can't make it out it says 1355 unread emails. (I happened to take this pic when she and I were both on a conference call, and I've been too busy to ask her why on earth her inbox was that full.)

1355 unread emails? Indeed, which is why I had to take a picture. There could be a lot of rational explanations about this, but here's one easy explanation. I myself get roughly about 150 emails a day. My coworker travels a lot, and she was gone the week before. So, it's easily conceivable that this is just backlog from her trip for a single week. That's just a sad statement for living high-tech today. I know that I'm busier than I've ever been, and every time I talk to anyone else (in my company or anyone else's), I always get the same reply--I'm swamped.

I've been thinking about blogging about this topic for a while, but ironically, I didn't have the time. I did have time to tweet about it, earlier though. (That's one of the things that makes me love Twitter--it's so much less of a commitment.)

How are you doing at your job? Busy? Yep, that's what I thought. Is it everyone in high tech? Is it endemic to the whole Western world? If you've got a spare 10 seconds, I'd love to get your comments.

Andy's Telematics Detroit wrap-up: how to make auto shows even better

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Gryc) — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 16:59:00 +0000

Telematics Detroit was, for us, a good event again this year. The Jeep was a great success, with lots of people filling all four seats on a pretty constant basis, and lots of people waiting to see what HTML5 really can do. The show was busy and loud, even if you don't include the car alarm going off near the end of the event. In the quiet of my hotel room, away from the clamour, I reflected on the event and came up with two main observations.

1) Telematics Detroit's main value is in networking. For industry old timers like me, it's always like a big reunion party. It was great to see old friends from jobs long ago, friends who have done business with QNX for many years, and friends who have never done business with QNX but love us all the same. It was great to build on our existing partner relationships, and to work on blossoming new ones. It's great to catch up with people, building up your own business-card sized slice into their personal career trajectory

More than ever, it's clear that the car app has finally taken hold. I talked to many mobile developers who are targeting the car; we're helping them figure out how to bridge the mobile-car gap.

An anecdote shows how important networking is to this event. The Telematics Update party sponsored by Slacker had two live bands, an open bar, and cheerleaders milling through the crowd. Telematics and Tonics (the event brought to life by my good friend and former boss John Correia, and sponsored by QNX, Agero, and Tweddle) was held at the same time across the street. We didn’t have a live band, an open bar, or cheerleaders, but people still found our party a great place to mix and mingle.

2) I think that the sessions at many auto events need a face lift. This isn't just about Telematics Update—it's a reflection of many shows I've been to lately. I heard from a few people that they had walked out of talks after the first couple minutes, or that they generally thought the content of the sessions or the panels was not as valuable as they could be. Having done panels (yes, I did one this time) and speaking engagements (no, I didn't do one this time) at many shows, I think I can shed some light on why this is.
Every show has to organize months in advance, so abstracts are created months earlier, which allows them to schedule and print show guides, etc. With this model, you're planning for what's going to be discussed several months ahead of time. Is this time lag critical? Sometimes it can be—if you're working in a fast paced industry, it may mean you're not going to be able to talk about something brand new.

There’s a bigger problem: the people you invite to speak are industry experts. And experts are in high demand. Which means that they're multi-tasking and being pulled in many different directions all the time. The show content they need to deliver is just a small fraction of what they need to output each and every day. As it's so far in the future, it often gets prioritized low on the list, often only getting completed days (or hours) before the show. Old material is often recycled, the presentation may be unpolished, and the slides may be uninteresting. This lack of ability to put quality time into creating a clear and concise message and refining it generally leads to presentations that are difficult to follow, or that add little value.

What would help? I can think of a couple things that could be tried:

Don't use printed guides at all, and leave the content and abstracts flexible until days before the show. Also, keep the content automatically updated on a web site—why kill trees for no reason? Not committing to a specific topic months in advance means the material can be fresh and relevant to that very week.
Except for the keynote, make the session rooms smaller and more intimate, and instead of having a one-way presentation that turns into a core dump, create open Q&A sessions around areas of expertise. This approach can encourage an interactive conversation that grows in the direction of audience interest, instead of potentially boring the audience or, even worse, going over their heads. The speaker is an expert—they don't have to prepare anything, except be prepared to talk. A panel session isn't exactly what I have in mind—even a panel is a little prescriptive and doesn't dig down into the details that can really engage the audience
Create and enforce use of a standardized presentation template. SAE does it. As a content creator, I have often cursed SAE’s policy, but it definitely drives consistency. SAE's template was less than attractive in years past, but this year it was actually decent. A standardized template has many advantages: it helps limit the number of slides and the amount of text on each slide; it also enforces appropriate image/diagram usage. If done right, it can help presenters create something that works well for the size and expectations of the audience.

