SaaS: Change starts easy and then gets really hard

Definitely worth a full read, but here’s a key nugget:

In the traditional software world, new releases were bundled up into distinct versions. And it was up to the customer if they wanted to upgrade or not. If they didn’t like the opinions of the new version, they could stick with the old, familiar version. If the new version didn’t solve any new problems they had, they could keep using the version they already had.

Not so with SaaS. When updates are deployed, they’re deployed instantly for everyone. That’s not always the case – sometimes you phase in a release – but for the most part the end game is the same: This is new and it’s making its way into the product. This means customers often don’t get the chance to opt out of changes in the SaaS world.

. . .

This is why change gets really hard as a SaaS product matures. Existing customer expectations are some of the strongest forces pushing back at a company with new ideas.

Even the best software, some might argue iOS or OS X fits this claim, is not immune. To make good software, you have to break some eggs. Or something.

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As a side note, compression is how cool people say Spandex.

Squid looks a bit bulky, but the data it collects and the technology itself are very impressive. I used to train a lot, and keeping a journal was always key for tracking progress and for motivation, albeit artificial motivation. I did this by carrying around a thick notebook and pencil to track reps and weight for all the various exercises I did. Seems pretty stupid now, but it served its purpose.

Having that data in a format I could quickly analyze and plot would have been very nice to observe trends and help plan future training.

Seems a lot of gym rats are nerds at heart, and Squid looks like a great way to tap into that geeky desire for self-programming. Although I haven’t seen any discussion of Squid as more than an experiment/proof-of-concept, I expect its concept will soon find a way into mainstream production via some apparel giant like Nike or Under Armor.

Imagine the applications for professional sports too, especially when it comes to preventing and diagnosing injuries. Very cool stuff.

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From my long-past days in IT, I remember the added pressure of supporting executives, regardless of what they were carrying.

When it came to support, we jumped, e.g. I once was called to an offsite meeting to work on the COO’s non-standard Thinkpad; we used to support different printer configurations for execs and their admins; certain small laptops (now called ultrabooks) were only for high-level execs, etc.

From what I’ve seen, IT makes no bones about giving better support to execs. After all, these people can get you fired if you refuse to support this or that non-standard device, and similarly, they remember you later as a go-to person, which never hurts.

So yeah, BYOD is driven top-down; IT will sit up and take notice if the CEO is using an iPad exclusively, not only because it might break, but also because, it means every other exec will follow suit very quickly, if only for the cool factor. It might take 1,000 line managers to get the same level of attention.

What have you seen in your BYOD experience?

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A few months ago, when I finally upgraded my wife’s OG iPhone, I initially bought the 4, but settled on the 4S because she thought Siri sounded useful and cool. I told her my opinion, basically that voice was a neat feature that no one ever used consistently beyond the first week or so.

I recall telling Anthony (@anthonyslai) the same thing about Android’s voice input feature years ago too.

For a while there, Siri looked like the exception, not the rule. I’ve been eagerly watching hackers do very cool things with Siri, all the while noticing that my wife never uses Siri. When I quizzed her, she said it was good enough, i.e. down a lot, wrong, slow.

Even though Siri is awesome technology and by far the best voice-based interface I’ve seen to date, it’s still not good enough to create new behaviors, at least for her. Now, I’m reading similar stories from other people, purely anecdotal, but still curious.

So, is this your experience with the 4S or what you’ve heard from people who have one?Possibly Related Posts:

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One trend I wholeheartedly endorse is the rise of the unplugged getaway, which is tougher (and pricier) than you think.

Have some fun imagining yourself at one of these places: 5 of the World’s Best Unplugged Getaways.

Years ago, I went to a tiny little coral cay off the coast of Australia and experienced this type of disconnection. No TV, phone, internet or even air conditioning in the rooms, which happily made it absolutely imperative to get out and enjoy the beauty of the Great Barrier Reef.

It was liberating and refreshing, and I’d highly recommend it.

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Anyway, one guy I met decided to connect to me on LinkedIn, a brilliant reminder of that professional network that I’ve neglected over the last half decade. I’m really glad he did because I was then reminded that most of the people giving me business cards, also are on LinkedIn.

So, I’ve been building my professional network like a boss.

