Z Trek: The Alan Zeichick Weblog

Mobile developer mojo

2013-04-25T20:31:00.007-07:00

Tickets for the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference went on sale on Thursday, April 25. They sold out in two minutes.

Who says that the iPhone has lost its allure? Not developers. Sure, Apple’s stock price is down, but at least Apple Maps on iOS doesn’t show the bridge over Hoover Dam dropping into Black Canyon any more.

Two minutes.

To quote from a story on TechCrunch,

Tickets for the developer-focused event at San Francisco’s Moscone West, which features presentations and one-on-one time with Apple’s own in-house engineers, sold out in just two hours in 2012, in under 12 hours in 2011, and in eight days in 2010.

Who attends the Apple WWDC? Independent software developers, enterprise developers and partners. Thousands of them. Many are building for iOS, but there are also developers creating software or services for other aspects of Apple’s huge ecosystem, from e-books to Mac applications.

Two minutes.

Mobile developers love tech conferences. Take Google’s I/O developer conference, scheduled for May 15-17. Tickets sold out super-fast there as well.

The audience for Google I/O is potentially more diverse, mainly because Google offers a wider array of platforms. You’ve got Android, of course, but also Chrome, Maps, Play, AppEngine, Google+, Glass and others beside. My suspicion, though, is that enterprise and entrepreneurial interest in Android is filling the seats.

Mobile. That’s where the money is. I’m looking forward to seeing exactly what Apple will introduce at WWDC, and Google at Google I/O.

Meanwhile, if you are an Android developer and didn’t get into Google I/O before it sold out – or if you are looking for a technical conference 100% dedicated to Android development – let me invite you to register for AnDevCon Boston, May 28-31. We still have a few seats left. Hope to see you there.

Big Data and PC Sales Data

2013-04-10T16:15:00.002-07:00

Last week, we held the debut Big Data TechCon in Cambridge, Mass. It was a huge success – more attendees than we expected, which is great. (With a debut event, you never really know.)

We had lots of sessions, many of which were like trying to drink from a fire hose. That’s a good thing.

A commonality is that there is no single thing called Big Data. There are oodles of problems that have to do with capturing, processing and storing large quantities of structured and unstructured data. Some of those problems are called Big Data today, but some have evolved out of diverse disciplines like data management, data warehousing, business intelligence and matrix-based statistics.

Problems that seemed simple to solve when you were talking about megabytes or terabytes are not simple when you’re talking about petabytes.

You may have heard about the “Four V’s of Big Data” – Volume, Velocity, Variety and Veracity. Some Big Data problems are impacted by some of these V’s. Other Big Data problems are impacted by other V’s.

Think about problem domains where you have very large multidimensional data sets to be analyzed, like insurance or protein folding. Those petabytes are static or updated somewhat slowly. However, you’d like to be able to run a broad range of queries. That’s an intersection of data warehousing and business intelligence. You’ve got volume and veracity. Not much variety. Velocity is important on reporting, not on data management.

Or you might have a huge mass of real-time data. Imagine a wide variety of people, like in a social network, constantly creating all different types of data, from text to links to audio to video to photos to chats to comments. You not only have to store this, but also quickly decide what to present to whom, through relationships, permissions and filters, but also implement a behind-the-scenes recommendation engine to prioritize the flow. Oh, and you have to do it all sub-second. There all four V’s coming into play.

Much in Big Data has to do with how you model the data or how you visualize it. In non-trivial cases, there are many ways of implementing a solution. Some run faster, some are slower; some scale more, others scale less; some can be done by coding into your existing data infrastructure, and others require drastic actions that bolt on new systems or invite rip-and-replace.

Big Data is fascinating. Please join us for the second Big Data TechCon, coming to the San Francisco Bay Area in October. See www.bigdatatechcon.com.

While in Cambridge wrapping up the conference, I received an press release from IDC: “PC Shipments Post the Steepest Decline Ever in a Single Quarter, According to IDC.”

To selectively quote:

Worldwide PC shipments totaled 76.3 million units in the first quarter of 2013 (1Q13), down -13.9% compared to the same quarter in 2012 and worse than the forecast decline of -7.7%.

Despite some mild improvement in the economic environment and some new PC models offering Windows 8, PC shipments were down significantly across all regions compared to a year ago. Fading Mini Notebook shipments have taken a big chunk out of the low-end market while tablets and smartphones continue to divert consumer spending. PC industry efforts to offer touch capabilities and ultraslim systems have been hampered by traditional barriers of price and component supply, as well as a weak reception for Windows 8. The PC industry is struggling to identify innovations that differentiate PCs from other products and inspire consumers to buy, and instead is meeting significant resistance to changes perceived as cumbersome or costly.

The industry is going through a critical crossroads, and strategic choices will have to be made as to how to compete with the proliferation of alternative devices and remain relevant to the consumer.

It’s all about the tablets, folks. That's right: iPads and Android-based devices like the Samsung Galaxy, Kindle Fire, Barnes & Noble Nook and Google Nexus. Attempts to make standard PCs more tablet-like (such as the Microsoft Surface devices) just aren’t cutting it. Just as we moved from minicomputers to desktops, and from desktops to notebooks, we are moving from notebooks to tablets.

(I spent most of the time at the Big Data TechCon working on a 7-inch tablet with a Bluetooth keyboard. I barely used my notebook at all. The tablet/keyboard had a screen big enough to write stories with, a real keyboard with keys, and best of all, would fit into my pocket.)

Just as desktops/notebooks have different operating systems, applications, data storage models and user experiences than minicomputers (and minicomputer terminals), so too the successful tablet devices aren’t going to look like a notebook with a touchscreen. Apps, not applications; cloud-based storage; massively interconnected networks; inherently social. We are at an inflection point. There’s no going back.

How do you interpret IDC’s results? Write me at feedback@bzmedia.com.

Looking for Girls Who Code

2013-04-02T16:23:00.003-07:00

I know many female IT professionals. In some parts of the tech field, there are lots of women. In others — including software development — females are fairly rare.

Is this a problem? If so, why? Those are legitimate questions. Do companies have compelling reasons to recruit more female developers? Do universities have compelling reasons to seek more female computer science students – or more female computer science faculty and researchers? Do open source projects and other peer-driven collaborative ventures have compelling reasons to welcome female contributors?

I say yes to all the above. The reasons are difficult to articulate, but it’s clear to me that a programming culture that pushes women away is cutting off access to half the pool of available talent. I also believe (at a gut level) that gender-balanced departments and teams are more collaborative, more creative, and more welcoming to those females who work there – and to many men as well.

Let’s be clear. This is a problem of culture, not one of intelligence, talent, drive or initiative. The macho attitude pervading many coding shops creates a hostile attitude for many women. Not just hostile. Sometimes the project teams are quite literally abusive in ways both subtle and overt.

