Software Everywhere — David Beers on Mobile Computing

I'm not dead yet!

One of the few pleasant things that can come of letting your blog languish is having a few long-time readers take the time to bug you about it. Thanks, guys... you know who you are! Apparently, flattery works.

I'm always impressed with the people who manage to make clockwork blog posts every day or even every week for years on end. For reasons I'm not sure I fully understand myself I seem to go through periods of furious spouting and then stretches where I go "heads down" and disappear from the web entirely. One thing: I don't have the self-control to write short snappy posts, so if for any reason I don't feel able to sit down and write the kind of essays that scratch my peculiar blogging itch I guess I just don't write at all. Another thing: after a long hiatus there is so much to talk about that the prospect of starting again seems overwhelming.

Enough of the self-analysis. This is a technology blog, so let me get on with it while I seem to be able! Queued up for discussion: Palm webOS thoughts, the LiveScribe SDK release, and another run at the perennial question: "where is the InfoPad?"

Working at MapQuest for the last year and a half has been an extraordinary opportunity for me in that the mobile applications I create there are targeted to an audience of 40 million people who use MapQuest.com at least once a month. A slight downside of being associated with the top brand in online maps and directions is that I'm not as free to talk about my work as I am when the signature on my paycheck is my own. That fact—and being on a small team that does daily battle with outfits the likes of Google—helps explain why I haven't posted on Software Everywhere as often as I like.

This week we had a new release of the MapQuest4Mobile application that has been my main "baby" over the last year, and the marketing folks asked if I'd like to blog about it. I still can't say much about what's coming next (aside from "you're gonna like it!") but at least you can get a feel for what I've been up to during this "heads-down" period of time. Check out my post on the MapQuest blog, and if you've got a supported BlackBerry device, check out MapQuest4Mobile!

(Pay no attention to the name on the MapQuest blog entry—it's me. I guess the "author" of the posts in the blogging application MapQuest uses is always the name of the guy in marketing who pushes the "Publish" button.)

My favorite company in the industrial handheld hardware business is, like many of the rest of us, seeing some tough economic times. In their latest newsletter they have announced they're having to sell the company jet:



These guys are old friends and we haven't sent much business their way in a while, so after reviewing things with the CFO (who I'm sleeping with by the way*) I've decided that Pikesoft will make an offer on the Aceeca jet to replace one from our own aging fleet:



I hope Alex's jet has WiFi like ours do.

*Usually with a 50lb dog between us.

Thanks to all the folks who have been asking "where you been?" over the last five months. I go through periodic lulls in blogging and this probably won't be the last, but it has been one of the longest.

So where have I been? Why, right here, heh:


In August I took a position as a Senior Software Engineer at MapQuest, where I've had the pleasure of helping start a new mobile maps, directions and search project from the ground up: new dev team, new product and project managers, and a big, blank slate on which to build both product vision and technology.

It's been exhilarating stepping into the consumer mobile application space after years of doing vertical apps, especially doing so in an area that is so hotly contested right now: mapping, navigation and location-based search. Defending MapQuest's still commanding lead over Google and Yahoo, our closest competitors, is a huge challenge for a company of about 100 people, and ever since the iPhone the mobile front of that battle is becoming very important. It's been a while since I worked on a project where I would wake up on any given morning, think about the day ahead, and feel an adrenaline rush before my head even lifted off the pillow. It's kind of scary, totally stimulating intellectually, and a whole lot of fun!

I'm somewhat constrained in what I write about my work at the moment, but suffice it to say that the technical, creative, and team challenges at MapQuest have been so absorbing that I just haven't been able to keep the blog on my radar screen. That's not really changing—the heat is on more than ever—but I'm feeling once again the need to off-load some of my thoughts on mobile software here, if only to help sharpen some of my thinking about the interesting challenges I face in my current work.

