Category: software

Software nationalism

Code is culture, as Basile Zimmerman told us at Lift10. Further proof is coming this week as the Wall Street Journal reports on Russia, China and Iran making moves to ensure they keep a certain level of independence from American proprietary software:

[...] Mr. Putin’s motives are not strictly economic. In all likelihood, his real fear is that Russia’s growing dependence on proprietary software, especially programs sold by foreign vendors, has immense implications for the country’s national security. Free open-source software, by its nature, is unlikely to feature secret back doors that lead directly to Langley, Va.

Nor is Russia alone in its distrust of commercial software from abroad. Just two weeks after Mr. Putin’s executive order, Iran’s minister of information technology, citing security concerns, announced plans for a national open-source operating system. China has also expressed a growing interest. When state-owned China Mobile recently joined the Linux Foundation, the nonprofit entity behind the most famous open-source project, one of the company’s executives announced—ominously to the ears of some—that the company was “looking forward to contributing to Linux on a global scale.”

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As the WSJ notes, “Information technology has been rightly celebrated for flattening traditional boundaries and borders, but there can be no doubt that its future will be shaped decisively by geopolitics”. Governments are increasingly aware of the fact that putting their IT on a foreign technology can have deep implications. And with the IT world being dominated by the US, we can see countries disputing the American supremacy (add Brazil and India to the list) taking the lead on the open source movement, the only real alternative available.

Is that why in the US, some “influential lobby group is asking the US government to basically consider open source as the equivalent of piracy“?

In the end, it will be interesting to see both forces fight each other. Traditionally in technology, open always wins. But this time the companies selling proprietary software could easily convince their governments of the positive effects of spreading their culturally biassed technologies to the rest of the world, and get their support in the process.

It also makes me wonder what will happen to programs like Microsoft Grant(which create controversies like this one) that consist in giving free proprietary software to developing countries (among others). While I was working at the UN, the general view was that it was a way to inspire loyalty to the products. It is a very cynical view of the world – and true benefits can be obtained from using these softwares – but as the geopolitical dimension comes into play, will developping countries resist those donations and turn to open software?

Lots of open questions, and a topic worth following in the coming years.

Prezi is out of beta

Prezi is a new kind of presentation software I used a couple of times (most notably in my intro speech at Lift09). It is a nice change of pace from flat and boring powerpoints, finally an innovation in the presentation space!

Imagine an infinite white sheet on which you can position objects, texts, videos, pictures. After you dispose all information you create a “path” that the camera will follow, going from one frame to the other, taking the audience on a journey that even the best slide transitions can’t replicate.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/IUdTHR_Hp50" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Prezi is now out of beta, and you should really give it a go. Only problem: it does not work with a remote and you have to present with your laptop in sight. This can be a big problem (again, see my Lift09 intro speech).

Microsoft moves into the touch business

Microsoft’s problems are more and more obvious to the media, the BBC even talking of Redmond’s survival strategy. Can “Windows touch” save the day? Can new interfaces make up for years of ignorance towards customer needs? It worked for Nintendo and Apple, let’s see how IT directors react to a new Windows allowing users to “shrink photos, trace routes on maps, paint pictures or ‘play the piano’.”

windowstouch.png

Seeing all these dummy trademarked product names shows that one of the most fundamentally wrong thing at Microsoft still won’t change, and that might be the real problem.

Uploads, the personal computer, and why you should and should not buy apple stocks

The Macbook air showed that the whole computer industry functions around one factor: upload speed. Follow me a bit here.

What do you do with your computer? You probably work a lot, writing email, juggling spreadsheets and word documents, browsing facebook wallstreetjournal.com. Then there is your personal space made of conversations, websites, but also pictures, videos or music. That is why you call it a personal computer after all.

Back in 1995, Microsoft got really annoyed by Netscape when the Redmond giant realized that the web browser was set to become an operating system in itself. To use Gmail or Writely (an online equivalent of  Word, now bought by Google) all you need is a browser, and you don’t care if it runs on top of Microsoft, Linux or Apple software.

