OneMind

A UK blogger named Gary Wynne, who's been working with NOLOH for over a year, has started a new blog about our mutually favorite Web app development tool. This one focuses on how easy it is to get into the habit of writing sexy AJAX user experience code without a single line of JavaScript, all within the NOLOH language syntax. Very cool.

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about the whole Web App development space. It's clear to me that the coming move to HTML5, which is already farther along than most folks who aren't hard-core developers realize, is going to change things in very fundamental ways. One thing that it portends is the ability with the right development tools to create Web apps that look and behave properly on desktop browsers and on handheld/smartphone browsers. How do I get there with the least friction?

I'm counting on my friends at NOLOH to solve this for me. And I'm betting that they will. Reading Gary's AJAX piece and reflecting on how much I can get done in NOLOH without writing anything but NOLOH code has further convinced me I'm betting on the right horse here. Even though Smalltalk remains my favorite language and even though it is true that for my personal Web projects I can choose any tool I like, I'm leaning strongly in the direction of staying with NOLOH. I figure if they can implement AJAX fluidity as absolutely painlessly as they have, they can make whatever I want or need to do pretty accessible.

Plus, I have the lead developers' home number.

Posted via email from danshafer’s posterous

A dyed-in-the-wool Adobe Flash developer explains why virtually no existing Flash content can ever be made to work right on a touchscreen device. Daniel Eran Dilger of Roughly Drafted magazine points out that without the ability to recognize or translate the mouse hover action on an iPhone or iPad or similar system, almost all Flash content will behave incorrectly if at all. Great point.

" So it’s not just that Apple has refused to support Flash. It cannot, logically, be done. A finger is not a mouse, and Flash sites are designed to require a mouse pointer (and keyboard) in fundamental ways. Someday that may change, and every Flash site could be redesigned with touch-friendly Flash. But that doesn’t make Flash sites work now," he summarizes. 

Posted via email from danshafer’s posterous

As you know, I’m a fan of the idea of creating smartphone applications that come in the form of properly designed interactive Web sites built around HTML5, CSS and JavaScript rather than writing code in Objective-C or some other more traditional programming language. I have a lot of reasons for that position; if you’re interested in reading them you can search this blog and come up with quite a few.

This morning’s news brought another good reason for taking this position: getting noticed in Apple’s AppStore, and increasingly in Google’s Android marketplace, is becoming a difficult-to-impossible task. As a result, these programs are moving in the same direction that desktop software moved in its early days, from a place where the marketplace sought out good products, keeping marketing costs relatively low, to a place where app publishers have to compete in an increasingly high-noise environment, driving marketing costs up beyond development costs and effectively beginning the ultimate demise of the small developer.

One of the problems I see here is that there is no secondary market for iPhone apps, for example. You must market your programs through Apple’s channel and no other way. (Well, that’s not strictly speaking accurate; you must distribute them through that channel but you can and should certainly promote them lots of other ways). Web apps are just, well, Web sites on steroids if you will.

So, again, I encourage you if you’re interested in developing apps for the smartphone market, to focus on HTML5 base apps that give you lots of advantages and relatively minor downsides that will undoubtedly be overcome in time.

Posted via email from danshafer’s posterous

A group of people around the world who are interested in the role of human intention in scientific research recently performed a successful mass online experiment in an attempt to influence the acidity (pH) of a sample of tap water. The experiment, organized and conducted under the auspices of British science writer Lynne McTaggart, was statistically a qualified success.

The intention set by the participants was to lower the pH level of a randomly selected beaker of water by one. The group was able to lower the pH but not by a full unit. A control experiment conducted later under close to identical conditions demonstrated no such change. However, the degree of change was disappointingly small, its statistical significance marginal and the screening-out of extraneous forces and influences inadequate to draw a clear conclusion. But I do think the outcome is sufficiently positive to warrant additional work in this area and to give people like me who are interested in the subject reason for some optimism.

This was the 19th intention experiment conducted by Ms. McTaggart. Sixteen of them have been deemed by her successful and some were far more statistically successful than this one.

Next month she is teaming up with famed Japanese water researcher Masaru Emoto in four simultaneous experiments intended to affect the condition of the water in Lake Biwa.

Both McTaggart and Emoto — along, of course, with thousands of others like them — are frequent targets of criticism for their lack of complete scientific precision and controls. Such is life on the bleeding edge where science and spirituality converge. I know from personal experience that there is a great deal in human knowledge that cannot be known or proven by the scientific method, which is, after all, a set of rules for a specific set of scientific claims, not a comprehensive method for demonstrating or understanding Truth. Scientism has, in our culture, become a religion unto itself. That is not necessarily useful or desirable.

Posted via email from danshafer’s posterous

While trying to get through to HP about a problem I have with a new laptop I just received, I had an epiphany about tech support. What is missing from every single tech support contact I’ve had is a simple single button way for me to say, “I’m pissed. I don’t know which of your stupid selections in your infernal call direction system I should push let alone what to ‘say’ to your so-called voice agent. Just get me someone to yell at.”

The call today was one of the worst experiences of my career with tech support. HP used to be really good. They clearly no longer are. I’m not going to bore you with details here but suffice it to say I was unable to get past one voice prompt because none of the options it offered me matched what was in front of me. So I gave it an arbitrary answer just to get to talk to someone. Five minutes into that conversation, the rep said he’d have to transfer me to the department tha t handled that notebook. The next jerk i taught to gave me incorrect instructions not once but three times and all three times accused me of not doing what I was told. I finally ignored his instructions and did what was apparently needed to get what he wanted. That worked. After being on hold 10 minutes he informed me this is a commercial notebook (not what I ordered) so he’d have to transfer me to commercial support.

This is just such a simple question. It’s not specific to a make or model, I’m confident. But they make me jump through their hoops which appear designed to keep me from receiving any actual assistance.

But a button labeled something like “I’ve Had It!” would have gone a long way. The other end of that button should be staffed by knowledgeable technology generalists who can answer basic questions and have a conversation with a customer that is both intelligent and intelligible, neither of which characterized my conversations today.

I’m not the first to say this and I won’t be the last but let me add my voice to the chorus. Out-sourcing tech support may have saved American companies lots of money and certainly cost millions of Americans good jobs. But it did more to damage the image of the consumer electronics space than 1000 recalls could. It is time for American consumer electronics forms to return their support activities to good English-speaking knowledgeable employees who care as much about the company and its products as does its management.

Posted via email from danshafer’s posterous