In that sort of toxic environment, everyone, men and women alike, are justified in finding someplace more welcoming to work or study or contribute. When women chose a different department, a different company, a different career, a different academic major, or a different online community, everyone loses.

What are the solutions? I truly don’t know. I don’t believe that books like Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In” have the answer. Similarly, I don’t believe that Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer can serve as a reasonable role model for female rank-and-file programmers.

The life of a huge company’s CEO or top executive is worlds away, no matter the gender, from the workers in the cubicles. Yes, it’s fun and informative to learn from standout performers like Sandberg, Mayer, Carol Bartz, Meg Whitman, Ursula Burns or Virginia Rometty. However, their example does not clearly illustrate a career path that other women can follow, any more than the typical male programmer can advance by copying Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison or Mark Zuckerburg.

Let me point out a few resources.

“Open a Gateway for Girls to Enter the Computer Field,” a great story last week in the New York Times.

The Anita Borg Foundation, which works to increase the impact of women in technology.

Girls Who Code, a nonprofit that works to educate, inspire, and equip young women with the skills and resources to pursue academic and career opportunities in computing fields.

Do you agree there is a problem?

The 8-year-old Git is coming on strong

2013-04-01T16:15:00.000-07:00

Git, the open-source version control system, is becoming popular with enterprise developers. Or so it appears not only from anecdotal evidence I hear from developers all the time, but also from a new marketing study from CollabNet.

The study, called “The State of Git in the Enterprise,” was conducted by InformationWeek, but was paid for by CollabNet, which coincidentally sells tools and services to help development teams use Git. You should bear that in mind when interpreting the study, which you can only receive by giving CollabNet your contact information.

That said, there are five interesting findings in the January 2013 study, which surveyed 248 development and business technology professionals at companies with 100 or more employees who use source code management tools:

First: Most developers are not using or planning to use Git. But of those that do, usage is split between on-premises or in a public/private cloud.

How do you use (or intend to use by 2013) Git deployment?

On premises: 30%
Private cloud/virtualized: 23%
Public cloud: 10%
Don’t use/do not intend to use 54%

Second: What best describes your use of Git today?

Git is our corporate standard: 5%
Git is one of several SCMs we use: 20%
Still kicking the tires on Git: 18%
Not currently using Git: 57%

Third: What do you like about Git?

Power branching/merging: 61%
Network performance: 53%
Everyone seems to be using it: 35%
It’s our corporate standard: 13%

Fourth: How do you conduct code reviews?

Automated and manual: 46%
Manual only: 24%
Manual, but only occasionally: 17%
Automated only: 7%
Not at all: 6%

Fifth: By the end of 2013, which SCM tools do you plan to use?

Microsoft TFS/VSS: 33%
Subversion: 32%
Git: 27%
IBM ClearCase: 22%
CVS: 21%
Perforce: 11%
Mercurial: 7%
None: 4%

Some of these technologies have been around for a long time. For example, CVS first appeared in 1986. CollabNet started Subversion in 2000, and it’s now a top-level Apache project. By contrast, Git’s initial release was only in 2005, and it flew under the radar for years before getting traction. Git’s rise to the third position on this study is impressive.

Moving into Big Data mode

2013-03-25T16:14:00.000-07:00

Packing lists – check. Supplies ordered – check. Show bags on schedule – check. Speakers all confirmed – check. Missing laptop power cord located – check. Airline tickets verified – checked. Candy purchased for reservation desk – check.

Our team is getting excited for the debut Big Data TechCon. It's coming up very shortly: April 8-10 in Boston.

What drove us to launch this technical conference? Frustration, really, that there were mainly two types of face-to-face conferences surrounding Big Data.

The first were executive-level meetings that could be summarized as “Here’s WHY you should be jumping on the Big Data bandwagon.” Thought leadership, perhaps, but little that someone could walk away with.

The second were training sessions or user meetings focused on specific technologies or products. Those are great if you are already using those products and need to train your staff on specific tools.

What was missing? A practical, technical, conference focused on HOW TO do Big Data. How to choose between a wide variety of tools and technologies, without bias toward a particular platform. How to kick off a Big Data project, or scale existing projects. How to avoid pitfalls. How to define and measure success. How to leverage emerging best practices.

All that with dozens of tutorials and technical classes, plus inspiring keynotes and lots and lots of networking opportunities with the expert speakers and fellow attendees. After all, folks learn in both the formal classroom and the informal hallway and lunch table.

The result – Big Data TechCon, April 8-10 in Boston. If you are thinking about attending, now’s the time to sign up. Learn more at www.bigdatatechcon.com.

See you in Boston!

Android + Chrome = Confusion

2013-03-18T16:08:00.000-07:00

What is going on at Google? I’m not sure, and neither are the usual pundits.

Last week, Google announce that Andy Rubin, the long-time head of the Android team, is moving to another role within the company, and will be replaced by Sundar Pichai — the current head of the company’s Chrome efforts.

To quote from Larry Page’s post,

Having exceeded even the crazy ambitious goals we dreamed of for Android—and with a really strong leadership team in place—Andy’s decided it’s time to hand over the reins and start a new chapter at Google. Andy, more moonshots please!

Going forward, Sundar Pichai will lead Android, in addition to his existing work with Chrome and Apps. Sundar has a talent for creating products that are technically excellent yet easy to use—and he loves a big bet. Take Chrome, for example. In 2008, people asked whether the world really needed another browser. Today Chrome has hundreds of millions of happy users and is growing fast thanks to its speed, simplicity and security. So while Andy’s a really hard act to follow, I know Sundar will do a tremendous job doubling down on Android as we work to push the ecosystem forward.

What is the real story? The obvious speculation is that Google may have too many mobile platforms, and may look to merge the Android and Chrome OS operating systems.

Ryan Tate of Wired wrote, in “Andy Rubin and the Great Narrowing of Google,”

The two operating system chiefs have long clashed as part of a political struggle between Rubin’s Android and Pichai’s Chrome OS, and the very different views of the future each man espouses. The two operating systems, both based on Linux, are converging, with Android growing into tablets and Chrome OS shrinking into smaller and smaller laptops, including some powered by chips using the ARM architecture popular in smartphones.

Tate continues,

There’s a certain logic to consolidating the two operating systems, but it does seem odd that the man in charge of Android – far and away the more successful and promising of the two systems – did not end up on top. And there are hints that the move came as something of a surprise even inside the company; Rubin’s name was dropped from a SXSW keynote just a few days before the Austin, Texas conference began.

Other pundits seem equally confused. Hopefully, we’ll know what’s on going on soon. Registration for Google’s I/O conference opened – and closed – on March 13. If you blinked, you missed it. We’ll obviously be covering the Android side of this at our own AnDevCon conference, coming to Boston on May 28-31.

