August 2008 – Page 2

Knockoff or Innovation?

Fraser is responding to the number of apps out there which: permit the viewing of photosets on Flickr permit the location element of photosets to be exploited I don’t, however, think it’s fair to consider these apps to be ‘knock-offs’ because the concept was trivial when you took into consideration the number of location-aware services … Continue reading “Knockoff or Innovation?”

Fraser is responding to the number of apps out there which:

permit the viewing of photosets on Flickr
permit the location element of photosets to be exploited

I don’t, however, think it’s fair to consider these apps to be ‘knock-offs’ because the concept was trivial when you took into consideration the number of location-aware services that you could build.

It’s not the first time I’ve seen this sentiment from ‘pioneers’ in the App Store and I daresay it will not be the last. I don’t think it’s fair, however. Would you consider the iPod a knock-off of other MP3 players (due to the result of the Creative lawsuit it would seem that a U.S. Judge thought it was.)

Look at the number of tip calculators, dice rollers, list managers? Are they all knockoffs of the first one?

IT: worker ratio

From Slashdot: Ratio of IT Dept Workers to Overall Employees? “I was recently talking to a friend about the Fortune 100 company she works for in IT. She told me the company has 35,000 employees, including over 5,000 IT employees â€” and it’s not a web firm. It has numerous consultants doing IT work as … Continue reading “IT: worker ratio”

From Slashdot: Ratio of IT Dept Workers to Overall Employees?

“I was recently talking to a friend about the Fortune 100 company she works for in IT. She told me the company has 35,000 employees, including over 5,000 IT employees â€” and it’s not a web firm. It has numerous consultants doing IT work as well. To me, from a background where my last job had 50 IT employees and 1,000 total, a 1-in-7 ratio of IT employees seems extremely high. Yet she mentioned even simple changes to systems/software take over six months. So, what ratio does your company have, and what is reasonable? How much does this differ by industry?

More information needed, please.

What does the company do?
For example, a cleaner in Pixar might consider there to be a lot of IT workers in the company. Similarly someone from the Human Resources department in Apple might see everyone in R&D as a form of IT workers. You don’t have to be a ‘web firm’ to require a lot of technology workers – computing workstations permeate every business these days.

Simple changes?
And if you have divisions of people, does it not make sense to roll out software or hardware, even “simple changes” to a department at a time (precluding the possibility of annoying dependencies, e.g. every upgrade to Microsoft Office I’ve ever worked through). If computers have anything to do with your company’s bottom line then you have a fiscal responsibility to stage changes slowly and always have a backout plan. Seems amazing but the $BIG_COMPANY didn’t have a process for staging changes to make sure there was no ‘interactive’ effect of the myriad small changes being made.

Ratios?
What does a ratio mean? When I first worked in enterprise IT, every person in the company (bar cleaners, machine operators and shipping personnel) sat at some sort of computer. The ratio of IT worker to ’employee’ was about 1:150. If you only included the people who used a computer in their job the ratio was probably closer to 1:100. (And I guess it’s notable that it went to 1:50 when we did the migration from UNIX/Mac to Windows).

So?
Ratios are nonsense unless you have an idea of what the business actually does. And the people you see with computers may not be IT workers in the traditional sense – but they may be skilled or knowledge workers in another sense.

Some films with no rating on the UK iTunes Movie Store.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse Resident Evil: Extinction XMen X2 Pale Rider Transporter Dirty Harry Constantine Hellboy The Terminator Deliverance Ronin Congo Ultraviolet Cloverfield Collateral Damage Death Wish Robocop Reservoir Dogs Alien Versus Predator Alien Versus Predator: Requiem (Uncut) Lethal Weapon Black Hawk Down CandyMan II: Farewell to the Flesh Count Yorga, Vampire Leprechaun 3 Troll 2 … Continue reading “Some films with no rating on the UK iTunes Movie Store.”

Resident Evil: Apocalypse
Resident Evil: Extinction
XMen
X2
Pale Rider
Transporter
Dirty Harry
Constantine
Hellboy
The Terminator
Deliverance
Ronin
Congo
Ultraviolet
Cloverfield
Collateral Damage
Death Wish
Robocop
Reservoir Dogs
Alien Versus Predator
Alien Versus Predator: Requiem (Uncut)
Lethal Weapon
Black Hawk Down
CandyMan II: Farewell to the Flesh
Count Yorga, Vampire
Leprechaun 3
Troll 2
Omen III: The Final Conflict
Clive Barker’s The Plague
Rosemary’s Baby
Childs Play
Fatal Attraction
Single White Female
Panic Room
Flatliners
Jagged Edge

And this is important because Apple’s App Store doesn’t have a rating system for anything outside of games.

