Juixe Techknow

It is that time of year where we reflect on the accomplishments of the passing year and look forward to the one to come. Here is a window into the past year in technology through this year’s popular posts on TechKnow Juixe.

Programming Rants

• Software Engineering in Pictures
• The Resume is Dead
• Resume and Interview Tips
• Programmer Pickup Lnes
• More Hats, More Problems
• Working Code is Just One Corner Case

Products and Features

• Foursquare Missing Features
• Apple vs Android
• The Future of Apple TV
• Facebook Was My Idea
• Facebook Zuckerberg and Plain Text Passwords
• Google Has Lot Its Focus
• Google Dead Pool
• Amazon Should Buy Blippy

Tutorial and Resources

• Use Google Forms for Surveys and Polls
• Model Business in Google Docs
• Check if GMail Account Has Been Hacked Into
• Apple iPad Top Resources
• iPhone Frameworks

Patents and Trademarks

• Us Patent: Virtual Currency
• US Patent: Linked List
• Cease and Desist Trademark Craziness

Code Conversations

• Captcha This, Byatch!
• Mushroom Life Cycle
• Zombie Code
• The Mayor of Dead Space
• Remote Debug Your Thinking Process
• All Code is Inherently Evil

Retweet 2010

• Retweet December
• Retweet November
• Retweet October
• Retweet September
• Retweet August
• Retweet July
• Retweet June
• Retweet May
• Retweet April
• Retweet March
• Retweet February
• Retweet January

Random Thoughts 2010

• Random Thoughts December
• Random Thoughts November
• Random Thoughts October

Year in Review

• Year In Review 2009
• Year In Review 2008
• Year In Review 2007
• Year In Review 2006
• Year In Review 2005

Google announced the development of an autonomous self driving vehicle that has the potential of revolutionizing and maximizing the use of roads, fuels, and other resources. I wondered out loud, via Twitter, what other struggling industries might need some of Google algorithmic-minded engineering.

• @techknow: In addition to moving into the automotive industry, Google should get into the airline business and revolutionize it from the ground up.
• @SchemaCzar: Google did get into the airline biz a few months ago by buying ITA Software.
• @techknow: You are right, I totally forgot about that acquisition. Okay, the business they still haven’t entered into: home loans! They could fix the mortgage industry

Spam and spambots are a big problem for website operators, but their solutions to get around spambots is hurting the web just as much as the spam. Personally, I despise captchas. Captchas are those cryptic and distorted letters or words that look you have to type to prove that you are a real person when signing up for a web application or service. I recently had to do an eye test and I have 20/20 vision and I have trouble entering captchas, imagine the accessibility issues that people with disabilities have to deal with because of these.

• @techknow: I get personally insulted when I am prompted to prove my humaness with a captcha. It makes me wanna bust a cap-tcha on some webdeveloper!!!
• @AaronBoynton: I so agree! There are better ways #downwithcaptcha
• @techknow: The worst part is that I start thinking that maybe I am a robot because I can’t read the damn captcha. A robot with poor vision.

I’ve written about missing features in Foursquare and other location based web services before. There is little or no utility in checking into a location though Foursquare. In check into hotels more than I check into Foursquare. In check into a restaurant more than I check into Facebook Places. I want to be able to check into a restaurant and make an order. I want to check into a hotel and check in without talking to the front desk. I want to check into a parking structure and pay for parking. The following conversation started with that idea.

• @techknow: I would like the hotel check-in process to be as easy as Foursquare check-in.
• @ButtercupD: cool would be something similar Fastrak for bridge tolls–what about frequent guest card and walk in and autochecks you.
• @techknow: We should patent that. ;)

I was fortunate enough to get a free CR-48 Crome notebook from Google. People outside of Google had the opportunity to sign up for one and this was the first raffle/lottery that I have ever won. This is the first time I have ever heard of a company making available a test pilot product to people outside of the company in this fashion. I think it was marketing genius and Google engineers will mine a lot of real life usage data from pilot users.