The argument against HMI modeling tools

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Gryc) — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 20:05:00 +0000

I was recently asked by a customer whether or not I would recommend use of HMI modeling or code generation tools. I thought maybe everyone might not agree with my viewpoint, so to spark some discussion I’ve posted my response here.

Let me start with some disclosures. I have in the past used Rational Rose quite a bit. It's a UML code generation tool, not an HMI one, but there is a good deal of similarity. And I've used Adobe Flash, which has many of the same characteristics as the other HMI tools you've mentioned. But I haven't directly used HMI tools myself, so my response comes from analogy to Rose or Flash, but not from personal experience. For what it's worth.

That said, I think that modeling tools are good for building small (or disposable) models, and not as good for long-term or big scale projects. I think this can be chalked up to a number of factors:

• Ease of use. It seems like the ease of use of a modeling tool is a good thing, and it is. But it also enables creation of a working model without having thought it through completely. The tools are designed to be used in part at least by HMI specialists. Because HMI builders are not always software engineers, they aren't necessarily entrenched in the ways of good software development. You can end up with a rat's nest because the model grew organically. If you're building an HMI through code, you don't have a choice—you have to think it through first. This doesn't guarantee a good design, but I would argue it has to help.

• Maintainability. You can't keep the whole of the project in a visual language like state machines—you have to drop into script/code at some point, whether that coding is directly supported in the tool environment or not. The physical separation of state machine vs code leads to a mental break, and means that it's far harder to think about. You've got to do multiple conceptual jumps to write/read/interpret. I don't know if this in itself harms maintainability, but it seems to be a hindrance once the models get rather complex. The break between visual and scripting makes it also much harder to do simple tasks. Search and replace comes to mind, but it's even a problem just finding the code that you're looking for. I find environments like Flash exceedingly frustrating in this regard, especially when it comes to someone's code other than your own. Code snippets are scattered "willy nilly" throughout the model. It might make sense to the original author, but not always to the reader. It's also hard to comment the visual model. "It's obvious, so you don't need comments!" That statement is only said if you've never maintained anyone else's code, and everyone else knows the truth. Software artifacts like design decisions, explanations, log tracking, or PR management cannot be reasonably kept in visual models, so you lose that connection with the past history of the code.

• Familiarity. Would you ever want to reuse your first C++ program? Nope. Me neither. There’s a reason why I never put my freeware Songbird Studio program into open source. I was too embarrassed to let anyone see how awful my first try at C++ was. The first few models in any language are not a good reflection of what you could build with the tool once you’ve had a few disasters under your belt first. The subset of knowledgeable experts on most HMI tools is quite small. In most organizations, it can be zero to start with. That leads to a "weekend experiment" type of feel to some of the models.

If you have experts in a particular tool, I know they can create well-structured and maintainable models. I’ve seen experts in action, and then it’s a beautiful thing. And it's also very well suited for applications where the behavior can be wholly contained within a state machine. I also think these cases are the exception rather than the rule. If the model is small enough, it might not matter. My own personal guideline is that if the model has become too big to be readable on a single sheet of paper, it's probably going to be a problem for your average software developer.

(You may read this and think I’m an old school dyed-in-the-wool traditionalist, but for the record I’d like to point out that I use the Eclipse IDE and not vi.)

What do you think? I'm certainly happy to be proven wrong--do you have experience with these tools that you can share?

Katimavik is on the chopping block!

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Gryc) — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 21:24:00 +0000

If you're not Canadian (or an honorary Canadian), you won't know what Katimavik is. As an explanation for my followers from other locations, it's kind of like the Peace Corp for Canadian teens. It's a very successful volunteering program for helping install a sense of purpose, and giving kids some direction when they most need it. Like a light-weight, short-duration version of sending a kid to military school, but much more fun, and no stigma attached. The kid gets to go to a different part of the country, learn new skills, meet new people, and perform valuable volunteering. It's been around for more than 30 years in Canada.

And this year, it lost funding. A good friend who's son was headed down a questionable path ended up turning around due to Katimavik, and met a nice girl there to boot. I know what Katimavik is because over the last three years, I kept running into people that say that Katimavik changed their lives or the life of someone they loved. What a tragedy to see such a loved and valuable institution die due to a funding cut.

As I'm not a Canadian citizen, I can't vote. But for those of you Canadians who can, give Parliament a piece of your mind! Go to their main page--they've got a number of online petitions you can join.

Update on Nuance acquisition history

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Gryc) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 18:41:00 +0000

My earlier blog on Nuance is already out of date, as I was missing a few new feathers in Nuance's cap, so here's the update.

