Daily links for 01/26/2012

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Bob Sutor

  • AT&T to offer Nokia Lumia 900 for $100 on March 18 | Signal Strength – CNET News

    “The new Lumia 900, which had been announced earlier this month at CES for AT&T’s network, will sell for $99.99 with a two-year service contract starting March 18, sources with knowledge of the launch plans told CNET. The Boy Genius Report first reported the pricing and launch date of the device as part of a leaked road map from AT&T the site said it received.”

    tags: nokia mobile

  • Board Your Plane with Your Smartphone – Forbes

    “The technology developed by OBS and SITA does not require an actual NFC chip to function. Instead, the companies’ innovation allows boarding pass data to be written directly on an NFC-enabled SIM card, which will likely lead to greater consumer adoption. Customers won’t have to purchase an NFC-capable phone to use the technology, and the card will be readable even when devices power off.”

    tags: plane smartphone mobile

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Daily links for 01/25/2012

Posted on January 25, 2012 by Bob Sutor

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Daily links for 01/24/2012

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Bob Sutor

  • iPhone 4S wooing lots of Android, BlackBerry users | Apple – CNET News

    “Specifically, 50 percent of the rival phone jumpers polled by CIRP upgraded from a Blackberry, 39 percent from an Android phone, and 10 percent from a Palm device. Only 21 percent switched from other mobile phones or picked up an iPhone as their first cell phone. And a full 43 percent of all iPhone 4S buyers upgraded from an older model iPhone.”

    tags: iphone android blackberry

  • Not Quite Smart Enough – NYTimes.com

    “The idea is that consumers can control the devices, which can communicate wirelessly, with their smartphones, tablets or televisions. So the owner of a smart refrigerator could check what’s in the refrigerator on a smartphone, and in some instances, send photographs to be displayed on the refrigerator’s LCD screen.”

    tags: m2m wireless mobile

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Daily links for 01/23/2012

Posted on January 23, 2012 by Bob Sutor

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Daily links for 01/20/2012

Posted on January 20, 2012 by Bob Sutor

  • Red Hat releases third version of its Enterprise Virtualisation platform – Update – The H Open Source: News and Features

    “As before, the RHEV hypervisor, which is only a few hundred megabytes in size, virtualises using KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) and integrates many RHEL core components – however, the new RHEV uses components from the current RHEL version 6.2 rather than RHEL series 5. Consequently, the new RHEV-V offers many improvements that have been available in RHEL 6 for some time – for example, guest systems can now access up to 64 virtual CPU cores and up to 2 TB of working memory. Technologies such as vhost-net, Transparent Huge Pages (THP), x2apic and KSM (Kernel Shared Memory) are designed to improve performance and increase efficiency.”

    tags: Red Hat virtualisation

  • API Management Service Apigee Acquires Mobile Data Platform Usergrid | TechCrunch

    “Apigee, a provider of API management products and services, which we’ve referred to in the past as a “Google Analytics for APIs” has acquired the mobile cloud platform Usergrid. For those unfamiliar, Usergrid helps to make mobile app development easier by providing the APIs needed to manage data, users and events. The company provides these kind of core APIs for the backend so mobile developers can speed their time to market.”

    tags: api management mobile

  • Big Business, Big Linux | ZDNet

    “It used to be that Linux gained its market-share from cannibalizing Unix servers. That seems to no longer be the case. According to this study, in the last two years 71.6% of new Linux deployments have been in brand new applications and green deployments. By comparison, 38.5% were migrations from Windows and 34.5% were from Unix.”

    tags: linux windows

  • Apple’s new iBooks Author targets e-book creators | The Digital Home – CNET News

    “Dubbed iBooks Author, the free Mac OS X application lets authors create textbooks and other books with simple drag-and-drop mechanisms. According to Apple, the application gives authors basic templates to quickly create titles that offer both text and interactive elements such as videos and images. To add multimedia content, iBooks Author lets users drag and drop content onto pages.”

    tags: apple author creators

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Daily links for 01/19/2012

Posted on January 19, 2012 by Bob Sutor

  • Role reversal: Apple’s the corporate standard for mobile | Mobile Technology – InfoWorld

    “But 2011 was the tipping point. iPhones now have more users than BlackBerrys within corporate environments, and Aberdeen Group mobile analyst Andrew Borg notes that many organizations have figured out how to handle the Apple security model comfortably, lessening the dependence on BlackBerry Enterprise Server outside of a small percentage users with special security requirements. Additionally, iPads became the corporate standard, with Windows-like market share, for tablets the same year. In fact, Aberdeen Group says that 96 percent of businesses have at least one iPad in use. Who’d have thunk it?”

    tags: apple mobile blackberry

  • Apple’s iOS, BlackBerry tops among business users | Mobile – CNET News

    “Among the more than 700 IT professionals polled for a Check Point study (PDF) out today, iOS accounted for 30 percent of the collective traffic on their networks. But RIM’s BlackBerry was hot on Apple’s trail with 29 percent. As BlackBerry has long been a corporate standard, the rise of iOS is a clear sign of the consumerization of IT in which employees want to use the same devices at work that they use at home. The trend is even more notable since Apple gears its products for individual consumers with little focus on the enterprise market specifically.”

    tags: apple ios blackberry

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Thoughts on mobile management

Posted on January 19, 2012 by Bob Sutor

What does it mean to manage a mobile device, say a smartphone like an Apple iPhone or one with Google’s Android operating system?

At the lowest level, the device level, you might want to

  • establish a policy for length and structure of passwords
  • set or reset a password
  • detect whether the phone had been jail-broken or rooted
  • configure device-wide VPN
  • set power management policies
  • manage the low level security of the filesystem or other local storage
  • wipe the device entirely or reset it to factory settings

Above that, at the application level, you might want to

  • inventory the device for installed applications
  • install or update applications
  • set security policies for use of the applications, their data, and their network connections
  • selectively remove an application or its data
  • configure application-specific VPN
  • manage anti-virus and other security tools for browsers and other applications that access the web
  • manage installation and use of an enterprise application store behind a firewall, private hosted outside, or via external sites like the Apple iTunes Store or the Android Marketplace

The first list of items, with additional functions, is part of Mobile Device Management, or MDM. Note that people do sometimes confuse “MDM” in this context with “Master Data Management.”

The second collection is part of Mobile Application Management, sometimes shortened to MAM.

The first thing to notice is that what I deemed “management” often has a lot to do with security, especially when the phone is used to access enterprise data and systems.

Second, in practice, those who provide MDM functionality often provide some MAM functionality, and vice-versa. That is, a vendor might say “I can give you an enterprise app store but can also wipe devices.”

BYOD, or “bring your own device” complicates things because I probably do not want the organization for which I work to impose overbearing policies that affect my personal use of my phone. I certainly don’t want them to wipe my entire device if I leave the organization juto remove all traces of enterprise data or network access.

So the line is blurry between MDM and MAM, and I think we should get rid of the distinction altogether. That is, let’s just talk about Mobile Management and combine the two categories above. It will simplify things, remove the imprecision of the definitions, and bring better clarity to what vendors do and do not offer.

So if we can agree that Mobile Management consists of 27 common capabilities (for example), a vendor that offers 5 of them can be more fairly compared with one that offers 25.

No doubt that vendor proving minimum capability will embellish the description by adding “but we do it from the cloud!” (grin)

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Daily links for 01/18/2012

Posted on January 18, 2012 by Bob Sutor

Mobile

Virtual Worlds

  • WonderBuilders Develops Singapore Games Village

    “WonderBuilders, Inc. has created a virtual world called “Singapore Games Village.” Announced as part of the Media Development Authority of Singapore’s new Games Solution Center (GSC), this virtual world allows locally developed games to be showcased to prospective publishers who can then select the titles which they wish to license. The Games Village includes customizable game kiosks. Each kiosk displays games that can be played in a browser or on a mobile platform. The game kiosks are multi-user. As one person plays a game in-world, other remote participants can watch the game play and talk about the action. Users can also take turns playing the game.”

    tags: singapore games virtual-world

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Mobile BYOD is not unbounded

Posted on January 18, 2012 by Bob Sutor

BYOD, or “bring your own device,” is an important topic in today’s discussion of mobile in the enterprise. Employees buy their own smartphones or tablets, love them, then bring them to work and want to use them to access company data, systems, and applications.