What do you think will happen?

Is Big Data a fancy way of saying Big Social?

2013-03-11T16:02:00.000-07:00

What do companies use Big Data technologies to analyze? Sales transactions. Social media trends. Scientific data. Social media trends. Weather readings. Social media trends. Prices for raw materials. Social media trends. Stock values. Social media trends. Web logs. And social media trends.

Sometimes I wonder if the entire point of Big Data is to sort through tweets. And Pinterest, Facebook and Tumblr – as well as closed social media networks like Salesforce.com’s Chatter and Microsoft’s recently acquired Yammer.

Perhaps this is a reflection that “social” is more than a way for businesses to disintermediate and reach customers directly. (Remember “disintermediation”? It was the go-to word during the early dot-com era of B-to-B and B-to-C e-commerce, and implied unlimited profits.)

Social media – nowadays referred to simply as “social” – is proving to be very effective in helping organizations improve communications. Document repositories and databases are essential, of course. Portal systems are vital. But traditional ways of communication, namely e-mail and standard one-to-one instant messaging, aren’t getting the job done, not in big organizations. Employees drown in their overflowing inboxes, and don’t know whom to message for information or input or workflow.

Enter a new Big Data angle on social. It's one that goes beyond sifting through public messages to identifying what’s trending so you can sell more products or get on top of customer dissatisfaction before it goes viral. (Not to say those aren’t important, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg.)

What Big Data analysis can show you is not just what is going on and what the trends are, but who is driving them, or who are at least on top of the curve.

Use analytics to find out which of your customers are tastemakers – and cultivate them. Find out which of your partners are generating the most tractions – and deepen those ties. And find out which of your employees, through in-house social tools like instant messaging, blogs, wikis and forums, are posting the best information, are attracting followers and comments, and are otherwise leading the pack.

Treasure those people, especially those who are in your IT and development departments.

Big Social is the key to your organization’s future. Big Data helps you find and turn that key. We’ll cover both those trends at Big Data TechCon, coming to Boston from April 8-10. Hope to see you there.

Bug Invaders! Angry Code! World of Compilecraft!

2013-03-03T11:22:00.001-08:00

Everything, it seems, is a game. When I use the Waze navigation app on my smartphone, I earn status for reporting red-light cameras. What’s next: If I check in code early to version-control system, do I win a prize? Get points? Become a Code Warrior Level IV?

Turning software development into a game is certainly not entirely new. Some people live for “winning,” and like getting points – or status – by committing code to open-source projects or by reporting bugs as a beta tester. For the most part, however, that was minor. The main reason to commit the code or document the defect was to make the product better. Gaining status should be a secondary consideration – a reward, if you will, not a motivator.

For some enterprise workers, however, gamification of the job can be more than a perk or added bonus. It may be the primary motivator for a generation reared on computer games. Yes, you’ll get paid if you get your job done (and fired if you don’t). But you’ll work harder if you are encouraged to compete against other colleagues, against other teams, against your own previous high score.

Would gamification work with, say, me? I don’t think so. But from what I gather, it’s truly a generational divide. I’m a Baby Boomer; when I was a programmer, Back in the Day, I put in my hours for a paycheck and promotions. What I cared about most: What my boss thought about my work.

For Generation Y / Millennials (in the U.S, generally considered to be those born between 1982 and 2000), it’s a different game.

Here are some resources that I’ve found about gamification in the software development profession. What do you think about them? Do you use gamification techniques in your organization to motivate your workers?

Gamification in Software Development and Agile

Gamifying Software Engineering and Maintenance

Gamifying software still in its infancy, but useful for some

Some Thoughts on Gamification and Software

TED Talk: Gaming can make a better world

Big challenges with data and Big Data

2013-02-25T11:17:00.000-08:00

Just about everyone is talking about Big Data, and I’m not only saying that because I’m conference chair for Big Data TechCon, coming up in April in Boston.

Take Microsoft, for example. On Feb. 13, the company released survey results that talked about their big customers’ biggest data challenges, and how those relate to Big Data.

In its “Big Data Trends: 2013” study, Microsoft talked to 282 U.S. IT decision-makers who are responsible for business intelligence, and presumably, other data-related issues. To quote some findings from Microsoft’s summary of that study:

• 32% expect the amount of data they store to double in the next two to three years.

• 62% of respondents currently store at least 100 TB of data.

• Respondents reported an average of 38% of their current data as unstructured.

• 89% already have a dedicated budget for a Big Data solution.

• 51% of companies surveyed are in the middle stages of planning a big data solution

• 13% have fully deployed a Big Data solution.

• 72% have begun the planning process but have not yet tested or deployed a solution; of those currently planning, 76% expect to have a solution implemented in less than one year.

• 62% said developing near-real-time predictive analytics or data-mining capabilities during the next 24 months is extremely important.

• 58% rated expanding data storage infrastructure and resources as extremely important.

• 53% rated increased amounts of unstructured data to analyze as extremely important.

• Respondents expect an average of 37% growth in data during the next two to three years.

I can’t help but be delighted by the final bullet point from Microsoft’s study. “Most respondents (54 percent) listed industry conferences as one of the two most strategic and reliable sources of information on big data.”

Hope to see you at Big Data TechCon.

From Apple to Microsoft to Tesla, rumors abound

2013-02-18T11:01:00.000-08:00

If there’s no news… well, let’s make some up. That’s my thought upon reading all the stories about Apple’s forthcoming iWatch – a product that, as far as anyone knows, doesn’t exist.

That hasn’t stopped everyone from Forbes to CNN to the New York Times from jumping in with breathless analysis of the rumor.

Turn the page.

More breathless analysis focused on why Microsoft’s stores and retail partners didn’t have enough stock of the Surface Pro tablet. Was this intentional, some wondered, part of a scheme to make the device appear more popular?

My friend John P. Mello Jr. had solid analysis in his article for PC World, "Microsoft Surface Pro sell-out flap: Is the tablet really that popular?"

I think the real reason is that Microsoft isn’t very good at sales estimation or manufacturing logistics. Companies like Apple and HP have dominated, in large part, because of their master of the supply chain. Despite its success with the Xbox consoles, Microsoft is a hardware newbie. I think the inventory shortfall was a screw-up, but an honest one.

After all, when Apple or Samsung run out of hot items, nobody says “It’s a trick.”

Can’t leave the conversation about rumors without mentioning the kerfuffle between the New York Times’s story, “Stalled Out on Tesla’s Electric Highway.” In short: Times columnist John M. Broder claims that the Tesla Model S electric car doesn’t live up to its claimed 265-mile estimated range. Tesla founder Elon Musk tweeted “NYTimes article about Tesla range in cold is fake.”