For that reason the blog will probably have a little different focus for a while. I'm still thinking about the future of mobile computing and the companies that I see pushing out the frontier (including Palm, my favorite underdog). But expect more developer-oriented topics, perhaps some thoughts on mobile search and advertising which I haven't covered in the past, and definitely a new focus on agile practices as applied to mobile phone application development. I've had requests to comment on Android, SuperWaba, ACCESS and how the carriers will shape mobile development, and I'm flattered to be asked. But whatever small time I can make to blog these days is going to be occupied with stuff that's at the forefront of my mind that day, so please forgive me if I can't predict when I'll get around to these topics. I'm sure I will.

I'll be presenting a session entitled "Smartphone Java Secrets: Exposed!" at Front Range Code Camp this Saturday, May 19 in Denver. If you're interested in what it takes to develop a successful application that runs cross-platform on Palm OS, Windows Mobile and Symbian smartphones I'm cooking up a session that I think you'll enjoy.

Code Camps are great opportunities for developers to build their own grassroots technical conferences. They're free to all. They're focused on sharing code, not marketing products. And they are a chance to meet up with local developers who share your interests in a low key setting. Lunch is provided and there could be last-minute annoucements, so the organizers are requesting that you "register" by joining this group if you expect to join us for the day.

I pay very little attention to my traffic stats on Pikesoft.com. Not that I'm not curious, just that setting up my server to track it is far down on a long list of "deferred maintenance" for the site and I never seem to get to it. I do occasionally watch the (imperfect) stats from Alexa, and the last few times I checked I noticed some surprises.

First of all, the number of visitors from the US tends to hover at only about 10%. Some months the Americans are outnumbered by Bulgarian visitors. Is this because for some reason US users tend to install the Alexa toolbar in their browsers less than everyone else, or is it real? The sample size is large enough: I tend to reach about 4 in every 10,000 people who have the Alexa toolbar with each post (roughly 4,400 readers, according to Alexa). And I can't think of a reason that the U.S. would be under-represented except that in fact only about 1 in 10 of you readers are Americans. That, in turn, could say something about where people do the most blog-reading, or it could indicate the level of interest in mobile technology. I'm leaning toward the latter explanation.

But what really gets me is that about two thirds of you people are from the UK or Canada. Overcome by curiosity the other day, I checked the folks who post comments on the PalmInfocenter articles and noticed a similar distribution: a high percentage of Brits, with Americans in a solid minority. This is a little strange to me not just because the UK is quite a bit smaller than the US, but also because my site and certainly PalmInfocenter's have a focus on Palm and Palm OS, which the analysts always tell us are popular in the US, but not so much overseas. I'd be interested in your theories if you have any. Among my mobile-blogging compadres I'd also be curious to know if you see a similar pattern in your viewership.

But for now I just want to say: God save the Queen! :-)

link

In case you haven't noticed, gentle reader, I am a mobile hardware developer trapped in a mobile software developer's life. Well, "trapped" is a little strong because I love being a software developer, but when I read the following job posting at Palm's web site this morning I thought "Gawd, I could be paid to do THAT?!"

Duties/Responsibilities:

• Competitive Benchmarking (mobile products)
• Purchase, teardown, and review (write-ups) competitive products
• Determine what valuable lessons can be learned from competitive products and push that information to the right parties
• Determine what valuable lessons can be learned from competitive products and push that information to the right parties
• Drive engineering testing of competitive products
• Drive usability, software, and features on competitive products
• Organize benchmarking tools and information for maximum benefit to the company and identify new ways to leverage benchmarking throughout the organization
• Direct interface with and support of the Software, Electrical Engineering, Procurement, Product Design, Industrial Design, Quality Assurance, Legal, and Product Marketing groups

Hopefully someone like me but who already lives in Silicon Valley (where the opening is) will read this and apply for the job of his dreams: ordering each of the competition's latest smart devices, running them through their paces (a.k.a. "playing with them"), dissecting them on a workbench (with a pitiless chuckle), figuring out what makes them tick (or not), and then writing annoying memos to decisionmakers in 8 other departments about "valuable lessons" they must heed, else the company is doomed. If he's anything like me I pray he gets the job.

Because as much as I'd love that to be my job description, I'm not moving to Silicon Valley.

