Posted on Fri, Apr 26, 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, 5 Things You Need to Know About Massive Announcements that Might Reshape the Mobile Web, please check it out. Earlier this month, there were two major mobile announcements that had to the potential to rock mobile developer's world...but did they?
And without further delay, here we go with this week's links:
Designing Apps with Automation in Mind | Mendix Blog
Sure, all developers start a project with the goal of creating a great application, but some are more successful than others at achieving this. And whether your users really love your application can pivot on design decision on how to automate certain processes for them. This article looks at five key areas you should paying attention to as you design and application.
How to build applications your users will hate | mrc's Cup of Joe Blog
What? Why would I want build an application my users hate? Well, of course you wouldn't and this post looks at some ways you could be doing just that -- and by understanding what to avoid, you can build applications that people will love.
The New API Gold Rush | ReadWrite
There's a lot happening around Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) as evidenced by Intel's recent purchase of Mashery. Trying to manage APIs is not always a simple matter and this article explains some of the issue involved.
10 Non-Computer Network Security Dangers | Smartbear
Remember Murphy's Law? This writer did and he applies it to network security. Sure, you're watching the obvious security holes, but as Murphy would point out, if it can go wrong it will, and you need to be prepared for as many eventualities as possible.
Christopher Haag, Hamster Chase, developer | APPetite App Marketing podcast
Listen and learn how this game developer released his new game and achieved 10,000 downloads in just 8 days. What strategy did he employ to achieve this? Listen and find out.
Photo by Ron Miller Used under Creative Commons Share Alike/Attribution License.
Posted on Thu, Apr 25, 2013
by Glenn Gruber
Ness AVP Travel Technologies and Mobile Solutions
April 3rd was an interesting day for the mobile industry with two major announcements that could reshape the mobile web. Two days earlier and I might have thought someone was playing a rather large joke.
The news that got most of the attention was Google’s decision to diverge from WebKit to introduce Blink as Chrome’s new rendering engine. Many people – myself included – referred to Blink as a fork of WebKit. While this is accurate, it’s often short-hand pejorative term that implies bad intentions. But before we ascribe good or evil to the move, let’s take a step back for some context.
Webkit has been the most popular browser engine, but has not been used on a majority of the desktop web.
But the numbers tell a very different story when you look at mobile browsing statistics (I used US numbers as a proxy for smartphone usage). On mobile devices (which now outnumber desktop devices) WebKit was the clear winner:
But Webkit was never a homogeneous entity. With the many flavors of Webkit-based browsers (about 40 according to Wikipedia) many of them used different JavaScript engines. So the idea of a pure WebKit browser was never true. As such, the forking of WebKit might not be as big of a deal as many fear.
But Blink wasn’t the only news...
1. Samsung/Mozilla Partnership Could Have a Bigger Impact on the Mobile Industry
On the face of it, the other announcement seems less dramatic, but is likely more intriguing. Mozilla announced that they are partnering with Samsung to create a next-generation browser engine called Servo. Two thoughts come to mind:
- Samsung seems to be steadily pseudo-forking Android for its own purposes. TouchWiz, S-apps that replace core Google services (e.g. messaging, translation, voice, navigation, app store) and the Knox platform seem to be creating a Samsung experience, almost to the point that it wouldn’t be recognizable as Android. In fact if you look at Samsung’s advertising it’s virtually free of any mention of Android. What’s missing is a browser and this could be their plan. Could the browser be the last step before truly forking Android as Amazon has? And if that happened, could it be said that Google has lost control of the platform? That could have a seismic impact on the industry.
- For Mozilla this could be the next step in maturing the FirefoxOS and more importantly, lining up the #1 non-Apple smartphone brand in the world as a manufacturer.
2. Community Projects Aren’t Always the Utopia We Want Them to Be
Google is no doubt making this decision to further its own interests and perhaps Blink will allow them to speed up the delivery of improvements to Chrome as well as perhaps our browsing experience. According to Alex Russell, a Google Chrome engineer, this is the primary driving force behind the move. Nothing nefarious, just Google’s laser-like focus on execution and speed.
Or is it?
