code & rock

Here’s a little customer service rant. Recently while I had my iPhone tethered to my iMac whilst I was testing out an app the cord tangled around my chair handle and then when I swivelled to speak to a colleague it got pulled off the desk and hit the ground face first with a resounding thud! Once I’m past cursing myself I begin to research the best place to have it fixed.

Firstly let me say if this has happened to you then do make sure and look around as the price variation between different vendors was quite a lot. Why not spend an extra half hour and save yourself £40.

I settled on a company that seemed to be professional whilst not putting one over the table in terms of cost. So I phone them up and enquire regarding how long it should take with there current work load. Let me paraphrase the response. ‘Not more than a few days sir’. Well while I was loath to give up my phone as like most people with a smartphone I really did rely on it and was accustomed to having it wherever I may be I decided to rip of the bandage and send it away a day or two after it dropped hoping to get it back by the end of the week.

Long story short they company I sent it too still had it TWO weeks later. I finally broke when I phoned for the n-th time to enquire about it’s progress and was told yet again that they still didn’t have the parts (front screen) in stock but should be getting them in a few days. I’d heard that before so I promptly asked for a refund and return of my device.

What is galling about this isn’t that they had a supply problem it’s that from my very first enquiry with them they seemed to string me along. Bit of advice for companies out there, never string your customer along!

Anyway I’ve found another service (through eBay god help me) that looks pretty good so hopefully this time it really will be just a few days turnaround.

Oh btw just in case you’re curious the website of the company that I will never use again is www.i-phone-repairs.co.uk.

Lately I’ve been developing for the mobile app stores (iOS, Play, App World) so all the coolness and problems alike are pretty fresh in my mind. It also means I’ve been reading a lot of articles recently discussing the current state of the mobile landscape.

I thought I’d get my thoughts down while I have the time (I’ve been smacked in the face by a big fat cold virus that’s forcing me to have a break from climbing and well everything. Not nice over the long Easter weekend!).

First up RIM

I thought it might be wise for one to kick off with RIM sense it’s entirely possible that by the time I’ve finished writing this little piece that they will no longer exist. OK maybe I’m being a bit facetious to say it won’t exist but I can guarantee that it will have continued further along  it’s downward trend.

It’s funny to think how far RIM has fallen in the years preceding the iPhone and shortly thereafter Android. I personally thought that they had a brilliant place from which to wage war; that being the absolute centre of enterprise. Somehow they managed to lose it. I say somehow, you can actually pretty much chalk it up to the consumerisation of IT in the enterprise gaining momentum and RIMs inability to ride the wave.

Example. My most recent mobile app was for a client who wanted the app in BlackBerry’s App World as well as the App Store and Marketplace (now known as Play). Thing is the app was designed specifically for modern smartphone screens which we defined as about 3.5 inch with a decent resolution. Not having had to look into RIMs line up for a while I couldn’t recall their devices of the top of my head so I headed over to their product listing page.

What did I find? A product listing that looked like it was from a few months after iPhone and Android emerged. There was only one model that had a minimum of 3.5 inch screen (it actually had a 3.7″) with a decent resolution. ONE MODEL! It’s been clear that people want a big ass slab of glass for their smartphone’s today. There’s a reason why iPhone, Android and even Windows Phone 7 are all (with the exception of a few Android models I’m sure) slabs of glass.

Now I find it hard to believe that RIM’s CEO didn’t know these two facts; the trend of consumerisation of IT and the majority of people’s taste in relation to smartphone’s. So the only thing I can think that happened is that he couldn’t put one and one together and extrapolate.

There isn’t much more to say on this. RIM is losing market share, mind share, developers and staff month over month. The only good thing I’ve heard from them recently is an admission that they really have screwed up these last few years, btw that was from the new CEO.

I think the best thing for RIM to do is to get out of or trim down massively their hardware line and license their OS and services to other manufacturers. I think some other HW vendors would be interested in at least exploring the opportunity to offer a compelling counter balance to Apple and Google.

