• IBM Launches Smart Business (Nov 18, 2008)

Some background into IBM Smart Business… The premise was simple. There was a tremendous need to make IT less complex for small and medium businesses. To address this, three things were created.

1. Smart Market: a Web-enabled, one-stop SMB marketplace clients can use to browse, rate and buy solutions or collaborate with other clients, industry experts and vendors from around the world.
2. Smart Cube: a secure, turn-key computer designed to deliver integrated solutions directly to the client. Smart Cubes install and connect users to Smart Market within minutes.
3. Smart Desk: a Web-enabled dashboard that clients can use as a single-point-of-contact for Smart Business maintenance, from updating applications automatically or subscribing to an on-demand service.

The model we tried to emulate in the project codenamed BBP was to think just like the Apple iPod model — the iTunes Store (Smart Market), iPod (Smart Cube), and the iTunes desktop application (Smart Desk).

I can only speak for the Smart Desk side of things, as I played a hand in its initial phases, parts of the GUI, and the build automation/testing of the Smart Desk.

UPDATE: I needed to retract some parts of this posting. Sorry about that.

We have decided to drop the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) for released iPhone software.

We put the NDA in place because the iPhone OS includes many Apple inventions and innovations that we would like to protect, so that others don’t steal our work. It has happened before. While we have filed for hundreds of patents on iPhone technology, the NDA added yet another level of protection. We put it in place as one more way to help protect the iPhone from being ripped off by others.

However, the NDA has created too much of a burden on developers, authors and others interested in helping further the iPhone’s success, so we are dropping it for released software. Developers will receive a new agreement without an NDA covering released software within a week or so. Please note that unreleased software and features will remain under NDA until they are released.

What does this mean to you?  This means that developers can now share to the world any technical articles or tutorials related to developing iPhone apps or web apps.  Now, I can finally proceed with publishing my iCopyUPaste technical article.

The main advantages of client based mobile Web applications are that they provide very good possibilities for graphic design of user interfaces and keep content available even offline. Furthermore, they often show faster reaction times and are sometimes easier to link to other telephone functions such as directories, camera, etc. The main disadvantage of every client-based solution is that they initially need to be downloaded by the user and installed on the mobile – a practice that will need to be repeated for every new release. Many users are prevented from taking this step due to technical problems, security issues and a lack of clarity concerning costs involved. Furthermore clients are always dependent on the mobile phone operating system and must often undergo costly adjustments for each individual terminal.

Mobile sites, on the other hand, do not require any installation. They are immediately available over the browser and the sites’ content and software are continuously updated unobtrusively to the mobile user. Mobile sites also provide a greater scope of outreach than clients do, as nowadays practically all mobile phones have a browser. Adjusting mobile sites and rich media content to various mobile terminals can be made 100 percent automatic. This means a massive reduction in development and testing expenses. User interface design is also no longer an obstacle. Modern mobile phone browsers enable use of AJAX and Flash, thus creating a user experience similar to that of PC Web. If a company is looking for a larger audience reach with as little hassle as possible, the mobile site is the clear winner.

I totally agree. The one thing that I advocate is to have some kind of markup language that allows the browser to have access to native device functions such as the PIM, camera, etc.

The premise is simple.  I want a way for anyone using an iPhone to open a bookmarklet on any Safari web page that activates a hidden dialog menu.  They can select any text from the web page and copy the text to a “Copy and Paste” web service up in the “cloud”.  The user can paste the text on another page’s form input field or somewhere else on the same page.  I can already think of several hurdles such as cross-domain JavaScript, server-related security issues, and iPhone limitations on JavaScript events.  I plan on sharing every morsel of information that I find on my journey and I invite anyone to help.  I will start putting up the code in some form of source control (more on that later).  By the time I’m done, perhaps Apple will already have implemented a nice solution to this problem.