The truth is that when you have a lot of people contributing to a project you reach a point where priorities diverge and that really seems to be at the crux of Google’s decision to introduce Blink. All you have to do is look at Chrome’s current advertising spot and it becomes clear.
Google wants to more tightly integrate your browsing experience across all devices (even though the ad doesn’t include TVs, it’s definitely part of the vision) and having greater control of the core browsing engine was likely seen as a linchpin to deliver that. With all the different voices that are part of a community project, Google probably couldn’t get where it wanted to go without going off on its own. Besides, if Google thinks it provides a competitive advantage, I can understand why they would choose not to share.
Further, the conspiracy theorist in me also sees this as a move done primarily because it directly hurts Apple --Google’s primary (only?) competitor in mobile. Lee Matthews of Geek.com notes that “For quite a while now, Google has held the number one spot on the WebKit code commit “leaderboard.” Now that its engineers are working on Blink, that leaves WebKit with a greatly reduced number of active contributors”, which can pose quite a challenge for Apple to ensure that WebKit keeps up with Chrome from a technical perspective. With Samsung joining forces with Mozilla on Servo, we don’t know how much future WebKit contributions we can expect from either – Seeing as Samsung has no love lost for Apple either.
And while Google gave good reasons for pulling out of WebKit, primarily pointing to Chromium’s use of a multi-process architecture, it didn’t have to go down the way it did, according to an Apple developer who is part of the WebKit team:
“…the main reason we built a new multiprocess architecture is that Chromium's multiprocess support was never contributed to the WebKit project. It has always lived in the separate Chromium tree, making it pretty hard to use for non-Chrome purposes.
Before we wrote a single line of what would become WebKit2 we directly asked Google folks if they would be willing to contribute their multiprocess support back to WebKit, so that we could build on it. They said no…
If Google had upstreamed their multiprocess support, we almost surely would have built on it. And history might have turned out differently.”
3. Modestly Higher Workloads for Web and Mobile Developers
In many ways the amount of work that development teams need to expend won’t change very much. Servo replaces Gekko for all intents and purposes, so that’s a wash. You can say that Blink becomes the 4th engine, essentially taking the place of Presto (previously used by the Opera browser), but given the low market share for Opera, I would wager that many organizations didn’t develop or test for it specifically.
And even though Blink is a fork of WebKit, will it really be that different? Will it really cause that much incremental effort? Xavier Facon, CTO of Crisp Media (a leading mobile advertising platform provider) doesn’t think so:
“It won't make life easier or harder. These two engines [Blink and WebKit] will stay more similar to each other than compared to Servo and others. I can't imagine it will cause much fragmentation. All WebKit implementations already have different JavaScript engines. A different rendering engine increases the potential differences, but I think the WebKit teams and Blink teams won't work outside the specs much anyway. In fact, the approach of using flags in Blink, and carefully remove webkit prefixes, allows new experimental features to be rolled out in fully backwards compatible approach.”
Bastien Cojan, Technical Director for Ness’ Imano mobile development team, notes that web developers will have to go back to testing Chrome and Safari separately, though he says that many firms were doing that anyway as the differences between the two WebKit –based platforms were already significant enough to merit it.
4. Better Security, Stability and Performance
All code gets worse over time. It’s not that the code itself degrades, but the layers and layers that are added increases code complexity, introduces bugs and expands vulnerabilities. So the streamlining of the codebase that will result from Blink (Google says it will remove 4.5 million lines of code and 7,000 files) and the removal of the Google-dependent code in Webkit should enhance both products.
Veracode, a leading application security platform vendor, agrees noting on its blog that there have been 210 reported security holes in Webkit since it launched in 2007, with 207 of those discovered in the last three years, including some moderately serious security holes. Given that Android accounts for 79% of all malware on smartphones, one can see why Google was keen to close up some of these holes.
5. This will be good for the industry
It’s generally a good thing when everybody works together. Life become more consistent, orderly. Standards, even if they are defacto, help the productivity of developers everywhere. But to really move an industry forward significant change such as Blink and Servo can spur innovation. With Apple, Google, Samsung and Microsoft all with significant skin in the game they will have to really up their efforts and the consumer will be the beneficiary in the form of better products and experiences.
