Bruno's Journal

IoT Needs Edge Compute, and More Than You May Think

Thu, 28 Jan 2021 10:18:03 +0000

IoT Needs Edge Compute, and More Than You May Think

The First Internet

The computer industry of the 1980s was based on a simple premise. It saw continuous hardware improvements that led to exponential growth in computation capabilities. This made it worthwhile to create high-value software.

A decade later, in the 1990s, the Internet and HTTP became mainstream, computers connected to one another, and we were no longer limited to the information in our local drives. Rather, we could access and download information across the world. Throughout, the user paradigm was not much different than the one of the client-server architecture of the 1990s which had replaced mainframes. In the First Internet, we used our PCs to access and download information. The heavy lifting was still done, for the most part, on our PCs.

Is DSRC dead? Vehicle to vehicle mobility network interoperability with LISP

Mon, 06 May 2019 11:43:52 +0000

Is DSRC dead? Vehicle to vehicle mobility network interoperability with LISP

Toyota’s recent announcement to halt the deployment of 802.11p (DSRC or ITS-G5) vehicle-to-vehicle technology in new cars may come as a surprise to some. But this is a rational and sensible decision by one of the world’s largest OEMs, a natural consequence of the evolution of communication networks, vehicle connectivity, and the introduction of more vision based automated driving features in cars.

Managing Consumer Products: A Lesson from Redesigning the Yahoo Homepage

Thu, 13 Dec 2018 07:25:02 +0000

Managing Consumer Products: A Lesson from Redesigning the Yahoo Homepage

Back in the early days, all computer users were software engineers. In fact, in the very early days, the people writing the software for computers were the ones using the computers. As an engineer you knew how the system worked, since you wrote it, and how to extend it whenever you needed to support a new feature. Explaining how the system worked to other engineers, or understanding what new features the system had to support, was also easy. A couple of decades later, the arrival of UNIX made computers more mainstream, and much more powerful, and MAN pages arrived as the way to communicate between the engineers writing the software and the engineers using the software. Eventually capturing new requirements also became more complex, and the architect role appeared. But, so far, everybody working with computers was a software engineer, and things were relatively easy.

The Sustainable Use of Big Data and AI at Nexar: Our Ethical Pledge

Tue, 04 Sep 2018 06:40:01 +0000

The Sustainable Use of Big Data and AI at Nexar: Our Ethical Pledge

The Nexar Mobility Network has the potential to become a key component of the world’s present and future, making transport and mobility both safer and more efficient. This network will become an essential part of our lives and will provide the same level of welfare we see in other networks, such as broadband and the Internet.

Introducing BDD100K: The World’s Largest Driving Dataset

Wed, 06 Jun 2018 13:12:21 +0000

Introducing BDD100K: The World’s Largest Driving Dataset

At Nexar, we invest a lot of time in learning about the world’s roads, driver behavior and what happens on the road on a daily basis. That’s because we are building a safe driving network and understanding our roads is an important step in creating a reality with no car collisions. To date, drivers using Nexar have driven more than 150 million miles. The anonymized footage of these driven miles helps us and other companies, researchers, and institutions develop accurate automotive perception and decision control models.

Time Restricted Feeding for the Endurance Athlete

Thu, 19 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Since 1950, obesity rates in the adult population in the Western World have increased from 13% to 35%. Adolescent obesity is sadly not far behind, with 18% of teenagers being obese. Aside obesity, 75% of the US population is considered overweight (BMI 25~30). Excess weight increases the risk of cardiovascular diseases, cancer and brain diseases. Obesity and overweight have become the epidemic of our time and we are in fact living in a time bomb. Higher life expectancy achieved through medicine and pharmaceutical approaches are “patches”, and as more of the obese population reaches the old age, the higher the pressure in our medical system. Combine this with the inverted population pyramids seen across the Western World, with more elderly people benefiting from the health system than those contributing in their working age with their taxes, and we are facing a social disaster.

