Does Apple know how to stage manage a launch, or what?
Apple over the weekend sold more than 700,000 iPhones to rocket past analyst predictions and shatter AT&T's record by selling more iPhones in three days than Motorola's RAZR did in its first month.
Now that's what I call a positive PR Event.
On today's Smalltalk Daily, I go over the syndication library used in BottomFeeder for creating feed objects from RSS and Atom. It's separately loadable from BottomFeeder, and today's screencast goes over the API entry points to the library
Technorati Tags: smalltalk, atom, rss, syndication
Techmeme reports (via CNN) that the Wii is outpacing the PS3 by leaps and bounds in Japan:
Nintendo Co.'s (NTDOY) Wii video game console outsold Sony Corp's (SNE) PlayStation 3 by six to one in June in Japan, a Japanese publishing company said Monday.
Sony took two hits on the PS3: they got to market a yea after MS did with the 360, and they didn't see the Wii coming at all. I've been wondering whether Sony might be forced out of the console business due to the PS3 debacle, and I'm still wondering.
Boris explains how to integrate Google Analytics with Seaside, and why:
We now return to regularly scheduled programming. First up, adding Google Analytics tracking code to your Seaside application. If you ask me, it’s an absolute must have if you are serious about your application.
The directions look really simple - simpler than doing the same for my blog server, as it happens. All I did was create an include file and copy it to the directories I needed to handle, but Boris' example shows the power of Smalltalk reuse, rather than the copy/paste variety.
Update: Boris adds more details you'll want.
The last time I stayed in a hotel outside of Gatwick (London), I paid £75.00, and got a room with no TV, no clock, and no phone. I had to pay a £10.00 deposit for a wind up alarm clock :)
So with that in mind, this capsule hotel sounds like a great deal at £40.00 for 4 hours:
The study desk folds out of the techno wall with its own stow able chair and a complete range of power and connectivity including free internet access and cosy local lighting. Suit and dress hanging and storage for everything from your smalls to the loose change provide a place for everything and everything a place.
A 23”flat screen TV system with huge choice of films, TV, radio, internet and an input for your own music and iPod.
Order from a cabin service menu on screen or visit the galley where your cabin crew are on duty 24 hours a day.
So amusingly enough, the actual "hole in the wall" has better amenities than the metaphorical one I stayed in. Next time I have an early flight from Gatwick, I'll consider this place.
I like the way Dare Obasanjo comments on Universal Music Group's tactics with Apple:
So this is what it looks like when an industry that has existed for decades begins to die. I wonder who's going to lose out more? Apple because people some people stop buying iPods because they can't buy music from Jay-Z and Eminem on iTunes or Universal Music Group for closing itself out of the biggest digital music marketplace in the world in the midst of declining CD sales worldwide. It's as if the record labels are determined to make themselves irrelevant by any means necessary.
I can't add much to that - other than to say I agree completely.
This is kind of interesting - have a look over this forum for the Nokia N95 phone. If you're a Smalltalker, you probably recognize the venting. If you replaced N95 with Smalltalk, and iPhone with java, those posts could be from 1995.
Mind you, I don't have an N95, and I have no intention of getting an iPhone ($600???).
Technorati Tags: marketing
I finally realized that I had fixed the link in the main post, but not in the feed - which is what iTunes hits. Doh! That's all better now.
In today's Smalltalk Daily, we look at an thread scheduler used in BottomFeeder. IN general, there are times when you would like to limit the number of "worker" threads; this example shows a simple approach to that problem.
Technorati Tags: process scheduler, smalltalk
Dare Obasanjo - with lots of good linkage - explains why Walled Gardens (like Facebook) become popular. There's even an advantage to not having full external visibility - post stupid pictures (etc) from some collegiate party on MySpace, and you might find that hiring managers are a bit leery about you. Do it on Facebook, and it's invisible to anyone but your friends. I can definitely see that as being a huge thing for the current crop of high school and college age users of these networks.
Technorati Tags: proprietary, web2.0
Yet another Pot/Kettle thing from the Enterprisey one:
"Folks who blog but still don't understand blogging..."
Technorati Tags: humor
This week, we spoke to Igor Dmytryk of Export Development Corporation of Canada. They use Cincom Smalltalk to manage their financial services packages, which is one of the core parts of their business.