Crisp Media’s Facon says, “I am pretty certain, all considered, it is a positive. There are various mobile OS and browser projects scheduled by Samsung, Intel, Google, Apple, Opera, etc... that we don't know about. Some of those projects are made complicated for developers when there is code share going on between all these competitors. For Google to take this step was brave, considering they probably expected some backlash, but it solved business problems for both Apple and Google that allow them to move faster on projects we will end up caring about once we know them.”
Cojan agrees: “These new web engines seem to be developed with 'mobile in mind', which should speed up the current mobile development and have a better handle of device specificities as it will be directly developed by the device manufacturers (google+samsung). In theory, this should make the developer’s life easier (think Apple owning both hardware and software) and reduce the need for handling high number of different cases for different devices.
Photo Credit: (c) Can Stock Photo
Posted on Fri, Apr 12, 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, If you're adversaries with your software service provider, here's how to get back on track , please check it out. If you're having an adversarial relationship with your software service provider, you're not alone. This post explains in practical terms how you go to this point, and how to fix it.
And without further delay, here we go with this week's links:
Analyzing the Top-Paying IT Jobs for 2013 | Tom's IT Pro
If you're looking for something deeper than a top ten salaries list, this article will help you understand how to interpret these lists and whether they apply to you personally or a more broad overview of your specialty.
Why Boring Data Centers Are the Best | Slashdot
For the second time in a couple of weeks I'm seeing an argument for homogeneity in the data center. If you want consistency across your data center, no better way to do it than to standardize on one vendor's hardware, but then, you're locked into one vendor and that could present a different set of issues.
How to Deal With Software Development Schedule Pressure | CIO.com
Everyone feels it, that pressure to get your software project done on time and within the budget given you, but it's not always practical or easy to achieve. Some software development veterans sit down and talk about how they deal with keeping projects on track (or getting ones that have slipped back on).
15 Programming Skills Most Coveted By Employers | ReadWrite
You're a coder, but maybe you're looking to expand your skill set. This list looks at the most desirable skills based on job listings on the Indeed.com job listing site. Have a look. You might just be surprised at the most coveted one.
Move Over, Apple and Google: Apperating Systems Are Taking Over Your Phones | Wired
When Facebook announced Facebook Home recently, a tool that takes over your phone and gives you information before you even unlock the lock screen, it gave rise to a whole new term, Apperating System, an app that's so important to you it supersedes the OS itself.
Photo by Tomma Henckel Used under Creative Commons Share Alike/Attribution License.
Posted on Fri, Apr 05, 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, comScore Shocker: Android loses market share in latest report, please check it out. You might expect the same-old, same old from comScore's latest mobile market share figures, but you would be mistaken. There were several surprises.
And without further delay, here we go with this week's links:
Mobile-Device Management: 10 Best Practices for Creating a BYOD Policy | eWeek
Bring your own device is spreading across organizations, and it's causing some confusion among IT pros on how to manage a hodge podge of devices. This article offers some practical advice for creating sensible BYOD policy in your organization.
Why What You’re Reading About Blink Is Probably Wrong | Infrequently Noted
When Google announced its new browser rendering engine Blink this week, it certainly generated a lot of strong opinions. This article maintains that most of those are wrong. Do you agree?
What is Open Source Cloud? | Linux.com
This post gives you a cloud computing primer, then explains the importance of cloud computing in the context of open source and that having an open cloud is essential to keep the work of the open source movement moving forward.
Your Code May Work, But It Still Might Suck | Smartbear
There is value in dedication to your programming craft and that means creating elegant code in every step of the process, even ones that might not seem to matter. Just because it works doesn't mean it's art and that's what you should be striving to produce.. See the next post.
The Artful Organization | Agile Zone
When I saw Seth Godin speak a couple of weeks ago, he spoke of the importance creating something unique and how creative organizations will win --and this post extends that notion on the importance of being an organization that creates something unique and beautiful and offers some resources to help get you there.
Photo by Ron Miller. Used under Creative Commons Share Alike/Attribution License.
Posted on Thu, Apr 04, 2013
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by Ron Miller
Ness Blogger
Usually the comScore marketshare statistics come in, and it's ho-hum another report in which Apple and Google lead the market, and while that's still true, there was a shocking difference this month: Android lost marketshare for the first time I can remember.