For the CIO, this represents an opportunity to save money by not having to pay for and provide devices, but opens up many questions about how to allow secure access and management of the enterprise portions of those devices. I’m here at the Lotusphere conference in Orlando, so it shouldn’t surprise you when I say that many of IBM’s customers are looking at Lotus Traveler for secure access to email, calendar, and contacts on mobile devices, for example.

BYOD does not mean that any employee can bring any device to the office and demand that it be allowed access to the company’s digital infrastructure. That said, if the CEO brings in his or her sexy new smartphone, the CIO may feel more inclined to make that work.

In practice, CIOs will say that certain devices running specific mobile operating system versions, augmented by security and management software and policies will be allowed access to the company’s network. That is, “bring your own device” really means “bring your own device as long as it is one of the following.”

Many enterprises already support Blackberrys, so that will be relatively easy. There’s not too much variation among Apple iPhones and iPads beyond the major version numbers. So while a 3g phone might work, I think many enterprises will insist on a 4 or 4s phone, probably running the latest version of iOS.

Android is more problematic because there are many handset providers and many versions of the operating system. Expect individual handset vendors to negotiate directly with CIOs to allow use of their devices in the CIOs’ companies, even if those devices are bought by the employees.

The wildcard here will be Windows Phone and the devices that support it. While Apple iOS and Android are very different, both technically and culturally, Windows Phone is different yet. While Mango is quite nice looking, as I saw from the Nokia team at Lotusphere, will individual purchasers and CIOs wait until Windows Phone 8? Will the rate of adoption allow it to be accepted into the enterprise any time in 2012 or might it even be 2014 before the demand is sufficient for supporting it inside companies?

My advice to CIOs is this: if you support Blackberrys, you will need to support them for the foreseeable future. The newer iPhone and iPads will need to be given enterprise access because of their marketshare and the demands of senior management. For Android, pick a couple of handset vendors, perhaps based on a survey of your current employee users, and settle on the level of the operating system you will support. Educate yourself about Windows Phone, but the above combinations are probably of more immediate and higher priority.

Also see: “10 predictions for enterprise mobile for 2012″

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Daily links for 01/17/2012

Posted on January 17, 2012 by Bob Sutor

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Harnessing the Power of Enterprise Mobility presentation now available

Posted on January 17, 2012 by Bob Sutor

My presentation for Lotusphere 2012, Harnessing the Power of Enterprise Mobility, is now available on SlideShare and embedded here:

Lotusphere 2012 – Harnessing the Power of Enterprise Mobility

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IBM Mobile Team at Lotusphere 2012

Posted on January 17, 2012 by Bob Sutor

It’s an artifact of today’s spread out worldwide working culture that many people in large companies never get to meet each other if they work in different locations. I’m down at IBM’s Lotusphere conference this week talking about Mobile for the Enterprise, meeting with partners, doing press interviews, and having discussions with learned industry analysts. There are also several members of the extended IBM Mobile Team here as well, so I’m going to try to photographically document their presence.

In this first installment, from left to right we have Dirk Nicol and  Christian Hunt from my mobile team and Yakura Coffee from my WebSphere Foundation team. They’re manning peds in the Solution Showcase and, if you are at the show, I encourage you to stop by and pay them a visit. This is the first time I’ve met Yakura and Christian though we’ve worked together for over half a year.

members of the IBM team

Note the snazzy shirts. I’m not sure if they glow in the dark, but, by rights, they should.

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IBM Mobile Technology Preview v3, now with iOS support

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Bob Sutor

IBM just released the third drop of the IBM Mobile Technology preview at ibm.co/ibmmobile, with details of the update on the tech preview blog.

This release includes updates to the mobile application manager with social feedback, SMS support, tools, and, perhaps most important, support for Apple’s iOS mobile operating system. The first two releases supported Android only.

This drop also includes the latest version of the Liberty Profile for the WebSphere Application Server. It’s a great example of how we think customers will use the Liberty Profile and OSGI in action.

The Mobile Tech Preview is our way of giving you a glimpse of what is going on in the IBM labs around the area of mobile application development, tooling, security, and management.

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Daily links for 01/16/2012

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Bob Sutor

  • Jerry’s 2012 Technology Trends (WebSphere: Into the wild BLUE yonder!)

    “Happy 2012! I enjoy kicking each New Year off with a posting of my top technology trends. These trends represent areas in which we are driving new technology innovations into our WebSphere and Software Group portfolios. Last year, I accompanied my trends with a rock and roll video. This year, I am practicing what I preach. Given Social Business is one of my top trends; I’ve placed the detailed description of the trends on a Facebook page, which I hope will allow richer social interaction around these topics. I am also using a prototype SMS-based app, which is aligned with our Mobile for Enterprise trend, to allow you to review, rate and receive notifications, when I publish new information on these trends throughout the year.”

    tags: technology trends websphere

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Mobility and Endpoint Management at Pulse 2012

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Bob Sutor

Pulse banner

From March 4 through 7, IBM will be holding its Pulse 2012 conference at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. One of the main streams of the event will be the Mobility and Endpoint Management track, and I’ll be a member of the keynote panel kicking off the discussions.

With the ever-increasing number of endpoints organizations must manage – physical and virtual servers, desktops, laptops, point of sale and mobile devices – it is imperative to gain visibility, control and automation. These devices simultaneously represent security risks, employee productivity, and new business opportunities. Join us at Pulse 2012 to hear from your peers and IBM experts on how to minimize risks, increase productivity, and increase innovation.

Mobile devices in particular have a very large impact throughout the organization today. Their rapid adoption over the last several years has significantly increased the “consumerization of IT” and forced IT departments to adopt Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies. At IBM we understand this goes well beyond the devices themselves though – it impacts network traffic, internal software development and custom applications, employee collaboration and use of social media, and much more. We are enabling businesses to build mobile applications, run and connect them to backend systems, manage their devices and applications, and secure their businesses on mobile – all to help our customers create new business opportunities and extend existing business capabilities.

You can register today for the conference and don’t forget to mention Mobile as one of your main interests in attending.

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Daily links for 01/12/2012

Posted on January 12, 2012 by Bob Sutor

  • IBM Sametime – Apps on Android Market

    “We are very excited to bring you IBM Sametime for Android! This gives you access to IBM’s award-winning platform for Unified Communications on today’s hottest Android devices.”

    tags: mobile lotus sametime android

  • AT&T offers HTML5 SDK for third-party mobile Web app developers

    “AT&T is planning to launch a store for mobile Web applications that run in the browser. The company has released a set of JavaScript APIs and a software development kit (SDK) that provide Web developers with access to certain mobile network features. Platform fragmentation has long been a major concern for AT&T. The company has repeatedly expressed frustration with the difficulty of making applications that work across the full spectrum of poplar mobile operating systems. Previous development frameworks that had the potential to unify the mobile application landscape, such as Java ME, largely fell short of expectations. AT&T is hopeful that standards-based Web technologies will finally solve the problem and provide a ubiquitous target for third-party application developers.”

    tags: mobile at&t developers

  • Canonical CEO: Ubuntu tablet OS will battle Android, iOS | Open Source Software – InfoWorld

    “Jane Silber is on a mission to get the Ubuntu Linux distribution onto mobile devices and TVs, rather than be stuck on desktop PCs. The CEO of Canonical (which makes Ubuntu) took over from the previous CEO, Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth, in March 2010, but has been with the company since shortly after its 2004 founding.”

    tags: ubuntu tablet

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Daily links for 01/11/2012

Posted on January 11, 2012 by Bob Sutor

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Daily links for 01/10/2012

Posted on January 10, 2012 by Bob Sutor

Mobile

  • PhoneGap 1.3 Adds Windows Phone 7 Support – Mobile and Wireless – News & Reviews – eWeek.com

    “Among the more popular tools for pulling off this Web-powered multi-device strategy has been PhoneGap, an open-source mobile-development framework from Nitobi Software, which Adobe acquired in October. When Adobe announced the acquisition, the company said it planned to donate the PhoneGap code base to Apache, where the project will go by the name Project Cordova. (It was briefly named Project Callback.) PhoneGap 1.3 began shipping in December, with Windows Phone 7 support as its headline feature. WP7 joins iOS, Android, BlackBerry, WebOS, Symbian and Bada in the PhoneGap-supported platform lineup.”