Our talk hit a lot of things, including why they use Smalltalk, and how they managed the transition from the 2.5 release of Cincom Smalltalk VisualWorks to 7.2. We also found out that the "blocks in BOSS files" topic that we've talked about before originated in some work that Dave did at EDC - so we were able to explore that.
As always, if you have feedback, send it to smalltalkpodcasts@cincom.com, or head on over to Podcast Alley and vote for the cast - bear in mind that they clear the votes at the beginning of each month.
Technorati Tags: smalltalk, financial services
Enclosures:
[http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/audio/2007/industry_misinterpretations-07-02-07.mp3 ( Size: 14052804 )]
We got the podcast in late this weekend - 7 pm yesterday. So, I'm still editing it. We had a good coversation with Igor Dmytryk of EDC, which is part of the Canadian government. Interesting stuff on Smalltalk in the financial sector; it should show up later today.
Oh, and it's the beginning of a new month - if you like the show, head on over to Podcast Alley and vote for us, They clear the vote system each month :)
I'd have more interest in Universal trying to expand the list of music partners if I thought they weren't just trying for more DRM. Here's the jist, from Reuters:
Universal Music Group, the world's largest music company, has declined to sign a long-term deal with Apple Inc.'s iTunes music store, leaving open the possibility for exclusive deals with other services, an industry source said on Sunday.
Wake me when they renounce DRM. Until then, sign me up for a huge yawn.
Technorati Tags: DRM
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We get few enough days like this in Maryland in July - so I headed out to play golf this morning. I was hitting my drives well, but - the golf gods had their revenge on my iron shots. |
Via Dave Winer, we find out what happens when the masters of PR partner with the epitomy of customer ignorage:
Steve Rubel is one of the 38 percent. And since he cancelled his Verizon account, he no longer has a cell phone. Not a good situation for a guy like Steve. He's in PR. (Steve writes: "I actually have a backup phone from Edelman but it's my personal phone that was cancelled.")
Thomas Hawk's iPhone isn't working yet either. He describes waiting on hold endlessly with AT&T. Like Steve, his first memory of iPhone is going to be a wasted weekend trying to get started.
I have no idea whether 38 percent is an accurate number of people who can't activate, but it almost doesn't matter - the meme is out there. Maybe Apple should have found a partner that could spell customer service.
Technorati Tags: marketing
Argh! I was this close to getting a Wii tonight. At 1:20 AM, my WiiTracker feed spots available consoles at KMart.com. Sadly, I didn't notice it until 1:48 AM. At which point, I got this:
Wow - where did June run off to? Last week, BottomFeeder downloads ran at a rate of 184/day, which is about average. The details:
| Platform | BottomFeeder Downloads |
| Windows | 484 |
| Update | 234 |
| Linux x86 | 104 |
| Mac X | 92 |
| Solaris | 71 |
| CE ARM | 60 |
| HPUX | 60 |
| AIX | 40 |
| Mac 8/9 | 38 |
| Linux Sparc | 23 |
| SGI | 21 |
| Sources | 16 |
| Linux PPC | 16 |
| Windows98/ME | 15 |
| CE x86 | 8 |
| ADUX | 7 |
So it's off to the HTML page accesses:
| Tool | Percentage of Accesses |
| Mozilla | 51% |
| Internet Explorer | 40.5% |
| MSN Bot | 4.2% |
| Other | 2.4% |
| Opera | 1.9% |
Still heavy on the Mozilla side for HTML accesses. The Syndication Stats:
| Tool | Percentage of Accesses |
| Internet Explorer | 36.3% |
| Mozilla | 19.5% |
| BottomFeeder | 10.6% |
| Other | 4.1% |
| Net News Wire | 3.9% |
| Google Feed Fetcher | 3.3% |
| Vienna | 2.8% |
| BlogLines | 2.7% |
| JetBrains | 2.6% |
| Safari RSS | 2.6% |
| FeedOnFeeds | 2.6% |
| NewsGator | 1.7% |
| Liferea | 1.5% |
| Akregator | 1.5% |
| XML-FeedPP | 1.3% |
| Python | 1% |
| News Fire | 1% |
| Jakarta | 1% |
The Syndication readership continues to bounce up, too.