What's more, Microsoft made a modest gain. The period covered the crucial holiday shopping season and beyond from November 12, 2012 - Februrary 13, 2013.
These data points may mark the beginning of a change or they may be a blip in an otherwise consistent mobile market. Only time will tell.
Let's look at who gained and who lost marketshare:
- The shocker was Android, which dropped 2.0 percentage points from 53.7 percent to 51.7 percent for the period.
- Microsoft gained 0.2 points moving ever so slightly from 3.0 to 3.2 percent, but hey, upward is better than the reverse and until this report, that's what Microsoft had been facing for the last year.
- And how did Apple do? It gained 3.9 percent moving from 35.0 to 38.9. For a company that is being battered lately in the press, all it does is continue to sell devices hand over fist.
- Meanwhile, BlackBerry, which came out with new phones in the middle of the cycle, dropped 1.9 percent from 7.3 to 5.4 percent.
Overall, there were a number of surprises with a big gain by Apple and a significant loss by Android leading the way.
The fact that Microsoft shows life has to be encouraging to Redmond, which is has been promoting Windows phones for almost 18 months with little to show for it. At least they move the needle forward and that has to feel good after months of reverses.
As for BlackBerry, it may be too soon to tell if the new BlackBerry phones can reverse years of bleeding marketshare, but overall even though I really liked the Z10 in the brief demo I got from BlackBerry officials at Mobile World Congress, I think it's really too late to salvage the company. By producing some decent phones, perhaps they have made themselves a more attractive take-over target.
That Apple is still gaining marketshare at this point, especially in light of press reports and falling stock prices, may be even more surprising than the fact that Android slipped back. Apple has taken it on the chin, but simply continues to sell phones and tablets in remarkable quantities.
Whether it can continue or if the players at the bottom of the market can chip away at that remains to be seen. For now, we probably can't read too much into changes that happen over a single cycle, but the fact is that there were some surprising numbers in this report, and I can't remember the last time I saw marketshare numbers that surprised me. That's significant in itself.
Photo Credit: Carlos Varela on Flickr. Used under CC 2.0 license.
Posted on Fri, Mar 29, 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, How to migrate Windows without killing the CTO, please check it out. Migrating to a new version of Windows can be a painful experience for an organization, but with planning, you can ease the transition.
And without further delay, here we go with this week's links:
10 Tips to Improve Mobile Security | Internet Evolution
This post offers some tips for securing your mobile device, something we should all pay more heed. A recently-released Cisco Partners survey found 39 percent of users don't even password protect their phones. Chances are they aren't doing many of these either and if your company has a BYOD policy, you need to start educating people.
Writing Open Source Software? Make Sure You Know Your Copyright Rights | Smartbear
If you're writing code for an open source project, you can't leave the copyright to chance or you could risk your hard work. This article delves into some practical copyright matters and it's well worth your time.
The Four BYOD Integration Challenges | Tom's IT Pro
BYOD is a double-edged sword for organizations. On one hand it frees IT from trying to keep up with a constantly changing market, but it also presents challenges on several fronts, especially in finding ways to balance access to enterprise data and user freedom.
Roll Your Own Hardware and The Disruption of the Enterprise Server Market | Redmonk
With the rise of the cloud and availability of open source, we've seen many firms rolling their own software solutions, but we could soon see roll-your-own server move from the realm of mega players like Facebook and Google and become more the norm in the enterprise -- and we are seeing the impact on hardware vendors already.
The 3 Phases of Owning a Computer - The Oatmeal
I think you'll probably recognize your own experience in this Oatmeal cartoon. As the saying goes, it's funny because it's true.
Photo by Ron Miller. Used under Creative Commons Share Alike/Attribution License.
Posted on Fri, Mar 22, 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 posts, Flummoxed by Samsung Knox and iOS Rules the Sky Infographic, please check them out. In the former, Glenn Gruber wonders if a containerization approach is the best way to secure enterprise data on mobile devices, and in the latter, when Go-Go inflight analyzed which customer devices were connecting to its inflight service, it found iOS was the clear winner.