Not that there's anything wrong with Silicon Valley. It would be incredibly exciting as a technologist to live there, and nearby San Francisco is about as cool a city as you will find in the US. But with a median home price of $800,000 no one who isn't already there can afford to move. That median home in San Jose is roughly the same home I bought three years ago in Manitou Springs, Colorado for $200k and change. Except mine is a fully-renovated Victorian that comes with a mountain stream gurgling a few yards from the bedroom window, the towering slopes of Pikes Peak visible from my office, plus 8 hiking trails and 32 of the coolest cafes and restaurants within 10 minutes walking distance of the front door.

On the other hand, as the Eagles once put it, "every form of refuge has its price." The price of taking refuge in Colorado is not the house per se; it's that all the other software developers along the Front Range—and there are a lot—seem content to receive a big chunk of their compensation in the form of "quality of life" (or what we used to call "psychic income" back when I was an economist). That drives programmer salaries and contract rates to a pitifully low level compared to other parts of the country. The companies know you can't bear to leave the place, so picking up developers is like shooting fish in a barrel. It's a sad state of affairs if you're an employee or contractor—one that's driven me to take out-of-state clients that are willing to be flexible with me on travel vs telecommute. It's hard to believe, but I make more money working in Chicago even after paying for two round-trip airfares a month, two weeks of car rental and lease of a one bedroom apartment than I do working for Colorado clients from home.

So here's a hint for new startups: don't open your office in Silicon Valley. Launch your startup instead in Boulder. Or better yet in the Pikes Peak area, which is full of bright programmers that'll work for peanuts so they can climb or mountain bike after work and snowboard on the weekends. Hell, pay them with lift passes. Its a great place to bootstrap your software company on a shoestring budget because the mountains cost you nothing.

Already living in Silicon Valley? Great! Sell your house, buy a better one in Colorado and with the half million that's left you can be your own VC!

When Pikesoft some day makes the transition from consulting to software startup you can bet that we'll be keeping our headquarters right here in Colorado.

[posted from Addison, Illinois. sigh.]

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Update: By the way, I didn't mean to give the impression that I'm dissing the Chicago area. Chicago's not Colorado, but it's got more going for it than first meets the eye. It's a beautiful city with incredible cultural amenities, there's a fair amount of mobile software stuff happening, and there are some pretty places to live with reasonable home prices. I also meet an unusually large number of folks here who are "salt of the earth" types--smart, solid, broad-minded, decent people that aren't hung up on themselves and are just a pleasure to work with.

Another great Carnival came through SmartMobs over the weekend. Judy Breck did another bang-up job putting together the show and there are some terrific blog posts this week. I get the feeling that we are holding each other to higher standards with each passing Carnival. I'm still reading through them but will probably pick one out for special comment tomorrow, as is my habit. Meantime, go check them out for yourself.

I'm so busy these days it's all I can do to post once or twice a week here and I rarely make the time to deal with maintenance and site improvements--or even to set up something to track my traffic (how lame is that coming from a software developer?). If I were more honest with myself I'd probably realize I'd have plenty of time for site maintenance if I didn't stay up late writing chapter-length essays for blog posts. Ha!

But I do check my logs from time to time and I notice that I get a lot of folks who create logins, presumably to post comments, and then never succeed in making the comments. I use some open source blogging software that I customized myself to power this site and there may be bugs in it that I need to address. So if you're reading this message and have had trouble using my site, please drop me an email at dbeers (at) gmail (dot) com to let me know what happened. Might be a good idea to let me know what browser you're using and how you have it set up with respect to dealing with cookies, if you happen to know that. I'm guessing that's where the problem lies. If you don't have a clue about your browser settings, please email anyway so I know you're having trouble.

Thanks!

In my first career I was not a software developer but an economist. One of my intellectual heroes during my days in the Econ Ph.D. program at George Mason University was Jane Jacobs, who passed away this Tuesday in Toronto at age 89. Jacobs was most famous for her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, but my favorite of her books was her first, The Economy of Cities. It is the most delightful mixture of genius, promiscuous eclecticism, erudition, and personal warmth that you'll ever encounter in a work of scholarship. Jacobs' writing was always brimming with the intense curiosity of a self-trained scholar and contained not a lick of academic pretention. She was as comfortable supporting her revolutionary arguments with clippings and anecdotes from the middling pages of local newspapers as she was with academic works by economists, archeologists, engineers, or biologists. And she held her own against some of the greats in these fields--especially the urban economists of her day.

