Posted on Fri, Jun 14, 2013
It's Friday and that means it's time for our weekly feature where we search the Web looking for 5 interesting, funny and poignant links for developers and IT Pros.
If you missed our most recent post, Android versus iOS argument persists, but developers should follow the money, please check it out. Mobile app developers can't afford the luxury of having the passion of the average Android or iOS fanboy. They follow the money. For now, Apple's App store is far ahead of Google Play in terms of developer revenue, but the trend is in Android's favor, and developers should be paying attention.
And without further delay, here we go with this week's links:
The $200,000 software developer: We can build him, we have the technology | ITworld
If you're looking to make top money as a developer, you need top notch skills and a keen understanding of the platforms that are most in demand. This article looks at the attributes and industries that can earn you top dollar.
Security at the edge of the cloud | Cloud Pro
A lucid explanation of the security challenges facing IT in the BYOD and cloud age. The game is changing and the security model needs to change with it.
Employees circumvent IT security when it slows them down | ITworld
It should come as no secret that if you put up too many obstacles for your employees to do their job in the name of security, they will find a way to circumvent your security. That means the more you try to control it, the less actual control you have.
Is your smartphone making you stupid? | guardian.co.uk
It's only natural that as we become more reliant on our smartphones, we offload some of the tasks we used to use our brains for such as memorizing phone numbers or figuring out how to get some place, but whether that's making us stupid or giving us more room to think about other things is still open to debate.
Snowden NSA Case Points Up Security Flaws in Thumb Drives | TechTarget
It's the kind of story IT pros lie awake in bed thinking about at night. Someone walks into your building with a thumb drive and walks out with a cache of company secrets. That's exactly what NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden did and it makes securing your network very challenging indeed.
Photo by Tomma Henckel Used under Creative Commons Share Alike/Attribution License.
Posted on Fri, Jun 07, 2013
by Ron Miller
Ness Blogger
It's Friday and that means it's time for our weekly feature where we search the Web looking for 5 interesting, funny and poignant links for developers and IT Pros.
If you missed our most recent post, Infographic: More reasons for developers to pay attention to emerging markets, please check it out. New data from Sandvine reinforces the idea that mobile developers need to pay attention to the huge potential of emerging markets.
And without further delay, here we go with this week's links:
Why Developers Are Such Cheap Bastards | ReadWrite
This writer has a problem with companies offering free tools to build apps and developers accepting them. Seems logical to me that if you want a developer's business, you need to provide frictionless access. What do you think?
Why your users hate Agile development (and what you can do about it) | ITworld
Why is it that developers like Agile and users don't? This article looks at the reasons why users are uncomfortable with Agile and yes, how you can resolve this conflict.
Tips for Bringing Novice Developers Up To Speed | Mendix Blog
Baseball executives have two ways of building their team. They can pay for top talent in free agency or they can develop it themselves in the Minors and teach them the team way. Developers are really the same. If you want to develop new talent, you have to nurture it and teach them your ways of doing things --and this article looks at ways to help youngsters hone their craft.
Windows 8 continues to fail | ZDNet
This article compares the growth of Windows 8 desktop and the dreaded Vista and finds that in spite of the nearly ubiquitous hatred for Vista, Windows 8 is doing far worse in terms of sales to this point.
How smart developers generate lousy code | ITworld
Even good development teams generate lousy code for any number of reasons including bad communications between team members. If you want to avoid shipping lousy code you need to pay attention to the social as well as the technical aspects of development.
Photo by Tomma Henckel Used under Creative Commons Share Alike/Attribution License.
Posted on Fri, Mar 15, 2013
by Ron Miller
Ness Blogger
It's Friday and that means it's time for our weekly feature where we search the Web looking for 5 interesting, funny and poignant links for developers and IT Pros.
If you missed our most recent post, When machines talk...,please check it. Machine to Machine communication was all the rage during my recent visits to Mobile World Congress and CeBIT, and when machines talk, they might actually transform your business. The challenge is figuring out what's important -- and that could be the next big data challenge.
And without further delay, here we go with this week's links:
Help Wanted: Developers Who Are Also Janitors | The Coders Lexicon
You might think this title is a bit of stretch, but you can argue that good programmers clean up messes. You find a coding disaster and you deal with like a good janitor would.
Five ways to save Windows 8 | ZDNet
Last week we looked at five reasons why Windows 8 has failed. This follow-up piece looks at five ways Microsoft could save Window 8 if it were inclined to listen. For starters, the author suggests dumping the metro interface. Do you agree? Could these moves save Win 8?