From a developer point of view. Well I wouldn’t shed a tear should RIM disappear.

Next up choice/fragmentation in Android

Depending on your view it’s either consumer choice or platform fragmentation. Well here’s the thing as a consumer I’m sort of sitting on the fence as to what I’d call it. I might be leaning toward consumer choice in relation to the HW but fragmentation in relation to the platform.

As a developer however it’s a clear cut decision. It’s fragmentation and a whole lot of work! And it ain’t quick iteration thanks to the painful sluggishness of the Android emulator. Of course as I finished the project and get my thoughts out here a new rev of the emulator has been released with the major improvement being hardware acceleration. I haven’t had a chance to update my development machine so can’t comment first hand on how well this works but I have seen some demo’s on youtube and it does look good.

Here’s an example of the fragmentation that we developers face. Take for Google’s mobile homepage for search. How do you think it holds up when viewed across a range of browsers.

You can see higher quality versions of the image here.

Keep in mind this example is only across browsers and not devices and OS versions. I like the openness and flexibility of Android but I really do wish that it was far more consistent.

Lastly; Adobe might be getting back to its ‘we build kick ass tools’ roots with Shadow

As a quick last point I want to highlight a new app from Adobe. It’s called Shadow and it allows you to pair mobile devices with your dev machine and test web apps on the mobile device.

Besides from me liking the tool, it really can speed up workflow, I’m heartened to see Adobe returning to it’s tools heritage. Originally before getting caught up in Flash Adobe made tools and not platforms. I think this is the direction they need to continue.

Adobe I’d love to see more releases such as Shadow that solve real problems.

Update: Adobe have released an update of Shadow that solves some of the major problems I encountered while playing with it. Loving the quick iteration Adobe! Instead of me re hashing the details you can find out more on the release here http://thenextweb.com/dd/2012/04/13/adobe-updates-web-app-development-tool-shadow-with-labs-release-2/

People have been saying for a while that Google hasn’t been innovating like it use to. A good discussion was had on the last this week in Google that got me thinking about some previous Google products such as GMail, Maps, Reader and of course search that I love and would say Google innovated in that space.

More recently… it hasn’t felt like they’ve kept the pace up. It’s understandable, companies grow, start to have vested interests and lose their agility.

However very recently, for the last year in fact Larry Page has been at the helm for Google once again and he has brought a focus back to the company that was sorely missing. For a while I really did think that Google might just quietly slide into the big company trap that caught Microsoft but now I think  they have a fighting chance of staying out of it.

Lately I’ve felt like they’ve been getting back to form in both the big idea playground and in the trenches of everyday life. Lets start with the big idea playground shall we.

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Question. How much tax did Amazon pay in the UK in the last fiscal year?

Struggling? Let me help you out with some figures. In the last year alone Amazon’s revenues in the UK were £3.3 billion. Any ideas now?

Before I offer up the answer let me ask you to reflect on a few other points. At the time of writing this the global economy is still struggling to free itself from the grips of recession or flat growth. World governments are (supposedly) trying everything they can to jump start each of their economies. One tactic in the many being tried is to become more efficient and less wasteful. To make what we have work harder and last longer.

What this point in reality means is that for the average person things have got a bit/massively tight. Does this sound familiar; No pay rise in work, cost of living increasing, access to finance reduced, having to make do with less whether that be not taking the kids out for the day or trying to get another meal out of your weekly shop. My point here is that the average Joe is making sacrifices to help get the economy back on track, which is pretty fair in these times. I’m sure no matter what country you’re reading this from you’ve heard the phrase ‘We’re all in this together’.

Well we’re not. How much tax did Amazon pay in the UK last month? £0.00. Nothing!

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One of my pet peeves from the day I first got into technology was clueless politicians introducing unrealistic laws that affect the technology industry and myself as part of it. While I would love to say that I’m seeing things changing, that the people we elect to power in this country are becoming more intelligent about technology, unfortunately there’s no proof of that rather there’s proof intimating that it’s getting worse!