Jacobs' work was not only inventive and original, its persuasive power made a difference in the world, something that I wanted very much to believe I could do as a young economist. She was a fine writer and didn't mind getting her hands dirty in political battles against government planners who believed they could "renew" cities by rebuilding them according to their own abstract designs. I admired her faith in the spontaneous order that emerges from the creative and mundane actions of individuals and I was confounded that I couldn't map her ideas easily onto the libertarian political principles that I held. Her work was the subject of a dissertation that I never completed.

Thinking about it tonight after I read about her passing, it occured to me that Jane Jacobs, one of my favorite economists, actually helped plant the seed that led to my departure from the field of academic economics. I learned from her that you don't have to hold a position in a university or think tank to play a valuable role in the world of ideas. The honor that she paid to human creativity inspired and emboldened me to follow my own creative instincts and pursue a career as a technologist at a time when all the "normal" indicators in my life were pointing in a different direction. It's one of the best decisions I ever made, and I'm sad to see her go.

Wikipedia's entry on Jane Jacobs comes up a bit short on her legacy, but what's there is still quite good and worth a read. Reason had a wonderful interview with her in its June 2001 issue.

Amazon just stole some of Google's thunder and announced a storage service that any software developer can use to store arbitrary application data on Amazon's bodacious server infrastructure. This is great news for small, entrepreneurial software shops who want to deliver applications or data as services over the Internet but don't want to worry about about building, maintaining, scaling, and securing a server farm to do it. The cost of the service is very reasonable--especially for guys like me who focus on business applications and mobile apps that require the security and high availability but not necessarily terabytes of storage or bandwidth. From the press release:

"Amazon S3 is based on the idea that quality Internet-based storage should be taken for granted," said Andy Jassy, vice president of Amazon Web Services. "It helps free developers from worrying about where they are going to store data, whether it will be safe and secure, if it will be available when they need it, the costs associated with server maintenance, or whether they have enough storage available. Amazon S3 enables developers to focus on innovating with data, rather than figuring out how to store it."

S3 lets developers pay only for what they consume and there is no minimum fee. Developers pay just $0.15 per gigabyte of storage per month and $0.20 per gigabyte of data transferred.

Of course you still need your own servers to run your software, but the fact that your customers' data is always available to them on Amazon's infrastructure eliminates worries for the customer as well as the developer.

I'll explain the picture in a moment. It ties in, so read on...

I gave Michael Mace's Mobile Opportunity blog an endorsement a couple days ago at the end of a long but relatively content-free placeholder post. But his latest missive looks like the start of something particularly good so I figured I'd give him another plug. I'm eager to hear what he has to say on the topic he's taken up: the battle between the the middlemen who "own the pipes" that deliver content to consumers and the creators and innovators who want to break the middleman's stranglehold on the channel.

Mike shares the Silicon Valley frustration with channel oligarchs of all stripes: wireless carriers, publishing houses, music labels, electronic software distributors, etc. He also shares the idealism about a promised land where little guys can topple giants with an idea and some small digital stones. But he's been there long enough to be pragmatic and subtle about the course that needs to be mapped through the wilderness to get to that place:

The late Peter Drucker once predicted that electronic publishing was on the verge of making magazines obsolete. Today, 28 years after he made that prediction, electronic publishing is still on the verge of making magazines obsolete. This is typical of much of the analysis of new content channels--it tends to focus on the benefits and gloss over the process of getting from here to there. We assume the benefits are so compelling that it'll just happen. But in my experience the real world doesn't usually work that way. If you dig into the details, there's usually a tipping point that combines economic models, new technology, and new business infrastructure that must be created before a new channel takes off. If any element is missing, the transition never happens at all.

The barriers are very different in each industry, which means the pipes won't all change at once, and some of them may not change at all. To figure out what needs to be done, you have to look at each case individually.

