Thursday July 23, 2009 Be afraid when a company becomes technology-driven
You know it will turn out poorly when a company becomes more technology-driven rather than customer-driven. There comes a time when every successful tech company gets too big and starts to design based on what can be done with technology rather than what should be done with technology. Here's a San Jose Mercury News piece by Chris O'Brien talking about Google's identity crisis. See: SJ Merc piece: Google's identity crisis Here's a quote: it's hard to explain to someone exactly... Google's mobile operating system, Android, ...and why it's better than or different from Apple's iPhone? ... These new products have the whiff of engineers building things for other engineers, rather than you and me. This ought to be raising some giant red flags at the Googleplex.So, true. So, true. |
Hinkmond
Friday July 17, 2009 1.5 billion iPhone app downloads: Bogus or Bonafide
I attended a talk here at Sun, by Ilya L. and Chris D. from GetJar.com talking about their download rate of Java ME apps far outnumbering the actual download rate of the Apple App Store for the iPhone. There seems to be some controversy over whether the possibly cooked up 1.5 billion iPhone app download number contains just unique app downloads or includes the frequent updates that an already installed app requires. Jason D. O'Grady a blogger at ZDNet seems to agree and think the Apple number is bogus. See: 1.5 billion iPhone app downloads bogus? Here's a quote: Apple is cooking the books (ala Enron and WorldCom) when they put out irrelevant and nonsense releases like this. For starters, I’m pretty sure that Apple counts every download in that 1.5 billion number. Updates and re-installs included.Pretty strong words. Some might even say libelous. But as Jason points out, if the 1.5 billion download number is true, then where is the court injunction against his libelous blog post? Where is the demand for a retraction? If the number were true, I would think Apple would sue his mud slinging, yellow journalism tushie mighty quickly. (Of course, I'm just saying that since I didn't make that claim and I want to see a food fight or at least a court case...) ;-) By the way, after talking with the GetJar.com guys, we could probably come up with the number of Java ME app downloads that happened last year. Something north of 20 billion is the guess... Not including updates. :-) |
Thursday July 16, 2009 Rock Stars of the JavaOne 2009 conference
Well, after presenting at 10 JavaOne conferences, I've achieved Rock Star status. Props to the peeps who came to my session and filled out the surveys. I couldn't have done it without you. Your checks are in the mail. ;-) See: Scroll down to TS-4506, near the middle. So, do I get a limo and backstage passes now? (I have a sneaky suspicion this isn't the same thing as Jimmy Page or Pete Townsend...) |
Thursday July 02, 2009 Slag: vitreous residue left after smelting metallic ore
So, there I was reading a random blog post about Android and the JavaWorld author says something about some awesome, brilliant, insightful Sun Java ME blogger who tends to "slag" on Android. Slag? What's slag? I had to look that up. And, oh, he was a referring to me and had a link to one of my blog posts last year about Android. (Yeah, stop snickering out there) But, of course! :-) See: Java ME Blogger Slags on Android Here's a quote: In addition, because Harmony is a tweaked Java SE implementation, code written for Android doesn't match up with the Java ME standard that Sun would like to see be the default for mobile device development. It's no wonder Sun's official Java ME bloggers tend to slag on it.It took me some time to find this photo of a heart-shaped slag. It's a good metaphor: slag but behind it there is <3 for Java. :-) |
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