Interestingly, like Facebook, LinkedIn’s search leaves much to be desired; it’s great if you’re within two hops of the person, but if not, good luck to you.

Google, however, is really good at searching LinkedIn, which tells you a lot about why Twitter decided not to renew their search agreement. On the one hand, you could argue that allowing Google to index your content brings people to your site, makes you relevant, etc. If you go this route, why even have search at all?

On the other, if Google decides to tweak (ahem, socialize) its algorithm, then your results could suffer. Most services offer search, but why does it have to be so bad? I wonder if LinkedIn has hidden some results based on the degrees of separation. They do try to upsell you when you try to connect to people outside your immediate network.

Anyway, search always needs to be better. My LinkedIn profile needs more attention, etc.

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Enterprise iPhone 4S activations spike, highlight Apple’s halo effect | ZDNet

Since its release in 2007, the iPhone has served as the perfect gateway drug to other Apple products in the home. Apple is now seeing this among enterprise buyers too.

I spend a fair amount of time attending enterprisey gatherings, so I get a nice sample of the hardware people rock for work. Years ago, I was among the very small number using a Mac. That has changed, but PCs still dominate these gatherings, by a large margin.

I see a ton of iPhones, like 95%, and iPads are very common too. Macs, not so much though, maybe 10-25% depending on the attendees.

So, if there’s a halo, I’m not seeing much of it.

I also get the sense that very few people BYOD, at least to conferences, e.g. many of the Macs I see have corporate inventory tags on them.

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He even includes pictures of SunSpace communities on Chris’ (@cbales) Spaces iPhone app, which I personally love both as a go-to app and as a case study for WebCenter’s REST APIs, which I’ve been pumping up to user group leaders all week at the IOUC leader summit (@iouc_conference).

Anyway, check out Peter’s post and follow him for updates on the newly-migrated communities and for WebCenter tips and tricks.Possibly Related Posts:

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Check out the recap on the official WebCenter (@oraclewebcenter) blog:

Do More with Oracle WebCenter: Expand Beyond Portals – Webcast QPossibly Related Posts:

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Here are a few good voices I’ve read recently, along with some that I’ve been reading for a while in no particular order:

• Yannick Ongena (@yannick_ongena)
• Andrejus Baranovskis (@andrejusb)
• WebCenter Architecture Team, a.k.a. the A-Team
• John Sim (@JRSim_UIX) and Fishbowl Solutions (@fishbowle20)
• Bex Huff (@bex)
• Billy Cripe (@billycripe)

So, if you want to learn more about WebCenter, how people use it, tips and tricks, experiences, all that, add these people to your favorite feed reader and to the Twitters, if you’re into that.

Did I miss anyone? Find the comments and educate me.

Update: I’ve promoted John Brunswick‘s (@johnbrunswick) work here before, but yeah, you should read his stuff too.Possibly Related Posts:

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To be clear, I’m talking about the Logitech Revue remote:

The Logitech Revue remote

Not the Sony one:

The Sony Internet TV remote

First off, I have a Logitech Revue, which Google sent me after Google IO 2010. I like the idea of Google TV, and the latest bump to Honeycomb has cleaned up the experience quite a bit. Protip: having Netflix makes Google TV awesome. Google needs to line up more content for Google TV, and I’m more bullish now than I was initially. Still, the device has an uphill journey.

Back to the remote, I read some criticism of the Sony remote coming out of CES, and it reminded me to write this post.

The Logitech remote looks bulky and inconvenient, but believe me when I say it’s awesome. I wish more remotes would follow in its path.

What do I like about:

• It’s starkly utilitarian and uncompromising, no bells or whistles or tiny keys.
• It’s a full-size keyboard (unlike the Sony remote) so typing is comfortable, and the keys are tactile, not rubber, which I prefer.
• It’s easy to learn how to use because it’s a known quantity, a keyboard. Look at your remotes and see how similar they are; you basically have to relearn the major functions for each remote.
• It’s wireless so unlike most remotes, there’s not IR line-of-sight limitation, which is a nice feature.
• It’s size makes it much harder to lose, a common remote problem. It’s lightweight and thin so you can operate it with one hand, but its dimensions keep it from sinking into the couch.