The wonderful part of this idea is that it doesn’t necessarily have to be confined to iPhones.  Creating it as a web service and opening up an API allows any platform that can consume web services to have access to a “cloud-based” Copy and Paste.  Therefore, I can envision native iPhone apps to simply create the following options: “Copy to iCopyuPaste” and “Paste from iCopyuPaste“.  They can hook those events to consume the “iCopyuPaste” web service.  Of course, the down side is that it won’t work if you aren’t immediately connected to the 3G or Edge or Wi-Fi network, but that’s the trade off for copy and paste.  Another use case scenario could be for someone who needs to copy some text from one computer’s browser over to another computer’s browser.  If they needed that text to be pasted into a native app via the system’s clipboard, someone could conceivable use Adobe AIR to create a widget that consumes the “iCopyuPaste” web service and store that text onto the system clipboard, ready to be pasted on any application on the desktop. Thoughts?

What does iPhone 2.0 offer that warrants an upgrade?  GPS, 3G, and slightly larger storage.  That simply is NOT enough to warrant the extra $30 / month I’d have to shell out to get the new iPhone 2.0.  I currently pay $55 incl. taxes and fees for my iPhone 1.0 plan, and I thought that was pretty hefty to begin with.  This new plan simply is highway robbery!  Apple and AT&T, no thanks, but I’m sticking with iPhone 1.0.

• Google Gmail - I can access my mail from home, work, Wi-Fi hotspot, my iPhone.
• Google Calendar - Anything that relates to time/date/place/to-dos, it goes in my Google Calendar.  I can access this from practically anywhere.
• Google Reader - This is my online RSS Newsreader. With Google Gears offline support, I can catchup with all the latest news feeds even when I am on a plane.
• Del.icio.us Bookmarks - I find that I have not bookmarked a page in IE or Firefox in ages! Instead, all my bookmarks are on this handy service.
• MP3tunes - All my iTunes music safely stored and synced online with MP3tunes.com.  I can stream my music from the Internet.  This service doesn’t store and sync my iTunes videos and movies, so I use other means to backup and sync these files.
• .Mac - I use the iDisk service to keep any storage of files and folders that I need to access from anywhere.  The one other feature that I do like is the Photo sharing capabilities.
• SlingBox - Ok, its not really an online service, but its how I watch TV now.  Place-shifting means I can watch TV shows streamed online from any single Slingbox location.  Place one SlingBox hardware in your parent’s home in Canada and you can catch international TV right on your computer.  Quality is not the greatest, as it depends a lot on the upload speeds of the SlingBox locations you are getting the streams from.
• Google Docs - This service can almost replace your traditional Microsoft Office apps. Unfortunately, it is not as speedy as having a desktop app.  Speed and offline portability are the biggest factors in me not completely switching over to using online-based office apps.
• Google Alerts - This is how I read the latest news. I give search terms that I find most interesting, and everyday they will send me the top links to news stories and blog entries that match my keywords.
• Kayak - I give it my top flight destinations and the maximum price I am willing to pay, and I get a daily report of any matching deals.
• Twitter - This service is basically a mashup of fan site / blog / and alerting service. You can alert all your followers via SMS text, IM, and email with “what you are doing now”. I am still a little weary of letting everyone know what I am doing now, but I can see how it can be used to alert a large number of people at once, with whatever information you wish to share. This is most useful for people with a mobile lifestyle, who may not get a chance to post their thoughts to a blog.

Why has Firefox surged to  the top?  Two things. Add-ons/extensions, and tabbed browsing.  I cannot even imagine browsing the web without these innovations.  Those two simple ideas have made my online experience a sheer joy.  My top ten add-ons include:  del.icio.us, Foxmarks, Adblock, Google Browser Sync, Google Gears, Google Notebook, Operator, Greasemonkey, Firebug, and User Agent Switcher.

The upcoming FIrefox 3 also promises new innovations to make browsing even more simpler and useful. The aptly named “Awesome Bar” is indeed awesome.  You just start typing in anything that you’ve accessed in your browser URL, and it comes up with possible suggestions.  Unlike type-ahead, the suggestions you get can come from any position in the URL (not just the first n characters). Also, the performance and security enhancements are much needed as pre-Firefox-3 browsers had started to become slow.  I remembered the primary reason that I had switched from IE to Firefox back in the day was because Firefox 1.0 was so much faster than IE 6.0.  Performance is as much part of the user experience as UI. You can have the prettiest user interface, but if the user has to wait longer to get their information, they will perceive the product as crap.