Sharing My Fitness Recipe

Fri, 09 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Once a while I get told that whatever it is I do to stay fit, must be working. It is true that my routine has helped me regain fitness, cut weight, and improve my sharpness and focus at work. It works for me, and maybe could work for others. So in the spirit of sharing, here it is, my life recipe, all in, raw ingredients and method.

Volume

One thing I have learned is that in the long run there are no better gains than those achieved by increasing the weekly training volume. Although there is plenty of merit in high-intensity training plans which work well for time crunched athletes, as they reduce the amount of time required to keep and improve fitness, these plans are short-term focused, or local optima. Long term improvements towards a global maximum, i.e. season by season improvements, require long volume at endurance intensity that time crunched training plans do not provide. When it doubt, I put volume, not intensity.

The Case for Continuous Deep Learning at The Edge

Tue, 10 Oct 2017 22:27:48 +0000

The Case for Continuous Deep Learning at The Edge

Edge devices and very large real-world driving datasets hold the promise of autonomous driving

Over the past few years, we’ve seen significant advances in learning-based approaches to the development of automotive safety applications. These advances have been applied predominantly to the perception stage of autonomous driving systems. The decisioning stages of autonomous driving development have largely remained dependent on rule-based approaches. These approaches are, unfortunately, limited to pre-existing rules and unable to address complex corner cases or rare scenarios involving multiple driving agents. Any advancement has been limited to costly deployments only applicable to individual agents. With the broad adoption of IoT devices — and smartphones — running in almost every car on the planet, we can finally build a robust end-to-end system that learns from rare events not routinely accounted for in today’s systems.

It’s All Corner Cases: Teaching Computers to Drive Safely

Wed, 16 Aug 2017 13:05:46 +0000

It’s All Corner Cases: Teaching Computers to Drive Safely

It could be argued there is only one proven Big Data application — web search. Nothing so far has met the sheer size and complexity of indexing the web at the precision, recall, and freshness Google delivers. In its quest to structure the web well beyond text documents, around 2011 Google realized it had to fundamentally change the way it was indexing images. Google’s DistBelief system — the inception of the newly formed Google Brain team — pushed the boundaries of how deep learning could be applied to massive problems by training on a highly distributed configuration of thousands of CPUs. The publication of this system marked a key milestone for Google and the tech industry at-large. By applying the deep learning techniques Geoff Hinton and Yann LeCun had been researching for over a decade, Google was finally able to create a production system that could scale to understand and structure information from images.

Sports, Sleep and Startups

Sun, 04 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Back in 2012 we relocated to Beijing, China, triggered by my work. It was a great leadership opportunity to be a “pig”, not a “rooster”. One of the issues with being in China was managing a global team across timezones. Whilst we lived in London, dealing with California meant staying a bit late at work. You would expect the same for California teams, given that I was behind them in China. But no, teams in California don’t stay late, nor they come early. Rather they expect the rest of the world to adapt to the universal Bay Area timezone. Anyway, the issue being in China was lack of overlap with the California team. So, I changed my schedule, and I began waking up by 4:30am to start my meetings with Sunnyvale by 5am (2pm in California). I would carry on for 2 hours, till 7am (4pm), have breakfast with the children, bring them to the school bus, do a swim, and hop in the car by 10am (6pm), when I would do all my one-on-one meetings on my 1 hour ride to the office. This routine mixing work, sleep and sports, which started as a necessity, ended becoming a healthy habit with many benefits.

The Marathon of Work and Life

Sun, 04 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

When I started my professional life, now over two decades ago, I remember an Andersen Partner lecturing us in St Charles, Illinois, that our work life was to be marathon, not a sprint, and that we should pace ourselves for the long run. I have learnt to appreciate this more and more as I get older. This weekend I learnt about watering breaks, in this marathon called life.