It’s not just me either. My wife loves this remote too. I was actually shocked when she told me this because generally, she dislikes learning new gadgets.

Logitech got it right with this remote, whereas I’m not so sure about the Sony version.

Anyway, the point here is that utility trumps beauty in everyday devices.

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Sun was an early social adopter, and SunSpace was/is a very active community. I first met Peter a shortly after the Sun acquisition was announced. As social community managers, we shared tips and tricks, and we talked about adding his Community Equity layer to Connect. That never happened, since Connect has been a side project for several years, but Peter and I kept in touch.

I’m stoked to be working on the same team with Peter now, where we can pool our collective experiences with social in the enterprise and apply our knowledge to WebCenter.

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Tips’n'Tricks for WebCenter #3: How to display custom page titles in Spaces
by Matthias Müller-Prove

If people don’t know where they are in the web, they tend to get lost in cyberspace. This can be prevented by displaying the page title for your pages in Oracle #WebCenter Portal Spaces. (At least they won’t get lost in your WebCenter space.) All you have to do is to create a custom page template and use it as default in your space. Its head section will contain a few code snippets to display the title. Add an HTML box and enter e.g.<h1>#pageDocBean.title</h1>: 

That’s it. That is the basic idea.

Caveat: This does not work for wiki pages and HTML pages because they do not have a specific title in WebCenter. #pageDocBean.title will just return ‘Wiki’ or ‘Resource’.

Now let’s get a little bit more sophisticated. A space has a title as well. So let’s use it:

<h1>#spaceContext.currentSpace.metadata.displayName &ndash; #pageDocBean.title</h1>

Are you ready for level 3? Now I want to add more styling, and I want to have a special treatment for the home page to display the tagline for the space. Here is a preview of the final result, first the home page, then any other page in the space:

To accomplish this behavior, I have to use a conditional statement #{ BOOL ? CASE1 : CASE2 }. WebCenter’s expressions cannot be nested, hence the conditions will be tested several times to get the desired result:

<h1 style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;">
<span style="color: #9a9a9a; font-size: 80%;">
#{pageDocBean.title != 'Home' ? spaceContext.currentSpace.metadata.displayName : ''}
</span>
<span style="color: #9a9a9a;">
#{pageDocBean.title == 'Home' ? spaceContext.currentSpace.metadata.displayName : ''}
</span>

<br />

#{pageDocBean.title != ‘Home’ ? pageDocBean.title : ”}
<span style=”font-size: 80%;”>
#{pageDocBean.title == ‘Home’ ? ‘Information Matters’ : ”}
</span>
</h1>

• First I apply an inline style for h1 to remove some space above and below the heading.
• Then I ask for the page title, and if it is not ‘Home’ (every page but the home page) then I display the space name at size 80% and gray.
• Just for the home page I display the space name in size 100%.
• New line for the page title.
• Now the same distinction fot the page name. For every page but the home page I display the page title.
• If this code is executed on the home page then I display ‘Information Matters’ – the tag line for the space – instead of the page title.

Yes, you are correct. Thanks for paying attention. The image of the lady is missing in my code example.

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It didn’t end well, thanks to a variety of factors, but one good thing that came of the effort was a conversation with Justin (@oracletechnet) about how valuable a WebCenter VM would be to the Oracle community. He agreed, apparently, because last year, a WebCenter 11g Patchset 3 VM appeared on OTN.

Update: Turns out Christina Kolotouros and Pieter Humphrey actually built the WebCenter VM for the virtual developer day series for OTN. Kudos to them.

My new role as an evangelist/advocate for WebCenter has brought my back to the same place I was in 2009, in need of a good VM. This time, however, I want a VM that’s also convenient for developers. We want people to try out WebCenter, and the easier I can make that process, the better.

Talking to friend of the ‘Lab Bex Huff (@bex) recently, the idea of achieving productivity in 30 minutes with any new product came up as a bar to use for success. I like this because it’s measurable and catchy. So, my goal for the WebCenter VM will be to see how close we can get to 30 minutes to productivity.

I describe the entire adventure below, but if you’re interested in the executive summary, I was able to fit the entire, decompressed OTN WebCenter 11g Patchset 3 VM onto a 32 GB thumb drive. And, more importantly, it’s actually possible to run the VM from the thumb drive, a la Ubuntu Live CD.