Via Slashdot, we learn that the RIAA folks don't like it when the anal probe is directed at them, rather than by them:
"The RIAA is opposing Ms. Lindor's request for discovery into the agreements among the record company competitors by which they have agreed to settle and prosecute their cases together, by which she seeks to support her Fourth Affirmative Defense (pdf) alleging that 'The plaintiffs, who are competitors, are a cartel acting collusively in violation of the antitrust laws and of public policy, by tying their copyrights to each other, collusively litigating and settling all cases together, and by entering into an unlawful agreement among themselves to prosecute and to dispose of all cases in accordance with a uniform agreement, and through common lawyers, thus overreaching the bounds and scope of whatever copyrights they might have. ...As such, they are guilty of misuse of their copyrights.'"
Suffice to say, my sympathy does not run over.
Phil Windley explains that the iPhone created an eco-system before it even shipped:
A guy near me in line, Kevin from Park City TV, went to Dicks Sporting Goods and bought a shade tent. I went over and bought a golf umbrella. Lots of people have bought chairs, umbrellas, and so on. Whether of not Apple makes money, Dick's is cleaning up!
California Pizza Kitchen has been making deliveries to the line. I got a Diet Coke and it about saved my life.
I don't know how the iPhone will do over the long haul, but Apple sure knows how to get people excited.
Technorati Tags: iPhone
Squeakers are organizing a conference in Chicago:
We’re putting together a great three day program including hands-on workshops, panels, presentations, casual sharing time and fun social events. Alan Kay will give a talk about the One Laptop Per Child Initiative, the “xo” machine and Squeak Etoys on this platform.
Technorati Tags: smalltalk
Following up from yesterday's screencast, today's Smalltalk Daily cleans up the Hangman example, structuring it as a better example. Possibly overkill for something this simple, but it does make for a cleaner "how to".
This is representative of the absolute mania surrounding the iPhone:
We counted at least 30 of these boxes getting unloaded a few minutes ago off of a UPS truck. The management at the store in Palo Alto tried fruitlessly to block our view.
Now, if someone told me that my local Target was about to get a shipment of a few hundred Wiis, I might drive down and spend an hour or two to see if I could get one. But a phone? Mostly, I sit on conference calls with my cell phone, so no matter how sexy it is, I'll still be spending most of my time saying "huh? I lost track of the conversation, so could you repeat that?"
I've been making a number of UI changes to BottomFeeder lately, and Rich just suggested one that simplifies things quite a bit. Newspaper view has been a feed level property, and Rich suggested that I add it to the "View" menu as an option for viewing items. That made sense to me, so now it's there. Have a look below - click through for the bigger image:
Technorati Tags: smalltalk, aggregator, rss, atom
Have the Yankees figured out that "one more trade" for an aging star isn't the answer? Have they finally figured out that some young talent might be a better answer in the long run?
The Yankees are leery of dipping into the depth they have built in their farm system to make a trade for short-term help. That explains their reluctance to jump at Los Angeles Angels first baseman Shea Hillenbrand, who was told he would be designated for assignment on Friday.
The Yankees would take Hillenbrand, but only if the Angels paid almost all of his salary and accepted very little – probably a low-level prospect – in return. Hillenbrand is making $6 million this season and is batting .254, with an on-base percentage of only .275.
The last thing they need right now is a "short term answer". They need younger pitchers, and that's not something that will happen overnight. This season is a washout - the same thing is happening for the Yankees now that happened to Atlanta last year. If they don't panic, the farm system will help them out.
I spent some more time this evening getting tab state straightened out - the tab functionality is finally starting to work the way it should in the latest update. There's a bit more to do - I need to address Newspaper view and tabs. Beyond that, things look stable, and I should be able to get the new release out soon. Hat tip to Rich Demers for his very, very helpful UI testing!
Technorati Tags: smalltalk
Ken Treis explains that you can create "normal" bookmarkable urls in Seaside apps where they make sense:
Thankfully, there are hooks in Seaside that make meaningful links possible. But they’re not very well known, and I can’t find any reference to them anywhere online. The methods are on WAAnchorTag, named #extraPath: and #extraParameters:. These two methods allow you to mangle the URL on the front side, just like you can with #updateUrl: on the other end.
Go read the whole post for context and details.