    tags: mobile phonegap

  • AT&T unveils a new API platform for HTML5 apps | Application Development – InfoWorld

    “Developers must rewrite native applications to run on iPhones, Android smartphones, Windows Phones, and BlackBerrys. HTML5 simplifies things for developers by letting them instead build apps that run in a browser accessible by any smartphone. HTML5 apps look and act similar to a native app. By 2016, 85 percent of smartphones will have browsers capable of running HTML5, Christopher said, citing a prediction made by Strategy Analytics.”

    tags: html apps mobile

  • Hybrid HTML5 Apps Are Less Costly to Develop Than Native

    “It seems like a fairly straightforward question: As a developer, business and enterprise, do I develop Web apps, native apps or some combination thereof? Answers to that question are anything but simple. Who is your target audience? What is the purpose of the app? There are a series of diverse questions that must be answered before jumping right into development. “

    tags: hybrid html native apps mobile

Virtual Worlds

  • Vivox spreads fast through OpenSim grids – Hypergrid Business

    “The process is simple. Applicants get a set of papers to sign — basically saying they won’t share their access codes with anybody else — and then add a few lines enabling Vivox to their opensim .INI file. The voice never actually passes through the simulator — the voice stream goes directly from the viewer, to the Vivox data centers, and back again — so there is no additional load on the region.”

    tags: opensim business voice

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My talk at Lotusphere 2012

Posted on January 10, 2012 by Bob Sutor

Next week is IBM’s Lotusphere conference in sunny and, I hope, warm Orlando, Florida. For those of you attending, I’ll be giving a talk called “Harnessing the Power of Enterprise Mobility” on Monday, January 16, from 11 to 12 AM. The session number is 1582A and the room is Swan – SW 7 – 8. The abstract is

It’s hard not to talk to an enterprise customer these days without getting into a discussion about Mobile. By 2012, the shipment of smartphones and tablets is expected to exceed that of traditional personal computers, including laptops. Enterprise CIOs want to use these personal mobile devices to give better access to their internal data and processes for employees, as well as enabling better purchasing and support services for their customers. Complicating this is the variety of devices used, employees who wish to use their own devices at work, application level and device management, cost controls, and security concerns. In this session, Bob Sutor will discuss his views on the foundational needs of enterprises for a mobile application platform, mobile device management, and security along with comments on how IBM can help you become a social business that leverages experts wherever they are working.

I’ll also be hanging out at the Enterprise Mobile booth from time to time, talking about the IBM Mobile Technology Preview. Stop by and say hello!

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Daily links for 01/09/2012

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Bob Sutor

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Daily links for 01/06/2012

Posted on January 6, 2012 by Bob Sutor

  • NASA opens it Open-Source Code Doors | ZDNet

    “As William Eshagh, who is spearheading the project wrote on the NASA open-source blog, NASA is first “focusing on providing a home for the current state of open source at the Agency. This includes guidance on how to engage the open source process, points of contact, and a directory of existing projects.””

    tags: nasa open source

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Daily links for 01/05/2012

Posted on January 5, 2012 by Bob Sutor

  • Apple launching iPhone 4S in China, 21 other countries on Jan. 13 — Apple News, Tips and Reviews

    “The iPhone 4S will then be available in 90 countries in total, making it Apple’s “fastest iPhone rollout ever,” according to Apple CEO Tim Cook. The new countries getting the iPhone on Jan. 13 include Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Botswana, British Virgin Islands, Cameroon, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, China, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Grenada, Guam, Guinea Conakry, Ivory Coast, Jamaica, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Niger, Senegal, St. Vincent and The Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos and Uganda.”

    tags: mobile iPhone apple

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Daily links for 01/03/2012

Posted on January 3, 2012 by Bob Sutor

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Daily links for 01/02/2012

Posted on January 2, 2012 by Bob Sutor

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Monthly disclaimer

Posted on December 31, 2011 by Bob Sutor

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent my employer’s positions, strategies or opinions, especially if they are about the guitar, fishing, gardening, carpentry, porch building, and musical tastes.

Blog entries before 2010 are in my Archived Blog.

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Daily links for 12/29/2011

Posted on December 29, 2011 by Bob Sutor

  • STLtoday – Associated Press – News

    “After the hauling of hundreds of thousands of tons of rock and tens of thousands of man-hours on heavy equipment, Vermont is ready to celebrate the completion of a Herculean task and the biggest single engineering challenge following the flooding from the remnants of Hurricane Irene: the reopening of the last state highway washed out by the storm. Just in time for the new year, and four months after the storm hit, Vermont officials are planning to mark the reopening of Route 107 between Bethel and Stockbridge. The state highway is the last to reopen after being closed by flooding.”

    tags: vermont roads

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Daily links for 12/23/2011

Posted on December 23, 2011 by Bob Sutor

  • Best iPhone Apps of 2011 – NYTimes.com

    “For iPhone owners, 2011 brought a flood of new apps, but in many cases they struggled to outshine last year’s best. So rather than present a top 10 list that includes names from 2010, I’m including only apps that had their debuts this year. If you really want to turbocharge your device, combine these with last year’s picks. (Note that this list doesn’t include games, which will be the subject of a separate post on the Gadgetwise blog.) Like last year’s list, this one includes many free picks.”

    tags: mobile iphone nytimes apps

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10 predictions for enterprise mobile for 2012

Posted on December 23, 2011 by Bob Sutor

Yes, it’s that time of year of for predictions for what we might see in the next twelve months. Being in the IT business and in a company like IBM, I’m somewhat hamstrung in what I can say regarding the future because of confidentiality, but here’s my attempt at some prognostications that won’t be giving away anything secret.

These are my personal predictions and not those of IBM.

  1. There will be a huge rush to fill the developing void being left by RIM and Blackberry, and smart enterprise CIOs will focus on security and management issues first.
  2. Although there seem to be 1 or 2 new entrants in the mobile device management area every week, potential customers will learn that it takes more than being able to call an API to wipe a device to give you enterprise credibility.
  3. The differences between mobile application management and mobile device management will become clear.
  4. Companies that develop multiple applications will understand that some will be web/HTML5 based, some will be native, and some will be hybrid. You don’t need to support just one kind and your application platform vendors shouldn’t force you to do so.
  5. CIOs will realize that the connection between mobile and cloud is overhyped. CIOs will realize that the connection between mobile and cloud is underhyped. That is, your use of cloud for mobile applications may not be in the way you expect today.
  6. Traditional networks that support web applications will need to be reconfigured and re-optimized to support an increasing amount of traffic from mobile devices. The number of interactions will dramatically increase, their length will be shorter, and significantly more asynchronous notifications from the server side will all drive a lot of R&D.
  7. While Android fans continue to claim world domination and Apple keeps selling more and more iPhones and iPads, look for Microsoft’s relative marketshare to start inching up.
  8. WebOS is done, but look for a new smartphone/tablet operating system to arise by late 2012 that will start to challenge RIM and Microsoft for the number 3 and 4 market positions.
  9. Amazon will have a serious tablet in the market by mid-2012 that will start to get some enterprise interest. The connection between that and the Amazon cloud will become clearer. The device may not be running Android.
  10. Apple will make changes to iOS to make it easier to support both personal and enterprise secure personalities on the same device. Yes, I know you can do this on Android today, but we weren’t talking about Android, were we?

Bonus: I will give up my Blackberry and get an Android smartphone for the first time (to complement my personal iPhone and iPad).

