Thinking About iPhone Web Apps for the Enterprise

Apple’s initial iPhone application model (build a decent website) is brilliant. Websites are easily the fastest, most compatible, most maintainable, most popular, way to create software applications. Once Apple supported adding specific website’s to the icons on the iPhone’s home screen, you’ve got the equivalent of applications on the Palm Treo – with internet access required, sure.

Doesn’t (or shouldn’t) this model cover 97% of all software?

The alternative is learning Objective-C, the development language in OS X and the amazingly popular GNUStep. Um. While not exactly wide reaching, this should increase the demand for ObjC developers.

For the commitment to ObjC, what to you get?
Some deeper ties into the iPhone’s hardware capabilities and iTunes as only distribution method.

In a client meeting earlier this week the team mentioned how the project needed to be available on mobile devices for internal use.


This brought to mind the Symbol barcode scanner running Palm’s OS and the handheld devices package delivery people at UPS and FedEx use.

Could they be replaced with an iPhone?

Maybe.

“Most road warriors could use Web-based tools with little loss in productivity.” – Phil Windley

Scanning an object’s barcode and manipulating data about it by multi-touch is a very compelling vision – whether on sales floor or in the warehouse.

On the flip side, I have a hard time imaging signing for a package on an iPhone…or enterprises IT departments agreeing to push out updates to a iPhone-native app via iTunes.

Unexpired Potential – Domains I Own

Inspired by Rex’s unused domain list, here’s my list of yet-to-be-released projects:

  • BlockByBlog.com
  • CoffeeHacks.com
  • Dashcaster.com
  • ExpiredPotential.com
  • Limble.com
  • LunchForBrains.com
  • Nusability.com
  • Unlistened.com
  • PodcastCalling.com
  • RedBallThankYou.com
  • SLAReporter.com

Update June 3, 2008.
A few more I’ve picked up since we last talked:

  • DroidWarehouse.com
  • Kernest.com (Launched July 17, 2009)
  • MSGCTRL.com
  • NeuPost.com

Update October 21, 2008.
Just added:

  • BroadcastCulture.com

Update February 8, 2009.
Just added:

  • Crumbl.es
  • Crumbl.us

Update March 4, 2009.
Just added:

  • Unbrkn.com

Update June 13 2009
Recent Acquisition:

  • KidStoryReviews.com
  • PressOnRails.com

Update Sept 16 2009
Recent Acquisition:

  • Smirkless.com
  • Fontue.com
  • Woffly.com
  • AdOrNews.com

Update Sept 30 2009
Recent Acquisition:

  • WallTales.org

Looking at the list and remembering the projects behind them, I’m pleasantly surprised;

  • how much these ideas still interest me
  • how some of these ideas are far easier to execute today then when I purchased them,
  • how diverse these ideas are.

All good things.

What Andrew Baron Should Be Selling: Following

There’s lots of chatter today about Andrew Baron auctioning off his 1500 Twitter followers.

As of this writing, the auction is just over $500.

Standard ad-based media play: aggregate eyeballs and sell them off to the highest bidder.

Yummmm. Eyeballs.

“This stunt may spark some copycatters, but it is essentially meaningless.” – Stowe Boyd

I suspect I’m not the only one that unfollowed prior to the outcome, not because of the auction specifically, I just didn’t enjoy his messages and this development was a fine enough reason to dump him. :p

That’s what made me think Andrew is selling the wrong asset. He can only sell his followers once. What he should be doing is auctioning off his ‘following’, the people he’s paying attention to.

“Will the new Andrew Baron, unlike the old one, follow me?” – Stephen Baker, Business Week

Andrew is the advertisement anyway.

This has a couple benefits for Andrew that his current stunt doesn’t:

  1. It’s an ongoing revenue stream. If someone wants Andrew to pay attention to them, this makes it real easy, pay him.
  2. It puts a dollar figure on attention. I suspect Steve Gillmor would love that
  3. It reduces Andrew’s information overload.

Elsewhere:

“There’s nothing wrong with stunt income, but it can only work once at best.” – Ewan Spence

“Don’t care, don’t believe it proves anything one way or the other except this: It proves the shallowness of at least a few folks who actually care to waste $1500+ dollars on something that means exactly nothing.” – Karoli

And to lighten things up a bit:

…I also participate in another telephone number over on my cell phone so I’m thinking I’ll start taking more calls over there and start up a new phone to do what I want to do next…. – Alexander Muse

Un-Blog

When I talk about Cullect to people publishing feeds, I very consciously don’t use the word ‘blog*’. Primarily because bloggers blogging blogs aren’t the only people publishing online. Almost everyone publishing online publishes a feed.

No matter if that publication contains text, audio, video, software, or something completely different. Cullect works the same if you’re CNN, Dave Winer, or Eric Larson.

“Being called a ‘writer’ has a far more important vibe to it, perhaps the opposite of ‘blogger’, which seems to have a more amaterurish flavor about it.” – Eric Rice

I’m much more comfortable with the word ‘blog’ at blog.cullect.com – where it represents the voice of a non-human entity – and much less so everywhere else. Now that I think about it, that may be the only WordPress install I maintain identifying itself as a ‘blog’.

Also note, the button in WordPress to make this public is labeled ‘Publish’.

Towards a Richer Environment

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“…the way we can best improve our environment is to make everyone rich enough to afford it (something that is already happening)…” – Will Franklin

In 1989, I watched, stunned, at James Burke’s PBS special “After the Warming”. That was my first exposure to environmentalist propaganda; oceans rising flooding Florida and Indonesia – hundreds of refugees into Australia, etc. Hell-in-a-hand cart stuff.