Everyone loves a good twitter-fight. Dozens of pundits, and gazillions of clicks, are keeping this story in the news.

The complications of cloud adoption

2013-02-07T08:42:00.001-08:00

Cloud computing is seductive. Incredibly so. Reduced capital costs. No more power and cooling of a server closet or data center. High-speed Internet backbones. Outsourced disaster recovery. Advanced edge caching. Deployments are lightning fast, with capacity ramp-ups only a mouse-click away – making the cloud a panacea for Big Data applications.

Cloud computing is scary. Vendors come and vendors go. Failures happen, and they are out of your control. Software is updated, sometimes with your knowledge, sometimes not. You have to take their word for security. And the costs aren’t always lower.

An interesting new study from KPMG, “The Cloud Takes Shape,” digs into the expectations of cloud deployment – and the realities.

According to the study, cloud migration was generally a success. It showed that 33% of senior executives using the cloud said that the implementation, transition and integration costs were too high; 30% cited challenges with data loss and privacy risks; 30% were worried about the loss of control. Also, 26% were worried about the lack of visibility into future demand and associated costs, 26% fretted about the lack of interoperability standards between cloud providers; and 21% were challenged by the risk of intellectual property theft.

There’s a lot more depth in the study, and I encourage you to download and browse through it. (Given that KPMG is a big financial and tax consulting firm, there’s a lot in the report about the tax challenges and opportunities in cloud computing.)

The study concludes,

Our survey finds that the majority of organizations around the world have already begun to adopt some form of cloud (or ‘as-a-service’) technology within their enterprise, and all signs indicate that this is just the beginning; respondents expect to move more business processes to the cloud in the next 18 months, gain more budget for cloud implementation and spend less time building and defending the cloud business case to their leadership. Clearly, the business is becoming more comfortable with the benefits and associated risks that cloud brings.

With experience comes insight. It is not surprising, therefore, that the top cloud-related challenges facing business and IT leaders has evolved from concerns about security and performance capability to instead focus on some of the ‘nuts and bolts’ of cloud implementation. Tactical challenges such as higher than expected implementation costs, integration challenges and loss of control now loom large on the cloud business agenda, demonstrating that – as organizations expand their usage and gain more experience in the cloud – focus tends to turn towards implementation, operational and governance challenges.

We will be covering the intersection of cloud computing and Big Data in depth at Big Data TechCon, coming April 8-10 to Boston. That’s an excellent conference to get training and insight into the issues.

You can’t analyze what you don’t capture

2013-02-05T06:42:00.002-08:00

According to research done by Robert Half Technology, Big Data can sometimes mean Big Obstacles. And often those obstacles are simply that the Big Data isn’t there.

That’s what more than 1400 CIOs told the firm, which is a staffing agency. According to the study, whose data was released in January, only 23% of CIOs said their companies collected customer data about demographics or buying habits. Of those that did collect this type of data, 53% of the CIOs said they had insufficient staff to access or analyze that data.

Ouch.

The report was part of Robert Half Technology’s 2013 Salary Guide. There is a page about Big Data, which says,

When you consider that more than 2.7 billion likes and comments are generated on Facebook every day — and that 15 out of 17 U.S. business sectors have more data stored per company than the U.S. Library of Congress — it’s easy to understand why companies are seeking technology professionals who can crack the big data “code.”

Until recently, information collected and stored by companies was a mishmash waiting to be synthesized. This was because most companies didn’t have an effective way to aggregate it.

Now, more powerful and cost-effective computing solutions are allowing companies of all sizes to extract the value of their data quickly and efficiently. And when companies have the ability to tap a gold mine of knowledge locked in data warehouses, or quickly uncover relevant patterns in data coming from dynamic sources such as the Web, it helps them create more personalized online experiences for customers, develop highly targeted marketing campaigns, optimize business processes and more.

How does your company stack up in terms of capturing customer demographics and buying habits?

We want your nominations for the 2013 SD Times 100

2013-01-28T06:39:00.000-08:00

It’s time for reader nominations for the SD Times 100, when we recognize the companies, organizations and open-source projects that truly make a difference in our industry. Reader nominations are open through March 30, 2013. You can fill in the nomination form here.

Who are the leaders and innovators? Leaders lead, and the industry follows. Leaders create new technologies. Leaders solve problems in interesting and novel ways. Leaders start movements. Leaders destroy paradigms. Leaders write great software, they develop methodologies, they create platforms, they release tools, they start projects.

Leaders and innovators matter. People talk about them. People want to try their tools, technology and services. People try to emulate them. People want to partner with them, or become compatible with them. People worry about competing against them.

If the only people using an open-project are its sponsors or the contributors to that project, it’s not a leader. If the only people talking about a company are its employees and PR agency, no, it’s not a leader. If nobody is following the organization’s work, sorry, it’s not a leader.

The SD Times 100 are decided by the editors of SD Times, but we want to hear from you, our readers. Tell us who you follow. Which projects you believe in. Where you see innovation. Where you see the boundaries being pushed. Where you see thinking that’s so far of the box that you can’t even see the box. Where you see the best of what software development can be.

Honors for the father of fuzzy logic, Lotfi Zadeh

2013-01-17T13:58:00.000-08:00

“In contrast to classical logical systems, fuzzy logic is aimed at a formalization of modes of reasoning that are approximate rather than exact. Basically, a fuzzy logical system may be viewed as a result of fuzzifying a standard logical system. Thus, one may speak of fuzzy predicate logic, fuzzy modal local, fuzzy default logic, fuzzy multivalued logic, fuzzy epistemic logic, and so-on. In this perspective, fuzzy logic is essentially a union of fuzzified logical systems in which precise reasoning is viewed as a limiting case of approximate reasoning.”

So began one of the most important technical artciles published by AI Expert Magazine, during my tenure as it editors: “The Calculus of Fuzzy If/Then Rules,” by Lotfi A. Zadah, in March 1992.

Even then, more than 20 years ago, Dr. Zadeh was revered as the father of fuzzy logic. I recall my interactions with him on that article very fondly.

I was delighted to learn that Fundacion BBVA, the philanthropic foundation of the Spanish bank BBVA, has recognized Dr. Zadeh with their 2012 Frontiers of Knowledge Award.

To quote from the Web page for the award,

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) category has been granted in this fifth edition to the electrical engineer Lotfi A. Zadeh, “for the invention and development of fuzzy logic.” This “revolutionary” breakthrough, affirms the jury in its citation, has enabled machines to work with imprecise concepts, in the same way humans do, and thus secure more efficient results more aligned with reality. In the last fifty years, this methodology has generated over 50,000 patents in Japan and the U.S. alone.

The key paper, the one that started it all, was “Fuzzy Sets,” published by Dr. Zadeh in June 1965 in the journal “Information and Control.” You can read the paper here as a PDF. I wouldn’t call it light reading.