Mozilla’s next phase is to rule the mobile browser space. The space is already crowded with the likes of Webkit, Opera, Pocket IE, etc. How awesome will it be to be able to keep those Add-Ons while surfing the mobile web on any smartphone platform. That’s Firefox’s bread and butter.  That’s what will make them successful in the mobile web 2.0.

Spooky, eh? If there’s only one RSS feed that you want to keep track of my online world, this is it.  Looks like a very promising web service. It allows you to make and keep track of comments for all your online feeds that you subscribe to. All your feeds and conversations in one place. Interesting…

I have some interesting ideas for it:

• Instead of the blog as the front page, redesign front page to simplify navigation and accessibility.
• Split up into 6 themes according to what are the most requested information: World Festival, Your Country, About RIA, Blog, Events Calendar, Memberships.
• Shiny new logo
• About RIA - Allow people to easily find photos, and other promotional materials. Without exposing personal information, add a directory of current board members and a way for people to contact them.
• Your Country - Enable people to easily find resources and news based on a specific country.
• Memberships - Add ability to renew or join membership online. Add a way to accept credit card donations online via PayPal or Google Checkout.
• Link to Facebook group page for RIA

IBM said the marketplace will offer pre-integrated products and services from IBM and independent software developers. Customers will be able to use the software they buy on premises or in the cloud.

IBM is working with Google to build a worldwide network of connected servers, an architecture sometimes referred to as a computing cloud, from which it plans to deliver software and services.

The online store will be organized geographically and also by industry. Customers will be able to purchase software or services in just four clicks, IBM said. The company plans to pilot the marketplace throughout 2008

Read more about this from various sources online:

• IBM To Launch Web-Based Application Market - InformationWeek
• Google, IBM Join Forces To Dominate Cloud Computing - InformationWeek
• IBM to Build Apps Marketplace for SMBs - PCWorld
• IBM launching a platform for SMB opportunity - IT Business

This type of location network awareness could be applied to many other applications. For instance, upon connecting to your Wi-Fi router at home, it could signal an action of some kind. For instance, if your smartphone sensed that your PC or Mac was online in your home network, it could synchronize your smartphone’s contacts, calendars, and music automatically over Wi-Fi. On the smartphone, there should be the ability to discover open hotspots, store those hotspots to location profiles, and take actions based on those location and network profiles.

The iPhone Safari browser, Nokia, and Android all use the same web browser engine called Webkit.  Webkit is a revelation in itself. The full web browsing experience on the desktop now available on the mobile device. Mozilla’s Fennec is based on the same Mozilla Firefox engine and also allows for the full browsing experience.  Windows Mobile has Internet Explorer and its also starting to move in this direction. See a trend?  Yep. The days of WAP browsing are slowing being numbered. Its not going away anytime soon, but it eventually will.

Of course, as a developer, you will also be faced with a choice of developing a mobile native application vs mobile web application. That decision is not an easy one to make. There are so many platforms to choose from. iPhone, Windows Mobile, Palm, BlackBerry, Java ME, Flash Lite, Symbian, and the list goes on. This tells me that in order to get the most market penetration for your application, targeting the mobile web is the logical choice. However, there are exceptions. Gaming apps, off-line storage, and integration with phone hardware feature set are all compelling reasons to target your application to a platform as opposed to the mobile web.  What Apple should have done to make this decision easier was to integrate phone APIs into the Safari Webkit engine. Create a subset of XHTML tags or JavaScript objects that allow the mobile web app to tap into the PIM, camera, or other mobile device native function.

Roger Cohen: A chubby Obama’s ‘unity in diversity’

Note: I do not affliate myself with any political party. I am a unbiased bystander in American politics. I am pretty sure a lot of readers will consider this a nod for Obama as president, but I make no such claims.

Things are still being worked out, but I have already pitched the idea of integrating this server management piece with the iPhone (now that the iPhone SDK is officially out there).  Unfortunately, things at IBM go at a glacial pace, and I have yet to hear much about my idea coming to fruition. Well, here’s hoping they seriously consider it.

