blog.cpinto.net

Batch of truisms

2009-10-10T20:22:00.002+01:00

On Twitter I was writing a small burst of truisms that I'd like to share here too. Please note that this isn't advice, you can and should get that from people you look up too, who have accomplished stuff and who are overall more intelligent and experienced than both you and me.

If you're not located on Silicon Valley don't think or act in a Silicon Valley way

This is an easy one. We all read Techcrunch and whatnot and begin to think we can replicate what we imagine we'd find in Silicon Valley if we just build a community and act the way we perceive them to. Let me tell you something: this isn't quite as simple as monkey-see-monkey-do. Governments, local groups, etc. all of them, throughout Europe, have been trying to build up their own version of "Silicon Valley" and so far every single attempt has failed. This has failed even in the US.

So if you want Silicon Valley, move there.

Avoid seeking institutional investment for your startup, instead have a customer pay for the project that you'll turn into a product

All products have customers, so start there if you're planning on creating something. It should be easier to build up on existing technology and deliver a project that covers what your first customers actually need, which later you can turn into the proper product you've been mulling about. People will pay you to deliver those projects and you get to own your company fully. Something else to consider is that if your take investment, you not only still have to sell to customers but you also have to answer to the investors. Do your best to have as few "masters" as possible.

Ryan Carson once said it took Carsonified 1 year of projects to finance a product they came up with. Is this not better than getting institutional investment right from the get-go? Also, on a TED talk Joachim de Posada explained the link between delayed gratification and future success. I'll leave it for you to think about that.

Failing fast is bad advice, fail cheap!

I've seen this written and heard it being told, time and time again, but the more I think of it the more I believe it's stupid advice. If someone tells you to "just fail fast" just tell them to f*ck off and stop blabbing and in the majority of times you'll be doing them a favor. What you really want is to fail cheap! Does it really matter if you fail after 1 year of hard work but only spend 10.000 USD or Euros? Of course not. It may make a dent to your family budget for that year but that's it. On the other hand it sure as hell matters if you fail fast (eg. 6 months) but burn through 1 million USD or Euros along your way down. Of course, what they actually mean - the smart ones that is - is that it's preferable to spend $1MM and fail after 6 months, than burning through $10MM for two years only to find out that there isn't really a market for your product. But then, you're still failing cheap. Also, why does that kind of math just feel wrong? Anyway...

Stay clear of people who tell truisms

You shouldn't really be reading this blog post. For that matter, you shouldn't really read Guy Kawasaki's books either. As I have none and he has many, go burn his.

Studio musicians also have a ball doing what they love

We all want to be innovative and change the world, just like all musicians would love to be real rock stars. Likewise, it's just as ok to start a lifestyle business as to be a studio musician. And I can assure you that studio musicians also have a ball doing what they love and taking enough money home.

Eu vou votar... na esplanada.

2009-09-26T11:28:00.003+01:00

Diz que amanhã há eleições. Como já não escrevo neste blog há meses, parece-me uma boa oportunidade para mandar bocas e "manter a bola em jogo". Em princípio não vou votar. Não porque não acredite que a voz do povo não deva ser ouvida, deve, mas porque me recuso a participar nesta palhaçada de democracia cujos actores são praticamente os mesmos desde a revolução de 25 de Abril de '74. Do século passado. E os que não são, querem ser. E porque também me recuso a fazer o mesmo papel que o meu concidadão vai fazer daqui por uns 6 meses: "estes gajos são todos uma malandragem". Mas insiste em lá ir meter o papelinho. É o mesmo que dizer que o café do snack-bar aqui da esquina dá diarreia e insistir, diária e religiosamente, em começar o dia por beber lá essa bem-dita bebida energética.

Mas não é só por isso: eu não me sinto representado. Por ninguém. No barómetro eleitoral português que por aí anda, fiquei para lá de todos os partidos, com uma taxa de compatibilidade a rondar os 60%, um valor demasiado baixo. Aconselho a que olhe em vez desse, para o world's smallest political quiz. Vá lá, nem 10 segundos deve demorar a preenchê-lo, se for uma pessoa convicta das suas razões. O meu resultado, libertarian, que segundo o website significa:

LIBERTARIANS support maximum liberty in both personal and economic matters. They advocate a much smaller government; one that is limited to protecting individuals from coercion and violence. Libertarians tend to embrace individual responsibility, oppose government bureaucracy and taxes, promote private charity, tolerate diverse lifestyles, support the free market, and defend civil liberties.

Interessante... Como é que se chega a este resultado? Continue a ler porque vou tentar racionalizar, mas não justificá-las perante si, as minhas opções:

Government should not censor speech, press, media or Internet.

Concordo, claro. O governo, a existir, não deve censurar nenhum tipo de expressão individual. Note-se, no entanto, que isto não significa que seja obrigado a ouvir e levar em consideração tudo o que é dito. Point in case: eu cá adorei quando 200.000 professores saíram à rua e tanto o PM como a ME se estiveram marimbando o ruído dos sindicatos. O lado menos positivo disto é que esses meninos (os manifestantes), quando vão para a rua, têm a terrível tendência para entupir o trânsito em Lisboa. Escutem, deixem-me dar-vos uma dica: porque é que não se vão manifestar para uma planície alentejana qualquer? Podem fazê-lo em grande número na mesma, quem sabe se não ainda maior, e não incomodam mais ninguém.
Military service should be voluntary. There should be no draft.

Concordo, claro. Ninguém deve ser obrigado a ir morrer pelas ideologias e visões dos outros. 'nuff said!
There should be no laws regarding sex for consenting adults.

