Mike Rowe celebrates dirty jobs | Video on TED.com

All-in-One

People like me don’t take pictures, don’t use Twitter often, don’t fill-in their Facebook updates to the let world know what we’re feeling at that given second – and flat out just don’t feel like sharing a whole lot with everybody.

However, it is not out of shyness or fear of acceptance. I feel tht this is an issue of useability.

With my current technology and financial status (a Nokia 6030 sans camera and $100), I have little incentive to go buy a camera or a beefed phone before the Gphone comes out. I only post this because I’m leaving for Austin tommorrow and have no camera but my sister’s which I’m borrowing.

This sucks, because I would take a million photos if I had an all-in-one device, a la iPhone or Gphone, where I could sync my physical and digital worlds in one place on the go.

So, the purpose of this post is to be a time-anchor as to the before and after effects of a smartphone on my digital social life. Will I take more photos, take the time to post them, engage in richer dialog, explore more ideas in this blog rather than on paper? Who knows, only time will tell.

Until then, I will hit the road in the morning to enjoy the Great American Southwest in all it’s splendor.

God speed.

Road Trip to Austin

Im leaving for 9 days, returning October 12th, on a road trip out to Austin, Texas. This will be a great chance to check out the Austin startup scene after I rummage around the desert for Route 66 kitsch.

I’ll especially be checking out Los Alamos National Laboratory as well as Socorro, New Mexico – site of the Trinity atomic bomb test in 1952.

Well, hopefully I can capture some photos to share.

T-Mobile Can Be Our Savoir

Excellent post in BusinessWeek today regarding how T-Mobile’s embracing of the Android platform entirely changes the economics of the U.S. mobile industry.

And these days, a change in economics is the way to go.

Waterfall Models

Sorry, the title might be misleading. I just came across this today while researching some software design aspects we’re looking at.

Those who are programmers have probably heard of the waterfall model, an approach towards software development which takes you through the phases of requirements analysis, design, implementation, testing (validation), integration, and maintenance.

The waterfall model of software design originated by William Royce in 1970.

This model was cited by Royce as an example of a flawed system. Ironically, it was the most commonly referred to system in the 1970’s and 1980’s, especially by large-scale government software operations.

I write this post not in support or disagreement with the waterfall model or the many other approaches deriving from it (read: agile model, spiral model, or Big Design Up Front Model, etc.). Each of these systems have their merits and cater to different applications, teams, and developmental circumstances (i.e. startup or mid-large company), etc.

I write this because I am intrigued how the approaches all begin with the application requirements - all of them agree that you cannot move on to the next stage of design before you nail out the core requirements of your system. In other words, what will your software do? What does it solve?

Don’t worry about the little features. All of that comes in later stages – that is what alpha and beta releases are for.

The design process has to begin with the planning stages, addressing the key elements and functionality of the product. This is the best that can be done by an idea guy in the ideation stage. If you’re an entrepreneur with no programming background but have a tech idea that is so compelling it makes you jump from your seat, I bet it is hard sometimes to convey the features of your product to a technically savvy programmer without having them shoot you odd looks.

This was a grave problem and continues to be so in our early days with BARCS, our small mobile app programming group. In the beginning, when attempting to contact developers regarding our project, I would explain the idea in vague terms to the programmer describing the broad scope of the application. Unfortunately, I didn’t get many responses back from programmers because I just wasn’t speaking their language. They wanted to hear from somebody who knew that we needed a Rails developer who knew Java first and foremost, with a LOT of databse experience using MySQL. This first engineer has/had to know how to connect their system to the work of another Java engineers work on camera functionality.

Once we delved into the specifics, response rates increased. It is still in it’s infancy, but I feel that the more time I take on defining the Requirements stage of the application, the better prepared we’re to get where we want – i.e., programmers will have a much clearer vision of what needs to be done and the scope of this project.

The next few weeks for this guy will be spent learning database design (MySQL, Dubois), getting depper into Java (Head First Java, Kathy Sierra), and reading more on software development cycles (Joel on Sofwtware, Joel Spolsky).

This is a real learning experience for a young entrepreneur. I can only best prepare myself in the Requirements and Planning stage, until I can hand off the software development cycle to our programmers.

After that, the business cycle has it’s own “waterfall model” which is just as labor intensive – from planning to implementing, tweaking, testing, pitching, developing…it’s a long road ahead, but that’s the fun.