• Copy and paste (Come on, how hard can this be?)
• Text to speech for Safari web pages (This is useful for when you are driving and want the text of the web page to be read outloud to you)
• Enable Bluetooth GPS receivers (If the Windows Mobile SmartPhone has support for this, then why can’t the iPhone?)
• Voice prompted turn-by-turn navigation in Maps (Right now, you get directions in the Maps application, but unless you have a passenger with you that can operate the iPhone and tell you where to turn next, you are bound to get into an accident doing this solo)
• Corporate Wi-Fi access (allow user/pwd instead of preshared key for authentication)
• Video capture for camera. (Like the copy and paste idea, I have no idea why this is so difficult to implement)
• Native iPod games that you can buy from iTunes on an iPhone (Not just as a Safari webapp)
• Enable offline storage for Maps and Safari webapps

Third Party Applications on the iPhone

Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February. We are excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users. With our revolutionary multi-touch interface, powerful hardware and advanced software architecture, we believe we have created the best mobile platform ever for developers.

It will take until February to release an SDK because we’re trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once—provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc. This is no easy task. Some claim that viruses and malware are not a problem on mobile phones—this is simply not true. There have been serious viruses on other mobile phones already, including some that silently spread from phone to phone over the cell network. As our phones become more powerful, these malicious programs will become more dangerous. And since the iPhone is the most advanced phone ever, it will be a highly visible target.

Some companies are already taking action. Nokia, for example, is not allowing any applications to be loaded onto some of their newest phones unless they have a digital signature that can be traced back to a known developer. While this makes such a phone less than “totally open,” we believe it is a step in the right direction. We are working on an advanced system which will offer developers broad access to natively program the iPhone’s amazing software platform while at the same time protecting users from malicious programs.

We think a few months of patience now will be rewarded by many years of great third party applications running on safe and reliable iPhones.

Steve

P.S.: The SDK will also allow developers to create applications for iPod touch. [Oct 17, 2007]

Pros

• Mobile Safari web browser using Wi-Fi or EDGE. You can surf the web just as on a desktop, or you can go to iPhone specific sites that really customize the web browsing experience.
• Everything you can find in an iPod, plus a mobile phone.
• The thin form factor and profile is elegant and makes it feel like you’re holding something luxurious.
• Photos taken from camera are surprisingly good. Viewing photos on an iPhone is a joy.
• Syncing all your songs, podcasts, photos, contacts, and calendar with iTunes is a breeze and brain-dead easy.
• Wi-Fi Music Store. This is really a long time coming. Basically, if you happen to be at a coffee shop (i.e. StarBucks), and you like a song thats playing there, you can connect to the Wi-Fi Music Store and purchase it on the spot. To me, thats the future of how people will discover new music instead of traditionally on the radio.
• An active iPhone hacker community.

Cons

• No GPS. The Google Maps application is great, but without GPS you need a copilot with you when you are driving in order for it to work. Plus, it doesn’t cache any of the maps. So if you are in an area without any network connectivity, you are pretty much hosed.
• No wireless sync. This is something that Zune2 got right.
• Can’t record video.
• No real 3rd party apps (no access to local storage and other advanced hardware features). UPDATE: See later post about Steve Jobs change of heart.
• No disk mode. Basically, you can’t use it as a flash drive as you used to be able to do with the iPod video.
• Have to pay an extra $0.99 for a ringtone version of a song that you purchased at the iTunes store already. Ringtone maker won’t work with MP3s or AAC files that you ripped from CDs.
• No external battery. Must recharge.
• Headphone jack is not compatible with other head phone makers. Duh!
• Locked only to AT&T service provider for 2 years. There is a simple work-around to choose the Go-Phone Prepaid plans that have no contract obligations. Just make sure to call 611 to cancel automatic monthly refills, and you’ll have a really expensive Go-Phone in your hands.
• Apple and AT&T are becoming NOT so consumer-friendly. Just lookup the all the bad rap they are getting with their intentional “bricking” of iPhones and the really bad AT&T customer service.

Ok. There are more cons than pros, but that’s the price you pay for being an Apple fanboy. For an alternative smartphone go check out the Nokia N95 8GB version. At the moment, its not available in North America and the price tag is $200 more than an iPhone.