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Daily links for 12/21/2011

Posted on December 21, 2011 by Bob Sutor

  • Mobile devices: Five predictions for 2012 | Mobile – CNET News

    “Just as 2011 saw the rise in dominance of Android, Apple basically opening fire on every Android device through lawsuits, and a flood of tablets and 4G devices, 2012 should see similar shake-ups in the industry. Below are five predictions for what will happen next year. Some are based on recent conversations with industry sources, others rely on where the market trends are heading, while a few are speculation and wishful thinking.”

    tags: mobile

  • IBM Gets iPad, Android Tablets Ready for Enterprise With New Mobile Apps – Mobile and Wireless – News & Reviews – eWeek.com

    “IBM is rolling out eight new social-networking and collaboration mobile apps specifically designed to address enterprise-class requirements on Apple’s iPad and Android-based tablets. The new software, available for download now from most of the popular app stores, takes IBM’s industry-leading social-networking, real-time collaboration and online-meeting capabilities from behind the company firewall and places it into the hands of tablet users. The new offerings span a wide range of tablets, including the iPad. The software allows employees to more effectively collaborate and share data and images, and conduct meetings on the fly more securely as part of their everyday work experience, IBM said. Big Blue’s new apps offer social-networking capabilities for the iPad, online meetings, instant messaging, accessing business documents, and easier access to mail and calendar. IBM also released new software for building apps faster and better, and for improving the Web experience for users.”

    tags: ipad android ibm tablets

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Daily links for 12/20/2011

Posted on December 20, 2011 by Bob Sutor

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Daily links for 12/17/2011

Posted on December 17, 2011 by Bob Sutor

  • Explaining the API Revolution to your CEO – Forbes

    “One of the most striking findings was how often API programs were started in secret, nurtured by the true believers in a clandestine way, slipped into production, and then brought to the awareness of senior management after the API was shown to be a success.”

    tags: api forbes

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Daily links for 12/16/2011

Posted on December 16, 2011 by Bob Sutor

  • Android Will Lose the Tablet Race: 10 Reasons Why – Mobile and Wireless – News & Reviews – eWeek.com

    “The tablet market hasn’t been too friendly to Google’s Android operating system. Over the last year, consumers have been increasingly turning to Apple’s iPad to satisfy their tablet desires. Android-based products, like the Samsung Galaxy Tab, Dell Streak and countless other slates, have been collecting dust on store shelves. Of course, there are some who say that that will change. To prove their point, researchers and analysts point to Android’s slow start in the smartphone space before Android won a dominant share of the overall smartphone market. But so far, Android hasn’t lived up to the hype in the tablet space. So perhaps it’s time to question if Android really can make it in the tablet market. There’s no debating that it will have some slice of the tablet market, but it’s becoming more likely that it won’t be dominant. What’s more, it’s becoming far more possible now that Android might just become the “odd man out” in the tablet market. Don’t believe it? You should. This slide show spotlights why Android’s chances for dominance in the market aren’t nearly as great as Google and its fans would have you believe.”

    tags: android tablet

  • Open source is not a dumping ground | ITworld

    “Open source is not a dumping ground, unless someone chooses to treat it as such. If it is not treated as a garden that must be tended, don’t be surprised when it does seem like a graveyard.”

    tags: open source

  • GPL, copyleft use declining faster than ever | ITworld

    “A new analysis of licensing data shows that not only is use of the GPL and other copyleft licenses continuing to decline, but the rate of disuse is actually accelerating.”

    tags: gpl copyleft

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Daily links for 12/14/2011

Posted on December 14, 2011 by Bob Sutor

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Daily links for 12/13/2011

Posted on December 13, 2011 by Bob Sutor

  • Amazon’s Trojan Horse: Don’t Underestimate The Kindle Fire | TechCrunch

    “But there’s another narrative that says this is a secret success. Analysts estimate that Amazon will sell 5 million of the devices this quarter, a little under half the iPads sold in Q4 2011 (although the Fire has been on sale for a shorter period). I have a feeling that Amazon will hit or just graze this mark once it tallies holiday sales but, Amazon being Amazon, they’ll never announce total sales.”

    tags: amazon fire techcrunch

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Daily links for 12/10/2011

Posted on December 10, 2011 by Bob Sutor

  • HP: WebOS, Enyo app framework goes open source | ZDNet

    “Company officials told ZDNet that open sourcing WebOS was the best move after the company reviewed the various possibilities for the mobile operating system. There are two reads on the WebOS news: HP couldn’t find a reasonable buyer or the company is betting it can take off on its own.”

    tags: webos hp Open Source

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Daily links for 12/08/2011

Posted on December 8, 2011 by Bob Sutor

  • How to Conserve Battery Life on Your iPhone ~ LockerGnome

    “It’s well-known that, with the release of iOS 5, battery life has been less than exemplary. I’ve been slammed with it, too, and am feeling the repercussions when I’m only halfway through the day and I get that dreaded low battery warning on my iPhone — not only my iPhone, but any iDevice has been struck hard for those of us who have updated. Apple has been actively pursuing a solution to the problem and even called complaining owners personally to have them install diagnostic tools for troubleshooting. Since then, iOS 5.0.1 has been released to combat the problem a little bit, with a full solution promised in an iOS 5.0.2 release soon.”

    tags: battery life iphone

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Killing WordPress page scam

Posted on December 7, 2011 by Bob Sutor

I hate spam and I don’t think very highly of those who help create it. On my blog I have comments on entries locked after 3 days because 1) I think that’s enough time for people to respond, and 2) it cuts down on the amount of junk sent by spambots.

Akismet does a great job of capturing spam, but I still like to clean out the spam folder, especially if hundreds a day are arriving. In the last few months, I’ve noticed that spam has been directed to pages within the blog where comments had not been turned off. Evidently my 3 day window above does not apply to pages, just blog entries.

This is what I did to shut off the comments on those pages and hence the spam in WordPress 3.2.

Go to your Dashboard and click on All Pages in the left-hand column. Click the checkbox next to Title above the page listings, and then click Bulk Actions above it, select Edit, and hit Apply. In the box next to Comments, choose Do not allow. Then hit Update.

This turns off comments for all pages that appear in that administrative panel. If you have more pages, you will need to move over to them and repeat the above. You can increase the number of entries shown on the screen via Screen Options in the upper right.

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Daily links for 12/07/2011

Posted on December 7, 2011 by Bob Sutor

  • Win 8 app store revealed: more money for devs, beta in late February

    “In San Francisco today, Microsoft started talking up the Windows Store, the online marketplace for Metro-style Windows 8 applications. With Apple’s Mac App Store and iTunes Store already operational and selling both computer and tablet applications, Microsoft was keen to highlight the differences between its offering and Apple’s. Microsoft promised to make an application store that was more flexible, more transparent, and ultimately more lucrative for developers than Apple’s.”

    tags: app store microsoft apple

  • Marie L. Wieck: The Only Constant In Life Is Change: How Will Your Business Stay One Step Ahead?

    “So, here are some questions to consider. If you were to turn a critical eye on your internal IT, what would you notice for the first time? Do you have ability to visualize unusual events? What operations or processes are ripe for automation? Could you improve decision making by quickly responding to changing market conditions?”

    tags: ibm marie_wieck change

  • IBM’s Top 12 Tech Trends for 2012 Include Cloud, Analytics, Mobile – Cloud Computing – News & Reviews – eWeek.com

    “What if you could predict the next big trend in IT to stay a step ahead of your competitors or ensure that you were building the right skills for future success? The IBM 2011 Tech Trends Report is designed to provide a glimpse into what IT tools will become critical for businesses to adopt and the skills IT professionals need to stay ahead of the curve, drive success and help build a smarter planet. As a result, IBM is focusing on four key areas: business analytics, mobile, cloud and social business.”

    tags: ibm tech trends

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Daily links for 12/06/2011

Posted on December 6, 2011 by Bob Sutor

  • Motorola Xoom 2 review — Engadget

    “So what now? Well, Motorola has recast its Xoom: it’s made it faster, slimmer and lighter. They’ve beefed up the disappointing screen found on the original, it’s now a Gorilla Glass-coated IPS screen that promises 178-degree viewing angles. But Motorola has also cut more corners than the four you see before you — ones that it hopes customers won’t miss.”

    tags: motorola xoom engadget

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Daily links for 12/05/2011

Posted on December 5, 2011 by Bob Sutor

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Daily links for 12/03/2011

Posted on December 3, 2011 by Bob Sutor

  • IBM Systems Magazine – The iPad Meets the Mainframe

    “Mobile devices like smartphones and tablets deliver great graphics capability and processing to their users. Such devices enable access to applications that was previously unthinkable on mobile equipment, with terminal emulation screens and even full-screen browsers. And with the widespread adoption of Apple devices, which run iOS, there is a unique opportunity to link mobile users to IBM System z platforms.”

    tags: ibm systems ipad

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Daily links for 12/02/2011

Posted on December 2, 2011 by Bob Sutor

  • Developer Segmentation: Tell Me What You Think. Or How the Web “Killed” the Professional Developer – James Governor’s Monkchips

    “I have been giving a fair bit of thought lately to app developer segmentation. Considering how much money is poured into developer relations, its surprising just how little solid segmentation work has been done in terms of understanding developer roles or personae. I am currently working on a project for a client, and began some rough segmentation work for an internal report I am writing. Then it struck me I should ask the Internet what you think. The list below is not designed to be comprehensive- in fact its more like a first cut. What to call the types is certainly a challenge – on another call with a developer relations client, yesterday, they referred to “bedroom developers” – is that an insult or a compliment?”

    tags: developer segmentation

  • 7 Reasons that Rexx Still Matters

    “You might think of the dynamic language Rexx with nostalgia, but without a sense of urgency to program in it. René Vincent Jansen offers several convincing reasons that it ought to be in your programming toolbox.”

    tags: rexx programming

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Monthly disclaimer

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Bob Sutor

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent my employer’s positions, strategies or opinions, especially if they are about the guitar, fishing, gardening, carpentry, porch building, and musical tastes.