Se é consentido, é consentido. Quer pagar? Pague. Quer usar um chicote, cueca de cabedal e bota dos fusos? Use. Desde que a outra parte diga "quero" a sociedade não deve poder impor a sua moral, que não raras vezes é apenas a moral de quem legisla, às relações entre adultos. Lembre-se, a imoralidade está na sua cabeça.
Repeal laws prohibiting adult possession and use of drugs.

A nicotina é uma droga? Sim, é. A cafeína é uma droga? Sim, é. Que Deus as abençoe e quem as produz e também quem mas disponibiliza. Se não beber café logo pela manhã dói-me a cabeça portanto sou um "agarrado", estou dependente de um café para funcionar. Um adulto tem de poder tomar as suas próprias decisões (e arcar com as consequências). Se quer usar drogas pesadas, que use e abuse. O problema é dele, tal como o dinheiro que gasta nelas é dele. Quando não é dele, quando é roubado, aí temos outro problema que tem pouco a ver com posse e uso de drogas.
There should be no National ID card.

Agreed, claro. Diz que tem funcionado muito bem no Reino Unido, onde até o passe dos transportes serve como elemento identificador, porque é preciso apresentar outra prova de identificação como o cartão multibanco, que só é entregue se se mostrar a certidão de nascimento ou o passaporte. A ter de existir alguma coisa deste género, façam o favor de unificar todos os sistemas de identificação. Cartão de Cidadão ftw!1
End "corporate welfare." No government handouts to business.

Seja qual for o negócio. Se correu mal das duas uma, ou foi mal gerido ou não tem razão de ser, ie. falta de mercado. Acreditem que sei do que falo. Seja como for, um negócio tem de sobreviver com o mercado que tem e não às custas do estado. A não ser que o estado seja um cliente.
End government barriers to international free trade.

Aqui está um tema que me é muito querido. Eu não diria apenas que não deviam existir barreiras ao mercado livre internacional, diria que não deviam existir barreiras internacionais, ponto. Antes de sermos Portugueses, Franceses, etc. somos cidadãos do mundo. As such, não deviam haver barreiras a que eu me mude para a Tailândia para montar um negócio de prostituição, para Silicon Valley para montar um negócio de tecnologia, para a África do Sul para abrir uma pizzaria ou para Portugal (se fosse do Leste da Europa) para construir coisas. Diz que a ausência de fronteiras no Novo Mundo funcionou bem até por volta do séc. XVI.
Let people control their own retirement; privatize Social Security.

Como diz alguém e muito bem, a Segurança Social é um esquema de Ponzi. Pelo que entendo, é um esquema financeiro ilegal. Conseguem soletrar: dois pesos, duas medidas? Mais, a SS devia ser opt-in e concorrer em termos de oferta (ie. mercado) com os privados. Querem o meu dinheiro? Ofereçam-me melhores condições.
Replace government welfare with private charity.

O nosso Governo tem uma receita de 35 mil milhões de Euros relativa a impostos. O nosso Governo gasta 28 mil milhões de Euros com toda a Segurança Social. 7 mil milhões de Euros nos bolsos dos Portugueses fazem toda a diferença, portanto mais fariam 35 mil milhões. Quem tem dinheiro faz caridade, quem não tem não faz.
Cut taxes and government spending by 50% or more.

Onde é que fui buscar aqueles números? Aqui (obrigado pelo link João). O Estado gasta 14 mil milhões de Euros com pessoal. Are you friggin' kidding me??? 14 mil milhões? Mas esperem, a receita são 40.000MM€ (incluindo outras que não fiscais), a despesa são 46.000MM€. Já dá para perceber qual é o problema?

Se, tal como a mim, também lhe faz uma certa "comichão" toda esta situação em que estamos metidos, não se admire mas sinceramente eu acho que a culpa é mais sua que minha, a minha mensagem é mais forte que a sua. Se concorda com alguns destes pontos, não tem de concordar comigo note-se, então faça uma visita a'O meu governo que já está na altura das coisas mudarem apesar de não ser a tempo destas eleições.

The real cloud computing

2009-04-18T01:31:00.003+01:00

I've been quiet, too damn quiet, for far too long. You see, as the Dude would put it, "lots of shit came to light" and when it hasn't been terrible, it's been so bad that blogging has been at the very bottom of my priority stack. But not tonight, oh no. Tonight I have an ax to grind, and I'm going after cloud computing.

The cloud computing concept nowadays breaks down in two major camps:

that of the Storage, and
that of the CPU (or virtual machines if you prefer)

Cloud storage just works and we love it. Someone gives us a REST/SOAP interface and we tell it "here's this blob, store it under this key", we get "kthxbai" and we go our merry way. This is the perfect image of cloud computing. There's no managing of storage, you don't have to request "extra" disk space or "manage" partitions. It Just Works (tm).

Virtual machines on the other hand, sorry! This is not cloud computing! At least to me it's not. Having to create system images? Manage the full software stack? Networking? If this is a form of cloud computing then bow to IBM, HP and whatnot because have been doing it for ages as they manage the mainframe hardware and your sysops (which at this point should have Cloud Computing Expert on their business cards) manage the OS and everything that runs in there. You don't buy hardware, you lease it! So all of the sudden it's cloud computing because it's all in datacenters you have no access to and you pay a lease?! Give me a break! Yeah, this new wave of cloud computing experts/consultants are just glorified sysops, as much as flight attendants are just glorified waitresses. At least the latter actually do business in the clouds, but I digress. Anyway, the only innovation I see on this front is on demand resource availability. (Almost) all the rest: crap!

It's not all bad though, I can see light at the end of the tunnel and it comes in the form of Google App Engine... and something else (more on this at the end). It's not the only solution mind you but it's by far the most popular and most well executed.