Congratulations, Dr. Zadah, for your many contributions to computer science and software engineering – and to the modern world.

Big Data, by any other name, would smell as sweet

2013-01-10T14:00:00.005-08:00

Modern companies thrive by harnessing and interpreting data. The more data we have, and the more we focus on analyzing it, the better we can make decisions. Data about our customers, data about purchasing patterns, data about network throughput, data in server logs, data in sales receipts. When we crunch our internal data, and cross-reference it against external data sources, we get goodness. That’s what Big Data is all about.

Data crunching and data correlation isn’t new, of course. That’s what business intelligence is all about. Spotting trends and making predictions is what business analysts have been doing for 40 years or more. From weather forecasters to the World Bank, from particle physicists to political pollsters, all that’s new is that our technology has gotten better. Our hardware, our software and our algorithms are a lot better.

Admittedly, some political pollsters in the recent United States presidential election didn’t seem to have better data analytics. That’s another story for another day.

Is “Big Data” the best term for talking about data acquisition and predictive analytics using Hadoop, Map/Reduce, Cassandra, Avro, HBase, NoSQL databases and so-on? Maybe. Folks like Strata conference chair Edd Dumbill and TechCrunch editor Leena Rao think not.

Indeed, Rao suggests, “Let’s banish the term ‘big data’ with pivot, cloud and all the other meaningless buzzwords we have grown to hate.” She continues, “the term itself is outdated, and consists of an overly general set of words that don’t reflect what is actually happening now with data. It’s no longer about big data, it’s about what you can do with the data.”

Yes, “Big Data” is a fairly generic phrase, and our focus should rightfully be on benefits, not on the 1s and 0s themselves. However, the phrase neatly fronts a broad concept that plenty of people seem to understand very well, thank you very much. Language is a tool; if the phrase Big Data gets the job done, we’ll stick with it, both as a term to use in SD Times and as the name of our technical training conference focused on data acquisition, predictive analytics, etc., Big Data TechCon.

The name doesn’t matter. Big Data. Business Intelligence. Predictive Analytics. Decision Support. Whatever. What matters is that we’re doing it.

Movable walls in the garden

2013-01-06T09:36:00.004-08:00

Today’s word is “open.” What does open mean in terms of open platforms and open standards? It’s a tricky concept. Is Windows more open than Mac OS X? Is Linux more open than Solaris? Is Android more open than iOS? Is the Java language more open than C#? Is Firefox more open than Chrome? Is SQL Server more open than DB2?

The answer in all these cases can be summarized in two more words: “That depends.” To some purists, anything that is owned by a non-commercial project or standards body is open. By contrast, anything that is owned by a company, or controlled by a company, is by definition not open.

There are infinite shades of gray. Openness isn’t a line or a spectrum, and it’s not a two-dimensional matrix either. There are countless dimensions.

Take iOS. The language used to program iPhone/iPad apps is Objective-C. It’s pretty open – certainly, some would say that Objective-C is more open than Java, which is owned and controlled by Oracle. Since iOS uses Objective-C, and Android uses Java, doesn’t that makes iOS open, and Android not open?

But wait – perhaps when people talk about the openness of the mobile platforms, they mean whether there is a walled garden around its primary app store. If you want to distribute native apps to through Apple’s store, you must meet Apple’s criteria in lots of ways, from the use of APIs to revenue sharing for in-app purchases. That’s not very open. If you want to distribute native apps to Android devices, you can choose Google Play, where the standards for app acceptance are fairly low, or another app store (like Amazon’s), or even set up your own. That’s more open.

If you want to build apps that are distributed and use Microsoft’s new tiled user experience, you have to put them into the Windows Store. In fact, such applications are called Windows Store Apps. Microsoft keeps a 30% cut of sales, and reserves the right to not only kick your app out of the Windows Store, but also remove your app from customer’s devices. That’s not very open.

The trend these days is for everyone to set up their own app store – whether it’s the Windows Store, Google Play, the Raspberry Pi Store, Salesforce.com AppExchange, Firefox Marketplace, Chrome Web Store, BlackBerry App World, Facebook Apps Center or the Apple App Store. There are lots more. Dozens. Hundreds perhaps.

Every one of these stores affects the openness of the platform – whether the platform is a mobile or desktop device, browser, operating system or cloud-based app. Forget programming language. Forget APIs. The true test of openness is becoming the character of the app store, whether consumers are locked into using open “approved” stores, what restrictions are placed on what may be placed in that app store, and whether developers have the freedom to fully utilize everything the platform can offer. (If the platform vendor’s own apps, or those from preferred partners, can access APIs that are not allowed in the app store, that’s not a good sign.)

Nearly every platform is a walled garden. The walls aren’t simple; they make Calabi-Yau manifolds look like child’s play. The walls twist. They turn. They move.

Forget standards bodies. Today’s openness is the openness of the walled garden.

Write once run everywhere, version 2.0

2012-12-27T09:32:00.000-08:00

In 1996, according to the Wikipedia, Sun Microsystems promised,

Java's write-once-run-everywhere capability along with its easy accessibility have propelled the software and Internet communities to embrace it as the de facto standard for writing applications for complex networks

That was version 1.0. Version 2.0 of the write-once-run-everywhere promise goes to HTML5. There are four real challenges with pure HTML5 apps, though, especially on mobile devices:

• The specification isn’t finished, and devices and browsers don’t always support the full draft spec.

• Run-time performance can be slow, especially on older mobile devices – and HTML5 apps developers can’t always manage or predict client performance.
• Network latency can adversely affect the user experience, especially compared to native apps.

• HTML5 apps can’t always access native device features – and what they can access may depend on the client operating system, browser design and sandbox constraints.

What should you do about it? According to Ethan Evans, Director of App Developer Services at Amazon.com, the answer is to build hybrid apps that combine HTML5 with native code.

In his keynote address at AnDevCon earlier this month, Evans said that there are three essential elements to building hybrid apps. First, architecting the correct division between native code and HTML5 code. Second, make sure the native code is blinding fast. Third, make sure the HTML5/JavaScript is blinding fast.

Performance is the key to giving a good user experience, he said, with the goal that a native app and a hybrid apps should be indistinguishable. That’s not easy, especially on older devices with underpowered CPUs and GPUs, small amounts of memory, and of course, poor support for HTML5 in the stack.

“Old versions of Android live forever,” Evans said, along with old versions of Webkit. Hardware acceleration varies wildly, as does the browser's use of hardware acceleration. A real problem is flinging – that is, rapidly trying to scroll data that’s being fed from the Internet. Native code can handle that well; HTML5 can fall flat.