You read that right. I was able to run the WebCenter VM off a 32 GB thumb drive.

This is kind of a big deal, given that a live CD/USB gives you the ability to test drive software without leaving any trace on your machine. No install, no configuration, no mess when you’re done.

Finally, it’s entirely possible to get a WebCenter VM up and running and more importantly achieve productivity within 30 minutes. There are some caveats, but this is also a big deal. Read on for the skinny.

Getting Started
Providing a way to test out new products is critical to success within a development community, and OTN has done a fantastic job of this for the Oracle community for a really long time. So, I began my second adventure with the OTN VM, rather than trying to roll my own, again. After all, they’ve done all the heavy lifting.

So, the WebCenter VM, it’s 22 files, totaling 14.5 GB. So yeah, it’s big. I set about downloading the files, which ultimately took me about three (3) hours over a 10 mbps connection.

Once I’d downloaded all the files, I moved on to decompressing them; OTN provides detailed instructions on the best way to do this, i.e. using 7-zip (Windows), p7zip (Linux) or 7zx (Mac). These tools reconstitute the compressed files into two .vmdk files, which can be imported into VirtualBox.

One protip here for Ubuntu users, like me. You can install p7zip directly from the Ubuntu repos like so:

sudo apt-get install p7zip-full

Anyway, regards of your host OS, when you’re done, you’ll have three files:

REAVDD-HOL-WC-disk1.vmdk

REAVDD-HOL-WC-disk2.vmdk

REAVDD-HOL-WC.ofv

Decompression took about 10-15 minutes. So, I’m at 195 minutes, if you’re scoring at home.

Once you have these three files, simply open the .ofv file in VirtualBox to import the VM. Import took me about 15 minutes, and the decompressed, imported VM came in at 28 GB.

By this point, I’ve invested 210 minutes, or 3.5 hours, but I’m hopeful I can cut this time dramatically using a flash drive.

Ideas
My idea is to put the decompressed VM on a flash drive and see if it will run from the flash drive, live USB style, just like Canonical offers with Ubuntu Live CD.

This is the best way to get developers to test your  software because it leaves no lasting traces on their machines. No fuss, no mess. If they like it great, they can copy over the VM from VirtualBox and run it locally; if not, they have a nice flash drive keepsake from the WebCenter evangelism team.

Even if live USB won’t work, I’ll still be able to save some time, considering it took 210 minutes to download and decompress the files, then import the VM into VirtualBox.

So, I bought a 32 GB flash drive (this one) and set off to test my theories.

My first order of business was to reformat the drive. First, this removes the software that comes bundled with it, saving space, and second, I know I’ll need a cross-platform partition format in order to make the drive readable from Linux, Mac and Windows.

I decide to use exFAT because it fits the cross-platform bill, and unlike its cousin FAT32, it supports file sizes larger than 4 GB, which is a must for the WebCenter VM whose .vmdk files are 3.4 and 11.1 GB respectively.

ExFAT is relatively new, but it’s supported by many different OSes, including OS X 10.6.5 (Snow Leopard) and 10.7 (Lion), Windows 7, and Windows XP (with an update, KB955704). With Linux, your mileage may vary, depending on the distro.

I run Ubuntu 11.10, and installing FUSE exFAT added the drivers I needed. See here and here for easy instructions.

Once I had the drive partitioned, which took maybe 5 minutes, I was able to copy the files without any hitches. That process took about 3 hours.

After the files copied, I had a ready-to-test thumb drive. Drum roll please.

Results
Initially, I was worried about running the VM at all, given the hefty hardware requirements listed on OTN:

• At least 3GB of RAM (recommended 6GB)
• At least 30GB of free disk space (Note: virtualization works best with contiguous space so if using Windows as the host operating system, it is a good idea to run a defragmenting program, and make sure you are using NTFS for your file system to handle large files)
• 2GHz processor

My hardware doesn’t come close to the recommendations, despite being pretty sweet. My Macbook Pro sports a 2GHz quad-core Intel i7 CPU and 4 GB of RAM, and my Dell running Ubuntu rocks a 2.4 GHz quad-core Intel i5 CPU and 4 GB of RAM.