I haven’t seen Inconvenient Truth, simply because it everything I’ve heard about it makes it sound identical to that 20 year old PBS special. I am not in the mood to make the problem more overwhelming.

Walking past the TV the other day, I caught an Oprah guest was asking everyone to wash their garbage so it could be “recycled.” The straight face made me think she had forgotten about Georgia’s drought this past summer1. All because we each “produce” 4lbs of “garbage” daily.

Extending the minimize-your-impact-environmentalism argument (don’t breathe, fart, or eat) to its logial conclusion – people don’t exist on planet Earth. And if they do, they’re all dirt poor without any machines, computers, cows, or trade2.

Personally, I don’t want anyone to be poor and believe we should dismiss environmental policies and behaviors that encourage poverty.

I prefer Amory Lovins attitude:

“I don’t do problems, I do solutions.”

Two of my favorite points from Amory, both in his Winning the Oil Endgame.pdf:

  • Between 1977-85, America cut oil use by 17%, total oil imports by 50%, and Persian Gulf imports by 87%.
  • 87% of a cars fuel energy is spent in over coming inertia, 6% accelerates the car, <1% moves the driver.

1. Why is soapy water and the washing effort less of an issue than tossing in the ‘trash’. If this is the only way to make recycling cost-effective, we have a serious problem.
2. Without trade, what will people in Minnesota eat in the winter? Hot dish for 4 months? No. Period.

Google AppEngine: More About Google Labs than You?

There’s a long history of tech companies developing there own applications because it’s cheaper long-term than licensing, especially for core applications like: email, calendaring, text processing.

I’m confident Apple employee use Mail.app, iCal, and iWork in-house and those apps are cheap or free for the rest of use. Same for Sun and StarOffice/NeoOffice. Same for Google and Google Docs. One guess on who isn’t getting ongoing licensing fees for those apps? 😉

This is not only why ‘HuddleChat’ was the first AppEngine app but also why it was pulled. HuddleChat made it obvious.

I can easily imagine this conversation at Google:

“Campfire is a great tool, we should pay for it.”

“That sounds like a lot of money for something not built here. It’ll be cheaper long term if we build a clone in-house.”

Take a look at the number of applications in Google’s Lab page. Many of them need; some form of authentication, the general look/feel of Google, integration into Googles infrastructure, to be built at Google, etc.

What a perfect candidate for an abstracted framework like Google AppEngine.

Elsewhere:

“The Google App engine may some day be worth mentioning but as of right now its nothing short of comical. Essentially Geocities 2.0.” – Tom, Tom’s TechBlog

Confirming this theory and that AppEngine is all about future acquisitions (i.e. ‘Want to increase the chances of being acquired by Google – build on AppEngine’).

“Because of the difference in technology, it can take a company anywhere from a year to three or more years to move over to the Google infrastructure and architecture.” – Nik Cubrilovic

Free & Open Is Its Own Lock-in

A decade ago, one of the very first places I found that offering free websites gave everyone access to the same images directory. You could upload your own images, but then everyone else could use them as well.

Goofy, questionable, but free.

I’ve been hosting with Joyent for more than 3 years, purchased 3 different ‘lifetime’ accounts from them. I’ve played around with a hundred website ideas on those accounts, comfortable knowing I can do whatever I need to explore an idea.

Whatever the app; Rails, PHP, MySQL, Facebook, some other crazy technology sounds cool, I know Joyent’s servers are up for it.

At this point, a year after my last ‘lifetime’ purchase, I consider those accounts ‘free’.
Free, as in: I’ve got a crazy idea and some server space, let’s see if this thing has legs.

I suspect Joyent considers them free as well.
Free, as in: Here’s the pricing on our Accelerators when you figure out your idea has legs.
Not free as in: Sharecropping.

“If you’re developing software for the Windows platform, yes. Or for the Apple platform, or the Oracle platform, or the SAP platform, or, well, any platform that is owned and operated by a company. They own the ground you’re building on, and if they decide they don’t like you, or they can do something better with the ground, you’re toast. ” – Tim Bray, 2003

“Perhaps Google is thinking about acquisitions. How much would it be worth to buy companies without having to transition their technology to their platform?” – Dave Winer

“Try to leave App Engine. Or AWS. When you move can you install Bigtable? S3?” – David Young

From its very first iteration, Cullect.com was running on one of my ‘free’ servers. Late last year, I moved it to another, bigger, ‘free’ server. A couple months ago, ‘free’ didn’t cut it any more. The idea had legs and needed room to run. I opened my wallet and and purchased a 1GiB Accelerator.

While I briefly considered moving the app to a different host, I realized Joyent has me locked-in.

Not locked into their platform, but locked into their attitude. Locked into their community, and locked in because I know I can experiment for ‘free’ and when those experiments work, they sold another Accelerator.

“If the news is important, it will find me”

“In essence, they are replacing the professional filter – reading The Washington Post, clicking on CNN.com – with a social one.” – Brian Stelter

We read through each other anyway. I’ve long read major news outlets through the people I trust and often know personally. Blogs and Twitter are great for that. Sure, I run the risk of missing things, but again

“if it’s important, it will find me.”

It’s great to see that ‘news’ is finally thought of in the same way a urban legends. Passed along when they capture the imagination of the social group, independent of timeliness. Unless the event is happening….NOW…any account of it is ‘olds’ anyway.

Importance is persistent and rises to the top.