I had the chance to spend Friday evening and all of Saturday with my children. Usually I only carve out an hour here and there for them on weekends, to do something quick together, and then I get back to doing work. And even when we are together doing something, I don’t fully disconnect and I am still glued to my phone and my computer. Partially this is work demand, usually getting something urgent ready for the week ahead, and just remaining responsive to the team’s needs. It is also playing catch up and reading articles published through the week. And sometimes it is doing all sort of admin, tax, banking, time-sucking bits and bobs.

CooSpo H6 ANT+ and Bluetooh Heart Rate Monitor

Sat, 29 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Tired of my Wahoo TICKR Run failing to capture correct HR data in now almost every outdoor run, I decide to try something else. But given my positive experience with the Milestone Pod, instead of going for the usual suspects from POLAR, Suunto or Garmin, this time around I decided for a sub $30 Heart Rate Monitor and got a CooSpo. How did it fair?

My experience with the Wahoo TICKR Run has been mixed. As a heart rate monitor, it served its purpose extremely well for 2 years of daily use. Battery, consistency and quality are really excellent when it comes to reading heart rate data, including R-R for HRV estimation. Recently I have experienced complete misreadings, either entering a classic plateau for a long period of time, or even worse, misreading by +/- 20 bpm randomly. As for its running dynamics features, I have never been able to use it properly. The running dynamics features only work if you use the Wahoo Fitness app. And even ignoring the running dynamics, the stride sensor is totally bogus and can read up to 5x higher or lower than correct, despite calibration. If you want a proper footpod, get the POLAR or the Milestone POD (highly recommended!).

The Curious Case of the Elite Turbo Muin and Misuro B+

Sun, 16 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Elite’s Turbo Muin is a super quiet direct-drive “classic” fluid trainer with a very smooth and progressive response. By classic Elite means it’s not a “real” or a “smart” trainer, but rather that it has no resistance control and no power readings. To change resistance, you gear up and down, and to get power readings we need to add a power meter. Elite however offers an optional Misuro B+ sensor for about $50 for its line of “classic” trainers which can output speed, cadence and power –the Elite Turbo Muin Smart B+ is nothing but a “classic” Turbo Muin with a built-in Misuro B+–. The question then is how good are the power numbers from a Turbo Muin with the Misuro B+?

WaterRower vs Concept2 - A Power Study

Sat, 15 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

There are many comparisons online between the two leading erg rowing machines, the Concept 2 and the WaterRower. There are many “soft” reasons discussed, but how do the two erg compare when it comes to pushing top watts? As a data-oriented athlete, I set myself to figure this out.

When I bought my WaterRower back in 2013, I spent time researching which erg rower to get for my home use. After narrowing it down to the WaterRower and the Concept2, I ended up choosing the WaterRower. Let me save you a few hours of researching forums, articles and blogs. These are the key “soft” differences between the ergs:

The benefits of rowing for runners and cyclists

Fri, 14 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

As you walk into a gym at a peak busy hour, you will likely see the cardio equipment being heavily used, be it treadmills, elliptical, spinning bikes, recumbent bicycles, … All but one, the erg rower. Rowing machines (“ergs”) seat lonely most of the time, normally only used by rowers. Even a short peak of popularity thanks to House of Cards has not made ergs popular. Which is a pity, since for triathletes, cyclists and runners, the rowing machine is probably a great piece of equipment in the gym.

Autonomous Navigation

Mon, 03 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

“Look at that red Tesla, it looks really nice, doesn’t it?” I said as we pulled out of the school parking lot after Hugo and Celeste’s after-school tennis lesson.

“That’s Claudia’s car. It is so cool, it drives by itself,” said Hugo impressed by the fact that somebody else’s car was better than daddy’s.

“Yes, you tell it where to go, and the car just takes you there,” added Celeste, proud to know how Tesla cars work, as she was the only one who had been inside Claudia’s Tesla.