The VM imported itself with a default setting of 2 GB of RAM, and I didn’t really expect it to run well, given previous experience with allocating 50% of the host’s RAM to a VM.

I was wrong.

The WebCenter VM boots up quickly and runs smoothly on the host. Plus, the VM includes handy scripts to start all the services required by WebCenter, as well as a hands-on lab, which helps get you on your way to productivity.

Services take about seven (7) minutes to start, but keep in mind, I’m starting a database instance, WebCenter Content (formerly UCM), and WebLogic Server, with only 2 GB of RAM. Once everything is running, you can open the Avitek sample portal and get started right away.

So, by my count, that’s less than 10 minutes from VM start to Avitek. Not too shabby.

OK, sure, you have to copy the files from the flash drive to your machine, which could take several hours, but this is an operation you can leave overnight, unlike downloading 22 files.

Just saying.

But what about running the VM directly from the flash drive as a live USB?

Turns out this is possible, but it takes patience.

I ran the live USB from my Mac, and the VM booted up quickly. I didn’t time it, but it felt like a couple minutes tops. Starting the services is where the patience begins. It took about 23 minutes to get the database instance, WebCenter Content, and WebLogic Server started.

After the services were started, opening Avitek took another five (5) minues, but once it was running, the response times were pretty snappy.

So, even running the live USB VM, you could get to productivity in about 30 minutes. Your mileage will definitely vary here, given your hardware specs. I suspect there are I/O constraints over USB 2.0 that would prevent times from ever reaching the direct I/O speeds you see off a hard drive.

Still, it’s possible.

Admit it, you’re surprised, and I am too. This is great news.

Final notes
So, what have I proved?

Well, primarily that it’s possible to get started with WebCenter in 30 minutes or less.

That’s a big deal. OTN has done a huge favor to the community by providing the WebCenter VM, and now, I want to go even further and save you that 210 minutes or so required to download, decompress and import the VM.

Why? Because we want you to try out WebCenter, silly. We know you’re busy, so let us do some legwork for you. I hope to get some flash drives produced with the OTN VM on them to hand out to interested people I meet at events. So, watch this space if you want to meet us, talk WebCenter and score on of those drives.

Or hey, if you’re really stoked to give it whirl, leave a comment, and we’ll talk.

Epilogue
I should mention that the OTN VM throws an error when it boots if you don’t have a specific Windows temp directory to map.

This is a Shared Folders setting, and all you need to do is delete that share to avoid the error, which is harmless anyway.

If it matters, I did my testing using the current version of VirtualBox, 4.1.8, and you’ll need to ensure you install the corresponding Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack for whichever version of VirtualBox you’re running.

Also, the VM includes an older version of the VirtualBox Guest Additions, which might matter to you. If so, check out Chet’s (@oraclenerd) post on how to install them on OEL.

So, that’s it. I finally got my WebCenter VM, and I hope this has been edifying for you. Next project: WebCenter Content on a stick.

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He initially posted these internally to Connect, which he uses as his internal blog, an unintentional feature we created a long time ago. Not so long ago, the venerable SunSpace, which our own Peter Reiser (@peterreiser) created and oversees to this day, migrated off its old infrastructure to the internal instance of WebCenter 11g Patchset 4 we all use.

So, many of the content owners from Sun have become WebCenter experts overnight as their communities migrated to WebCenter.

Anyway, I convinced Matthias to share his tips and tricks with the outside world so that all the WebCenter users out there could benefit, and since we’re a WebCenter team, I’m reposting them here for your edification/education and for posterity’s sake. Thanks Matthias. Enjoy.

Tips’n'Tricks for WebCenter #1: How to apply custom resources in Spaces
by Matthias Müller-Prove

This is the beginning of a little series of tips’n'tricks for Oracle #WebCenter Portal Spaces. The background is our migration from Confluence – that we used at Sun – to WebCenter Spaces as a collaboration tool for the VDI engineering team. I want to share my insights so that other teams and users can get a smooth(er) start with WebCenter.

As a space owner and administrator you might have been to Pages and Spaces Actions > Manage > All Settings

… then opened the Resources tab, and skimmed through the lists of page templates, navigations, and skins. And you might have asked yourself, “which of these is actually used in my space?”