Blog entries before 2010 are in my Archived Blog.

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Daily links for 11/30/2011

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Bob Sutor

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Daily links for 11/28/2011

Posted on November 28, 2011 by Bob Sutor

  • 11 programming trends to watch | Application Development – InfoWorld

    “From JavaScript everywhere to everything on the JVM, the times and the tools are a-changing. So too is the way programmers work, thanks to the rise of frameworks and walled gardens, as well as a shift away from openness. Concerns around bandwidth, energy, and scalability are finding a place at the programming table, as are parallelism and the video card. There’s so much happening that you might find yourself thinking of going back to school, if only traditional education wasn’t fading from relevance.”

    tags: programming java

  • Dunder Mifflin Morphs Into Real-Life Brand – WSJ.com

    “The struggles of fictional paper company Dunder Mifflin to compete with real-life office-supply chains like Staples Inc. are a running joke on NBC’s “The Office.” Now, an online outlet owned by Staples is using the Dunder Mifflin name to try to sell more copy paper.”

    tags: staples dunder mifflin

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Daily links for 11/25/2011

Posted on November 25, 2011 by Bob Sutor

  • IBM Software events – Introduction to WebSphere Application Server V8 Part 1: Speed delivery of new applications

    “The pace of business is unrelenting and it falls to developers to deliver new applications and services as quickly as possible. In this first session of a two part series, learn how the new WebSphere Application Server V8 speeds development through broad choice and support of programming models and open standards including JEE 6, IBM Java SDK 6.0 (J92.6), OSGi, SCA, XML, CEA, SIP, Java Batch and Dynamic Scripting. Learn how you can also easily extend the reach of WebSphere Application Server applications from the desktop to mobile devices with the new Web 2.0 and Mobile feature pack.”

    tags: websphere ibm application server

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Daily links for 11/22/2011

Posted on November 22, 2011 by Bob Sutor

  • Retailers Enliven Catalog Offerings Through Apps – NYTimes.com

    “Just 8 percent of online shoppers own tablet devices, and retailers, on average, have spent an anemic $14,000 on tablet apps, according to Forrester Research. But 60 percent of tablet owners use them to shop and many, especially young people, say they prefer shopping on tablets to smartphones and even computers.”

    tags: retailers mobile

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Daily links for 11/20/2011

Posted on November 20, 2011 by Bob Sutor

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Daily links for 11/19/2011

Posted on November 19, 2011 by Bob Sutor

  • At last: The results. (Tech Trends Report)

    “In July, IBM developerWorks conducted a survey of over 4,000 IT professionals, faculty members and students from among the developerWorks community. We asked respondents about their view of the future of technology, including questions on business analytics, mobile computing, cloud computing, and social business.”

    tags: results tech trends mobile

  • Amazon to launch smartphone next year? – Rethink Wireless

    “With the Amazon Kindle Fire creating a splash, it was almost inevitable that rumors would resurface of a smartphone from the retailer. In many ways this would be a backward step – a phone does not drive content consumption or online shopping, Amazon’s key drivers, to the same extent as a larger-screened tablet or e-reader. But research by Citigroup suggests the web giant does plan a handset next year, citing supply chain channel checks.”

    tags: amazon smartphone

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Daily links for 11/15/2011

Posted on November 15, 2011 by Bob Sutor

  • Hey Mobile, Thanks for All the APIs

    “There are a number of factors coming together to fuel the growth of APIs. Without a doubt, one is the corresponding growth of mobile devices and the distribution of services across multiple platforms. An API is often required to create one native mobile application and becomes incredibly important when supporting many devices. Sometimes these private APIs are made public, sometimes they aren’t.”

    tags: mobile apis

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Getting started with mobile in the enterprise: The IBM Mobile Technology Preview

Posted on November 14, 2011 by Bob Sutor

Over the last 15 years of my career, I’ve seen several ideas or technology trends capture a significant amount of customer, press, and analyst attention. There was Java, XML, web services, SOA, and cloud. In and around all those were standards and open source. To me, the unquestionably hot technology today is mobile.

To be clear, I’m not talking about what happens in cell phone towers or the so called machine-to-machine communication. I mean smartphones and tablets. Those other areas are important as well, but devices are so front of mind because so many people have them.

Apple is obviously playing a big role with its iPhone and iPad, not to mention the half million apps in their App Store. Google and the Android ecosystem have produced even more smartphones and a whole lot of apps as well. Then there’s been the drama around HP and webOS, plus RIM and the PlayBook and outages. So we’ve got competition, winners and losers, closed ecosystems, and sometimes open ones. What’s not to love about mobile?

It can get confusing, especially for people trying to figure out their enterprise mobile strategy. They are looking for strong statements, for “points of view,” that will help them take advantage of mobile quickly but also aid them in avoiding the biggest risks. This is made even more interesting by employees bringing their own devices to work, the “BYOD” movement.

Not every employee is issued an official company smartphone and the devices they buy themselves are often better than what the company might provide. So they are saying “I’ll pay for my phone and my contract, let me have access to work systems so I can do my job better.” The recent ComputerWorld article “IBM opens up smartphone, tablet support for its workers” discusses some of what’s happening in this space at IBM, my employer.

Next there is the whole web vs. hybrid vs. native discussion regarding how to build apps on the device itself. Should you write it to the core SDK on the device (native), stick to developing standards for continuity and interoperability reasons (web), or something in between (hybrid)? Which is faster and for what kinds of apps? Does the app cause a lot of network traffic or does it require great graphics? Are you willing to bet that HTML5 will get better and better? I’ve started discussing this in a series of blog entries called “Mobile app development: Native vs. hybrid vs. HTML5″ (part 1 and part 2). Your choice will involve tradeoffs among expense, time to market, reuse of web skills, portability, and maintainability.

What about management? If I bring my own device to work, how do the company’s apps get onto it in the first place and then get updated? Is there an enterprise app store? If I leave the company, do they zap my whole phone or just the apps they put on it? There are differences between Mobile Application Management (MAM?) and Mobile Device Management (MDM) that you need to understand.

Let’s not forget security, as if we could. A colleague of mine, Nataraj Nagaratnam, CTO of IBM Security Systems, told me the way to start thinking about that for mobile is that “a secure device is a managed device.” That doesn’t mean that all security falls under management, but rather you need to have device management to have a complete mobile security strategy. You also need to be handle identity management, authorization and authentication, single sign-on across apps, data loss protection, and all the things you need to worry about with the web today such as phishing, viruses, worms, social networking, VPN, etc. Security must be there but it also needs to be unobtrusive. Most mobile users will not know what a certificate is nor whether they should accept it.

Fundamental to managing and securing mobile devices compared to laptops is that people tend to lose their phones a lot more often than they lose their laptops. That’s a good starting point for thinking about the differences.

With that as prolog, let me introduce you to the IBM Mobile Technology Preview on IBM developerWorks at http://ibm.co/ibmmobile.

The Mobile Technology Preview encapsulates several technologies we’ve been working on in the labs. We’re making it available for you to experiment with it, comment on it, share your requirements for your mobile platform, discuss the pros and cons of different approaches to mobile app development on both the device and server side, and join the community to make it better.