Comics.

Wednesday afternoon I popped round to Paul’s house for a quick chat (and a couple of headache tablets) and I saw a demo of MurderDrome, the first iteration of a new comic application for the iPhone. There have been a few comic reader apps for the iPhone/iPod touch out there, most notably ClickWheel Comic Reader … Continue reading “Comics.”

There have been a few comic reader apps for the iPhone/iPod touch out there, most notably ClickWheel Comic Reader which gives access to a lot of content produced for 2000AD.

The Murderdrome iPhone comic demoed to me that day had a few very startling and fresh ideas.
The content was perfectly sized for the high res (160 dpi) screen of the iPod touch and iPhone. The side-side swipe of the finger moved from page to page but the UP-DOWN swipe of a finger took you through the content on that page. It removed colour, then inking, then brought the images down to the base wireframe. You could see the process on how it was made. You can, at a touch, remove or re-add speech bubbles and there are other settings (greyscale etc) which I didn’t have time to play with.

Paul (art, letters, colour) and Al (writer) have collaborated to make Murderdrome specially for the iPhone/iPod touch screen. The code was written by Philip Orr who you’ll also recognise as one of the names behind infurious. Watch Phil’s Blue Pilot for some very interesting developments soon.

See the Youtube video for more

Paul has some entertaining ideas on how this is going to work into a business model on the iPhone and iPod touch but you’ll definitely find some information on that on Paul’s blog, “Notes from the Drawing Board“.

Get into Tech?

When you see some of the demos available out there, it’s easy to see why so many people get excited by technology. Look at Jeff Han’s Multitouch Demos. Or what Johnny Lee has been doing with Wii Remotes. My favourite has to be this, however. The reaction of a robot sentry. The creator intends to … Continue reading “Get into Tech?”

My favourite has to be this, however. The reaction of a robot sentry.

The creator intends to sell them.

There’s a lot of initiatives to get people in schools to get into technology and science as a career as numbers for these disciplines aren’t what the gubmint thinks they need to be. This is why Momentum (my new employer) is running a series of open days for ICT in QUB, UUJ, UUM and UUC in September and why I think it would be great to have some local tech gurus to attend and help explain to schoolkids why they love working in the tech field.

I’ve done about half a dozen of these demo days over the years (long before the whole Digital Circle thing came up) and thoroughly enjoyed them. If you’re interested in contributing and spending a bit of time explaining why tech is a good career choice, then please get in touch. Obviously it helps if you’re IN Northern Ireland, duh!

(PaintballSentry via nigelcooke.com)

Rewenge!

Disturbing: Recently this customer ordered my software and started to use it. But after a few days later he ask me for a refund because he say my software doesn’t do some things he wanted. I told him i dont do refunds after 10 day, but he did a chargeback so im force to pay … Continue reading “Rewenge!”

Disturbing:

Recently this customer ordered my software and started to use it. But after a few days later he ask me for a refund because he say my software doesn’t do some things he wanted. I told him i dont do refunds after 10 day, but he did a chargeback so im force to pay him back.

My question is how can i punish him for this. Im thinking about building new module in my software, so next time if someone buys it then wants to do refund/chargeback, it formats the customer hard disk.

The comments, on the other hand, range from the sensible to the hilarious. The Original Poster continues:

thanks for every great ideas anyone. there are many idea here that i like, but best one is i think the using customer webcam to take picture and using it to black mail them. This is better than formatting but it will still punish them ;).

Ps im not in the US so im not scared from law 😉

I’m speechless.

Does anyone care about Android?

I got this video from “Mobile Web Wars Videos: Does Anybody Care About Android?“: A few things. Michael Arrington is funny. There seems to be a difference in opinion on what the mobile web represents to some. To Jason Devitt (CEO of Skydeck) it seems to be the ability to buy games (and presumably applications) … Continue reading “Does anyone care about Android?”

I got this video from “Mobile Web Wars Videos: Does Anybody Care About Android?“:

A few things.

Michael Arrington is funny.
There seems to be a difference in opinion on what the mobile web represents to some. To Jason Devitt (CEO of Skydeck) it seems to be the ability to buy games (and presumably applications) on mobile (using his $700M on games quote) but this doesn’t represent the mobile web to me. I’ve got to agree with Omar Hamoui that the mobile web really represents what can be done on the internet as a whole (and not just used to download applications).
People obviously feel very passionate about the subject to the point where they may ignore protocol if they feel their voice isn’t being heard.