If Linux were a dog | ITworld
In this fun piece, the writer breaks down different Linux distros and compares them to different dog breeds. If Ubuntu is a Boston Terrier, what's Red Hat? Read it and find out.
This man did all his work from a smartphone for one year -- here's what he learned | CITEworld
Hard to believe, but this man pledged to do all his work on his smartphone. Now he chose a Samsung Galaxy Note, which has a lot of screen real estate for a phone, but not relying on a desktop or tablet ever? That's harsh. He did it and says he will never go back now. But there were obstacles.
How to Adjust to the Changing Face of Software Testing - CIO.com
The most common method of software testing is writing scripts and insisting that testers follow it every time. That will find issues related to the script, but what happens outside the cozy confines of the script. A new methodology is developing that encourages testers to freelance and it could be changing how we think of testing in a fundamental way.
Photo by Ron Miller. Used under Creative Commons Share Alike/Attribution License.
Posted on Thu, Jan 10, 2013
by Ron Miller
Ness Blogger
It wasn't that long ago that all you had to worry about was a few smartphone platforms. Sure, new ones come along every once in awhile like webOS and meeGo or even Mozilla, Windows Phone and Ubuntu and you are forced to decide if it is worth learning -- but suddenly everything is a development platform.
This week was the big Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas and there were gadgets, and gizmos and appliance galore, but while watching the coverage of the show it occurred to me that many devices are computer-like and require sophisticated programming -- and I wondered what the implications were for developers and manufacturers alike.
One happy outcome from the developer perspective is that you're likely to have more competition for your skills. When you have "smart" televisions, refrigerators and stoves, suddenly programmers are going to be in even greater demand than they are now.
ieee Spectrum reports that LG wants to use near-field communication (NFC) most commonly used for payments on smartphones as a way for users to communicate with their appliances -- picture your smartphone as your appliance's remote control.
Meanwhile, GigaOM reported that Lenovo announced an Android TV sporting a 5 mp webcam, Qualcomm Snapdragon processor along with 1 GB of RAM, 8 GB of storage and 2 GB SD card. The TV runs Google Ice Cream Sandwich and sounds more like a computer than a TV, which is of course where developers come in -- it is essentially a computer
Heck, everything is a programmable computer now. We've certainly already seen this with the Nest thermostat, which you can program from your smartphone or tablet and which itself is smart, learning your habits and adjusting accordingly.
At CES this week, we learned that Ford is inviting developers to build voice-activated apps on top of the Ford Sync platform using the AppLink API for in-car apps in Ford automobiles. Hau Thai-Tang, vice president of Engineering, Ford Global Product Development said in a statement that the company recognizes this is a dramatic shift in the way they have developed for the Sync system in the past. "Opening the car to developers gives consumers a direct voice and hand in the creation of apps that can help our products remain relevant, up to date and valuable to our customers."
The car company wants drivers's hands on the wheel, so these apps need to be voice-activated and shouldn't require the user to stare at the screen too long. So far, there are three main categories: news and entertainment, music and navigation
And Ford's not alone, Wired reports that GM has also developed an API for developers. Of course, there are no in-car app standards yet, so as each car company jumps on board, you can be sure they will each have their own operating environment until somebody develops the in-dash car app standard that everyone can agree to.
For now, it's a free-for-all and as developers that's a double-edged sword. You're going to be in huge demand, but you're going to have to learn to use a lot of different tools to develop across different device platforms. And you might find that it's better to develop an expertise around a couple of things -- and get some help when you need to develop on more obscure ones.
Photo Credit: (c) Can Stock Photo
Posted on Fri, Nov 09, 2012
I
t's Friday and that means it's time for our weekly feature where we search the Web looking for 5 interesting, funny and poignant links for developers and IT Pros.
If you missed our most recent post, Users Give Poorly Performing Mobile Apps Short Shrift (infographic), please check it out now. A recent survey of US mobile devices users found that they have little patience for underperforming apps. In the best case, they will blab about bad experiences online and in the worst case, they just delete them.
Please consider subscribing if you like what you see here, and if you have something to say, please feel free to leave a comment and let us know what you think.
And without further delay, here we go with this week's links:
What Hooters Can Teach You About E-Discovery | Yottabytes
Who would have thought we would ever put together Hooters and eDiscovery in the same sentence, but it turns out Hooters is at the center of a very key legal decision about use of predictive coding in electronic discovery work. Go figure.