It took me quite some time to figure it out. And that’s the reason for this posting. You are looking at the wrong spot! You have to go to Pages and Spaces Actions > Manage > All Settings > General to look at the right column under Display Settings. This is the control area where you set the default Page Template, Skin, and Navigation for your space:

So in order to customize any of these for your space, you have to copy an existing resource, add your changes, save, go to the General tab and select your new Page Template, Skin, or Navigation. If you go now back to your space you can see the change in action, a new page template, an updated look and feel, or a new menu bar.

Tips’n'Tricks for WebCenter #2: How to create an Admin menu in Spaces and save a lot of time
by Matthias Müller-Prove

Objects in Oracle #WebCenter Portal have a visibility flag that is set to true or false. But you can also enter conditions. To make something visible just for moderators, you have to replace true by #{WCSecurityContext.userInScopedRole['Moderator']}

I use it to create an Admin menu. The visibility of the folder item in my custom navigation is specified as above. That means that all menu items under that new Admin menu are only visible for space moderators.

One candidate for such an Admin menu would be the Analytics menu item because it is not necessary to reveal it to all space members.

Another item that is extremely useful is a shortcut to Pages and Spaces Actions > Manage > All Settings. If you are a space admin you know how often you have to go there, and how difficult it is to navigate the mouse to the submenu item.

So under my new Admin menu I’ve added an item ‘All Settings’ with a link to http://YOURWEBCENTERDOMAIN/webcenter/spaces/YOURSPACE/admin.

You can get the link for your space via Pages and Spaces Actions > About > Share Link and append /admin. Note, that you have to check the Redirect flag under Options to avoid the frame-in-a-frame problem.

The following set of screenshot might guide you to create an Admin menu in your space.

#1 – Add a folder to the customized navigation:

#2 – Set the Visibility to mods only:

#3 – Add links to the new Admin menu:

#4 – Set the target path to Manage All Settings, do not forget to check the Redirect option under the Options tab:

#5 – The customized navigation with the new Admin menu:

#6 – The customized menu applied to your space:

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The first was by Dan Ariely (h/t Slashdot), who writes about economics and stuff, two of my favorite topics. Plus, he referenced a favorite Oatmeal comic of mine, which also conveys the angst I (and others apparently) feel about dropping a dollar or two to buy an app for our vastly more expensive devices.

I tried to find the right excerpt from Dan’s post, but I found myself copying half the post. Just go and read it.

His basic point is that Apple anchored the price at free (and populated the App Store with some pretty compelling apps at that price point), thereby creating a low price floor anchor that has affected all the apps that have followed.

A few days later, Simon Judge mused about a report that shows the App Store going the way of the Android Market, i.e. free apps growing at the expense of paid apps. The big question for iOS developers is why.

One question is why people won’t pay for apps. Alternatively, are developers at fault having lowered their prices to the point they have reached zero? I believe the main problem is that most apps actually have very little value. Most are ‘information’ apps that just provide a more convenient way of viewing things that are already available free via web sites. Dumbed down apps have resulted in dumbed down prices.

But what about apps that that do have substance? Examples are navigation, medical reference, office and substantial drawing apps. The problem is that these apps take a significant amount of development effort. Even at say 10x the price of a ‘dumb app’, it’s difficult for them to be financially viable. As most apps cost close to zero, many consumers think twice before purchasing the more expensive apps even though they are a bargain compared to their PC or Mac counterparts.

The second point is further bolstered by apps like Google Maps on Android, which is a full-blown, turn-by-turn navigation app and is one of the must-have/can’t-live-without features of Android. If you’re Garmin or Tom-Tom, why even bother to build an Android app? On iOS, maybe, but even there, some apps are well below you in price, including MapQuest which is free. So, even if you want to build a substantial app, you’ll most likely have competition.

Matt (@topperge) covered the topic of useless apps (a.k.a. apps of little value) years ago, and a quick look at the App Store confirms this hasn’t changed much. This observation bleeds over into two related ones: first, it’s too easy to create and distribute an mobile app, which drags overall quality down and second, the App Store and Android Market are both hot messes where you can’t find anything useful.