You see, in GAE you don't have to manage system images, you don't have to manage networks and all that jazz. You deploy to it, give it instructions on how the world can interface with it and you're done. You don't know or care how many CPUs you're code is running on, where they're at and how to reach them. It all happens under the hood, a hood made by clouds. And let me tell you: it is beautiful! Go try it yourself if you haven't done so already and witness how awesome it is. Don't let the snake bite you, you RoR fanboy, the word is that now that GAE drinks Java, JRuby can also deploy to GAE so go create your awesome 20 minute blog with RoR and give it a try.

But GAE isn't the end solution, oh no, there's something even better, way better, down the pipeline and it's called <your browser name goes here>. You see, a group of smart people hooked up and 9 minutes later this idea that browser clients could be used to process chunks of work came to birth in the form of collaborative map/reduce. Fortunately I had the privilege of being introduced to this idea a few weeks earlier so it wasn't really new, but I was left breathless by it's simplicity and a whole new world of possibilities came to me and I just hope I have the will power to bring at least one to life.

And this, this is cloud computing. Millions and millions of workers requesting serialized code and data they can munch on and you won't have to do a thing to make them work for you. Beautiful! Awesome! And it's light years ahead of this stupid concept that of having to manage virtual machines and virtual networks is the best thing since sliced bread.

What mobile app should I build?

2008-11-25T21:11:00.000Z

Wonderful article by Paul Golding! If you're thinking about
startupping in the mobile market, read it and leave the whishful
thinking at the door.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WirelessWonders/~3/465199034/RSSRetrieve.aspx

PS: as you may have noticed I'm doing low text, ugly links, kind of
posts. I'm actually using the mail2blogger feature, but I'm not happy.
Need to cook up something that understands the most basic of markups.

And it's me who's the dumb techie?

2008-11-25T20:57:00.000Z

Check the link below. For years my preachings on how good synaptic is/
was have been hushed by moronic PC users and now they're going apeshit
with AppStores. I predict a million of them will popup and quickly
become irrelevant, just as download.com did before them, due to all
those thousands of apps that do the same thing, all look alike but the
names are different.

If you think the Apple AppStore is in any way successful (still
waiting for the real numbers) then it's because it's *exclusive* and
*targetted*.

Please, someone, anyone, put a stop to this before it gets out of hand
and those poor users have to install tens of AppStores on their poor,
little and gray and dull PCs to download those copies of shareware
software they don't really need. Unless one of those AppStores
supports illegal torrents, then we're talkinng business.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/25/ycombinator-startup-creates-a-better-download-app-store-for-windows-baseshield/

-
Celso Pinto // 7syntax // http://handivi.com

Codebits 2008

2008-11-16T18:57:00.001Z

This year's codebits edition is over and it finished with the promise of it taking place yet again next year. I think I said it last year but I'll repeat it again: it was awesome! Congratulations to everyone at SAPO for pulling it off. One thing I noticed was that the audience was (or seemed to be) younger than last year's edition, which can only be a good thing.

I'd also like to thank SAPO for accepting the applications for everyone at 7syntax and inviting us to give a couple of talks. VD was there talking about AWS and I gave an overview of the tech we're using to build handivi. My slides are available on slideshare so you can view them if you want:

Codebits Handivi

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: codebits08 codebits)

My project, a topic detection tool, didn't win anything but I'm cool with that, in the process I found out someone was working on a similar problem so, in spite of wanting to stay at home due to coming down with a flu, I ended up showing up for the last day, presenting my creation and being introduced to the Programming Collective Intelligence book which is awesome too. Thank you Paula!

But that wasn't my only hack :-) A few days before the event I had challenged everyone at 7syntax to show up with a mustache. Alas, only Nuno and me did that. Thanks to Alexandre my looks for the duration of the event have been made timeless on flickr:

Pretty out of whack stuff, but cool nonetheless. All I wanted was to have a 60's UNIX hacker look, instead I was called a mexican, a drug lord, a 70's porn star, a heavy metal fan, a chopper rider and James Heltfield-clone. Daniel was really keen on the mexican thing and he was supposed to get me a sombrero for me to wear during my talk but didn't. I would use it, definitely!

Another cool thing was Rock Band, man the game's amazing! I teamed up with Mário, Paulo and a guitar player who shall remain nameless because he doesn't want the internet to know who he is ;-) to play a couple of oldies: Detroit Rock City by KISS and Run to the hills by Iron Maiden. I had to bail out on Friday before the battle of the bands contest due to the flu worsening and becoming exhausted from having only slept about 1:30, 2 full hours the night before but I heard they did well even though some other band won the contest.

Finally, I had the pleasure of spending some time with the massive from up north and meeting Jan and Peter face-to-face.

Combining Codebits and SHiFT it's easy to see how SAPO and it's people have already done more, way more, than anyone else in fostering a creative environment in Portugal. Hats off to them once again!

Eyes on the puck

2008-11-05T01:05:00.000Z

http://gigaom.com/2008/11/04/google-wins-big-at-fcc-today/

These are great, no, AWESOME news: the FCC allows independent use of
the freed TV wireless spectrum and the deal between Clearwire and
Sprint, paving way for an US national-scale WiMAX network. I know many
of you don't see any future in this so please let me paraphrase a
famous quote on Wayne Gretzky[1]: Wayne became the best because he
skated to where the puck was going to be, not to where the puck has
been.

I'm sorry for the terrible formatting but I'm catching up on the news
in bed and posting this through the iPod email client.

[1] if you don't know who Wayne Gretzky is then you clearly didn't
enjoy enough faceoff time in NHL94 :)

A call to Portuguese startups: I want your schwag!

2008-11-03T21:52:00.002Z

Hugo made some stickers this weekend and brought them in today. As you can see by the photo above, I have plenty of visible area where I can put them so it dawned on me that I should also carry around logos of other local startups, if only to spread the word. So, if you're a Portuguese startup: please send me an SVG of your logo and we'll try to get them printed and I'll proudly put them on my laptop screen. Email to cpinto at 7syntax dot com ok?