• Duh! Forward Jarome Iginla and goaltender Mikka Kiprusoff. The best forward is the captain Iginla. The best goaltender is Kipper. If those two don’t play well, it’ll be tough to win games.
• Powerplay. The powerplay specialists need to dominate. In my mind, Alex Tanguay and Kristian Huselius are the keys to the Flames powerplay success. And did you see Daymond Lankow’s shot tipping skills? He’s the “Joe Nieuwendyk” for the Flames powerplay unit. Macinnis and Suter no longer man the powerplay unit, but for now Dion Phaneuf and Adrian Aucoin are gonna be key players.
• Penalty Kill. Obviously staying out of the penalty box is key, but if you need to kill penalties, these are the key players for the Flames. Kiprusoff, Regehr, Sarich, and Yelle. If everyone else plays like them, it’ll be tough to score against the Flames.
• Even strength. I agree with Mike Keenan’s strategy to make sure the passing game improves. If that improves, the overall team speed improves as well. If you took a look at Detroit Red Wings from last year’s playoffs, they totally dominated the Flames with crisp and accurate passing. The other team can’t score if you have most of the puck possession.
• Intangibles. The Flames have plenty of leadership to go around. I can count at least 5 former captains in the lineup. The Flames no doubt are more skilled than in years past. The key ingredient missing the last two years was a “consistent” hard working effort every shift, every battle along the boards, and every time without the puck. You can’t simply have a poor 1st period and then dominate period two and three and expect to win games any more. Consistency is key.

Well, there you go. Thats my assessment and I’m sticking to it! Work hard, play hard. Go Flames go!

• Zec Online Journal: Steve Jobs doesn’t understand mobility
• Steve Jobs Answers Walt’s iPhone Questions
• The iPhone’s Camera: Great Under Ample Light
• Finally Confirmed: What the iPhone Doesn’t Have

I have one comment about the iPhone’s announced rate plans. It works out the same as the current Cingular/AT&T voice plans plus the $19.99 unlimited data plan. There were rumblings that Apple and Cingular/AT&T would make it more expensive, but I think it was a wise decision not to charge more.

More Info

Just got it delivered to my house yesterday. I went around my neighborhood and down some back roads to get comfortable with the speed. The speedometer says it can max out at 80 MPH, but based on my first few rides, I seriously doubt that it can go that fast. Going uphill, it seemed to max out at 45 MPH. On a straight flat road, it had no trouble going 50 MPH. I did not go faster than that, as the ride started to get a bit rough.

It is after all a very good thing that Apple has decided to provide URL-based access to the iPhone’s telephony, email, and other services, but that point really got lost on the crowd I think, who were expecting an SDK to access these things. We’ve known all along that web apps would be one possibility for third-party iPhone development, and Steve’s “there’s no SDK, just use Safari and standard Web 2.0 technologies like Ajax to develop iPhone apps” message didn’t highlight the power of what they are actually allowing here. (As one colleague commented, “just try getting your web app to make an actual phone call on a J2ME-based phone.”) Personally, I think that there are a lot of interesting possibilities for third-party development with this kind of access to the iPhone’s main features, and I’m not surprised that Apple isn’t letting us get at the OS or place buttons on the home screen, but his message clearly didn’t go over well with the developer audience here in San Francisco. Read More.

Obviously, having access to basic phone functions isn’t entirely new as many current mobile web browsers give this basic functionality (if your web pages are coded correctly). The real meat is if web developers are given access to local persistent storage on the phone, access to iTunes, and access to mail and calendar. Another important thing that we would need is access to the multi-touch user interface events (i.e. in addition to the standard onClick and onFocus events, perhaps we would use onPinchIn or onPinchOut events to trigger actions on the web application. I have yet to see any real specifications on this 3rd party web app API, but it does hold some promise (contrary to what many see as a disappointment).

Oh, and one last thing. I also want to be able to run Java ME on the iPhone. I already have two Java ME apps that I use constantly. Gmail and Opera Mini. It would be sweet if the iPhone could leverage the Java ME space. However, I do recall that Steve Jobs once quoted as saying that Java is too heavy weight and isn’t likely to be in its future plans. Therefore, I’d assume that Java ME on the iPhone will most likely never happen.