Sayonara Linux Desktop

Mon, 03 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Six months into using Linux on the desktop daily on a Dell XPS 13, having moved from OS X due to hardware issues, I am sad to report that I am moving back to OS X.

Listen Linux, no hard feelings, it was fun, it was almost good, it felt liberating, and it was a great learning experience. But I am tired.

I am tired of having to disconnect and reconnect my external display whenever Gnome does not feel like picking it up, randomly. Race condition anybody?

The Challenging Case of Training at Threshold

Sat, 21 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Our ability to be fast in racing, whether it is cycling or running, is limited by an almost magic upper ceiling. Right below this ceiling, we are able to push ourselves for a long time at a comfortable heart rate, as the body is able to bring fuel to the muscles and recycle toxins. But push above this ceiling, and things quickly fall apart. This limit is our lactate threshold, and although it is mainly determined by genetic factors and it can only be determined exactly in the lab, it is possible to train the body to raise this threshold. Training for threshold will allow sustaining more power for longer periods of time, and at a slightly higher heart rate that will then feel more comfortable.

Are lighter riders faster on Zwift?

Tue, 03 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

In Real Life (IRL) cycling, the laws of physics apply and determine how fast we go. Do the same laws apply on Zwift, so that lighter riders go faster on the climbs on Zwift?

We hear from heavier riders how lighter riders are at an advantage as soon as the road goes up, and viceversa, lighter riders claim they can’t compete with heaver riders on the flats. That would be the case IRL, is it so on Zwift?

The Harsh Realities of Self-Driving Cognition Development

Tue, 01 Nov 2016 15:41:22 +0000

The Harsh Realities of Self-Driving Cognition Development

I often get asked the questions “why are you building a dashcam network?”, “How do you intend to fulfill your vision of zero road fatalities?”, “What is so smart about dashcams anyway?” Enough with the questions, it’s time for answers.

Eran Shir and myself founded Nexar in 2015 to embark on a journey to build a network of connected vehicles; we are building the first vehicle-to-vehicle network, the fundamental nodes of which being dashcams running on smartphones. But that is just the beginning. The camera’s artificial intelligence road-scene understanding is constantly developing and is increasingly able to warn and guide drivers away from dangers.

Linux Desktop on a Dell XPS 13

Mon, 24 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

It has been over 22 years since I started using Linux as my main operating system. Back in 1994, I started with Slackware 2.1, and kept using Linux as my desktop at school, for research, and even at work on a dual boot environment. I spent countless hours then configuring the kernel, X11 and what not to make things work. I went through distribution after distribution, till 2005, when our eldest daughter was born, that I got tired of compiling Gentoo packages and dealing with all the Linux issues. I had no time for it any longer.

2016 Hever Castle Triathlon Race Report

Sun, 25 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This Sunday I raced my first Olympic (international) distance triathlon at Hever Castle. Hever’s triathlon is part of the Castle Triathlon Series that have been happening for few years now on the highly charismatic grounds of castles across the United Kingdom, Ireland and France. Hever’s is the UK’s second largest triathlon, and the largest for children (in fact, our two daughters also competed this weekend, and I am a very proud dad).

Rowing with the WaterRower in Zwift

Tue, 29 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I have been rowing with the WaterRower indoor erg for a while, a good quality home rower overall, but notoriously known for its complete lack of software support. It is hard to get data out of it, it’s hard to make it interface with … anything, and it is mentally exhausting. A bit like indoor cycling with a turbo trainer was before Zwift. On the other hand, I have really enjoyed riding indoors on Zwift almost daily for the past year. As I took back rowing to work on my core, the itch became how to interface the WaterRower so that I could row on Zwift using the power readings from the WaterRower S4 computer.

Nifty Minidrive Storage Hack

Sat, 28 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Adding storage to a Macbook Pro can be an expensive proposition given the compact hardware architecture the new MBPs have. For my MBP 15-inch retina laptop, which comes with a 512 GB SSD, I wanted to add a bit extra where to put all our Dropbox, GDrive, Box, etc. network share replica. Nifty Minidrive is one of the most attractive options.