Also, I'd like to thank Hugo (aka htr) for doing this. Instead of having fun coding in Python and fiddling with CouchDB he spent an hour printing stickers. Rock on Hugo! ;-)

Google PDF search: tesseract redux

2008-11-01T03:04:00.001Z

So it seems that Google's now able to index PDFs by extracting text from images. If you ask me, this is pretty exciting stuff although I have a hunch they're just eating their dog food and, if so, the technology isn't new, it's just Google being Google (ie. smart). At a point where everyone appears to be thinking about semantic search and other (mostly useless at this point) non-sense Google takes it one step beyond and continues to improve their service. This, in itself, is begging for the question: has the Google competition called it quits on the search engine marathon?

Life Changing Meme

2008-10-26T16:58:00.001Z

It's a slow weekend so I'll take the time to pick the meme where José left it:

wake up early: for some reason I keep going back to getting up at about 9/9:30AM when what I'd like to do is get up at 7, 7:30AM maximum. This alone should improve my QoL dramatically as I'd have lots of time for the next item. I'm working on it though :-)
exercise ~~more~~: I have all this exercising gear at home but usually I only stick to the exercising plan for two weeks, then leave it. I should get me a proper bicycle and enjoy early mornings by going out for a ride.
travel often and longer: my few latest trips to other countries end up being no longer than 4 days which totally ruins the experience. On the arrival and departure days there's no time to enjoy the time being spent there so this leaves me a couple of days filled with rushing everywhere with no time to let the culture sink in. I guess it's one of the bad things of living at the far tip of Europe: travelling anywhere needs too damn preparation.

So iPhone reached 11.6 million unit sales in past 12 months

2008-10-22T00:41:00.001+01:00

A good debunking of iPhone sales by Tomi: http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2008/10/so-iphone-reach.html

If the link is broken I apologize, as I'm testing the mail2blogger
thingy straight out of byline.

Wrapping up SHiFT'08

2008-10-19T19:41:00.000+01:00

SHiFT, a conference about "social and human ideas for technology" ended last Friday after three days filled with creative thinking. All the team was there and not only that we managed to take one extra lucky person with us, judging by her comments and grin on her face, I'd say she had a wonderful time, which is awesome.

This was the second edition of the conference and not only the big things were done right, all the little things had that little... I don't know, you just had to be there to feel it, it was an amazingly good vibe.

I didn't attend as many talks as I wanted to but, the ones I did, were great: Andy Budd, Delphine Ménard, Fred Oliveira, Julian Bleecker, Mark Wuben, Mike Davis (the real Mike Davis, and he's on Twitter) and Tijmen Schep. All of them brilliant people. I was really looking forward to hear what Julian, Mike and Tijmen had to say and I was not at all disappointed.

Now that SHiFT's over, I'm really, really looking forward to next year's edition.

Know me better

2008-10-18T00:09:00.001+01:00

Just because I'm in the mood for it, I've upgraded the "About me" section of this blog. Blame the weather, the positive thinking I got from shift (more on it tomorrow) or simply the fact that it being so terse as it was came back to haunt me from time to time.

Much is still private but many of the good things are there. If there's anything else you'd like to know email me and I'll add it there.

One for posterity

2008-09-10T16:02:00.002+01:00

On this day, I'm Python's top evangelist according to Google:

Thoughts on creating a real tech hub

2008-08-10T15:26:00.000+01:00

I was just handed a thought provoking article about the immense discrepancy of living on a big city. Although there are many upsides to that, we're seeing that people want to escape from it but cannot due to lack of infrastructures in less densely populated areas. Focusing on Portugal recent data shows that 42% of the population lives in 5% of the territory. To make matters worse, in 2015 the UN predicts that over 69% of the Portuguese population will live in the two major metropolitan areas: Lisbon and Oporto.

Although I'm not the one with a solution for that problem, this hits home with me because for years I've been advocating the need to create a real technology hub in some rural area of Portugal. This would need to be an artificial conglomerate, much like Silicon Valley.

The TGV (high speed train - or as I like to call it rails broadband haha) is just around the corner and can serve as a catalyst for such an initiative as it not only takes care of the transportation part but it also allows to create something right in the middle of two European capitals: Lisbon and Madrid. Because of that, it should be able to attract people from both countries and from there start a snowball effect, maybe enough to attract people from other countries.

The Portuguese government would of course need to offer some incentives to drag people and companies outside of their comfort zones: lower taxes, maybe even tax exemption on technology products bought on the first years of a startup's life, start a few initiatives for construction works (housing, office spaces and whatnot), infrastructure (fiber to the win!),etc. I'm usually not one to bank on the government to do something but this seems to fall exactly under their area of action.

I'm bubbling with ideas, much more than my poor English skills allow me to write, but what do you think of this? Does it make sense?

Project Caroline

2008-07-31T00:38:00.000+01:00

On and off I check on Sun's research projects to have a peek into what they're up to. You see, all the good stuff at Sun is classified as research project and they act like Xerox demoing stuff at anyone who cares at PARC until a handful of bright people comes along and starts a revolution... but I digress.

One of the projects I keep tabs on is Project Caroline (how's stupid is that? please name it something more meaningful like Sun Java Horizontal Scaling Services - yes, I'm taking a pot shot). Good thing it's moving forward, ableit in the same way as a glaciar. Here's a good description of what it's all about:

The platform takes care of the details of finding a machine for the process to run on, configuring the machine, network, and Internet connectivity. Operating system-level virtualization is used to isolate processes sharing the same physical machine while keeping per-process overhead low. Customer programs are expressed in languages like Java byte code, perl, and python that provide OS and instruction set independence. Other resources include IP sub-nets, network file systems, databases, external IP addresses, L4 and L7 load balancers, and DNS bindings. Applications can allocate, configure, and release these resources using the platform API. Through the platform API, applications can acquire and release resources in seconds.