Technorati Tags: seaside
James Lileks notes that people just love to tell stories about how bad they have it:
It's a reaction to the latest study, which puts our traffic in the Tokyo-New Dehli category, I guess. There are spots of the Twin Cities that have bad traffic, agreed. But right now I’m looking at this page of MnDot traffic cams , and it looks like a scene from some strange version of the apocalypse in which the cars experienced the Rapture and the people stayed behind. When these roads are choked all day, then we’ll have horrible conditions. For now we still have it pretty good. Really. If it makes you feel any better, people in Fargo are complaining about traffic these days. It’s worse than ever. Takes a fellow ten minutes to get to the other side of town. Ten! Right now someone in Antartcica is stuck behind another vehicle, thinking: this gets worse every year.
I have to admit though, having done the Maryland to Virginia commute for half a year a decade ago (and it hasn't gotten better since then), I'm very happy that I work out of home office, and that the commutes I do periodically have involve air travel.
Robert Scoble illustrates the disconnect between "old" PR, "new" PR, and what Apple does:
Last night one of the people who’ve been on the ScobleShow (my video show) wrote me and told me he was fired for appearing on my show without PR permission. I won’t tell you who that was since he’s interviewing for a new position now, but it made me realize that when I aim my camera at someone that there are real consequences for doing so. Now, the guy in question should have known that would have pissed someone off. Most big companies, in their employment agreements, have in there that you aren’t allowed to talk with the press unless given permission by the PR departments.
That would be "old" PR, where transparency is discouraged, and all news is left to the PR department for dissemination. Scble tried very hard to break that mold at Microsoft when he was there, and he's doing the same thing at PodTech. However, the "old school" approach does seem to work quite well - for Apple:
Steve Jobs is MANUFACTURING great PR by keeping everyone’s mouth shut. Heck, I’ve met some people I KNEW had an iPhone and they were so scared of retribution or consequences that they wouldn’t answer a single question.
Everyone has heard the hype surrounding the iPhone - and most of that hype has come from guarded statements from the top of Apple, followed by rampant speculation elsewhere. Contrast that with how MS handled information about Vista (or, how we handled information about Pollock), and you see the danger of promising (or even seeming to promise) too much too early.
The question is, which approach will work out over time? The current theory is that the "new" PR of transparency is the way to go, but the Apple counter-example is pretty compelling.
Technorati Tags: marketing, management
Nicholas Carr notes that the build out of online business is making the hunt for physical assets and less expensive power more and more important:
But large software companies are finding that, as more computing tasks move online, they have to compete not just on the elegance of their programs, but on their ingenuity and efficiency in buying and deploying physical assets - land, buildings, computers, and other gear - as well as managing the huge amounts of energy required to keep all the machines running. The management of atoms is becoming as important as the management of bits
In "web 1.0", it was outfits like Sun, selling servers, that made most of the money. With "web 2.0", it's the hosting providers and physical plant people. This trend can only accelerate, IMHO.
Technorati Tags: web2.0
On today's Smalltalk Daily, we go back to Seaside, and look at a Hangman game implementation.
I've posted another development build of BottomFeeder - a lot of issues with the toolbars, tabs, and menus have been worked out. There are still a couple of things I'd like to address with tabs, but 4.4 is nearly ready to go.
Technorati Tags: aggregator, smalltalk, rss, atom
Laura Ries adds some reality to the iPhone hype:
Don't be fooled: Despite the hype, the deals and the massive advertising smart phones still only have around 10 percent of the market.
This made me think of Scoble's post on the "ugly phone" he saw. Laura's point is that people would rather have a device that does one thing well than a device that does multiple things adequately. That's not universally true; camera phones are wildly popular, and the cameras in those phones are certainly sub-optimal. On the other hand, using one I can take a photo and mail it to myself (or anyone else) immediately - which is a great benefit.
I think the upshot is this: converged devices are useful, but they are a niche product. Single purpose, "best of breed" products still tend to win.
Technorati Tags: branding
Via Scoble comes the most nightmarish delayed flight I've ever heard of - this is the sort of tale that used to just be told "over beers" between friends - now it's the sort of thing that could go completely viral. Airlines have a fairly consistent history of not being completely straight with customers - that's simply not going to work anymore. Not when so many people have phones and cameras that can shoot video and record audio.
Technorati Tags: marketing
Here in Maryland, it's too hot to think - so of course, I went out and did yard work. Then I drove my daughter around to various activities in my car with non-functioning air conditioning. If the thunderstorms hold off, I can head to the pool...
On today's Smalltalk Daily, we take a look at the VisualWorks APIs for commonly needed UI actions: enablement/disablement of widgets, UI customization at startup, that kind of thing. In particular, we look at classes ApplicationModel and WidgetWrapper.