We Need Data Democracy | Architects Zone
This opinion piece about Big Data is spot on. While we need more data scientists of course, what we really need is better tools to allow regular business users to process and understand huge amounts of data without having to have a Ph.D.
Remote desktop apps: The great tablet equalizer | ZDNet
It's easy to dismiss the iPad and other tablets as simply devices for consuming content, and while they are very good at that, this writer argues that you can create content too, and if you have remote desktop software, you actually turn your tablet into a full blown computer.
Step Away From the Screen | Develop in the Cloud
This designer offers developers a bit of advice and suggests stepping away from the screen and thinking about your design/development issue the old fashioned way. Maybe take pen to paper and storyboard your idea first before you ever write a line of code.
Cleaning Out The Turkey Coop: Life After Getting Rid of Incompetent Employee | HP I/O
When you let that incompetent employee go, it's easy to think your problems left when the door slammed against their butt on the way out, but an incompetent employee can leave behind issues that can linger long after you revoke their security credentials.
Photo by Tomma Henckel. Used under Creative Commons Share Alike/Attribution License.
Posted on Fri, Sep 28, 2012
It's Friday and that means it's time for our weekly feature where we search the Web looking for 5 interesting, funny and poignant links for developers and IT Pros.
If you missed our other post this week,
Survey Suggests Facebook Could be Right About HTML5, please check it out now. The press is teeming with indignation over the state of the iPhone 5, but while the press might be hopping mad, it doesn't seem to have had any impact on iPhone 5 sales.
Please consider subscribing if you like what you see here, and if you have something to say, please feel free to leave a comment and let us know what you think.
And without further delay, here we go with this week's links:
Ten Strategic CIO priorities for 2013 | ZDNet
It's only September, but that doesn't mean it's too soon to start looking ahead to next year's IT priorities. Seems to me many of these are probably the same ones you should have been thinking about last year and this year including simplifying IT and getting more social. I'm wondering where the mobile component is. What do you think should be on this list?
“Agile” Often Isn’t | Input Output
It's one thing to get behind agile programming, and it makes a lot of sense too, but just because you think your company has gone Agile doesn't mean it has. When researchers studied shops that considered themselves agile they found a lot of gaps. Where is the perception/reality gap in your company?
What Developers Want | Anil Dash
It's hard to know what developers want when a lot of people react emotionally to changes in the environment, whether it's Twitter's change of service or the iPhone screen size change. This writer suggests that it is difficult to navigate, and of course the process isn't fair, but developers have to learn to adjust. Do you agree with him?
BlueStacks and AMD bring Android apps to Windows | ZDNet
Now this is a cool idea. Take mobile Android apps and make them work under Windows. It may be brilliant or a complete mismatch, but it should be fun to at least watch and see how well it works.
IBM Targets Amazon in the Cloud - WSJ.com
It's clear that public cloud platforms are the wave of the future. Amazon recognigzed this very early on and has done quite well with it. Now, IBM seeing that success wants a piece of the action and is launching its very own Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering. IBM isn't the first major player to take this step of course, but it sees a a market and it's going to give it a shot. The question is will people take IBM seriously as a vendor in this space?
Photo by Ron Miller. Used under Creative Commons Share Alike/Attribution License.
Posted on Fri, Jul 27, 2012
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It's Friday and that means it's time for our weekly feature where we search the Web looking for 5 interesting, funny and poignant links for developers and IT Pros.
If you missed our other post this week, No Surprise Mobile Programmers Making Big Bucks, please check it out. The Boston Globe recently ran a slide show of what it considered surprising 6 figure jobs. Mobile programmer was at the top of the list, but given the special skills required and the demand for talent, it hardly seems surprising.
Please consider subscribing if you like what you see here, and if you have something to say, please feel free to leave a comment and let us know what you think.
And without further delay, here we go with this week's links:
Vint Cerf, Vampire Slayer | Input Output
Vint Cerf helped develop the protocols that created the Internet as we know it, so when he speaks you should listen. In this piece Cerf warns that the forces that brought you SOPA and PIPA, continue to try and undermine Internet freedom, and we must remain vigilant. He also talked about Al Gore's role in the development of the commercial Internet, international Internet growth and more.