How's that for a technical brief? Unfortunately access to the grid is available exclusively to select partners. Time to go try to pull some strings at Sun I guess.

Prespectives on various subjects

2008-07-13T16:17:00.003+01:00

Twitter

Everyone's dog says/blogs/twits that Twitter is a synonymous to fail. They've had more than their share of downtime and keep cutting on features to be able to cope with the load.

Although it's annoying at times, I reckon they're being really, really smart about their options. You see, no matter how bad Twitter performs, no one's leaving. In the meantime, they're tuning their software and systems to make it scale like mad. When it's finished, problems will be a thing of the past, they'll be able to start adding new features and, more importantly, they'll be prepared to cross the dreadful chasm Moore wrote about nearly two decades ago. At that point, it'll be sold to the public as SMS for the Web and, taking a look into where the mobile industry is possibly heading, I can see them making it really big (a big clash of interests will surely follow).

iPhone prices

I keep reading about iPhone 3G prices everyday. I don't mean the price you pay when you get the phone but the sum of everything when the contract finishes. The latest (sorry, portuguese link, scroll to the bottom and ignore the rest) tells the iPhone costs about 1000 Euros after two years.

Man, these people really need to learn a thing or two. The correct way of figuring out how much the iPhone costs is to subtract the value of any contract plan with subsidy from the value of the same plan without subsidy. Example: for the iPhone Best 100 (which is the cheapest), you'll need 299.9 Euros to bring it out of the store. The phone is subsidized and the contract costs 29,9 Euros per month, which isn't a lot if you think about it: 100 minutes of voice on prepaid costs about 25 Euros. If the phone weren't subsidized, the same plan would be 14,9 Eur per month. So to calculate how much the phone will cost you, you subtract 14,9 from 29,9, which gives you 15 Euros and then multiply by the contract duration, which is 24 months, so the result is 360 Euros. Now add it to the price you paid to take it home with you and you'll get 659,9 Euros. This is the real iPhone price, not 1100 Euros, which includes the costs of communications (voice, SMS, data).

iPhone apps

Speaking of the iPhone, a topic came up the other day over lunch with the rest of the 7syntax crew. Someone, who shall remain anonymous :-), was saying that 3rd-party consumer apps will give a big boost to the iPhone popularity. I don't think so, but I can see how people might believe in this given the amount of hype surrounding both the iPhone and it's apps. With that in mind, if I were a betting man, I'd bet against companies who focus their development efforts of iPhone apps for the consumer market. A small note: I'll gladly accept being proven wrong as the game is just getting started. Another note: I'm talking regular apps, not games.

The major barrier to 3rd-party iPhone apps is the language you need to write them on: Objective-C is not the same as C. Where a C++ developer picks up Symbian in no time or a Java developer creates something for J2ME really quick, unless you have some Objective-C under your belt it'll take some time wrap your head around Objective-C and Cocoa. Also, there aren't as many experienced developers available as there are for other platforms. And then there's also the fact that one needs specific hardware (ie. a Mac) to be able to develop the software.

Finally, there's history. After Symbian got popular (ie. when Nokia started churning Symbian phones like mad), some companies focused themselves on developing consumer apps for Symbian. To be honest, I can't name any as still being alive and kicking. The way I see it, the only platform that stood the test of time is J2ME and games contribute a lot to this. What happens is that the general consumer market isn't looking to replace their computer with their mobile phone, so 3rd-party apps that aren't gateways to something bigger are pretty much doomed by default. It may happen, but it'll take lots of time.

Update: both Celso and Pedro made good points on Twitter with regards to the iTunes App Store, which I missed. Still, how is App Store any different form a carrier's own application portal which is also easily accessible on mobile phones? Is it so different and so engaging that it'll prove as important as the iTunes Music Store was for the iPod?

Adagio teas, a small review

2008-07-12T22:38:00.002+01:00

I'm not a tea fanatic. Sure, if the kettle's on I'll have a go but my favorite work beverage is, by far, coffee. Even so, a few days ago a batch of Adagio teas arrived through mail. I placed the order mostly out of curiosity, due to them having so many weird flavored teas available and the samplers costing only $2 USD.

In spite of a minor confusion that caused some shipping delays, the ordering process was simple enough and getting a package from the States delivered in less than a week is a sure way of getting a repeat customer.

These are the teas that were delivered at my doorstep:

Except for the first one, I've already tasted all the others (actually, I'm sipping through a nice cup of rooibos vanilla as I write this) so a small review is in order.

The Earl Grey is a huge disappointment. From what I've learned the bergamot is an orange-y kind of fruit and that was what I expected. Instead I got a perfume flavored tea. Utter crap and put me on a bad mood as it was the first tea I tasted and started to second guess what the others would taste like. Score: 1, just because it's Earl Grey.

Fortunately the other day I woke up way earlier than usual and prepared a cup of the Citron green tea. Now, this is a very good and light tea. It has a very nice lime flavor, just strong enough to be something worth enjoying. I'm giving it a 3 out of 5.

By coincidence the same thing happened this morning. I got up at about 8:15AM and was looking for something light to fill an empty stomach. At such an early time of day I wasn't quite ready to step outside and go to the café so I prepared a cup of peach flavored white tea and I'm really glad I did so as it's really, really good. It's incredibly light and the strong peach after-taste is, I dare say, awesome. This is my favorite out of the four. Score: 4.