Nifty is a young UK startup based out of Manchester. Coming out of kickstarter fund raising, with the usual manufacture out of China (possibly Shenzhen if I had to guess), they have managed to create a very elegant, practical and beautiful way to expand the storage for your laptop using the SD card slot.

Zwift - A Virtual Reality Cycling Game

Sat, 28 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This morning I received my invite into the Zwift Beta. Zwift is a new 3D cycling game which makes riding your bike indoors a lot of fun. Traditionally, I have been skeptic of 3D virtual riding, based on my experience with BKOOL’s and Tacx’ products. Zwift has managed however to really add a true competitive gaming angle into indoor riding.

After downloading the DMG, installing the app for Mac OSX is straight forward. Interestingly, as you fire the app, it behaves like a normal Mac app, with an icon and a menu “Zwift”. However, if we switch apps, e.g. to a browser and come back, we see it’s now called “ZwiftApp” and the icon is now the default “exec” (the basic app in XCode). This ZwiftApp has a Preferences menu option, but that brings the “GLUT” preferences (an OpenGL utility toolkit?). It’s probably just a small cosmetic bug which you won’t notice anyway unless you are like me taking screenshots for blogging …

Wahoo KICKR and CycleOps VirtualTraining

Fri, 23 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Since I bought the Wahoo KICKR, I have been exploring the available software for it. Although I appreciate the simplicity of the Wahoo Fitness app, I miss having structured workouts. Ouf of the software programs I have tried, CycleOps VirtualTraining has become my tool of choice for training with the Wahoo KICKR.

With my first trainer, the Elite Qubo Power Fluid, I was happily using Golden Cheetah for real-time indoor riding, as well as post-ride analytics. GC is a fantastic program, and I still use it post-ride to do all the training analytics, but the current lack of support for the KICKR meant I had to look for an alternative for controlling the trainer during the workouts.

The Datastream Marketplace

Mon, 29 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Decision Automation

We are currently seeing how data processing needs are exploding. Consumers are leaving a growing crumb trail of events as they use the Internet. Sensor-data telemetry is growing into the trillions of machine-generated events per day. DNA sequencing is generating terascale genome databases, per human being. On top of generating and collecting more data, the expectations as of how the data is used are also growing.

Social data platforms, such as Foursquare or Twitter, have educated consumers about seamless data manipulation, in exploratory, unstructured and close to real-time ways. Businesses owners now expect similar flexibility in the analysis of inventory, catalogue and procurement data, joining their proprietary data with open data sets. The objective is to make better and faster business decisions. Just like businesses, individuals are also using data mashup capabilities to make better informed decisions when buying a house, selecting utility providers, changing insurance, etc.

The User Data Marketplace

Mon, 29 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

There is a nascent and potentially large opportunity to create a user data marketplace, whereby users have full control of which and how their personal data is collected and used.

The Consumer View

Our activity on the Internet leaves behind a trail of behavioural events from which information inference can occur: what we buy, what we visit, what we read, etc. Hundreds of players on the Internet collect these behavioural events in order to apply complex algorithms and convert the raw behavioural events into valuable information. Ad networks, ad exchanges, data management platforms, demand-side platforms, personalization providers, app developers, cell networks, data clearing houses, spy agencies, etc. The derived information is used to optimize what each Internet player is trying to achieve: publishers seek to improve engagement and yield; marketplace operators seek better margins; advertisers look for optimizing the return on investment for their marketing budgets driving awareness and/or conversions; and finally, consumers are attracted by interesting experiences that keep them engaged and solve their tasks.

Training and Pleurisy

Sun, 28 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Deep chest pain, breathlessness, nausea, weak. These are symptoms that should make anybody run to A&E. Nonetheless, I did not. At least, not till having gone first through two sleepless nights. Here’s my tale of how I discovered I had pleurisy.