Anyway, lots of food for thought in there. I wonder when mobile apps will peter out due to all the above factors, or will Apple/Google figure out a way to alleviate these issues.

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This year, I just haven’t had the energy, and by now, I’ve read too many predictions posts (and so have you) to convince anyone that these are my own thoughts. The well is poisoned.

Predictions for 2012 tend to fall into either the can’t-miss or the can’t-hit-because-the-Mayans-were-right buckets, and it seems this year the biggest question is how to best combine the obvious trends (social, cloud and mobile) into a single unword.

SoCloMo? MoSoClo? CloMoSo?

Anyway, I’m doing something different for 2012. I’m listing areas that I’ll be watching with keen interest next year. So, expect to read more about this topics from me in the coming year.

3D printing
I’m astounded a how little coverage 3D Printing gets, given the amount of virtual ink spilled on the next iPhone and the cool, hip startup by this ex-Facebooker and that ex-Googler. Maybe I read the wrong things, but it finally caught my eye last year, after lingering on the margins for years.

Check out this National Geographic Known Universe segment if you need background.

This is real science fiction, a la the Star Trek replicator.

And just in time for 2012, Makerbot’s Thing-O-Matic went on sale for $999 for the kit, $2,000 assembled. Sure, that’s a hefty chunk of change. I’m sure the resin used to print objects ain’t cheap (that’s how they get you), but still, you could spend $999.99 on BarMax for your iOS device or a bit more than $2000 for an 80-inch TV.

The internet of things
Noel (@noelportugal) reminded us yesterday of how cool the internet of things can be, and it’s much more than cheerful holiday lights. Lots of everyday objects can now carry wifi adapters on board, and thanks to tiny Linux distros, they’re as smart as your iPhone and ready to be commanded.

The emergence of Siri as an interface has brought some interesting examples to light.

Years ago, the connected home meant doing a lot of hardcore hacking, maybe even to yourself, but now, thanks in large part to projects like Arduino and the maker community, it’s a snap. Plus, with the introduction of the Android ADK at Google IO last year, I’m expecting cool projects to begin appearing in 2012.

Sure, there are perils, but the promise is huge. I love reading about the projects that spring from the minds of makers.

Mobile payments
Despite the creepiness of Google Wallet, there’s something ultra-cool about waving your phone to pay for something, like a real Jedi boss. Way back in the day, when Bluetooth was initially released, one of the selling points was mobile commerce; that never happened, but as NFC-capable phones flood the market, it’s going to become reality very quickly.

I’m a huge fan of carrying less crap on my person. I keep my wallet as thin as possible (in more ways than one), and I love that my phone can replace the numerous other gadgets I used to travel with, like an iPod, wireless access point, camera, etc.

There will be problems, certainly, but I’m stoked to watch this area evolve.

Personal privacy and security
The high profile hacks and data breaches of 2011 are bound to continue. People will finally have to take real care with their online privacy and security, and tools like 1Password, which I love, will benefit.

But username/password authentication is so out-dated and rife with issues. I keep waiting for a single identity solution to take off, and maybe this will be the year.

At some point, people have to rise up and take control of their data and identities, right?

Evolution of interfaces
I’ve watched touch interfaces evolve with great interest, and obviously that will continue. However, new interfaces are emerging, voice through Siri, smart mirrors, any surface interfaces, etc. It’s a brave new world, and designers are figuring out the best ways to interact with it.

This is both good and bad, but either way exciting.

Health + intertubes
Gadgets like Fitbit and the now-doomed Jawbone Up and services like RunKeeper and making fitness easier with automation and analytics. I bought my wife a Fitbit for Christmas, and she’s been marveling at how easy it is to use for tracking what she does and eats, her goals, her sleep, like a personal trainer following her around all day.

As our time is increasingly precious, tools like these are emerging to help remind you to stay in shape and, you know, eat something every once and a while. The analytics provided by these tools are probably the most valuable; there’s something gravitational about personal reports, like Nicholas Feltron’s annual reports. We love us some data, especially in bite-sized reports.