As I wrote before, I'm now enjoying the rooibos vanilla. I never had tasted a rooibos tea before, nor a vanilla flavored one. I'm a fan of vanilla ice cream so I had high expectations that were totally met. One of the reviewers mentioned the fact that rooibos tastes like medicine but I can't spot that taste, only the nice vanilla. I'm giving it a 3.5. It's not as good as the peach white but it's definitely better than the citron green.

And so I'm ending this small tea review, but not without mentioning the mint tea Ruben brought to the office some weeks ago, which kickstarted this small tea adventure. The mint tea is awesome to have on those hot summer days and you should have it really hot as it gets the best flavor out of the mint. But don't prepare lots of it as after about an hour it starts to taste really bad.

All in all, Adagio has a very nice thing going on and their expanding their business to Europe. Although I'll probably keep ordering stuff from the States due to the low dollar price, I really hope they can get some traction over this side of the pond and start having a bit more of variety on their European store. Go check them out.

We're hiring!

2008-07-06T21:08:00.001+01:00

We have a couple of openings over at 7syntax. We're looking for highly motivated individuals that want to take part on something as special as a startup. If any of the following is you, get in touch by dropping us a word via work@7syntax.com.

Python Developer

Key responsabilities:

design and implement software back-end components
program in Python and C
analyse and improve the performance, scalability and stability of Handivi
colaborate with the rest of the product team
proactively look for ways to improve the service

Past experience/desired interests:

having participated in at least one medium to long term project, Open Source or commercial
solid skills in programming with Python and C on Linux
experience with Java
good knowledge of SQL databases, PostgreSQL earns you bonus points
solid understanding of messaging systems, server architectures and distributed systems
design patterns and unit testing
good communication skills and strong command of the English language

Bonus:

CS degree
solid experience with the Django framework
experience with one or more Amazon services: EC2, S3, SQS
experience with distributed version control systems
experience with agile methodologies
able to travel abroad for training sessions and conferences

J2ME Developer

Key responsabilities:

lead the development of mobile applications
interact with the design/user-experience team
provide technology insight for the definition of project architecture with the back-end team
research other emerging mobile platforms, e.g. iPhone or Google Android
proactively look for ways to improve Handivi

Past experience/desired interests:

having participated in at least one medium to long term project, Open Source or commercial
deep knowledge on Java Mobile Edition, it's advantages and weak spots, including MMAPI
design patterns and unit testing
having an interest in scripting languages, like Ruby
general knowledge on how mobile networks work, particularly data transport
excellent communication skills and command of the English language

Bonus:

CS degree
hands on experience with distributed version control systems
Linux lover
knowledge of agile methodologies
able to travel abroad for training sessions and conferences

Mobile 2.0: following up on the operator perspective

2008-07-06T20:55:00.004+01:00

The Operator Perspective panel at the Mobile 2.0 Europe conference was a pretty heated up debate. At a point some members of the audience were going ape which, although entertaining as it may be to the outside observer, wasn't doing any service to those who were looking forward to a rational debate.

Still, there were some highlights that deserve a post-event debate, starting with Anastassia Lauterbach of T-Mobile who shed some light with regards to mobile bandwidth consumption:

Youtube represents about 17% of all the traffic
peer-to-peer generates 34% of all traffic (I'm not really sure of this number as I failed to jot it down, please feel free to correct me)

She asked if the audience could figure out these numbers in a pure rhetorical exercise, as an excuse for the tight control and lack of data plan innovation on behalf of mobile operators.

While I can understand her point, in my opinion this is something mobile operators brought upon themselves when they came up with the idea of the USB 3G dongle for the masses.

People aren't using P2P on their mobiles, starting with the fact that it'd kill their battery in no time, and Youtube isn't compatible enough with a large enough range of devices that would cause such high data consumption values.

What's generating all that traffic is people with laptops watching Youtube funny videos while they commute or others that plug the dongle onto a computer and want it to be a complete replacement for fixed broadband, which is a completely legitimate assumption as it is what is being marketed by mobile operators.

At the end of the day, data traffic generated by dongles cannot be used as an excuse for the lack of data plan pricing innovation, which is something that was already going on way before such devices became popular.

Another hot topic was that of tight operator control over what gets into the phone (and what it is allowed to do). This is more of a problem in the US than in Europe, as European MNO's are getting increasingly more open although we're not quite there yet. Still, the old excuse of "we are the ones who get support calls" is getting worn out as a recent market survey rates Nokia as the most popular mobile operator and I doubt Nokia gets a flood of support calls, or considers it a problem large enough to become pretty vocal on it, over 3rd-party applications installed on their devices.

Mind you, I don't doubt MNO's call centers get support calls for 3rd-party applications but I also don't believe that by exercising a tight control over what gets installed will reduce them to zero.

A question that was left unanswered was about whether or not the iPhone, and the high data consumptions done by their users, will become MNOs worst nightmare as they have zero control over what gets installed and must "compete" on flat-rate data pricing amongst themselves.

Conclusion

Both these issues, coupled together, prove Max Niederhofer, of Atlas Ventures, right when he says that operators wanting to get a piece of everything makes him, and other VCs, extremely wary of any serious investment in the mobile industry.

When comparing the mobile services/applications ecosystem with what happens on the Web, one has to admit innovation is, in fact, stifled. And this is the reason any open debate between mobile operators and 3rd-party developers will continue to be heated up for the foreseeable future.

Moo crowdsourcing

2008-06-10T20:01:00.001+01:00

So you're planning on ordering a batch of Moo cards and are wondering about what images to use? Are you a photographer, casual or professional, who has a batch of really nice photos on Flickr and likes to see your work being shown to the world? Then, this Flickr group can be of use to you.

It started with Armando's idea of asking people to send him photos to include on his next batch of Moo minicards and this is the natural evolution of it. If you're a artist looking to spread your work, it just doesn't get any better than this. Join the group, share your stuff, we'll take care of the rest. Just a final note though, your work must be licensed under a Creative Commons that allows us to use it. That's it, see you there.