I'm starting to run out of room! Make sure you click on the diagram to get the full expansion. This adds Vlingo and Loquendo.

Cool BlackBerry App World Feature

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Gryc) — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 02:20:00 +0000

I wanted to use HootSuite on my new Torch (which, to my delight I'm really enjoying). I went to the HootSuite website from my phone as I didn't know if there was an app or not. Instead of getting some ill-defined mobile rendered version, I got an "Do you want to install this app?" screen. Now that's cool. My iPhone makes me hunt through the app store to get what I want. It's extrememly timely to have the website that I'm using be able to automatically download their BlackBerry app when I visit their web page.
Maybe Apple can do that, but I've never seen it!

Busted: FTL neutrinos have a measurement error

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Gryc) — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 19:29:00 +0000

If you read my original blog about neutrinos going faster than light, you'll see that I was a little skeptical. Just like the actual researchers, who suspected they'd done something wrong and were asking the scientific community to help find their error.

I don't want to gloat or anything, but it looks like the measurement error culprit may be my proposal #2, which accounts for a 64ns error in measuring GPS time due to referential frame dragging:

Okay, I'll gloat.

Zipper Knife

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Gryc) — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 05:24:00 +0000

I'm in Nagoya right now, preparing for the QNX Auto Summit 2011 in Japan. I'll be blogging about that soon, but over on our new QNX Team Auto blog.

You might know if you're a regular reader that I'm a sucker for butchered foreign translations. To be clear: I'm not poking fun. Any arbitrarily selected foreign person speaks my language far better than I speak theirs. Also to be fair, most companies have figured this out by now, and have native speakers take care of translations instead of dictionaries or Google translate (or whatever other machinations might be used). But I just love the completely unexpected jangle of words you get when you attempt translating dramatically different idioms and diametrically opposed grammatical constructs into English. It's almost like reading e.e.cummings poetry. You immediately get the sense of it, but there's this delightful whimsy about hearing words coming at you that a native speaker would never naturally string together.

Hence, this week's exhibit: Zipper Knife.

Now Zipper Knife is totally cool, partially because it's so darn tiny. I was one squeak away from being the proud owner of a Zipper Knife, and if I hadn't just last week bought a new Gerber key chain knife, I would be. But Zipper Knife's real deal-sealers are the benefits. Just in case you can't read the tiny print, here's what Zipper Knife can do for you:

Sometimes, you can use this tool to improve your nails.
You can put it to key ring.
This tool is very convenient to open an envelope for you.
It is so cool if you use this item for necklace.

All excellent benefits, for sure. However, they save the best for last.

It looks so small body. But it has true functions for your life.

CCC and MirrorLink, part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Gryc) — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 03:22:00 +0000

For the continuation of my CCC observations, take a trip over to our new team QNX auto blog:

On the Road with QNX Software Systems: Connected Car Consortium (CCC) MirrorLink meeting, Chicago, September 29, 2011

Connected Car Consortium (CCC) and MirrorLink

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Gryc) — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 21:07:00 +0000

I'm in Chicago right now, blogging from my PlayBook. I'll have a lot to say after I compose my thoughts, but with most of the day behind me, I'll just share some of the key themes I've sussed out of the days events.

Mobile makers (Nokia, LGE, and Samsung, at least) see MirrorLink as the way to get apps into the car
Nokia sees MirrorLink as a way to become relevant again
OEMs see the upside for new opportunities to connect with customers, but seem to somewhat be in denial that this will also decimate their existing revenue streams
MirrorLink has come a long way, but still has a ways to go in certification and safety concerns

And although there have been some great presentations (best one was the simplest PPT), I have to give my vote for the best slide so far:

I'll be back with more...

Makin' wine

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Gryc) — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 21:48:00 +0000

My girlfriend is pursuing her sommelier certification, and as a side-effect, we donated some time this last weekend picking some grapes for a little winery called Lift Haus in Prince Edward County. Yeah, they haven't picked the best name. (Lift Haus doesn't make German wine, and as far as German alcohol goes, I'm a much bigger fan of their beer!) It's a very small scale family run operation that makes half-way decent wines, and they really need help. So we helped.

The experience of crouching down in the field all day, picking grapes in the hot sun, made me truly appreciate a glass of wine, and all the hard work and love that goes into each one. Between the two of us, I calculated that we picked about 60 bottles of wine's worth of grapes--all day's work for a single row of vines. What a lot of back-breaking work it was!

Just in case I forget, remind me the next time I open a bottle that it took hours of labour and love to bring that wine to my lips. I've got a new appreciation!