It all started on Dec/23. I had done a nice 55km indoor ride on the KICKR, ending up 2nd on the rankings at Cycleops and Strava, putting in an average of 278w for over 90 minutes. Given that I had just come out of recovering from a cold, the ride felt good. By the time I went to sleep, I could feel pain inside my thorax. I thought it could be some gas, and just went to sleep. In the morning, I woke up feeling much better and spent the day with the children at the local pool and then cooking our traditional Christmas Eve dinner. Once the evening came, the pain in the chest came back, to the point of making me nausea and almost like passing out.

A Long Run in Marrakech

Thu, 18 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

For our yearly pre-Christmas family trip this year, we decided to visit the beautiful and vibrant city of Marrakech in Morocco. On the last day of our trip I got the chance to do a long run from the hotel.

Upon asking at reception for routes to run, the hotel staff remindeded me that it might not be safe to run outside and that it would better if I run inside the resort grounds, going around a 1.5km loop. Disappointed, I went back to my room to research the area on the Strava. A quick search in Strava found a segment right next to where I was. If it was safe for them, it was safe for me. I had to run outside!

Golden Cheetah on OS X Mavericks

Sun, 27 Apr 2014 08:01:05 +0100

I am a big fan of collecting and tracking the data from all the sensor device gadgets I use in my workout. For indoor cycling, I recently bought an Elite Qubo Power Fluid trainer, so I wanted to get the power curve into the software I am using for tracking cycling, Golden Cheetah.

First Build

Using homebrew we install Qt4. I did not try with Qt5 which is not as widely used anyway as Qt4.

Much Improvement Required in the UK Startup Ecosystem

Tue, 26 Nov 2013 07:45:14 +0000

London has many of the ingredients required for becoming the next startup hub. But it also has many structural problems that will prevent it from growing as fast as other centers, such as Tel Aviv.

I moved to London in early 2013 excited about creating a strong product development centre for Yahoo, in one of the hottest startup cities in the world. I am still hopeful we can still shape London to become such hub. But it requires a significant and non trivial amount of work from the UK government. This is a critical issue for the future of any economic power in the world that wants to be a global leader in the 21st century.

Convert Mailbox from Mail.app to Microsoft Outlook 2011 in Lion

Fri, 09 Nov 2012 07:45:14 +0000

In Mac OS 10.7 (Lion) and 10.8 (Mountain Lion), it’s not currently possible to export mailboxes from Mail.app to something that Microsoft Outlook 2011 can import directly. Here’s a way to fix it.

After a bit of research, and plenty of forum messages seeing the frustration of folks, including Microsoft’s reluctance to fix Outlook 2011 for Mac (instead they decided to just disable the feature, see in the release note “Import from Apple Mail is disabled in Outlook on Mac OS X 10.7 Lion”), I found the issue was due to the FSTypeCode not being set by Mail.app, which is actually really easy to fix.

Failing to Scale Out Push Web Services

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 05:28:11 +0000

Problem: On the web, enable a large number of message producers send a very large number of messages to a much larger number of message consumers. Example: allow 100,000 publishers send a total of 1 million messages per second to 100 million concurrently connected consumers.

We are dealing with the problem of connection channels, an abstraction that allows a producer distribute the message to many connected consumers. Our challenge is to design a distributed channel delivery mechanism that can scale out to millions of connected consumers. Throughout, our assumption is that this is a stateless delivery system, i.e. messages are either delivered or dropped and no persistence guarantees exists; if a consumer is not connected, it will miss the message.

The NodeJS Innovation Advantage

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 21:40:27 +0000

Thesis: “when building large scale distributed systems, high performance functional programming languages provide the quickest turnaround from idea to concept; however such advantage disappears as we move from concept to production, and the overall time from idea to production across all programming languages is of the same order of magnitude”.