No free lunches

2008-06-09T22:58:00.000+01:00

At Mario's I wrote that I too was eager to get my hands on an iPhone 3G, the $199 USD version which is about 125 Euros (of course it won't go out at this price but let's daydream for a while). But I think I pulled the trigger a bit soon because I paid a visit to the online Apple Store only to spot the following, roughly translated, small print:

The iPhone includes up to two years of free technical support, for the duration of the contract with your mobile operator

WHAT?! A two year contract? Unless it's a competitive monthly fee, e.g. 35 Euros, unlimited data (but of the actually unlimited kind), I won't really consider it. At least until someone finds a way of breaking the operator lock so that I can use it with my pay-as-you-go voice call service plus 100MB of mobile data (you know, the small and compact kind) that currently costs me roughly 20 Euros per month[1].

[1] Expect a full explanation of these costs sometime later tonight.

Tripping the... web!

2008-06-08T18:00:00.002+01:00

Yesterday I attended the very first edition of Portugal's webtrip in Aveiro. If you know me, you'll know I live next to Lisbon so going there meant covering nearly 270 km to get there and another 270 km coming back. Let me tell you it was well worth the effort but, unfortunately, this is how it all ended for me:

Clearly I haven't been having much luck with motorcycles of late. I'm jinxed or something, but I'll get to that later.

Webtripping

The purpose of webtrip, straight off the horse's mouth, is to have a monthly meet up with web people across the country. The expression "don't come to us, we'll go to you" applies perfectly because we all know about small groups getting together now and then to chat about tech in general, web in particular, over a cup of coffee. When something somewhat interesting happens it'll probably take place in or near Lisbon[1] and often times people don't attend because, although it's a small country, it's not easy to get around (nor cheap). So, every month, at a location voted by the people (or scripts, whichever is quickest to post the most votes) a lunch and after-lunch meet up, filled with interesting conversations containing lots of good and free advices, will take place.

I really liked the concept and, with that in mind, me and my script-foo went on to vote on Aveiro. No, the voting wasn't rigged, Aveiro was clearly set to win, I just gave it a nice boost.

Oh, one small piece of advice, if you attend the next one do yourself a favour and make sure to take a notebook (as in pen and paper) with you, you'll most definitely need it.

If you're now ready to read about what happened exactly, I'm sorry to disappoint you but I won't write about it, you'll need to show up next time around to actually know what goes on.

Motorcycles are fun

I really enjoy motorcycles. I mean, not in an obsessive way, if you ask me about parts and stuff you'll get a blank stare but I enjoy every bit out of the sense of freedom you get from riding one (and don't get me started on how I use it for reflection and introspection): it's just you and the road. With that in mind, when I went to get my driver's permit I just got the one that allowed me to officially drive a motorcycle, postponing a 4-wheeled vehicle one for later. Boy, did I regret that yesterday.

Going to Aveiro I started to get the feeling of her loosing some grip on the rear wheel. It's OK I thought to myself, thinking it was just road dirt. But then it happened more than a couple of times so I pulled over at a service station and noticed that the rear wheel was a bit loose. If you shook it, it moved a few millimeters which isn't much for slow driving but it's quite a lot if you're hurrying to get somewhere. Still, instead of getting back to base I proceeded to my destination.

On the drive back home, I started hearing this really weird "plonk" sound, similar to the one you get when you drive over a sewer man-hole cover. And I wasn't passing over any so it started to get on my nerves. Still I insisted on driving back but when I got on the highway at a certain point, which you can look up in the photo's location, it got really dangerous and I had no choice to call it quits, pull over the highway shoulder and ask for the insurance company's roadside assistance to pick me up and the bike. Now this would be all good, where it not the case of the tow truck showing up quickly, picking up the motorcycle and driving off, leaving me standing there in the dusk, waiting for the taxi to bring me home, on a highway shoulder, at the middle of nowhere with no roadside lights whatsoever. I blame it on the football match. Fortunately the taxi showed up about 15 minutes later and was able to spot me and I was set for a nearly 3 hour trip back home.

Oh yeah, why did I regret not taking the car driving license as well? Because the insurance company guy asked me if I would mind being driven to Oporto instead of Lisbon, pick up a replacement vehicle there and taking it back on Monday at some shop in Lisbon. "Of course not", I told him, "the only issue is that I can't drive a car so it'll have to be a motorcycle". No deal there, apparently there are no motorcycle rentals around these parts of Europe so I had to settle for a lift home. As for she, she'll be deliver at my mechanic's doorstep on Wednesday.

[1] let me save face by tell you that I don't mean that interesting stuff only happens in or near Lisbon, quite the contrary

Die Maemo, die!

2008-05-31T16:11:00.002+01:00

As I mentioned elsewhere, yesterday I got my Nokia 770 back along with a nice bluetooth GPS so, having a couple of free hours to fiddle with it again, I went to grab the Maemo SDK (oh yeah, the 770 is flashed with OS2008). Just by looking at the instructions at the INSTALL.txt file it recalled it wouldn't be a smooth ride, and indeed it wasn't. What I make of this is that my patience levels certainly aren't as high as a few years ago.

So, after running the maemo scratchbox (yes, there is a specific maemo scratchbox script, god forbid merging the scratchbox installer with the SDK installer) I noticed that, somewhere along the many packages to be installed, probably hundreds but I didn't bother to count, one of them failed so the entire installation was borked. Ok, back to the starting line: rm -rf /scratchbox. Woooooooppppssss, there goes my console. Oh, and the desktop env stopped responding too. Apparently, there were some wicked links to /dev and by rm'ing /scratchbox those links went the way of the dodo too. Pushed power button, all back to normal (ie. dev recreated) and time for a rant.

