I know, I know. This is supposed to be a technology blog. But It's summertime. I've been playing with The Simpsons Avatar Creation Tool. You can find it here. This is the result, not too bad, uh?
Ja ja ja.
< Mind Note > Back to Test definition.
We have just received the MSDN Welcome kit with the software DVDs. It has made my think about myself. More concretely, about how do I behave in my job. Do you realize that we could be the only people that get exited when a new job tool is received?
Technicians (developers, programmers, software enthusiasts, etc...) get exited with a new mobile phone, new DVDs, new Software, a new Beta Relase (Visual Studio 2008), etc..
It has to be very strange for non-technical people to accept these behaviors, don't they?
Nevertheless, it feels like turning back to childhood. It feels like Christmas day with all those brand new toys waiting to be opened. Exciting. Sometimes frustrating, sometimes not. The day you receive a new "toy" is a different day. Everybody is more relaxed, happier and more productive. Fortunately, we are enjoying the start up of a new company, with plenty of new toys to open. Lucky us.
Just to conclude. If someday I lose this feeling about new things, tell me so. I'll probably have to change my job or go on holidays.
I'm not lying. We have bought a Philips 42" LCD TV 1080p and a Nintendo Wii. Both came last Friday. To be honest, I thought that this kind of initiatives were only possible in certain companies (e.g. Google, as they're happy to say). I used to think that having a videogames console at the office was not very interesting because there is so much work to do that the last thing you think about is playing videogames.
Obviously, I was wrong. We have spent little time playing Wii Tennis, and the results are interesting. I think people work happier. We only play on spare time, not on working time, so the benefits are obvious. Sometimes people argue about the long spare time reserved for meals. I do. But If I can waste my spare time playing Wii with the rest of the colleagues, those death times are less boring and more "productive". At least in terms of happiness.
Just one picture to illustrate the post.
Oh, I'm looking forward to receive the sofas!!!!!!
No, I'm not crazy. One of the multiple tasks I must face in my new job is to evaluate software licenses. As long as we are in the first phase of the company, we are evaluating different alternatives regarding Microsoft Software.
I'd like to say that I'm not an Open-Source or Free Software fanatic or, as I like to call them, "Taliban". I think that every companies aims to earn money, and even Open Source oriented companies have a business model.
Microsoft Partner Program is a very interesting initiative for small companies. In our case, a Mobile oriented ISV, it allows us to obtain software licenses for a very small amount of money, which enormously helps to start the activity. This way, Microsoft takes advantage from this situation because companies define their processes based on microsoft products. In my opinion, it is very difficult and rare to change those processes once they have been started.
Intelligent move.
What's the point in releasing Safari for Windows? Several answers come into my mind. Anyway, I think that this is just a movement made by Apple to take advantange of the continuous hype surrounding this company.
Somebody told me once that Apple designs its products just for "poshes". Well I don't agree completely with this affirmation, I own an iPod nano, but in some cases its true. iPhone is actually the poshiest mobile phone in the world (appart from those mobiles that cost upto 3000€). The same can be said about Apple TV.
Another thing that comes into my mind is that Apple customers can be better described as "fans". My iMac, my MacBook, my iPhone and my iPod. All of them with the same appearance and very fashionable.
So, with this two things in mind, Who are the target customers for Safari for Windows? Just wannabes unable to afford "real" Mac Products?
I think that most people use Internet Explorer because of laziness. You know, it is integrated with windows, it does its job and most websites work properly with iExplorer. People using FireFox loves it because of the plugins, the configuration capabilites, and the extensions. Some sites refuse to load properly with Firefox. Well, that's a price to pay. I don't know much people using Opera. I know its an option, but few people seems to love it.
I think that the penetration of Safari will finally be residual, negligible. Of course, this is just an opinion. I haven't tested it yet, but I'll do during the weekend.
With some delay, I'd like to rant about Apple's iPhone Programming Environment. As you may know, two weeks ago Steve Jobs made one of his worst presentations ever. He gave little new information to the world. But one of the pearls he throw out was the new programming environment for the iPhone. This one and a port of Safari for Windows (full of bugs, by the way).In fact call it programming environment is a bit pretentious.
Apple, following their tendency of "wallet gardens", has created a mobile phone without programming capabilities. When Steve Jobs first presented iPhone, there were no programming functionality planned. No native programming, no java. But everything changed two weeks ago. They have created a programming environment for the iPhone. It is a solution based on Safari, the web browser, and AJAX as a platform. Impressive.
The first think that comes into my mind when I think in such environment is security. AJAX is not the quintessence of security. The combination web + AJAX is dangerous. They are based on a connected environment and if you allow a web site to access phone capabilities such as contacts, personal information, etc... the risk of appearance of malicious software increases exponentially.
In order to add capabilities to access phone's functionality through Javascript, they must extend ECMA Script with propietary functionality. Do you find the irony in this point? You use an standard tecnology (web+javascript in this case) in order to attract a big development base, but you add your own extensions to that technology making the software created for iPhone not standard.
I hope, for their own good, that the iPhone will limit that capabilities to remote applications, but on the other hand, all the benefits of an application accessed remotely (distribution cost, ease of access, less error prone) are missed. It's difficult to set up an environment with an adequate balance between security and functionality. At least when we are considering a web based environment.