Watch that space over the coming weeks. It should be interesting, and I'll be especially keen to hear what he has to say about wireless data if he gets to that subject.

Mike also links to a related blog that I just added to my roll: The Long Tail by Wired writer Chris Anderson. My friend Jeff Duntemann got me re-inspired about the Long Tail phenomenon when his first sci-fi novel, The Cunning Blood, published by an equally new small publisher, recently shot to #76 in the Sci-Fi and Fantasy category on Amazon because of a very brief mention on Instapundit and glowing Amazon reviews. As you can see from the screenshot, that was right ahead of the Left Behind book, a fact that I know was gratifying for Jeff on multiple levels! It's great to see brilliant writing and bold ideas beating out the conservative hit-making machine that has been throttling the publishing industry in recent years.

Whew. It's been a while since I've posted. I've been spending less time on-site with my Chicago client lately, which is great. But being in the home office more means less blogging time since my wife and I want to make the most of the time I have at home. We're really still just a couple of newlyweds. :-)

Still, I haven't been completely inactive on the blogging front, it's just that it's taking some time to chef up the next installment of my mobile developer interview series. In the next few days I'll post an interview I'm very excited about with brilliant Brazilian SuperWaba developer/creator Guilherme Hazen (affectionately known as Guich on the SuperWaba newsgroup).

As many readers know, I'm a big fan of SuperWaba, which in my experience is the best cross-platform mobile development SDK available today. While most of my customers still prefer to deploy Palm OS devices due to the superior user experience, many of them want to protect their investment in the software Pikesoft develops for them by ensuring that it will run on any devices they might choose in the future. So instead of writing the software to the Palm OS SDK we often use SuperWaba, which runs a single codebase on just about every smart device you can imagine: Palm OS, Windows Mobile, Symbian 7 (UIQ and Series 60), Linux (desktop or mobile), and even Sony PSP. It also runs on Win32 desktop OSes, Mac OSX, and as a Java applet inside a browser. The only notable device that lacks a SuperWaba port is the Blackberry. RIM, unfortunately, has closed access to their C/C++ API so it's difficult for anyone but RIM to develop a VM on the Blackberry.

Anyway, Guich has recently made yet another major breakthrough with SuperWaba 5.5, which we'll discuss. But the big news is a whole new product that they will release toward the end of the year that should really shake things up in the mobile software development world.

While you wait (and sheesh, I do have a big backlog of stuff to post) I'd like to commend former PalmSource CCO Michael Mace's blog to anyone interested in mobile technology. Mike has the best insights into the business of anyone I know and tends to write in more of the short essay style that I enjoy rather than the usual "link and blurb" style so popular in the blogosphere. Here's one of his best recent essays on the topic of "Does the mobile OS matter?" If you're a fan you should also head over to PDA 24/7 to read their recent interview of him. I didn't realize that he'd gotten his start as a small developer of Macintosh software back in the day.

I took a few minutes to browse the Palm web site to see how they are marketing their new devices (great Fall line-up, by the way) and found myself taking my glasses off to clean them. All the graphics on the page were crinkled and fuzzy the way they are when you use height and width attributes that don't match the actual dimensions of the image. Here's what I mean:Parts of the page, like the pricing information are almost unreadable because of the way the browser reflows the content to overlap text with graphics.

On a hunch I copied and pasted the URL from the address field in my Firefox browser into the one in IE and sure enough, the page displayed perfectly.

I see this all the time on sites where the company has obviously invested enormous amounts of time to get their pages looking just right. Can companies still afford to ignore Mozilla and Firefox?

13% of people browsing the Internet are not using Internet Explorer and among people shopping for something like a Palm device that percentage is probably quite a bit higher. I know Firefox accounts for 25-30% of my site's traffic, though that's surely on the high side. I'm not going to get on a high horse and act as though I'm in a discriminated class, but I would think that good browser compliance would be considered an absolute requirement for a major marketing engine like the Palm web site.

To make matters worse, there is no clear way I could find on Palm's site to report the problem. If someone knows an email address I can use to contact the webmaster, please let me know.