• @techknow: My Google wish came true, and it came in a UPS box!
• @aaronhalford: aw, everyone is getting a CR-48 but me. Enjoy it!
• @techknow: Thanks! I hope you get one too! I also wish that Apple had a similar program. I also wish for world peace.

Just like opinions, at the end of the year everyone has their own predictions for the new year. I came to these predictions by reading the back of caps of green tea bottles. If you like to see my accuracy with past predictions see the predictions for 2009 and 2010.

• Mark Zuckerborg will be summoned by congress for a congressional hearing to clarify privacy settings and violations when some White House intern force checks in the President at a Hooters.
• Digg will buy Reddit from Conde Nast and rebrand the merged organization as Reddigg.
• DVDs and Blu Rays sales will slow as users switch to on demand streaming service such as Netflix and Apple iTunes.
• Groupon will be purchased by Yahoo for $1.5 billion dollars.
• Facebook will have a major privacy and security flaw but non of its users will notice because they all found a pony in their stream.
• Google will allow its developers to only use cheap commodity Linux machines. Google employees will no longer be allowed to program in Macs.
• Google will start to aggressively push and market the Go programming language as an replacement of the Java programming language in the enterprise.
• Google will buy PostreSQL.
• Google will buy the Library of Congress.
• Quora will buy the domain ask.com.
• Ticket Master will buy Eventbrite.
• Rupert Murdoch will sell MySpace for $35 million.
• Mashable will be sold to Rupert Murdoch for an undisclosed $50 million dollars.
• Michael Bay will write, Steven Spielberg will direct, and Johnny Deep will star in Zynga: The Movie.
• Zynga and Rock Star Games will co-develop a crossover game called Grand Theft Auto: Farmville.

One of the most interesting technologies right now is Google App Engine. Google App Engine is a framework that runs Google’s cloud. Developer and programmers can program in Java or Python and upload their applications to be hosted in Google’s infrastructure. Google has a generous free plan, but if your application picks up traction you to buy additional bandwidth. Google App Engine has some decent documentation but I also like to follow in a book or two. Here is a short list of books on Google App Engine in hopes to get you started.

• Using Google App Engine
• Beginning Java Google App Engine
• Professional Google App Engine Programming with Java
• Programming Google App Engine: Build and Run Scalable Web Apps on Google’s Infrastructure
• Developing with Google App Engine
• Hello, Android: Introducing Google’s Mobile Development Platform

No explanation required, here are some random thoughts that occurred to me during the past month. These ideas were either to long to force into 140 character limit of Twitter but not fully develop to belong on their own post.

In the computer world, Bill Gates will always be remembered for Windows and the blue screen of death. Now that he has moved his attention to education and health care such as vaccines, a blue screen of death in these fields will can really cause someone dying.

If your enemies enemies are your friends, then it is to Microsoft’s interest to see Facebook get into the search space. It makes sense that Microsoft would pay a ridiculous amount of money for the tiniest fraction of Facebook just to see Facebook’s value go through the roof and branch into search, ads, mobile, etc.

I just started noticing people I follow on Twitter start using a new service to take and share their pictures taken from a mobile device. There are already a ton of other services such as Twitpic, Facebook, Flickr, Mobile Me, etc. I consider myself an early adopter, but I think there is a new category of adopter, the “I’ll try everything adopter.” There is a bunch of folks that suffer from the New and Shiny Syndrome where they must try every single new product or service they hear about. They all rave how much better that new product is on Facebook and Twitter for a week and then the herd moves on to the next new and shiny thing.

Every year there are a few companies that everybody wants to work for. It has been reported in many news outlet that there is a micro-brain drain at Google as engineers are migrating to Facebook. Zynga has also seen a tremendous growth and has been attracting talented developers, designers, and engineers. Both Facebook and Zynga are already large establish companies. If you are looking for the next breakout company I think you should look into Second Market. Second Market is building a marketplace for employee stock to private companies, Second Market is building a new market and perhaps a new industry. Second Market is has the potential to eventual be at a level to create or move markets.