On some of our mailing lists, there's been a thread covering documentation recently. The general feeling is that we don't have sufficient documentation for the system, and I'll highlight a comment from the thread that illustrates that feeling, and a disconnect that I think we have. Mind you, I am not trying to "make an example" of anyone who commented in that thread! I'm attempting to use an example to iterate toward a solution:
To give few examples of topics, which all could benefit from answers to questions like: how it hangs together, what was the purpose of introduction (some people my consider that obvious and some may wish to debate), design assumptions about usage, etc.
Multi-process UI - so there is no need to keep directing people at #uiEventFor: and family.
Now as it happens, the multi-process UI (which was introduced in VW 7.1) is fairly well documented - here's a passage from the GUI Developers Guide (one of the PDFs we ship in the "doc" directory):
Prior to 7.1, each window stored a queue of events sent to it, and processing of events was directed by a single instance of ControlManager, named ScheduledControllers. Accordingly, there was only a single UI process, the one run by ScheduledControllers. To allow for multiple UI processes, this mechanism was changed in 7.1.
Each window now has a WindowManager that holds an event queue, representing a single UI process. Each WindowManager can manage the events for one or more windows. Usually, only closely related windows, such as windows in master/slave relation, or windows and dialogs they raise, share a manager. Note that a dialog blocks only the those windows sharing its window manager.
This starts on page 63, and it goes on to talk about using #uiEventFor (etc). So in this case, the issue isn't that it's not documented - it's that a PDF document, separate from the tools that developers live in (browsers, inspectors, debuggers) is hard to use.
The problem is that our PDFs are adaptations of the old printed manuals. Now, printed manuals are good things (albeit expensive), and the PDFs are decent analogs for the printed manuals. However, they aren't a good companion to the Smalltalk system in the "tools I use every day" sense of things. This isn't to say that they ought to be eliminated; rather, augmentation and integration would be highly useful.
Along those lines, I've been thinking about what we could do. Within the system, our Packages and classes are heavily commented, and most of the "API" methods (while not necessarily marked as APIs) are commented as well. What if that were extractable into an easily searchable reference format? What if that reference format were linked to relevant passages in our PDF documentation? In other words, what if you could actually get at the documentation directly from the tools you already use?
I'd love to have feedback on this - either comment directly, or send email to jrobertson@cincom.com
Technorati Tags: smalltalk
How much buzz is there for the iPhone? Enough that Engadget has set up iPhone specific news feeds. And for the "oh my gosh, not more iPhone news" crowd - a sans iPhone news feed. Let the feeding frenzy begin :)
This is good news - the RIAA is getting sued for malicious prosecution by Tanya Anderson, who got an RIAA suit tossed recently with prejudice. From Ars Technica:
Former RIAA target Tanya Andersen has sued several major record labels, the parent company of RIAA investigative arm MediaSentry, and the RIAA's Settlement Support Center for malicious prosecution, a development first reported by P2P litigation attorney Ray Beckerman of Vandenberg & Feliu. Earlier this month, Andersen and the RIAA agreed to dismiss the case against her with prejudice, making her the prevailing party and eligible for attorneys fees.
This is the only thing that will give the RIAA the proper motivations - kicking their customers and creating negative PR seems to have no impact on their behavior. Maybe a nice, big loss (with a precedent set for more of the same) will do the trick.
On today's Smalltalk Daily, we take a look at some interesting charting code that uses Cairo Graphics.
There are advantages to having older, fully paid off cars - the lack of a car payment being the primary one. On the other hand, the last two days have demonstrated the problems. My (now nearly 20 year old) Mirage failed its emissions check, so I had to haul it to the mechanic last week. Got the car back yesterday - still not quite good enough, so I have to invest another few bucks to get over the Maryland waiver hurdle. I drive maybe 4000 miles a year, so it makes little sense for me to buy a brand new car until this one falls apart.
Which took me to this morning.... As my wife was heading to work (in the nearly 10 year old Windstar), the window stopped working - it was out of its track. This is a bad thing when thunderstorms are in the forecast, so I drove her to work, and went back to the mechanic. One dismantled door and a spot weld later, and it all worked.
I'm hoping that's enough car investment this month...
Technorati Tags: car
The June 2007 Cincom Smalltalk Digest is now online.
Technorati Tags: smalltalk
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