And without further delay, here we go with this week's links:
Microsoft's baffling 'multiple personality disorder | ZDNet
Anyone who has used Microsoft knows this good Microsoft-bad Microsoft swing. In some cases, Microsoft seems to completely get what customers need, while in others, it is bafflingly tone deaf.
7 Editors for the Android — for Free or Cheap | Smartbear
C'mon who doesn't like something for nothing or at least a good deal. That's what you'll find in this round-up of free or low-cost Android editors. Surely, there must be one for you.
The 5 things you need for the perfect smartphone | ZDNet
If you could have the perfect smartphone, what features would it have? This writer rounds up five features for that perfect phone. See if you agree.
Advice to CIOs: Don’t Choke On the Alphabet Soup | Laserfiche Blog
It's easy for CIOs to get caught up in their shifting roles as more of what used to be their jobs gets delegated to other C-level executives, but this writer says it's important to keep your eyes on the prize and strive to innovate.
Show Me the Money: Which Mobile Apps are Profitable for Developers? | Smartbear
Mobile developers will want to check out this report on which mobile apps make the most money. You might be surprised to learn for instance the most profitable platform is probably not the one you think it is.
Photo by Ron Miller. Used under Creative Commons Share Alike/Attribution License.
Posted on Tue, Mar 19, 2013
by Glenn Gruber
Ness AVP Travel Technologies and Mobile Solutions
There has long been debates over who is leading in the smartphones wars — Apple or Google.
Apple fans talk about innovation, quality, the revenues for developers from the App Store and user experience. Android fans talk about activations and market share. But while more Android phones are purchased (I’ll include “free phones” with activation) iOS seems to have the lead in usage as measured by mobile web browsing statistics.
Well that lead for iOS is no longer just a terrestrial advantage. In a recent post,Gogo Inflight published stats of device usage on planes and while the split between laptops, smartphones and tablets are roughly equal, iOS has a 3:1 advantage over Android in OS share.
I wonder if Fred Wilson still says to develop Android first . Enjoy the infographic below:
Posted on Sun, Mar 17, 2013
by Glenn Gruber
Ness AVP Travel Technologies and Mobile Solutions
Software played a dominant role in Samsung’s booth at Mobile World Congress recently where the main focus was Knox (as in Fort), Samsung’s answer to enterprise security and being business friendly.
I completely understand the need to make business feel that Samsung phones won’t be a security hold given the extent of malware attacks on the Android ecosystem. But the manner in which they approached this surprised me. Knox essentially creates a schizophrenic environment on your mobile phone – one personality for work and one for your personal life.
Certain documents, applications and other data are locked-down within the Work persona, ostensibly by your friendly neighborhood IT department. Then with a click of a button you are transported into your personal space where the color schemes, themes and apps are all completely different. Oh joy. You can’t even see your business calendar in the Personal zone. So helpful when you are trying to make an appointment for your child’s Parent-Teacher conference.
Personally I would NEVER be able to operate like this. On my phone I go between business and personal items all the time. The cognitive dissonance in switching between the two personas and forced interruption would be maddening. What’s funny is that this is exactly the same concept that was pilloried when Blackberry debuted it last month during the launch of BB10. I wonder whether Samsung will be given any grief at all.
And while elements of Knox is based on AirWatch’s technology , it’s not anywhere near as elegant a solution.
Further it completely flies in the face of some of Samsung’s most recent ads where a guy, mocking a Blackberry user, says he can work on his spreadsheet, while watching a basketball game (see clip below). Perhaps he just happens to have a sports-crazed IT department.
In trying to position Samsung as business-friendly, they also launched their Samsung Enterprise Application Partner program. They had several companies showing Knox-certified apps in the Samsung booth, including SAP and Dropbox. But at least in talking with a representative from Dropbox, the Dropbox for Teams app isn’t specific to Android or Knox. The same functionality is available on iOS.
What I wonder is whether Knox as a security layer will evolve into some sort of fork of Android. It’s unclear if a Knox-certified app will run unaltered on a Motorola, HTC or LG Android phone. I’m sure that there are marketing advantages to being a part of the SEAP program though. But if it requires maintaining a separate code-base I don’t see how it gets much traction. If it doesn’t, why bother?
What’s your thoughts? Am I being too harsh? Am I missing something?
Photo Credit: Ron Miller
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.