So it is not interesting to fight on this ground. It is a lost war. What the operating system makers need to do is to focus on two things: what people do not want to upload, and what people can not upload. Why? Because it is everything that happens outside of the web browser, and in that sense it is where you can make a difference, you can separate yourself from the pack.

One company seems to have understood that: Apple. What do you get out of the box if you buy a mac? A web browser (Safari) but no office suite. You go online or download the free Neo Office for that. Then you get tools to manage your digital assets (iTunes for music, iPhoto, iMovies, etc…), i.e. these things you can not upload because of network limitations.

And the mac will also take care of the stuff you do not want to share because they are too personal, you have encryption (Filevault) and automatic backups (Time Machine). That is what you call focusing on users needs.

Now there is a next step coming. Uploads are getting easier with bandwidths widening slowly. More of the things you had to do on your computer (like edit a picture or a video) are moving online. Ask Rodrigo of vpod.tv for a demo of their next product and you will be blown away. You can edit video, create transitions, add overlays of information, all online and in real time. Flabbergasting. Imovies and Photoshop are now coming to the browser.

The tasks we could not do online because of technological limitations will soon be available as web pages. A next paradigm is coming, and again, who gets ready for that? The macbook Air! It is a lightweight terminal with reasonable performance (it runs a web browser very well) and a small 60GB hard drive (about half the size of what you get on the cheapest PC).

This is the computer for the next evolution, when everything you do is online, and the personal computer has to become a light, reliable, safe, autonomous and friendly terminal able to connect to the web and run a browser. Apple is getting in position to reign on that market, taking the lead in almost every dimension that matters (interface, size, security, communication). That is why you should buy Apple stocks.

And the reason not to buy these stocks? The fact that this company loses 50% of its value if Steve Jobs has a car accident tomorrow. Who said investment was a gimmie ;)

You won’t escape open source

Gartner predicts that by 2011, “at least 80% of commercial software will contain open source code“.

As software applications get more powerful with time, they also share an increasing number of capabilities (think of login, profile edition or tabbed navigation for a web app). With time, open source usually ends up doing these basic tasks better than commercial product, simply because more people end up putting their brain power on the problem with the open model. Which probably explains why open source software ends up taking care of the fundamental layers of commercial products.

Are we slaves of Micro$oft?

37 in the morning at the RSR studioThat is the question I faced this morning during an interview (audio archive here) at the Swiss national radio (RSR) after Microsoft announced is was giving away free software to the students of Lausanne’s engineering school. My answer: Yes and No, and it’s getting better.

YES we are slaves, because inside many organizations you get a PC with windows installed whether you like it or not.

NO we are not slaves, because nobody forbids you to buy a mac or get a Dell with Ubuntu, you can use Open Office instead of Word and Excel, and please get Firefox.

II’S GETTING BETTER because we now have more credible options than ever (thanks in part to Mark Shuttleworth‘s work on Ubuntu – a linux version that your grandmother can use, and to mac OSX), and because we are spending the majority of our time inside a browser, i.e. an operating system independent environment.

This debate – who a few years back used to make people prone to irrationality ^ – seems to be less important now. What are your thoughts?

Ruby vs PHP vs Java

I am not that much involved in development anymore, but here is an interesting comparison between three of the most used Internet technologies you can choose from when you want to launch a service on the web.

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I am happy to have a few facts to move behind the war of religions that usually float around these decisions.

Multitasking

Jon Udell says out loud what many of us experience while working with computers:

Computers multitask way better than people can. As we perform the intellectual work that powers the information economy, our ability to achieve focus and flow is constantly challenged by distraction and interruption.
The paradox, of course, is that interruptions are vital, too

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Distraction is a huge problem. I noticed I am getting less and less productive because of interruptions, so I:
• don’t leave my email open all the time. I check it – for 5-10 minutes sessions – every 2-3 hours or so.
• shut down instant messaging when I need to focus on something.
• use SpiritedAway to automatically hide inactive windows

I believe this is a key issue for the future of computing, making our applications cope with the reality of our brains. Computers should better reproduce our offline work environments.