Matthew Reinbold is Creative Principal for Vox Pop Design. BloomBurst is his blog on growing organic software and building sustainable communities. More...
Recently I stopped by to check the Vox Pop Design Intergalactic postal box and discovered the flier (apologies for the sub-par snapshot, but, believe me, this is the best way of avoiding Orrin Hatch’s dreamy hypnotic stare). It’s an announcement for a series of events to inform the public of the change to digital television in 2009. Like the usual time share junk this raises so many interesting questions:
One of my numerous New Year’s resolutions that has suffered egregiously from my focus being elsewhere was the decision to learn Adobe’s Flex RIA platform. I’ve flirted copiously with it many times before. However, now I’ve gone and done the aspiring developer equivalent of buying it dinner. Let’s plan on a gossip session in about a month where I’ll share just how easy it really is.
As I review Jonathan Zittrain’s book, The Future of the Internet and how to stop it, I am struck with a parallel. Jonathan is extremely wary of a new breed of devices that he refers to as Internet appliances (to quickly get up to speed a number of press interviews are available). Among these he lists Tivo and the Apple iPhone. In these (and other) cases what we gain in elegant or eased user experience comes at the expense of being able to innovate.
He compares these devices to the original Compuserve. The idea of the portal was to streamline the turbulent, confusing mess of interconnected computers with a simplified interface. But if everybody wants intuitive, easy to use appliances why did the Internet win big while AOL is forced to flirt with whatever drunken merger comes ashore?
Zittrain maintains that it was the Internet’s openness - that messy, ruff-n-tumble, anyone can participate nature - that provided more meaningful innovation. This explosion in the unique, the odd, and the unpredictable quickly trumped the closed, safe, and stifling portals. Yet companies continue to maximize short term gain while minimizing long term benefits. Tivo has Linux inside. But write custom code for it to add features and you’ve voided your warranty. Apple has slowly opened a path for developers to get their apps on the iPhone. But they have to be approved by a central authority. [update 7/24 - TechCrunch on Apple’s “New” Walled Garden]
Cloud computing is to developers what Internet appliances are to consumers. Services like Amazon S3 and Google Apps Engine abstract away complexity into a black box (called a ‘cloud’). Requests go in and data comes out. They provide easy to use, elegant solutions to many problems that developers face. That is, until they break. On Sunday Amazon S3 went down. This is ironic because its selling point is that developers needn’t worry about downtime with the infrastructure of the storefront behemoth as part of their programs. Developers were not happy. There was no rebooting of the system. There was no tinkering under the hood. They were as helpless as iPhone users caught in mid-update (the dreaded ‘iBrick’). The App Engine, with the resources of Google behind it has had similar trouble.
On last Friday’s Couchcast, toward the end, I started riffing about how I had similar concerns for Bungee Connect. Bungee abstracts away the ‘hard stuff’ in building applications. Like in a cloud system, applications built are beholden to the hidden inner workings of the platform. And, perhaps most unfortunate, Bungee doesn’t have the resources of a Google or an Amazon. Ted, our guest on the show, mentioned that there will be an open sourcing of certain components. That would help. It plants a closed ecosystem with the seeds necessary to grow innovation the likes of which Bungee currently could not foresee (or have the resources to pursue).
Internet appliances, cloud computing, and “platform-as-service” offerings do have value: they hide complexity. They do so, however, at the cost of innovation. Carefully consider the trade offs before making one of these the critical piece at the heart of your work.
This past week on the Couchcast it was my pleasure to interview not one but two Utah companies benefiting from fragmenting business structures. Along with my co-hosts Thom Allen and Robert Merrill I talked to Integratechs and Bungee Labs.
Computer maintenance like data backups and virus checking are essential to maintaining smooth operations. However, most small to medium-sized businesses find it hard to justify the expense of a dedicated IT professional. Integratechs allows companies to focus on their core competencies while “farming out” this important, yet tangential, duty. Its what they call IT outsourcing.
Bungee Labs bills itself as a “Software as a Service” (SaaS) platform. It is a web based suite of tools that removes much of the heavy lifting required to make a diverse set of online applications. This may include correctly configuring SOAP calls to common web APIs or maintenance of hardware related to scaling. By abstracting away the common ‘plumbing’ Bungee allows developers to focus on the business logic that makes their application unique.
The idea of ‘hiring out’ non-essential business functions is not new - the people who clean your office are most likely employed by someone else. What is new, however, is that once whiz bang areas of computing are now commodities. With companies like Integratechs and Bungee Labs jobs like maintenance and server administration (respectively) are abstracted utilities.
Do you bring some uniqueness or creativity to your job? Are you essential to the strategic difference your company uses to compete? If not, how long before your services are replaced by a third party?
One of the most best things about working to build a better technology community in Utah is how stable our economic foundation has been. Houses spontaneously imploding (in value), credit chainsawing through traditional lending institutions, Madonna breaking up marriages - all are refreshingly absent here. In a recent piece I wrote, out today on Utah Pulse, I cover the resiliency of our job climate amongst the larger national meltdown. From the final paragraph:
The positive situation has resulted in Forbes ranking Salt Lake City as the nation’s best location for jobs for the 2nd straight year. It’s also caused those in the employment space remain optomistic, yet cautious, regarding Utah’s job growth. “This slowdown is more directly linked to consumer issues (real estate and fuel) and isn’t necessarily business driven, so demand for IT services to support the business core remains extremely high,” Bretton said. “I would be cautious to believe that we have hit bottom,” concludes Robert, “but Utah seems to have an interesting connection with industries either benefitting or otherwise unaffected by national events (energy, transportation, natural resources, military). The combination of those things leads me to believe Utah will likely have an even-stronger opportunity to take-advantage of the new technologies and innovations our companies are already investing in.”
You can read the full thing on the Utah Pulse website.