It’s a little old but the verge has an article demonstrating the point - Recreating famous Abbey Road scene could violate new UK copyright ruling. Now I’ll agree with you (as I’m sure you’ll notice) that copyright law isn’t in the heart of the technology industry but all I’m trying to convey is how the general situation of politicians making stupid decisions is getting worse.

I’d highly suggest you give the article a read and have a good think about whether you agree with it as you stare at the two pictures at the bottom of their post. I certainly do not.

As I don’t want to drone on too much about this point let me cut to the chase. Copyright law should protect against a person exactly duplicating another’s actual work but it should not ever prevent a person from creating work of the same idea. Essentially what this idiot judge has said with this ruling is that anyone who wants to shoot a red bus driving across Westminster bridge and process the subsequent photo to white out the sky must get permission from a person that has already taken a photo with that composition.

I mean where to even start dismantling this ruling! I don’t think I could without making this a multi part article. Can you imagine how many people would have taken a photo from that position with that composition while tweaking the sky in a bit of post processing? A damn lot. Can you imagine if this is upheld how many people will be running around famous landmarks and photographic regions snapping away with their DSLRs and howling about how their copyright is infringed when the next bloke/girl comes along with a similar artistic eye for the same scene?

Now to finish off. I would love to take a trip into London to take a few shots and claim ownership of the photographic composition but sense it is late at night and freezing cold I have opted to instead use a nice stock photo to make my point visually.

Here’s a scenario. You are going to travel to London for a day trip. You’ve never been. You find the traditional red phone boxes charming and would love to take a photo of one. While exploring London you see a red phone box with the London eye in the background. Lovely composition. You decide to take a shot…

NOT SO QUICK!

Someone has got there before you. Too bad…

I recently met up with a few good friends from back home in Northern Ireland for a stag do in Liverpool and got talking to a particular friend who’s also a web developer. The conversation eventually turned to shop talk which while including many things got me musing on one topic in particular, PHP frameworks. It got thinking of my framework of choice and more generally the emergence and increasing popularity of frameworks within the industry on my drive back home. Is this reliance on frameworks good or bad? Does one miss out on anything by using a framework? Are they really all they’re cracked up to be?

I don’t intend this to be a long article. In fact I don’t intend this to even be an article that has a particular purpose, say to sway your opinion on anything in particular. Instead I merely wish to discuss how I view the current crop of frameworks and when the right time to use one is, that is if there is a right time.

So let me kick of the meat of the discussion with the question ‘Is a PHP framework a net benefit to the developer who chooses to use one’? I’ll do my best to explain why I think the answer is a resounding yes, albeit with a caveat or two.

As with anything there are advantages and disadvantages. Trade off’s which you have to decide are worth it or not. As I’m feeling in an optimistic mood tonight, most likely due to the choc fudge cake and ice cream I’ve just indulged in I will begin with the advantages.

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Boom! Not to steal Steve Jobs’ catchphrase but that does sum up how I felt when I came back after lunch to launch Google reader and see 10 articles stating Google just spent a whopping 12.5 billion to acquire Motorola Mobility. Motorola Mobility is the phone hardware division of Motorola. Essentially it is what everyone thinks of when you say Motorola.

To put this deal into perspective the last major deal that Google made was to acquire DoubleClick in 2007 and that was for the grand sum of 3.1 billion. That deal turned out to be excellent value for Google. DoubleClick ad exchange eventually became Google ad manager and allowed Google a massive leap up into the display advertising game. It’s interesting that Microsoft was also interested in DoubleClick back then and they were reportedly interested in at least acquiring Motorola’s patents. Burned twice by Google in two very large acquisition attempts.

The question everyone is scrambling to answer is will the Motorola deal be as big or bigger success as DoubleClick or fall flat on it’s face.