I posted this diagram, without justification, yesterday evening, in an attempt to gauge the reactions of the community, in twitter. Thank you to all of you that commented. With the experiment done, let me now provide my thesis and hopefully address most of the feedback so far. I intend to make this post fluid and keep updating as the conversation evolves.

The Cloud Search Open Source Landscape

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 07:23:20 +0000

At some point in the race of scaling a search application, as query load (queries per second) and corpus size (number of documents) increase, we need to distribute things. Distribution means in practical terms sharding the index, and we need to solve both distributing indexing as well as distributed search.

To achieve distributed indexing we may either shard by document or shard by term:

Document-based sharding: each shard has index for subset of docs. A K word query requires O(K*N) disk seeks on N shards.
Term-based sharding: each shard has subset of terms for all docs. A K word query requires O(K) disk seeks, but much higher network bandwidth is needed to index. Search for complex queries is very difficult to execute.

For most deployments, sharding by document is the preferred approach for providing distributed indexing.

My Home Backup Strategy

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 06:07:53 +0000

For years I’ve been continuously fighting with backups. I have not been particularly good or consistent at it. We’ve been okay with Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner, but the recent addition of a digital SLR to our gadget collection has meant running out of space on our shared home drive.

Historically I’d been using a WD My Book 2x1 TB RAID1 array connected to an Apple Airport Extreme and shared via AirDisk (afp). We had Time Machine backup all the computers in the house in the AirDisk. We’d also store our photos and videos, etc. in the AirDisk. Aside running out of space, we had no good offsite strategy. Given that our digital picture collection is continuously becoming more and more valuable as a family history artifact, I though it was time to address this properly, rather than just adding more space.

The Praxis of Event Loops

Sat, 15 Oct 2011 15:27:47 +0100

On a theoretical world, given the ability for a processor to run an infinite amount of threads, we could prove the following statements (no attribution purposely given): (1) If you do more CPU than I/O, use threads; (2) If you do more I/O than CPU, use more threads. Which would allow us to conclude with the following corollary: “at full utilization, threads and events have the same theoretical throughput.” Such argument ignores praxis – it is a purely theoretical debate disconnected from the reality of scaling services –.

Markdown, An Open Document Workflow

Sat, 15 Oct 2011 14:27:55 +0100

I want to use a standard and open document format, so that I know I will be able to open my documents in years to come. That’s plain text. I also want to revision control my text files, so I want to use source control system. Which will also allow me to synchronize between computers between computers. I also like to have one standard editor I know I find in any operating system, and that will always work with my documents. I want to make sure that I am not locked-in into any particular cloud or tool or format or …

Railroad Diagrams from EBNF

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 21:04:33 +0100

I am playing with a new query language. I am defining the grammar as EBNF, but I want to show railroad diagrams for those readers that are more graphical and less familiar with BNF. I’ve found limited support for generating syntax diagrams from EBNF.

I’ve found a few tools, some working better than others:

Ebnf2ps (Haskell). This is the only tool I have not been able to get to work. I seem to be missing AFM fonts in my TeX installation and I am not sure I want to spend time figuring out how to generate the AFM files.
SQLite bubble generator (Tk/Tcl). Strictly this tool does not consume EBNF grammars, but a custom DSL. If I didn't care about EBNF, this would be the best tool
node-ebnf-diagram (Javascript). Although it works, I have to issues with it. One is that it can only generate PNG files. That would not be too bad if it weren't for the second issue: the tool does not automatically resize the canvas, and it requires explicit width and height input. If I don't find anything else, I'll probably end up using it.
ebnf2ps.el (Emacs Lisp). It works as advertised. The only issue I found is that the diagrams generated have a small white gap on the lines on the right hand side.
ANTLRWorks (Java). Bundled with antlr, it fits the task. Once you are in the game of defining the grammar in Java, why not just go ahead and use the same tool to generate not only the parser but the diagrams? This is what the tool does. Even if you are not doing a Java parser/lexer, this is a good tool to use for documentation purposes.