We plan to update the Technology Preview as we add or change the feature set, ideally because of your stated requirements. In this release we’ve included

  • an application server runtime that uses the WebSphere Liberty Profile of the WebSphere Application Server 8.5 Alpha (runs on Linux, Mac, and Windows)
  • a notification framework
  • a hybrid app development model using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
  • basic management functions
  • location-based security
  • several samples featuring notifications, Dojo, PhoneGap, and a starter insurance app for handling car accidents.

The Mobile Technology Preview is available for Android devices.

I plan to use the tech preview from time to time to illustrate some of my discussions of mobile in my blog. I encourage you to try it out, track its progress, and influence its roadmap.

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Daily links for 11/12/2011

Posted on November 12, 2011 by Bob Sutor

  • Examining Telecommuting the Scientific Way | Surprising Science

    “After a few weeks of the experiment, it was clear that the telecommuters were performing better than their counterparts in the office. They took more calls (it was quieter and there were fewer distractions at home) and worked more hours (they lost less time to late arrivals and sick breaks) and more days (fewer sick days). This translated into greater profits for the company because more calls equaled more sales. The telecommuters were also less likely to quit their jobs, which meant less turnover for the company.”

    tags: telecommuting

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Daily links for 11/11/2011

Posted on November 11, 2011 by Bob Sutor

  • Google reminds up App Inventor shutting down at end of year, download your projects now | Android Central

    “Google overnight sent out e-mails reminding users of its expiring App Inventor that it will no longer support the project on Dec. 31, 2011. As you’ll recall, App Inventor was a tool that allowed anyone with arguably no programming skills to create Android apps, though it certainly wasn’t quite as easy as that sounds. Google’s shutting things down but open-sourcing the project to MIT, and you can migrate your projects over if you want to keep them. Head to App Inventor and hit the “Download all projects” button and you’ll get a handy zip file.”

    tags: mobile google android

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Employee mobile device + work = potential security problem

Posted on November 11, 2011 by Bob Sutor

Employee: “I lost my iPad.”

Corporate security: “Why are you telling me?”

“I had company documents on it.”

“But you had the mobile security package installed, right?”

“Err, no.”

“I would have thought the company president would have known better …”

With the BYOD, or Bring Your Own Device to work, movement rapidly picking up steam, more and more employees are taking their smartphones and tablets to the office. This can be a boon to the CIO’s office if it no longer needs to foot the bill for those fancy new devices, but opens up all sorts of security problems.

The great thing about the current generation of phones and tablets is that they are so usable. Even forgetting apps, having mobile browser access wherever you are gives you access to information and processes that can help you do your work more efficiently and in a more time sensitive way.

Of course, being so convenient and light, it is also easy to lose them. This is why you can’t just tell your people to use their phones for work. You need to manage the access and resources they have, and be able to shut it down or delete them if the case arises. This could because because of a lost or stolen phone, but also because the employee should no longer be able to get to company data. There are levels of security access and people who are former employees should have no access at all.

All of this is on top of the security problems we already recognize and handle on laptops, such as phishing, viruses, and data loss protection.

And now a word from my sponsor …

IBM is today announcing the Hosted Mobile Device Security Management service. Capabilities in the new mobile security service include:

  • Configuring employee devices to comply with security policies and actively monitoring to help ensure compliance over time
  • Securing data in the event that a device is lost or stolen
  • Helping to find a lost or stolen device – wherever it is
  • Protecting against spyware and viruses
  • Detecting and removing malicious and unapproved applications
  • Monitoring and tracking user activity
  • Enabling more secure connectivity

And now back to me …

Seriously, this is a big but I believe containable problem if you take the necessary steps to understand the security exposures of employee devices in the enterprise and take steps now to provide the necessary security. Many people are familiar with the security and management capabilities of RIM and Blackberries, and they are now asking for the same level of comfort for iPhones, iPads, and Android devices.

If you don’t have a security policy in place for mobile devices in your company, you should start putting one together and implementing it now. Think about how many devices will need to be supported, what kinds, to what they will need access in terms of processes and data, and what you need to do when something goes wrong.

An employee need to understand that if he or she wants to use that cool new tablet for company work then he or she will need to live by the rules and policies set down to protect the organization’s assets. There’s a spectrum of possibilities between “you can’t use your own to device” to “you can do whatever you want.”

As an industry we’re trying to help companies move from the first situation to something in the balanced middle that provides the right level of security while maintaining the convenience, usability, and power of the devices.

Also see:

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Daily links for 11/09/2011

Posted on November 9, 2011 by Bob Sutor

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Daily links for 11/08/2011

Posted on November 8, 2011 by Bob Sutor

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Daily links for 11/07/2011

Posted on November 7, 2011 by Bob Sutor

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Daily links for 11/04/2011

Posted on November 4, 2011 by Bob Sutor

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Heathrow, more and less

Posted on November 4, 2011 by Bob Sutor

This morning I’m returning to the US after several days in the UK, specifically IBM’s Hursley Labs near Winchester. It’s been a good trip but as it wound to a close I began to turn my attention, and my anxiety, to the flights home.

I’m not afraid of flying, that’s not the source of stress. Rather, I hate dealing with long lines at the airport and the people ahead of me who are seemingly rebooking travel for 50 of their relatives. Because of this, I like to get to the airport early.

My first flight today leaves out of Heathrow Terminal 3 and goes to Chicago. When I can, I try to stay near Heathrow the night before flying so I don’t have to worry about travel problems on the roads or trains due to accidents or strikes. So last evening I checked into a new-to-me hotel, the Heathrow Hilton, near Terminal 4. This is a very nice, very modern hotel, though I was shocked that they still allow smoking in some of the rooms. My room was designated as non-smoking, but that familiar acrid and nasty smell wafted down the hallway as I got to the door.

The Chinese restaurant in the lobby was quite good and I turned in relatively early after doing some email and reading (Mercury Falls by Robert Kroese). My flight leaves at 1:15 pm so I left the hotel a few minutes after 9. In the past, I’ve taken the Hotel Hopper from my hotel to the terminal, but there was a walkway from the Hilton directly to Terminal 4. So I walked, and I walked, and I walked. The walkway is an enclosed elevated tunnel with occasional windows that give you a peek at all the traffic below you.

I arrived at Terminal 4, got on the elevator to take me down to the train that would take me to Terminal 3 (or on into London had I not been paying attention). I got off, realized I was on the wrong floor, smelled yet more cigarettes, and finally made it to Floor -1.

I then started moving swiftly toward the trains since the next one was to leave in 4 minutes. Perhaps I was too swift, because I got caught up somehow in the luggage barriers about 40 feet from the train. I went splat on all fours, banging my knees on the ground. After thinking “ouch” my next thought was how I was going to maintain some level of dignity as I got myself up, dusted off, and onto the train. Some very helpful security guards asked if I was ok, which I was, if a bit sore, and I got myself to Terminal 3.

In the old days I was Executive Platinum on American Airlines which gave me all sorts of perqs including being able to check in at the Business and First Class counter. Alas, I am only a lowly Gold member now having not travelled enough in the last year. So it was with great pleasure that I saw that I could check in at a kiosk and skip the long line with the 50 relatives who needed rebooking. That took two minutes.

Then it was on to security which used up 10 more minutes. So all in all, it took me less that 45 minutes to get from my hotel to where I am now, having breakfast in a restaurant (Eggs Benedict, Diet Coke) inside the terminal. Perhaps my anxiety was misplaced, though my back does feel a bit sore from my spill.

However, I’ve travelled enough to know that each positive experience only partially offsets the negative ones. So my fingers are crossed that the remainder of the trip goes reasonably well and I get home safely around 1 am.