Reality

No comment. 🙁 photo posted from my iPhone Related posts: AR Virtual Notes from Virtual Reality to Augmented Reality The Reality of Web TV

No comment. 🙁

photo posted from my iPhone

A more sober view on iPhone application development

Steven Frank of Panic software writes about the iTunes App Store. I’ve been trying to reconcile the App Store with my beliefs on “how things should be” ever since the SDK was announced. After all this time, I still can’t make it all line up. I can’t question that it’s probably the best mobile application … Continue reading “A more sober view on iPhone application development”

Steven Frank of Panic software writes about the iTunes App Store.

I’ve been trying to reconcile the App Store with my beliefs on “how things should be” ever since the SDK was announced. After all this time, I still can’t make it all line up. I can’t question that it’s probably the best mobile application distribution method yet created, but every time I use it, a little piece of my soul dies. And we don’t even have anything for sale on there yet.

I can’t disagree with anything Steven says.

Panic are one of the companies out there producing insanely great software and being remarkably transparent about the ins and outs of being in Apple’s ecosystem.

Go and read Steven’s post again. No, really. Don’t just read it, digest it.

Now read this from iPhone app developers, TapTapTap.

Weâ€™ve finally received our financial reports for the month. At this time, weâ€™re still missing some territories, such as Canada, but overall the US overwhelmingly makes up the bulk of the sales (>90%) so the final-final numbers wonâ€™t vary by much.
…
The sales are reported for the period of June 29th to August 2nd. But because the App Store opened July 10th, the period is actually 24 days. So over the course of those days we took in an average of around $2,200 per day.
…
We went from selling around 450/day when we were ranked around 50 to around 250/day when falling below. And we dropped like a rockâ€¦ in just two days we fell to around the 75th rank.

TapTapTap made $52,815 in the month of July and though they admit the numbers are dropping fast in August, it’s still not a bad thing at all and makes you think what might be achievable. Their premier application hovered around #50 on the App Store so imagine the numbers for applications which score much higher on the list.

On one hand you have the tenets by which Steven Frank designs software and on the other hand you have the potential to spend six months building an application and then making $52 000 in a month. It’s no wonder that some people see iPhone as a quick way to make a name, earn some money and set themselves up as an independent software vendor. Working as a code-slave for some mindless $BIG_COMPANY? Hack for a while and maybe make enough dough to enable you to spend a few more months hacking away. Sounds like fun to me.

I think that now the furor has died down, it represents a very personal decision on whether you want to develop for iPhone. There are obviously advantages but there are also disadvantages. The winner of course is Apple. They’re selling shedloads of everything (including the alleged 200 000 iPhones to HSBC).

Co-Working….somewhere near Tipperary?

While I was off cruising around Northern Europe and Scandinavia, Evert wrote about setting up a co-working centre: Spurred on by posts on co-working.ie and a recent post on Techcrunch UK I’ve decided to get serious with my plans for a Co-working/techhub/start-up center. While I have certain ideas on how I would like to setup … Continue reading “Co-Working….somewhere near Tipperary?”

While I was off cruising around Northern Europe and Scandinavia, Evert wrote about setting up a co-working centre:

Spurred on by posts on co-working.ie and a recent post on Techcrunch UK I’ve decided to get serious with my plans for a Co-working/techhub/start-up center. While I have certain ideas on how I would like to setup & run such a center I need the input of potential users. I do not intend to run it for my own benefit so rather than just come up with a list of requirements myself I am looking for input from outside sources.

Paul Campbell’s comment holds a lot of water in my books:

From your list, I’d say only the following are necessary:
– post boxes
– fast broadband (most necessary)
– out-off hours access (definitely, keys ftw)
– security, storage facilities (generally a place that is free from potential theft is good)

Evert has kept it close to his chest where he intends to open this centre but it seems to be off the N7 somewhere near Nenagh.

The most basic co-working facility really just needs desks, power and internet. Everything else is really gravy (yeah, even toilets). You can get by on cheap plywood desks (or a door sitting flat across some boxes), wooden chairs and a slow 512 Kbps line. And if the co-working space is important to you, then this is how you’ll set it up much like how it’s possible to write and publish a book while subsisting on 9p Ramen from Tesco or how it might be necessary to sleep a couple of hours under your desk at work rather than bothering with the commute because time is of the essence.

So if it matters, then just do it.

For comfort, however, you’re going to want more. This could be a Â£350 coffee pod machine, Aeron chairs, multi-megabyte UPLOADS as well as downloads, air-conditioning, natural light, all-hours access, more than one power outlet per person, telephones, secure storage, meeting rooms, scrum areas, whiteboards, projectors and a flesh-and-blood PA – it’s all going to cost money which means you have to pay for these things up-front.

Before all of this, you have to find a place. Unless you know someone who owns property or own it yourself, it’s likely going to involve a commercial lease – and they’re seldom less than 5 years. You might be lucky and get it for less but there are usually onerous problems with that.