• Store and serve application resources locally
• Store data locally in a fully-searchable relational database
• Run asynchronous Javascript to improve application responsiveness

At TechCrunch, they give a pretty good review of Google Gears. Now, this idea is not new in the desktop world. Lotus Notes pioneered the idea of “replication” for both online and offline use. This is Lotus Notes forte and cause of endless frustration at the same time. We’ll soon see how well Google will be able to work out the kinks. So far, the only web app that is Gears enabled is Google Reader. Other notable projects that propose to do similar thing are: Dojo Offline Toolkit and the Apache Derby embedded database.

Time to stop using the button element because it doesn’t render on many of the mobile web browsers.

This is why mobile phones in N. America still suck compared to those in Japan. Let’s see how the Apple iPhone starts to promote changes needed to catch up.

If only there was a way to save common canned responses to some datastore on your mobile phone, and simply paste them into form fields that you need to enter. I have a Windows Mobile smartphone device, and that is a feature that I most wished for. Sure… the platform supports copy and paste, but only for phones that have pen-based input. Surely, there must be a copy-paste mechanism for those smartphones that only have the joystick/keypad-based input. I have tried several mobile web browsers for my Cingular 2125 Windows Mobile smartphone device, and they all fail on providing this key feature. I tried Opera Mini (J2ME), Pocket IE, and the Opera Browser beta for Windows Smartphones, and it is an incredible chore to input text. A simple copy to datastore and paste mechanism would help alleviate this annoyance.

• User has a computer with mic or maybe a mobile phone as an input mechanism.
• User goes to a screen that prompts the user for the melody that they want to search. They hum the parts of the song to the mic and it is uploaded to the search engine backend for processing.
• The backend processing engine would need to recognize the melody and automatically transcribe it into musical notes. Then, it applys that pattern as a search term. It would also need to take into account that many people may hum the tune in different tones from the original song.
• Setting up the datastore on the server would obviously be no easy task. The data entry required to seed the database to make it useful would be enormous.
• If any matches are found, the results page should allow the user to preview clips of that song starting from the part of the melody that it thinks you hummed in.

Is this concept doable? Yes. Is this a simple task? No. Is there a wow factor for something like this? You bet.

My hope is that someday the mobile browser space will be advanced enough that it will rival that of the desktop browser space. That way, web developers can simply write their code once, and that it will render properly on all web browsers - desktop and mobile versions.

As soon as I put in the disc, there was very little hassle and user input required. I proceeded to install the Belkin Wi-Fi USB adapter. That worked using the XP drivers CD that I had lying around. When I took a look at the Device Manager, there were several missing device drivers. My motherboard uses the older NVidia nForce2 technology which enables RAID support and Firewire, A quick look at the Nvidia support site, and there is no Vista support for their nForce2 drivers. That sucked, but I don’t use RAID and Firewire anyway, so it was no big loss. The big glaring issue was no Vista driver support for my Creative SoundBlaster Live card! I had to search for a hack-around that someone posted to a forum in order to fool the Creative XP drivers to install into Vista. Luckily, that worked and I was able to get sound coming out again. The other big issue was that my previous year Symantec Antivirus would no longer work. Symantec’s solution is to get customers to shell out for their 2007 edition. I found that to be a load of crap! So, I ditched Symantec and went with Grisoft’s AVG Free Edition. That worked with no problems. The next thing I wanted to get working was the ActiveSync for my Dell Axim. I had heard that Vista included a new application that replaces ActiveSync called Windows Mobile Device Center (WMDC). After plugging in my Dell Axim, I expected Vista to automatically launch this new app. However, the only thing it did was install the device drivers and that’s all. I searched for the app using the Vista Search, but no matches were found. I was getting frustrated now, but after searching online, I found out that you have to go to Windows Update to get the WDMC installed. I didn’t understand why it wasn’t just included in the install media.

After all that work, I finally have a decent Vista setup. There are still many apps that aren’t compatible with Vista, i.e. iTunes, PeerGuardian, etc, However, that’s to be expected. My overall impression is that Vista is much prettier than XP.  It does take longer to bootup, and graphics playback seems to lag slightly behind. My experience index was a 3.0 out of 5.9. A more modern graphics card will probably help, but I am guessing that a CPU transplant would be more in order. The biggest con is the hefty price tag, and I would imagine the only reasonable way to get Vista is to get it preinstalled with a new PC. Verdict - I give Vista a 3 out of 5.9. Same as m