Microsoft fixes 'big boobs' coding gaffe | BBC
Apparently some juvenile programmers decided to use this phrase every time they ran Microsoft's tool designed to work with Linux. The code name came to light when Linux developers discovered it, and Microsoft removed it. Needless to say it left them embarassed and further prolonged the programmer 'boy's club' stereotype.
HTML5: To Fork or Not to Fork | HP Input Output
Two groups, WC3 and WHATWG, have created a fork that has the potential to create two versions of the yet-to-be-defined HTML5 standard. It's hard to say if this is a simple division of labor where the two groups will eventually come together, or if it actually represents a philosophical split about how to develop the final standard. For now, we can only watch.
Closed for Business | Matt Gemmell
Matt Gemell brings up the problem of piracy in the Android software world, a problem that he claims is driving many Android developers out of business or forcing them to change their delivery model. He blames easy piracy, at least partly due to the open nature of the platform (even though he says he's an open source advocate), on reducing the motivation of developers to create for-profit programs for Android. Have a look. It's a compelling read.
5 Ways to Think Wisely in Development | Java Code Geeks
This post offers some sound advice to programmers on things to consider when making development decisions. When you read them, you may find that most of them apply to any decisions, not just programming design and development issues.
Bonus Link: 12 Outdated Songs Rewritten for Today’s Tech | Laptop Magazine
And finally, a bit of technology news fun as one writer takes 12 classic pop songs and rewrites the lyrics to remove outdated references (such as instead of Take a Letter Maria, address it to my wife; it's compose a text Siri). Have a look. It's a fun exercise.
Photo by Ron Miller Used under Creative Commons Share Alike/Attribution License.
Posted on Thu, May 17, 2012
Games people play, you take it or you leave it
Things that they say, honor brite
If I promise you the moon and the stars, would you believe it
Games people play in the middle of the night
~Alan Parsons Project, Games People Play
We love to play games and the gamification movement, making just about everything into a game is changing the way we think about software and other services, but is this a good thing? Should everything be a game?
I wrote a post on this blog back in January called Making Programming Fun and Games, about Microsoft's ideas for making programming a game, comments on Reddit suggested it was a condescending approach. As one commenter, protonfish, put it, "I love having treats tossed in my mouth like a performing animal." In other words, programmers weren't thrilled at the idea of being subjected to gamification.
But does everyone feel this way? And what about your users? Would they like games? It probably depends on how well it's incorporated into the software and what the rewards are.
A recent post on the Randsinrepose blog suggests that it might be a good way to motivate users, but you have to be careful how you do it. As the blogger put it, "...there are a lot of folks who think gamification means pulling the worst aspects out of games and shoving them into an application. It's not. Don't think of gamification as anything other than clever strategies to motivate someone to learn so they can have fun being productive."
That's certainly a different perspective from thinking of your users, whether they are programmers or not, as trained seals, but the point is you have to be clever in your approach and not just offer some badges for generating the most code, for instance.
Neil Fox, who is vice president of strategic consulting at Ness says gamification may be the latest buzz word, but there's certainly something to it, even if it doesn't apply to all situations all the time.
"The real insight of gamification is the concepts of challenge, social and reward. That is not to say that every application needs to be a game, but software that includes a competitive social aspect with (most often not monetary) rewards will be more compelling than those applications that are pure utility in nature (read "no fun").
He says companies such as Amazon.com, TripAdvisor and hundreds of others have realized that by making software fun and social, you can create an amazing amount of participation, but he warns, "This is not as easy as it sounds. Creating a real social context and lasting competition is in itself a tremendous challenge."
He adds, "The good news is that gamification can be applied to nearly anything.... If you have kids then you likely know what it's like to make a game out of cleaning their room. We just need to think the same way, but with software and much more social."
So perhaps gamification, like so many concepts, can work for you too, but you have to be clever about it, rather than heavy-handed -- and just maybe you can get more people using your software or service -- which is after all the intended goal.
Photo by ShardsOfBlue on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.
Posted on Fri, Apr 27, 2012
It's Friday and that means it's time for our weekly feature where we search the Web looking for 5 interesting, funny and poignant links for developers and IT Pros.
If you missed our other post this week,
Flash May Not Be Dead, But It's Not Feeling Well, please check it out now. When Adobe abandoned Mobile Flash last Fall, it was a shot across the bow for Web developers. A recent Wall Street Journal article indicated Adobe was ready to focus on marketing departments and seem to be moving on from Flash. It may be time for your company web site to do the same.