Microsoft is anywhere between 5-10 years behind current market leaders in social, search, mobile, internet television, digital music, etc. They only consumer technology that they have a leg up on the competition is gaming with its XBox console system. As Microsoft keeps missing each industry boat in the consumer space, Microsoft more and more starts to resemble a company that only sells to large companies. For example, it took Microsoft a long time to get the security in Windows OS right (from XP to Vista to Windows 7) and all along the missed the mobile as a platform.

Twitter and Facebook need to come out with a year-end zeitgist for 2010. Google has been releasing zeitgists for each year since 2001, see the Google Zeitgist Archives. From Twitter I want to know what event was the most tweeted about, what was the hottest trending topic for the year, and a graph of the number of tweets throughout the year. From Facebook I want to know how many likes does it take to reach the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop, who do they sell private personal data to the most, if they fixed the broken fence that let out all those sad malnourished cows.

Philosopher George Santayana said that “those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it.” Steve jobs who lived through the Personal Computer Revolution is set to repeat Apple’s fortunes in the Smart Phone Revolution. With the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, Apple took the lead in a novel mobile device segment, the Smart Phone. Prior to 2007, there had been a number of business class phones that at best emulated the desktop user experience in a hand held device but non had the traction to change the cell phone landscape. By 2007, the cell phone technology had dramatically changed that Steve Jobs was able to pack more computing power in an iPhone that ever before and he revolutionized the mobile user experience with touch screens. Apple later took another significant evolutionary step in what we consider a smart phone platform when the iPhone SDK was released to developers and the iTunes app store was made available to consumers. With years ahead it’s nearest cell phone competitor such as Nokia, Motorola, or Microsoft, and key patents under their name, and thousands of apps in their online app store, most pundits would have thought that Apple’s market share would in smart phones would be firmly cemented.

If the iPhone ecosystem were a country, it would probably be a little like China with a strong authoritative central government, some limited free enterprise, and tight censorship. Apple has a tendency to dictate what the customer wants, for example, the common Apple mouse still has one button while a typical windows will have on average 3 buttons and a mouse wheel. Apple has never been an open platform. Apple’s close platform has always been it’s Achille’s heal but also core to how Apple designs it’s products. With the release of the first Macintosh, the first commercially successful personal computer, Apple develop a technical and marketing lead to it’s rival computer makers. With the help of IBM, an open architecture was developed that over time was standardized to the de facto personal computer, this architecture developed over time to the modern desktop which might include a Intel chip, Microsoft Windows OS, and other off the shelf components. A closed platform will always little footing to compete with an open one, especially when hundreds of vendors provided alternatives to fit every possible need and price. Overtime Apple’s market share dwindled to single digits. But even with a very narrow market share, Apple has learned to be profitable, it knows it can charge a premium for beautifully designed products that simply work more often than they are infected with viruses or fatal crashes.

Even being an active participant of the Personal Computer Revolution, and having a front row seat as Apple’s close platform lost market share, Steve Jobs is using the same closed platform playbook with the iPhone and iPad product lines. This time, instead of IBM, Google is leading the charge with an open alternative to Apple’s iPhone. Google’s Android has been picked up by a large number of phone makers. There is a wide variety of Android phones in the market aimed a different consumers as opposed to the two models (iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4) of iPhone currently available from Apple. Google claims that at least 200,000 Android phones are activated a day. It is clear that history will repeat itself, and Android will eat Apple’s lunch, or at least take it’s market dominance. With market share comes developer’s mind share.

Apple has been previously before lit the fuse the set off a technological revolution. It first did it with the Macintosh which sparked the Personal Computer revolution and it has done it again with the iPhone with the smart phone industry. In both situations, Apple held a lead over it’s competitors but gave way because of it’s closed platform. In having a tight and stringent control over the iPhone, Steve Jobs has conceded market share to the Android platform.