Automation via API
This last one is something recent that has caught my attention. Two services ifttt (if this, then that) and the Dropbox Automator both weave together the APIs of common services to do useful work for you like saving all your Instagram photos to Dropbox, copying photos you’re tagged in on Facebook to Picasa, sending you a text if it’s supposed to rain today, etc.

These are basically service mashups, and while they are risky to depend on, what with the dependencies on the beneficence of the API providers and the brokering of your credentials for multiple services, there is definite promise here.

I’m just at the beginning of my investigation here, but these feel a lot like OS X’s Automator, which is a highly useful little tool.

Happy New Year!
So, those are the topics I’ll be watching with interest. You may notice a common thread running through many of them, i.e. the combination of meat and byte life facilitated by the intertubes. I’m a sucker for that stuff.

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#cheerlights show me some purple

Hello. My name is Noel Portugal (@noelportugal) and this is my first official post on the theappslab. I’m an avid fan of all things connected to the Internet (aka the internet of things) and love hacking and tinkering away in my free time. This year I decided to join other folks in a social Christmas lights experiment called Cheerlights.

The project goal was to synchronize Christmas lights by checking Twitter mentions to #cheerlights or @cheerlights and the color desired (red,green,blue,cyan,white,warmwhite,purple,magenta,yellow,orange). The project provided an API powered by the thinkspeak.com platform that allowed users to subscribe to the latest color tweeted. The results were amazing; an android app that displayed the current color, an Ewok robot that reacted to color tweeted, a Chrome browser extension, a Twilio phone hotline, and other multiple light implementations.

arduino + xbee radio

I built my Cheerlights using the amazing and hackable GE Color Effects lights, an Arduino, an ioBridge module as an Internet getaway, and a couple xBee radios. Another geeky part of my implementation was that all my house Christmas lights (including the cheerlights) were scheduled by a cronjob! Yes, just as many of us use cronjob for every day automated tasks such as backups or cleanup, I was able to use a script to set start and stop times of my house lights.

Since I took some days away I also setup an IP webcam to check on my lights (and my house )

Check my blog for more detailed info and pics. Maybe you can join me next year with your own Cheerlights project.

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This immediately struck me as odd, given that I thought we were talking about the persona often referred to as “the business user,” i.e. someone for whom writing code is not a job function that will be using your software. You may know this persona already, since much time and energy has unfortunately gone into writing software to convert this person into a developer.

I think the point was that the software was easy to use to perform a function that is generally considered an administrative one. Generalizing again, I consider an administrative function is anyone that the user either cannot perform on purpose because that was design or does not want to perform because the function is tedious, difficult, frustrating, dangerous, “not my job,” etc.

Still, it’s safe to assume that there are no users with no technical competence. Given the worldwide penetration of mobile phones, which has opened up the intertubes to billions, I’m willing to make that assumption. If someone has landed on your product, you go ahead and assume that person has some level of technical competence.

That said, I also agree with the myth of the sophisticated user.

Contradiction? Not really. I’m in favor of assuming users want to do something and building for those functions, rather than creating assumptions about their technical savvy or lack thereof. The results of the latter too often place no design importance on so-called power user/admin interfaces because fewer people will use them and the users will be sophisticated.

Sophisticated users appreciate design too, perhaps more so, given their experience.

Anyway, food for thought.

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I have to assume that these tablets will eventually lose support, leaving their owners high and dry. Even at a reduced price, a tablet that gets no updates to its OS is just a fancy paperweight.

So, given the initial success of Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Android modding projects like Cyanogen, I wonder if there’s a business opportunity for these orphaned tablets.

I mention the Kindle Fire here for two reasons. First, it’s the most successful Android tablet to date, built on an older version of Android, maybe 2.2, maybe 2.3, it’s unclear and doesn’t seem to matter to consumers. The content and value proposition do. The value proposition could easily be recreated for older hardware.

Second, the Kindle Fire, although not actually a PlayBook clone as was initially rumored, is very similar to these other tablets in size and specs. Creating a mod for new hardware is by no means a simple task, but given that Amazon has already created a market segment for sub-iPads, it might be worth the investment to build mods for these depracated tablets.

Even a free, as-is mod might pay for itself with content purchased.

Anyway, for Amazon or someone else, there definitely seems to be a market emerging here. Call it the breathe-life-into-old-tablets market.

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