You may also want to have look at
The RIM Rise and Fall infographic we published earlier this week, which traces the rise of RIM to its recent troubles, all of which can be traced directly to the introduction of the iPhone in 2007.
Please consider subscribing if you like what you see here, and if you have something to say, please feel free to leave a comment and let us know what you think.
And without further delay, here we go with this week's links:
Google Drive SDK announced, but APIs are only for Web apps right now | Ars Technica.
Google announced the release of the long-awaited Google Drive this week and along with it some APIs that could make the service even more interesting than it appears to be at first glance. The APIs are limited at least for now, but it's a start and it should be interesting to see how people build services on the top of Google Drive.
NY datacenter leads with the Green | ZDNet.
One Albany company shows how to be green including using solar panels to generate a vast majority of the required electricity to run the data center. Read the article to see what other techniques the company is using to be green.
Effectiveness of Teams - .NET Code Geeks
This article looks at the importance of teams in the Agile development process. Overall, when you have multiple programmers attacking a problem, of course, you are more likely to solve issues than leaving it to one person.
2 more cloud myths busted: Lock-in and locked up | InfoWorld
This article attempts to attack two persistent myths about cloud computing use. First of all, that it locks you in -- the author argues that just about any choice is locks you in on a certain level -- and that you can't be compliant in the cloud. He argues that the compliance card is being way overplayed.
End of Life Quick Sand | Genuitec Blog
What happens when your big enterprise software system reaches the End of Life? It can make your life complicated in a hurry. You've put time and effort into customizing this huge and important system. What happens now?
And this week's bonus post:
Yahoo's genius content strategy | The Oatmeal
This Oatmeal cartoon nails why Yahoo! is failing.
Photo by Tomma Henckel. Used under Creative Commons Share Alike/Attribution License.
Posted on Thu, Apr 19, 2012
At the Google-Oracle trial earlier this week, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison was asked by the Google attorney Robert Van Nest if Java was free. According to CNET, Ellison hesitated, but when pushed by the judge, admitted he didn't know. I'm sure that answer left Java developers everywhere feeling warm and fuzzy.
As a matter of fact, given the prevalence of Java use, it had to leave CIOs wondering just what Ellison meant, but for now it's not clear if Ellison's words will translate into wholesale changes around Java.
Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier, a journalist and frequent contributor at ReadWriteWeb, who has written extensively about open source over the years, finds the statement disturbing and bizarre. "If Larry doesn't know, who does? That should be a disturbing statement on many levels coming from the CEO of the company that controls the Java process," Brockmeier said.
But Ness AVP for mobile solutions, Glenn Guber thinks this might be confined more to the trial and Google's use of Java more than anything that can be applied to Java use in general (although he's careful to point out, this is his opinion only). "I don't believe that there is any threat to web development or application development that stems from this lawsuit. But there is a big potential issue with Android as a platform if it does not go well for Google," Gruber opined.
He added, "I don't think that Oracle is saying that Java is not Open Source, but that Google did not honor the GPL license by essentially forking Java with Davlik and not appropriately licensing some the underlying APIs," Gruber explained.
Brockmeier's not sure what's going to happen, but he says Oracle can't simply un-open source Java, although it could make it more difficult to use in the future. "I'm really not sure what will happen if Oracle wins or tries to fence in what's considered open or not. They can't completely un-open Java, what's been GPL'ed stays open," Brockmeier said.
Brockmeier worries though that Ellison's statement could cause confusion -- although for now at least, Java is alive and doing better than ever. "It would introduce some uncertainty in the process, but how much impact that will have is unclear. Oracle's suit against Google hasn't - so far - had much of an impact on Java's popularity. Oddly enough, it seems like Java is on the upswing," he said.
As Alex Armstrong pointed out on the I Programmer blog, when Oracle bought Sun (and along with it Java) there was much hand wringing in the developer community. This simple statement at a trial couldn't be making those same programmers feel much better about Java's future.
As Brockmeier said, it's a bit too late for companies to simply give up on Java given the significant investment many have made already. "Too much money has been invested in Java, too many companies have too much code written in Java to just chuck it all," he said.
That means that Ellison could be sitting in the catbird seat when it comes to Java -- and that's not a position that can make Java developers feel very confident at this point.
Still, it's hard to know if this was an isolated statement, answered honestly under pressure or a shot across the bow that perhaps Oracle has other plans for Java down the road. Only time will tell.