Posted in Travel | 1 Comment

Daily links for 11/03/2011

Posted on November 3, 2011 by Bob Sutor

  • Eclipse Celebrates 10 Years of Innovation

    “In the month of November, the Eclipse community is celebrating 10 years since the start of the Eclipse open source project. In November 2001, the Eclipse IDE and platform were first made available under an open source software license. IBM made the initial $40 million contribution of technology to start the Eclipse project that has now grown to technology commons with an estimated value of over $800 million. The Eclipse community has also emerged as the leading place for individuals and organizations to collaborate on innovative technology development.”

    tags: eclipse

  • Open Source Eclipse Turns 10: Mike Milinkovich Looks Back at a ‘Novel Idea’ — Application Development Trends

    “It’s hard to believe, but it has been a decade since the Eclipse platform was first made available under an open source software license. In November 2001, IBM open sourced an internal project focused on creating a common component framework for developers (and coughed up $40 million to get the ball rolling).”

    tags: eclipse

  • Five Versions of the Gettysburg Address – The Fine Books Blog

    “The slim volume bound in vivid red cloth also includes reproductions of maps, photographs, telegrams, and letters on the battle, all from the LOC’s archives. In addition to the original text by the LOC’s David D. Mearns and Lloyd A. Dunlap, this new edition features commentary by Lincoln historian Douglas L. Wilson and retired LOC curator John R. Sellers, who discusses his experiences working with the Lincoln documents in the library’s manuscript division.”

    tags: lincoln

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So the gas meter said to the thermostat, ‘We should talk’

Posted on November 3, 2011 by Bob Sutor

In the last few weeks I’ve published several blog entries about mobile, but all of them have had to do with smartphones and tablets. There’s more to mobile than just that.

For a recent strategy presentation, my colleagues and I initially thought about how to segment the mobile marketspace and we came up with four categories:

  • Consumer: The apps and the infrastructure that support them
  • Enterprise: Again, the apps and the infrastructure that suport them, this time for companies to interact with their employees, suppliers, partners, and sometimes clients (when they are not viewed as consumers)
  • Network: What happens to support mobile in cell towers and on back
  • Wireless: The so-called Internet of Things and machine-to-machine communication

It didn’t take us long to decide that that Consumer and Enterprise should be merged since many of the features offered, problems to be solved, and technology used were the same. What you are seeing around the whole Bring Your Own Device to work movement further strengthens the idea that they should be considered together.

I’m going to discuss the last area around mobile that is listed above: wireless. Amazingly, this corresponds to an announcement made today that IBM and Eurotech have teamed up to donate software to and start a working group in Eclipse.org around MQTT, the Message Queueing Telemetry Transport protocol.

Admittedly, Message Queueing Telemetry Transport is a mouthful, and it’s no surprise that the acronym MQTT is used more frequently. Whether you like the short form or long form, I and many others think it will be very significant.

If you look around your house or apartment, you see a lot of devices that are very useful but pretty dumb. My thermostat has a modicum of intelligence in that it can learn how long it takes the house to reach a certain temperature and then plan ahead, but there is no way for me to access that over the web: I can’t remotely (Greek: tele) find out what temperature it is measuring (Greek: metron).

Even worse, I can’t remotely measure the gas or electricity use and compare that to the temperature to understand the efficiency of the furnace, optimize my energy use, or alert anyone if a significant problem is detected.

For example, in a seasonal house I might combine this information to respond before the pipes freeze on a particularly cold night.

Now there ways of doing this, especially in the last example. The problem is, when devices like thermostats, fire alarms, carbon monoxide level alarms, flood monitors, clothes dryers, and even refrigerators can convey information about their state, they do it in completely different languages and formats. As they become Things on the Internet, they need to communicate effectively with each other as well as systems that can take in all the varied information and make decisions.

The web works so well because we have the HTTP, the Hypertext Transport Protocol, to move data back and forth between servers and browsers. The hope is that MQTT will do the same for machine to machine communication.

In the example above, we may have smarter houses than 10 years ago, but MQTT could help turn them into actual Smart Houses.

Another example comes from the press release:

For instance, today’s smarter cities allow existing systems to alert operators of a broken water main and report the extent of flooding in streets and subways. However they are often closed systems. An open messaging protocol can be used to openly publish these events, enabling public and private transit systems to share and monitor these critical alerts. As a result, agencies would be able to adjust traffic signals, change routes, and notify commuters of alternative routes, transportation, lodging and meals on their mobile devices.

For more information about today’s announcement see:

P.S.: A very happy 10th birthday to Eclipse.org. From a $40M software donation by IBM, the organization has grown to encompass “273 open source projects at Eclipse.org; 1057 committers located around the world, more than half in Europe; 50+ million lines of code across all Eclipse projects; 174 member companies of the Eclipse Foundation.”

Eclipse is one of the most important open source organizations and has radically changed the nature and economics of the software development world. May their second decade be as productive the first.

Posted in Mobile | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Daily links for 11/02/2011

Posted on November 2, 2011 by Bob Sutor

  • Canonical’s Ubuntu Linux will battle for mobile developers | Mobile Technology – InfoWorld

    “But at mobile application developer Big Nerd Ranch, President Aaron Hillegass has seen mobile Linux efforts before and stressed the need for a viable ecosystem. “It isn’t enough for Canonical to announce that it is making the OS available — what makes the [Apple] iOS platform so compelling is the entire ecosystem: the OS, the devices, the iTunes store, iCloud, and the iTunes application. When that ecosystem exists for Ubuntu, we will be developing apps for it and offering the relevant training and consulting to our clients.”"

    tags: ubuntu mobile

  • Eclipse is celebrating its 10th Birthday

    “There’s a growing list of venues and dates, for events starting 7th November and spanning the rest of the month, but the biggest party is no doubt the one to be held at  EclipseCon Europe that opens today, 2nd November. This evening’s  keynote for the conference, is being delivered by John Swainson who will talk about the events that led to IBM’s 2001 decision to sponsor the creation of Eclipse with a donation of the people, code, and intellectual property. The creation of Eclipse marked the first time that a major IT vendor had open-sourced a strategic piece of technology and Swainson, who was the general manager of the Application Integration and Middleware Group at IBM at the time, will tell the delegates about why IBM made such a risky decision.”

    tags: eclipse birthday

  • The end of an era: Internet Explorer drops below 50% of Web usage

    “Internet Explorer still retains a majority of the desktop browser market share, at 52.63 percent, a substantial 1.76 point drop from September. However, desktop browsing makes up only about 94 percent of Web traffic; the rest comes from phones and tablets, both markets in which Internet Explorer is all but unrepresented. As a share of the whole browser market, Internet Explorer has only 49.58 percent of users. Microsoft’s browser first achieved a majority share in—depending on which numbers you look at—1998 or 1999. It reached its peak of about 95 percent share in 2004, and has been declining ever since.”

    tags: browser

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A browser to resolve mobile app development confusion?

Posted on November 2, 2011 by Bob Sutor

I read with interest the recent announcement by AppMobi that they are producing a browser for Apple iOS and eventually Android that will go beyond the basic HTML5 capabilities.

Typically, browser-based apps cannot access all the native capabilities of the device such as the camera and the address book. HTML5 does provide geolocation, local storage, and some other features, but that doesn’t come close to what a pure native app can give you. This has caused the growth of so called hybrid applications that use a library to provide JavaScript APIs and hence access to the native capabilities.

Hybrid apps are not pure native and not pure web, but bridge the gap in between. There are several ways of doing hybrid. PhoneGap is a popular open source technology for building hybrid apps, but there are others as well. You get to have all the display capabilities of a browser with the functionality of the underlying device.

Hybrid apps are not for every application design, but can do very well if there is a lot of network interaction, not too much necessary graphic performance, and whatever UI design you can handle in a browser with widgets coming from Dojo, jQuery, Sencha, or similar technologies.

The idea of this new browser is to include the PhoneGap and other APIs so you can write enhanced HTML5 apps with more access to the underlying features.

Is this interesting? Yes.

Does it cause people to think through the implications of native vs. hybrid vs. web? Yes.

Will people rethink app stores and how you can collect and manage apps that run in a browser? Yes.

Will it speed up development of HTML5 and mainline browser support for additional device features? Maybe.

Will this be the browser we are all using in 2 years? I really doubt it.

The web became successful because browsers became standardized. In the early days we had different browser functionality as Microsoft Internet Explorer tried to set de facto standards and Netscape tried to use real ones. Eventually Firefox, Chrome, and Safari all supported web standards, more or less, and competed on speed and quality of rendering. IE eventually caught up though it is losing share as we speak.

So I applaud AppMobi’s attempt to push the envelope here on what can be done in a mobile browser, but I think the mainline mobile browsers will eventually set the standard for how HTML5 and agreed upon extensions work.

We don’t need certain apps to require particular browsers to work. Check out this story from 2005 where the US Federal Emergency Response Agency required people to use IE to apply for aid after Hurricane Katrina.