Thus, Evans said, you need to go native. His heuristic is:

• HTML5 is good for parts of the user experience that involve relatively low interactivity. For example, text and static display, video playback, showing basic online content, handling basic actions like payment portals.

• HTML5 is less good when there is more user interactivity. For example, scrolling, complex physics that use native APIs, multiple concurrent sounds, sustained high frame rates, multi-touch or gesture recognition.

• HTML5 is also a challenge when you need access to hardware features or other applications on the device, such as the camera, calendar or contacts.

• Cross-platform HTML5 is difficult to optimize to different CPUs, GPUs, operating systems versions, or even to accommodate single-core vs. multi-core devices.

• Native code, by contrast, is good at handling the performance issues, assuming that you can build and test on all the key platforms. That means that you’ll have to port.

• With HTML5, code updates are handled on the server. When building native apps, code updates will require apps upgrades. That’s fast and easy on Android, but slow and hard on iOS due to Apple’s review process.

• Building a good user interface is relatively easy using HTML5 and CSS, but is harder using native code. Testing that user interface is much harder with native code due to the variations you will encounter.

Bottom line, says Amazon’s Ethan Evans: HTML5 + CSS + JavaScript + Native = Good.

When Big Data becomes Bad Data

2012-12-06T14:17:00.000-08:00

The subject line in today's email from United Airlines was friendly. “Alan, it's been a while since your last trip from Austin.”

Friendly, yes. Effective? Not at all close.

Alan, you see, lives in northern California, not in central Texas. Alan rarely goes to Austin. Alan has never originated a round trip from Austin.

My most recent trip to Austin was from SFO to AUS on Feb. 13, 2011, returning on Feb. 15, 2011. The trip before that? In 2007.

Technically United is correct. It indeed has been a while since my last trip from Austin. Who cares? Why in the world would United News & Deals –- the “from” name on that marketing email -- think that I would be looking for discounted round-trip flights from Austin?

It is Big Data gone bad.

We see example of this all the time. A friend loves to post snarky screen shots of totally off-base Facebook ads, like the one that offered him ways to “meet big and beautiful women now,” or non-stop ads for luxury vehicles. For some reason, Lexus finds his demographic irresistible.

My friend and his wife live in Manhattan. They don't own or want a car.

Behavioral ad targeting relies upon Big Data techniques. Clearly, those techniques are not always effective, as the dating, car-sales and air travel messages demonstrate. There is both art and science to Big Data – gathering the vast quantities of data, processing it quickly and intelligently, and of course, using the information effectively to drive a business purpose like behavioral marketing.

Sometimes it works. Oops, sometimes it doesn’t. Being accurate isn't the same as being useful.

Where to learn that art and science? Let me suggest Big Data TechCon. Three days, dozens of practical how-to classes that will teach you and your team how to get Big Data right. No, it’s not in Austin – it’s near Boston, from April 8-10, 2013. Hope to see you there – especially if you work for United Airlines or Lexus.

The API as an overloaded operator

2012-11-27T05:43:00.002-08:00

Once upon a time, application programming interfaces were hooks that applications used to tap into operating system services. Want to open a port? Call an API. Need to find a printer? Call an API. Open a winder? Call an API. Write to a file? Call an API.

Developers still use classic APIs of course. They are necessary for both native and managed code. Windows, iOS, Android, Unix, Linux, all are stuffed to the brim with hundreds and thousands of APIs. In fact, one of the most useful features of an integrated development environment like Visual Studio, Eclipse and Xcode is to provide an handy reference to APIs, check their syntax and arguments, and help fill them out with autocomplete.

Classic APIs are fundamental. Cloud-based APIs, which provide loosely coupled function calls to services over the Internet, are more sexy and more dangerous.

The December issue of SD Times contains a feature by Alexandra Weber Morales, “Connecting the World with APIs.” She explains that the variety of cloud-based APIs far exceeds the biggest, most visible examples, such as those from Amazon and Google. APIs are everywhere, from social media players like Facebook and Twitter, to business services like MailChimp and Salesforce.com.

Like electricity from the wall socket, or water from the kitchen faucet, it is easy to take cloud-based APIs for granted. Too easy. We outsource core functionality of our applications to cloud-based services, some free, some paid for by subscription. We expect them to work consistently. We expect them to be monolithic and unchanging. We expect them to be fast. We expect them to be secure.

We must not make any of those assumptions. Our software must be able to detect if a cloud-based API is offline or is running slowly, and should be able to handle such a situation gracefully. (I.e., not hang or crash.) We should never assume that APIs are secure and will keep our data safe or our customers’ data safe. We should not expect the API vendor to proactively notify us if they change some of the functionality within the APIs. It’s our job to be on top of any changes.

The availability of cloud-based APIs – unlike operating system APIs – is out of our hands. Our decision to upgrade a server’s OS is on our schedule, and we have time to read the documentation. When a mobile platform maker, like Apple, Google or Microsoft, releases a new operating system, we get plenty of notice and have plenty of time to understand about the newest APIs, the changed APIs and the deprecated APIs.

Not true with cloud-based APIs. While the three-letter acronym may be the same, our applications’ calls to a RESTful cloud-based APIs are not at all the same as our applications’ calls to native operating system services. While convenient, cloud-based APIs are ephemeral, distant and fundamentally unreliable. Never forget it.

Happy Thanksgiving

2012-11-21T06:14:00.003-08:00

Tomorrow Americans will celebrate Thanksgiving. This is an odd holiday. It’s partly religious, but also partly secular, dating back to the English colonization of eastern North America. A recent tradition is for people to share what they are thankful for. In a lighthearted way, let me share some of my tech-related joys.

• I am thankful for PDF files. Websites that share documents in other formats (such as Microsoft Word) are cludgy, and document never looks quite right.

• I am thankful for native non-PDF files. Extracting content from PDF files to use in other applications is a time-consuming process that often requires significant post-processing.

• I am thankful that Hewlett-Packard is still in business – for now. It’s astonishing how HP bungles acquisition after acquisition after acquisition.

• I am thankful for consistent language specifications, such as C++, Java, HTML4 and JavaScript, which give us a fighting chance at cross-platform compatibility. A world with only proprietary languages would be horrible.

• I am thankful for HTML5 and CSS3, which solve many important problems for application development and deployment.

• I am thankful that most modern operating systems and applications can be updated via the Internet. No more floppies, CDs or DVDs.

• I am thankful that floppies are dead, dead, dead, dead, dead.

• I am thankful that Apple and Microsoft don’t force consumers to purchase applications for their latest desktop operating systems from their app stores. It’s my computer, and I should be able to run any bits that I want.

• I am thankful for Hadoop and its companion Apache projects like Avro, Cassandra, HBase and Pig, which in a only a couple of years became the de facto platform for Big Data and a must-know technology for developers.