Here’s my take on what the deal’s about.

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You will have to forgive me this opening paragraph dear reader for its self congratulatory tone. You see back in university roughly 7 years ago now I approached a point where I had to decide whether or not to truly throw myself into acquiring a deep understanding of Abobe Flash and make the bet that it would be time well invested in respect of being able to get a good job and progress in my career. The issue I had was that I never felt ‘right’ in Flash. I understand it’s benefits, and I’m not one to suggest it doesn’t have some advantages. The problem was I never thought of it as being the future. I went back and forth internally on whether to become and pitch myself as a Flash developer. One day I may have seen a cool Flash site and thought let’s do it while the next day I was back to worrying about the plug-ins long term viability. Anyway not to bore you any longer than necessary I eventually decided to focus on becoming a web developer with a focus on open and standards compliant technologies.

I’m ecstatic to say that my analysis and choice were bang on! With this decision myself and all others who agreed with me managed to hit the ball out of the park. Of course to anyone watching the industry this is old news. Some would say that Adobe Flash was ‘dead’ the minute the iPhone caught on. Personally I hate the tendency of recent articles to brand things as dead and pitch rival approaches to problems in the technology sector as a ‘there can be only one’ fight, though minus the swords and beheadings!

What I believe is that Flash isn’t necessarily dead but rather becoming a more niche solution to the problems broached in our industry. Eventually I think it may disappear into obscurity but that day is many years away Consider for a minute the sheer penetration Flash has as a plugin and how many sites currently use it and continue to do so.

So why write this article now? In essence because I believe we have reached a sort off critical mass with HTML5.

A quick note before I begin. When I say HTML5 I include in that statement a number of technologies such as CSS3, Javascript, SVG and WebGL in addition to the actual HTML5 markup.

In no particular order then let me sum up my reasoning.

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I rarely say this outright as I believe most things in life are not black and white but… social scientist Sue Rabbitt Roff from the University of Dundee you are utterly wrong!

If you haven’t yet heard about Sue’s views on why people should be able to sell an organ I suggest you read up on it. You can take your pick of news sources or go for the mail online one which get’s the gist of the story across.

What’s wrong with the argument exactly? Most pressingly the fact that she is condoning financial motivation as a valid motive for a person coming to the decision to give an organ away. Coming to such an important decision should be powered by a deep desire to help someone. A person should feel it deep within them. It’s hard to quantify but the way I like to think of it (and this applies to any major decision in my life) is that when you think of the decision you’ve made that you feel nothing but a deep comfortable calm inside your heart and mind. No nagging doubts and a certainty that in many years time it will remain so.

Money doesn’t factor into any part of the above process and if it’s allowed to be used as a primary motivator of the decision it will almost certainly be followed by regret or at the very least a nagging doubt over the decision for the rest of a person’s life.

The other thing that rankles me with her suggestion is why people need the money. She says they could pay off their student loans with it! Well I’ve already made my opinion clear on that matter so I’ll not go over it again. Suffice to say people should not have to consider selling their organs to finance their education. How about we retroactively take an organ from all the politicians that got a completely free education!

As always I love to hear disagreements (and agreements).

I’m 25 years young. Finished high school, college and university and am currently working. I have just finished paying of my University student loan which was a measly £2,000. Recently the office got talking about the new student loan system coming into force for students who start their course in 2012. The more I look into it the more mind boggling I find the debt they will be coming out with.

As the kids say ‘lets’s break it down man’. Here’s what we think the major typical costs for a student starting in 2012 will be.

• £9,000 per year course fee
• £3,000 – £4,000 per year for cost of living
• £3,690 average cost of accommodation (£90 per week for 41 weeks)

Lets start doing our sums. I’ll base the figures on a typical 4 year university course.

• £36,000 total course fees
• £14,000 total cost of living (based on £3,500 per year)
• £14,760 total cost of living

This gives us a grand total of – £64,760!

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