Also see: Ars Technica – “The end of an era: Internet Explorer drops below 50% of Web usage”

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Daily links for 11/01/2011

Posted on November 1, 2011 by Bob Sutor

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Monthly disclaimer

Posted on October 31, 2011 by Bob Sutor

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent my employer’s positions, strategies or opinions, especially if they are about the guitar, fishing, gardening, carpentry, porch building, and musical tastes.

Blog entries before 2010 are in my Archived Blog.

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Daily links for 10/27/2011

Posted on October 27, 2011 by Bob Sutor

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Daily links for 10/26/2011

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Bob Sutor

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Daily links for 10/25/2011

Posted on October 25, 2011 by Bob Sutor

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Daily links for 10/21/2011

Posted on October 21, 2011 by Bob Sutor

  • Even the BlackBerry faithful are abandoning RIM | Mobile Technology – InfoWorld

    “The BlackBerry may not be dead, but it’s dying. New research from Enterprise Management Associates says that 30 percent of BlackBerry users in companies with more than 10,000 users will move to a different mobile platform in the next year. That would move Research in Motion’s standing in large enterprise into that of a minority OS. Today, 52 percent of users in such organizations “actively” use a BlackBerry for work purposes, EMA reports; a 30 percent reduction would bring that total to 36 percent.”

    tags: blackberry rim mobile

  • Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer — only geeks use Android phones – Computerworld Blogs

    “Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer proved once again he’s the master of hyperbole, telling an interviewer during the Web 2.0 conference that only the geekiest of the geeks can figure out how to use Android phones. Given that it’s the most popular smartphone OS in the world, there must be plenty of geeks out there if he’s right.”

    tags: microsoft android geeks

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Daily links for 10/20/2011

Posted on October 20, 2011 by Bob Sutor

  • Google confirms Android 4.0 ICS is open source | thinq_

    “Google has confirmed that the source code for Android 4.0 ‘Ice Cream Sandwich’ will be made public, after it refused to release the code for its predecessor ‘Honeycomb.’”

    tags: android open source google

  • BlackBerry freebie: RIM apps to placate for outage | The Digital Home – CNET News

    “RIM’s troubles started last week when the company’s services, including e-mail and BlackBerry messaging, went down across the world. After a few days, the company was finally able to get its services back online. But by then, the damage was done, and many users around the globe started complaining.”

    tags: blackberry apps

  • IBM Global CIO Study

    “With a unique, end-to-end view of their businesses, today’s CIOs are a driving force behind what makes companies work smarter. It is critical, as one CIO put it, to “ensure you understand the vision, have a clear strategy and execute where the business wants to go.” This is one of the many insights uncovered when we met face-to-face with over 3,000 CIOs to create The Essential CIO-the largest study of its kind to date.”

    tags: mobile ibm cio

  • VMware and Verizon team up for mobile virtualization — Tech News and Analysis

    “As is usual when dealing with mobile operators and corporate IT, some caveats apply. So far only Android devices will work with the Horizon hypervisor with VMware unable to offer the benefits of a hypervisor-enabled virtualization on Apple’s iOS devices including the iPad and iPhone for Verizon. Steve Herrod, the CTO of VMware, said in an interview that’s he’s happy to do it when Apple decided to let others play around with its operating system. Meanwhile he reiterated that eventually he hopes to get VMware’s Horizon product written into the Android code.”

    tags: vmware verizon mobile virtualization

  • Lookout Introduces a Security App for iPhones – NYTimes.com

    “But Lookout, a start-up that makes security apps for phones, wants iPhone owners to use its product, too. On Tuesday, it plans to introduce an iPhone app that addresses what its founders say are worries unique to iPhone owners.”

    tags: lookout security iphone

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Daily links for 10/19/2011

Posted on October 19, 2011 by Bob Sutor

  • Maqetta

    “Maqetta is an open source project that provides WYSIWYG visual authoring of HTML5 user interfaces. The Maqetta application itself is authored in HTML, and therefore runs in the browser without requiring additional plugins or downloads.”

    tags: HTML5 maqetta

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Daily links for 10/15/2011

Posted on October 15, 2011 by Bob Sutor

  • Why Banks Must Support All Mobile Platforms and Why HTML5 Matters – American Banker Article

    “The challenge of developing and maintaining mobile banking applications that will run on an iPhone, an Android phone, a BlackBerry or a Windows phone, as well as browser-based or wireless application protocol apps that will run on anything, is daunting even for large banks with massive IT budgets, never mind the rest of the banking world. But Jeff Dennes, who led the development of some of the first mobile banking apps at USAA and was recruited to Huntington Bancshares, Columbus, Ohio, a little over a year ago, says a multi-platform strategy is necessary. And HTML5, the latest version of the hypertext language for structuring and presenting content on the internet, is the next development frontier for banks to ignore at their peril.”

    tags: banks mobile

  • The Top Five Mobile Marketing Mistakes | Entrepreneur.com

    “Two years ago, there was no such thing as an iPad. Five years ago, nobody had a smartphone. Before 2007, the year of the iPhone, mobile marketing was mostly about text-messaging and selling ringtones. The bottom line is that everyone is new at this thing called mobile marketing. So, it should be no surprise that marketers are still working out the kinks.”

    tags: mobile marketing

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End of the sailing season

Posted on October 15, 2011 by Bob Sutor

Last year I wrote quite a bit about sailing. I purchased a 1988 Catalina 22 sailboat in July and got it onto Lake Ontario east of Rochester in August. We managed to get out on the water perhaps half a dozen times before we pulled the boat in early October.

Early this spring I did a lot of work on the boat, replacing the standing rigging and the halyards. We got the boat in the water right before summer started. My son Will and I even camped out overnight, battling mosquitoes that managed to get through the netting.

Unfortunately, it did not turn out to be a good sailing season for us, for several reasons. The boat was docked an hour from our house, something we obviously knew, but it was more of a problem this year than last. My work schedule made it very hard to get to the boat on weeknights and the weather on the weekends I had available often did not cooperate. In this middle of this, I had engine problems with the 6 HP Tohatsu outboard I bought last year.

As it turned out, a change of the spark plug and replacement of the gasoline eventually resolved the problem. The sparkplug was an easy fix, but the gas issue was odd because it was only a few weeks old.

Over the summer my son and I took the time to work on the trailer since the boat was not sitting on it. Will gave it a great new paint job, we got new tires to replace what were evidently the original 1988 models, and I completely rewired it. So that was all good progress.

Last week we again pulled the boat from the lake and brought it home. I was hoping to find someplace to store it inside for the winter, but that has not worked out. So after cleaning the boat inside and out, I moved the boat to the back of the property and secured two large tarps over it. I made two frames of PVC tubing to help support the tarps over the cockpit, and I hope that this helps prevent rainwater and melting snow from pooling.

I also placed the boat in an area that was not under trees. The spot I had it in last year was wonderfully convenient, but the tree canope and the things that fell from it made the boat cleanup harder this spring. Live and learn.

So everything is all put away and the engine is stored in our basement. What about next year?

First, we’re not going to put it on Lake Ontario, which means the end of our brief membership in the Pultneyville Yacht Club. Not only was the distance too much, but the wave height often made sailing in a boat the size of ours impractical. So it’s on to a new lake.

Which lake? That’s still under consideration. It could be one of the Finger Lakes close to us, though the nicer lakes still have the distance problem if not the wave one. We have another option we’re thinking of, and I’ll talk about that if it works out.

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Daily links for 10/13/2011

Posted on October 13, 2011 by Bob Sutor

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Daily links for 10/11/2011

Posted on October 11, 2011 by Bob Sutor

  • How to check on your Internet connection | ZDNet

    “If there’s someone on the planet who hasn’t had trouble with their Internet connection at one time or the other I don’t know who it is. So, if you’re having trouble with your network connection, here are some simple tricks to find out what’s what with your Internet and maybe even fix it.”

    tags: internet connection

  • HTML5 fundamentals

    “HTML5 reflects the monumental changes in the way you now do business on the web and in the cloud. Take a look at the functions and syntax for many of the elements and APIs offered by HTML5 to get a foundation to build websites or applications of your own that are powered by HTML5.”

    tags: HTML5 fundamentals

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