• I am thankful that Linux exists as a compelling server operating system, as the foundation of Android, and as a driver of innovation.

• I am thankful for RAW photo image files and for Adobe Lightroom to process those RAW files.

• I am thankful for the Microsoft Surface, which is the most exciting new hardware platform since the Apple’s iPad and MacBook Air.

• I am thankful to still get a laugh by making the comment, “There’s an app for that!” in random non-tech-related conversations.

• I am thankful for the agile software movement, which has refocused our attention to efficiently creating excellent software, and which has created a new vocabulary for sharing best practices.

• I am thankful for RFID technology, especially as implemented in the East Coast’s E-Zpass and California’s FasTrak toll readers.

• I am thankful that despite the proliferation of e-book readers, technology books are still published on paper. E-books are great for novels and documents meant to be read linearly, but are not so great for learning a new language or studying a platform.

• I am thankful that nobody has figured out how to remotely hack into my car’s telematics systems yet – as far as I know.

• I am thankful for XKCD.

• I am thankful that Oracle seems to be committed to evolving Java and keeping it open.

• I am thankful for the wonderful work done by open-source communities like Apache, Eclipse and Mozilla.

• I am thankful that my Android phone uses an industry-standard Micro-USB connector.

• I am thankful for readers like you, who have made SD Times the leading news source in the software development community.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.

The joy of being a geek

2012-11-14T13:36:00.002-08:00

So much I could write about today. The U.S. presidential elections. Intel’s new 60-core PCIX-based coprocessor chip. The sudden departure of Steven Sinofsky from Microsoft, after three years as president of the Windows Division. The Android 4.2 upgrade that unexpectedly changed the user experience on my Nexus phone. All were candidates.

Nah. All those ideas are off the table. Today, let’s bask in the warm geekiness of the Google Self-Driving Car. The vehicle, an extensively modified Lexus RH450h hybrid sport utility, lives here in Silicon Valley. The cars are frequently sighted on the highways around here, and in fact my wife Carole saw one in Mountain View last week.

Until today, I had never seen one in action, but at lunchtime, the Self-Driving Car played with me on I-280. If you’re not familiar with the Google Self-Driving Car, here’s a great story in the New York Times about one of the small fleet, “Yes, Driverless Cars Know the Way to San Jose.”

I encountered the Google car going northbound on I-280, and passed it carefully. Many cars lengths ahead, I carefully changed into its lane and slowed down slightly — and waited to see what the self-driving car would do.

The Google car approached slowly, signaled, moved into the next lane, and passed me. I was taking pictures out the window -- and the Google engineer sitting in the passenger seat smiled and waved. It was just another day for the experimental hardware, software and cloud-based services.

Yet, why do I have the feeling of having a Star Trek-style First Contact with an alien artificial life form?

It is wonderful living in Silicon Valley and being a participant in the evolution of modern technology – both at the IDE and behind the wheel.

Echoing the echosystem

2012-11-12T06:27:00.002-08:00

Echosystem. What a marvelous typo! An email from an analyst firm referred several times to a particular software development ecosystem, but in one of the instances, she misspelled “ecosystem” as “echosystem.” As a technology writer and analyst myself, that misspelling immediately set my mind racing. Echosystem. I love it.

An echosystem would be a type of meme. Not the silly graphics that show up on Twitter and Facebook, but more the type of meme envisioned by Richard Dawkins in his book, The Selfish Gene, where an idea or concept takes on a life of its own. In this case, the echosystem is where a meme is simply echoed, and is believed to be true simply because it is repeated so often. In particular, the echosystem would apply to ideas that are repeated around by analysts, technology writers and journalists, influential bloggers, and so-on.

In another time and place, what I’m now calling the echosystem would be called the bandwagon. I like the idea of a mashup between the bandwagon and the echo chamber being the echosystem.

We have lots of memes in the software development echosystem. For example, that the RIM BlackBerry is toast. Is the platform doomed? Maybe. But it’s become so casual, so matter-of-fact, for writers and analysts to refer to the BlackBerry as toast that repetition is creating its own truthiness (as Stephen Colbert would say).

Another is echosystem chatter that skeuomorphs are bad, and that Apple is behind the times (and falling behind Android and Windows 8) because its applications have fake leather textures and fake wooden bookshelves. Heck, I only learned about the term recently but repeating the chatter, wrote my own column about it last month, “Fake leather textures on your mobile apps: Good or bad?” {http://sdt.bz/37042}. True analysis? Maybe. Echoing the echosystem? Definitely.

The echosystem anoints technologies or approaches, and then tears them down again.

HTML5? The echosystem decided that this draft protocol was the ultimate portable platform, but then pounced when Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg dissed his company’s efforts.

SOAP? The echosystem loved, loved, loved, loved, loved Simple Object Access Protocol and the WS* methods of implementing Web services, until the new narrative became that RESTful Web services were better. The SOAP bubble popped almost instantly when the meme “WS* is too complicated” spread everywhere.

Echoes in the echosystem pronounced judgment on Windows 8 long before it came out. Echoes weighed in on the future of Java before Oracle’s acquisition of Sun even closed and have chosen JavaScript as the ultimate programming language.

There is a lot of intelligence in the echosystem. Smart people hear what’s being said and repeat it and amplify it and repeat it some more. Sometimes pundits put a lot of thought into their echoes of popular. Sometimes pundits are merely hopping onto the bandwagon. The trick is to tell the differences.

Hurricane Sandy can’t stop the tech from Microsoft and Google

2012-11-01T06:49:00.000-07:00

It take a lot to push the U.S. elections off the television screen, but Hurricane Sandy managed the trick. We would like to express our sympathies to those affected by the storm – too many lives were lost, homes and property destroyed, businesses closed.

Microsoft and Google had scheduled tech events for the week of Oct. 29. Build took place as scheduled on the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Wash. Google cancelled its New York City launch event and offered its products rollouts via blog.

The big Microsoft news was the release of Windows Phone 8, with handsets from HTC, Nokia and Samsung set to go on sale starting in November. This follows, of course, the rollout of Windows 8 and the Surface with Windows RT ARM-based notebook/tablet device on Oct. 26.

Everyone that I know who has talked to who has used a prelease Windows Phone 8 has been impressed. (I have a Windows Phone 7.5 device and find the Live Tile apps to be very usable and exciting. I look forward to installing Windows Phone 7.8 on that device.) Through a strong program of incentives for app developers, there are many flagship apps for the phone already.

There are three compelling messages Windows Phone developers:

• You can use Visual Studio and familiar tools to build apps for Windows Phone 8.

• Windows Phone 8 is almost identical to Windows 8, so there’s minimal learning curve.

• Windows Phone 8 is a reboot of the platform, which means you’ll face few competitors in the app store, called Windows Phone Store.