What do you get when you put a bunch of geeks who consider themselves Christ's second coming in a room?

A huge pile of shit!

Maemo people, please, pleeease take a page off the Android guys book and learn how to make an SDK generally available to the public. You've been at this for what, 3 years now?

As for the simple app I wanted to create, yet another dumbass Twitter client I can use without being in front of a computer, I'll go with Android. At least the tools don't get in my way and the last time I did something with Android, it took me less than a couple of hours to go from installing the SDK and browsing the docs to having something pretty to show in the emulator.

Barcamp FCT cool down

2008-05-26T00:17:00.002+01:00

Yesterday I managed to attend BarCamp at FCT in Lisbon (ok ok, not quite Lisbon but close enough). I say managed because I only attended after a (crazy enough) friend lent me his motorcycle. Quite nice, being able to drive a Triumph Sprint ST instead of my trusty old Honda CB 750. If you want to learn more about the beast, check this link. I had already had a nice taste of another Sprint when a good friend bought one last year and I had to drive it back to Lisbon, but this one was special because I always wanted to take it for a ride but always refused offers to do so. These Sport Touring motorcycles are bloody impressive because they pack a huge punch and yet are extremely comfortable. On my way to FCT and without noticing it (ie. with no effort whatsoever of the engine) I was driving at about 160km/h (100mph). Really great bike, although it was missing most of the plastics, because they're being re-molded, and that got me into trouble going in (security guy didn't like my overall looks, can't really blame him) and coming out of FCT as I'll later explain.

Anyway, back to the Barcamp. I missed the opening salvo by Carlos Rodrigues, which was a shame as I admit to be geeky enough to have a passing interest in FireHOL, iptables and whatnot, although I am not a sysadmin. Met with Alexandre Solleiro on my way in and we stayed outside chatting about his project and exchanging ideas on it while an incredibly lengthy presentation was on. Before walking back to the auditorium I spent some time with João Moreno who was organising the event. Really smart kid and a Python lover too. João, if you're reading this, I'd be glad to have a talk with you after you get back from your MSc :-)

Then VD went on stage to talk about platforms, services and products. Ok, I have to admit I was really slow yesterday as a result of serious sleep deprivation, barely getting some quality shuteye this past week, but I found the entire discussion, which was the only part I caught, mostly irrelevant and confusing. You cannot really compare the frustration between having a problem on a physical product, say a laptop, and a service, say like Flickr or Twitter. If my computer breaks down I'll get extremely pissed off because I paid crap loads of money out of it with the expectancy of having it functioning 100% of the time for at least a couple of years. If Flickr loses some of my photos or Twitter goes down, yes I'll bitch about it but life will go on as usual. On social network services, the experience they provide is completely determined by who's in that social network. Twitter trounces Pownce because of the difference, in many orders of magnitude, between the amount of action that goes on Twitter and not on Pownce. Twitter keeps going down, Pownce is still irrelevant (sorry Leah, Pownce is not awesome). And users don't just flock to other services exactly because of that. On the other hand, if you're creating a developer platform you'd better go out of your way to have a pristine uptime record because your users really do care about whether your service is up and running or not. So I pitched in by trying to explain that there is a world of difference among the three types of users/consumers, what each of them expects and how much, in reality, they value your product/service/platform.

Lunch was served and it was kickass. Really. In no other conference (woops, sorry for throwing an unconference into the conference mix) was food as good as this one. After lunch, half backed dot-com went on but, although I agree with it having to be about nonsensical stuff I don't like it when a particular person becomes the target of public mockery. So instead of ganging up on someone I barely know, I took my interest elsewhere and I'm glad I did because in the coffee break room, which I maintain should have been used for Ignite sessions, the usual suspects were brainstorming around interesting stuff. I seriously tried to keep up with the discussion, but failed due to struggling between an extremely reduced attention span and background noise. From then on I entered zombie mode, hanging around just because of the interesting side discussions that unfortunately never took place inside the main room. Also met with Andre Oliveira, from Sem Papel, with whom I let out some frustrations about how currently job sites are little more than glorified newspaper classified ads and do very little to explore a possibly good opportunity to differenciate themselves.

As the event got closer to the end, ignite sessions started to take place. I was prepared to go deliver two 5 minute pitches with no safety net, read no powerpoints just my trusty moleskine and the blackboard, so I let everyone who needed a computer go first. By the time I was ready to go on stage the other guy from the BarcampFCT team let Ignite go astray by having people from the audience step in. Now don't get me wrong, I found the motivational speech somewhat interesting, although I havet to wholeheartedly disagree with recommending startups to mainly seek government sponsorship or see it as their best option. What I got really frustrated with was the sense of having someone just jump in right into the front of the queue, without even bothering to ask for permission. The guy I mentioned in the beginning of the post, who also owns a SprintST, had just arrived so, with frustration adding up to fatigue, I decided it was time to walk out, but not before extending my compliments to João who did a really good job.

I was getting ready to actually get out of the campus when the SprintST simply refused to turn on. You see, this is the kind of problems I wrote about. It's way, wayyyy different to have a electronic malfunction on a motorcycle than to experience a Twitter failure (which was down at the time btw). You see, it rained during the day and because the bike didn't have it's plastic bodywork some of the water went into the electric circuitry. By that time all the water had already dried out so we got the bikes side by side, Private set us up with battery cables which we plugged in and hoped for the best. Fortunately, the bike started to work, although timidly but enough for me to take it for a spin and have it warm up a bit before leaving, noticing that the speedometer failed to function. All's well when it ends well I guess.

To the people who made it happen a big thank you, you did a good job and it was indeed unfortunate only half of the people who said were attending actually made it to the event.