G1 v. iPhone Cartoon

Link Shout: Android Apps Blog

Ten Reasons Why Starbucks Disappointed Today

Today I spent 37 minutes in vain trying to connect to Starbucks’ WiFi. It was a fruitless endeavor that ended up horribly unseccssful. Here’s the sequence of events.

1. Sit down and grab a delicious cup of coffee
2. Sipping on coffee and anxiously typing away “gmail.com” in my Firefox nav bar
3. Get the T-Mobile welcome screen
4. Realize I dont have a T-Mobile account
5. The page tells me to connect to attwifi…providing no link to attwifi whatsoever…but hey guys, i dont have wireless, i cant connect to attwifi!!!
6. Type in att.com – leads me site to an att site that has no talk whatsoever of starbucks
7. Spend 10 minutes navigating att.com with at least 20 clicks of disappointment
8. I smart up and type in attwifi.com
9. AHA! Finally, Im an ATT customer, so the page tells me I can access wifi for free
10. Wait, my UVerse #. Shit, cant I just type in my mobile #?
11. 15 minutes and 20 clicks later, I get up and walk away – AT&T provided no link for me to just purchase the damn wifi access.

Bottom line
Attention Starbucks, ATT, and T-Mobile folks. I gave you 35 minutes of my time, and you gave me nothing.
You didnt even provide me a simple way to get online. Im a paying customer to at least 2 of the 3 right there, and have been for years – I thought we were cool.

Role model for you guys
Look atyour buddy Jeff Bezos at Amazon.com. Everytime I go to this site, I can buy something within seconds with one click. Neither Starbucks, ATT, or T-Mobile provided that.

What Should Starbucks/AT&T/T-Mobile Do?
Cater to the impulsive people like me who will buy something off of emotion…such as WiFi for $3.99 for 2 hours (that is rape as is guys).

How?
Make it one-click, so I dont get angry at myself for wasting my time and dont get extra angry at you guys for cretaing a clustered service.

On an optimistic note (b/c I really do like Starbucks coffee and want to see this company pull out of it’s “slump” under returning CEO Howard Schultz), the barista helping me wwas really caring and kept checking back on me to see if I got access. So service is still key for employees as it has always been.

They should be better trained in technology though. Remember that failed iTunes initiative you guys had? Yeah.

Robert, Bob, and Rob

If your name was Robert, why the f%$# would you call yourself Bob?!

Bob = 1997 Buick and Filipino wife on visa.

Rob on the other hand…Rob connotates finnesse, style, and confidence without a hint of arrogance – the modern gentleman.

Advantage Rob.

Graphic Boredom

Inspired by boredom and caffeine at 1am last night.

Android SDK v. iPhone SDK

Well, despite what appears to be a horribly marketed launch from Google and T-Mobile in their release of the G1 phone – I have to say that I will be a customer and am working towards developing an app for the Android platform.

Why? Check out this article from Neil McAllister of InfoWorld.

The iPhone environment has to be a pleasure for developers. With a fixed screen-width, dlelicious interface, and unambiguous operating environment, the iPhone is certainly exciting for programmers.

The problem – cost, operating language, and restrictions. It costs $99 to register for the Apple SDK, programming is done in Objective-C (A LOT fewer programmers than traditional Java), and you don’t know if your app will ever see the market because guess who has final say?

Contrast this to Google’s Android platform.

It’s open-source (Apache License), free, programming is done in the ever-so ubiquitous Java language, and there are no restrictions to get into the Android Market store.

Plus, the G1 from HTC has auto-focus features on a 3.0 megapixel camera. Contrast this to the iPhone with it’s 2.0 megapixel camera with no auto-focus.

Why is auto-focus so important? Barcodes. Look how many winning apps were in Androids developer challenge this year.

1. Android Scan by Jeffrey Sharkey.

2. ShopSavvy by Big in Japan.

3. Amazon mp3

I’m watching the barcode arena closely. This will be interesting to see as we should have much richer apps in the next year once the commonplace developer learns how to work with zxing and geo-location based apps.

Enjoy. All of this is really soothing news which provides some optimism despite the last few weeks and the markets (if you’re lucky, you get a picture of two Asian kids covering each others eyes on the WaMu homepage – how appropriate…hahaha…muahahahaha…okay thats enough).

Cheers,

Ahmed