Of course, the downside is:

• The installed base of Windows Phone 8 is nonexistent, compared to gazillions of iOS, Android and even BlackBerry OS.

If I were an entrepreneurial mobile app developer, I’d give Windows Phone 8 a try.

Google’s news was much more incremental: More hardware and a minor rev of Android.

The new hardware, announced in the Google Official Blog, is a new phone called the Nexus 4 and a 10-inch tablet called the Nexus 10. The big tablet has 2560x1600 display – that’s the same resolution as many 27-inch desktop monitors, and I’d love to see one.

Google’s seven-inch tablet announced during the summer, the Nexus 7, came only with 16GB of RAM and WiFi. Now you can get it with 32GB RAM or GSM-based cellular connections using the HSPA+ mobile standard. These are good hardware upgrades, but aren’t “stop the presses” material in the weeks surrounding the launch of Windows Phone, Windows Phone 8, Surface and Apple’s iPad Mini. Heck, the tablet doesn't even have 4G.

The operating system update is Android 4.2, which is still called Jelly Bean. {http://www.android.com/whatsnew/} There are plenty of consumer features, such as a spherical panoramic camera mode, and a smarter predictive keyboard. The ability to support many users is a good feature, and one frankly that is long overdue for these expensive tablets.

Expect to see more about Android 4.2 at AnDevCon IV, coming up Dec. 4-7, 2012. Maybe someone will bring one of those 10-inch tablets so we can see the screen.

With Windows 8, one size must fit all

2012-10-26T11:10:00.002-07:00

It is too early to praise Windows 8. It’s also too early to pan it. But it’s never too early to have an opinion. Mine is, “The one-size-fits-all UX paradigm doesn't scale.”

I’m a fan of the mobile Metro user experience – excuse me, the Windows Store app user experience. Since its release with Windows Phone 7, the new user interface paradigm has been outstanding on phones and tablets. Live Tiles represent a genuine breakthrough. Microsoft has demonstrated through the original Zune music player software design, the Xbox Kinect, and now with Live Tiles, true creativity that rivals anything from Apple or Google.

The idea behind the Metro, ahem, Windows Store app is, and let me selectively quote from Microsoft’s documentation:

Apps have one window that supports multiple views. Unlike traditional desktop apps, a Windows Store app has a single, chromeless window that fills the entire screen by default, so there are no distractions.

On a phone or a tablet, that is perfect, as the tiny amount of screen real estate lends itself to full-screen apps. Not only that, but given the environment where phone or tablet apps are being run, the user is probably focused on a specific task: I want to check my calendar. I want to send a text message. I want to update Facebook. I want to get driving directions. I want to answer a phone call. I want to play Angry Birds for a few minutes. I want to update my to-do list. I want to read 50 Shades of Gray with a glass of wine.

This is a different use case than when a worker is sitting in front of a desktop computer for eight hours, or when a laptop is connected to a 27-inch monitor while the college student does her homework.

The Metro, err, Windows Store app design does not lend itself to immersive multitasking uses of the computer as a workstation. In my (admittedly limited) experience, it is not designed to help the user efficiently multitask without requiring context-switching.

To use a focus group of one: My environment right now consists of a 13” notebook connected to a 30” display. I have currently open Microsoft Word (in which I’m writing this essay), several browser windows using two separate browsers (Chrome and Firefox), an email client, and several chat windows – and I have switched my mouse over to each of them many times while still writing the column. I’m not swiping from side to side; the windows are all visible, all present, providing me with both information and interrupts. I almost never expand any app to full screen on either display.

One could argue that my windowing style is distracting, and that I would be more productive if the OS encouraged me to focus on a single app or task. Maybe. But when I switched many years ago from a small screen to multiple screen to a very large screen, my productivity increased significantly.

I look forward to spending more time with Windows 8, and in using it on a large touchscreen. Perhaps my view will change. For now, I believe that new Windows 8 UX may be today’s best for mobile devices that being used in a single-mode context – but that it decreases productivity in a multi-app working environment. In other words, it does not scale.

What do you think?

Cross-platform mobile dev, tablets, Windows Phone and BlackBerry

2012-10-19T11:17:00.000-07:00

It’s hard to get away from mobile development. Yes, not every organization is building apps for mobile devices. Yes, only a small number of developers within a typical organization are likely focused on mobility. The others are doing stuff like websites, databases, desktop apps, server apps, integration…

That said, mobile development trends are fascinating, and not only because many of us not only use mobile devices ourselves, but because in many businesses, the subject keeps coming up. Over and over again.

I’d like to share a few data points from Evans Data Corp., an analyst firm that covers mobile development. Below are some abridged quotes from recent documents from Evans:

The vast majority of mobile developers are hedging their bets in the mobile ecosphere by designing at least some of their apps to target multiple platforms according to a survey of over 400 mobile developers conducted by Evans Data Corp.

The new survey shows 94% design at least some of their apps to run on multiple platforms, though only 13.5% target all of their apps for multiple platforms. The largest plurality, 58%, design from 1 to 50% of their apps to run on multiple platforms.

Mobile developers are overwhelmingly embracing the tablet form factor according to Evans Data’s Mobile Development Survey, a worldwide survey of developers who target mobile devices. Seventy-three percent said they either are currently writing apps for mobile devices (34.7%) or plan to within six months time (38.7%). Only 8% said they had no plans at all to write apps for tablets, with the rest planning to begin sometime after six months.

The independent syndicated survey of over 400 mobile software developers found significantly higher numbers of developers in North America planning to target tablets within the next six months than mobile developers in the APAC or EMEA regions. Android tablets were cited most frequently as the type of tablet that would be targeted, with Samsung as the preferred Android device type.

In North America 35% of mobile developers are currently targeting tablets, but an additional 46% plan to within six months. The APAC region is second in adoption with 37% currently targeting tablets and an additional 37% planning to within 6 months. The EMEA region trails.

Regarding specific platforms: On Thursday, Oct. 18, I visited the Microsoft Store at the Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto, Calif. There was a big display of Windows Phone 7.5, featuring the Nokia Lumia 900. It was a sad display; the phones were discounted down to $49.95, if someone signing up for a two-year contract with a carrier. (Non-US readers: That’s the common deal for smartphone in the United States.) Why the heck would anyone do that, when the Windows Phone 8 devices, including the superior Nokia Lumia 920, will be out in only a few weeks?

The store manager admitted that they’re not selling many phones.

And what about the BlackBerry? The talk of the town is an article published by the New York Times on Monday, Oct. 15, “The BlackBerry as Black Sheep.” The story is light on data and heavy on anecdote, but it seems fundamentally accurate to me.

The folks at Research in Motion disagree, though. Read the rebuttal by Thorsten Heins, president of RIM.

What do you think of the smartphone and tablet market?