I am using ANTLRWorks, generating all the diagrams from the command line as part of my markdown transform pipeline:

{% highlight bash %} java -cp antlrworks-1.1.4.jar org.antlr.works.Console -f yql.g -o output/ -sd eps {% endhighlight %}

Ahead with Node.JS and Google V8

Sun, 11 Sep 2011 15:34:12 +0100

It has been 10 months since I posted about Google V8. But somebody re-started a thread again on Hacker News about my old blog post. So now I am compelled to briefly say where we are at.

We have continued and extended our investment in Node.JS. I can tell you that what the teams are doing is transformative and pure awesomeness. Unfortunately this is as much as I can tell you right now, but really soon you’ll start hearing what we’ve done. In every single demo, internal and external, we have done of the technology, the feedback has been fantastic. I am very happy and fortunate to have a team of super-stars working on this.

Answering Jason on V8 governance and impact to NodeJS

Sun, 06 Feb 2011 05:30:44 +0000

Jason Hoffman (Chief Scientist, Founder at Joyent) has posted some good questions to me, based on my original nodejs and V8 post. Let me summarise Jason’s questions and comments.

Update (2011/9/11): this post is picking up again 8 months later, I’ve written an update as of where we stand.

There are three key messages in Jason’s response:

It’s Joyent’s responsibility that NodeJS runs well period. We’re not afraid of a language VM. […] actual node.js committers (who all work at Joyent) know quite a bit and have pretty good relations with the V8 team.

NodeJS: To V8 or not to V8

Sun, 06 Feb 2011 00:05:01 +0000

I have been saying for a while that server-side Javascript matters. We, at Yahoo!, see a bright future in server-side Javascript and are making a big investment in it. But if you follow me on twitter, you’ll know that I am also looking into ensuring high-availability of server-side Javascript-based services on production. Which really comes down to something like: to V8 or not to V8.

If you have not watched Douglas Crockford’s video lecture on server-side Javascript, I recommend you do that first before reading further into this post.

Java AIO (NIO.2) vs NodeJS

Sun, 30 Jan 2011 09:13:32 +0000

I just installed OpenJDK 7 on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS under VirtualBox (one core, 256 MB). I wanted to run a quick test to see how the new JDK7 Async channel APIs were performing in comparison with node. A simple test of a hello world running on a single core shows that the JVM truly has what it takes to be the best runtime for network servers. Most notably, compare the distribution of response times, especially at 99%. The advantage the JVM is showing might be enough to comfortably fit Rhino onto it.

Quick benchmark checkpoint on Java and NodeJS

Sun, 23 Jan 2011 19:46:58 +0000

First, in Java (my nodejs-inspired NIO/Netty based HTTP server):

{% highlight java %} Server server = Http.createServer(); server.setRequestListener(new RequestListener() { @Override public void service(ServerRequest request, ServerResponse response) { HashMap<String, String> headers = new HashMap<String, String>(); headers.put(“Content-Type”, “text/html; charset=utf-8”); headers.put(“Content-Length”, “47”); response.writeHeader(200, headers); response.end("

hello world

"); } }); server.listen(8080); {% endhighlight %}

Now, in Javascript:

{% highlight js %} http.createServer(function(req, res) { res.writeHead(200, {“Content-Length”: “47”, “Content-Type”: “text/html; charset=utf-8”}); res.write("

hello world

"); res.end(); }).listen(8080); {% endhighlight %}

Facebook BigPipe in an Async Servlet

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 06:44:48 +0100

Since Subbu wrote BigPipe using node.js, I had to see how the same thing would look like in a Java async servlet.

Stephan Schmidt had already written Facebook BigPipe for Java, but using a synchronous servlet model, not asynchronous. I decided to implement it using Jetty continuations and the Jetty HTTP client, but the code should be easy to adapt to servlet 3.0 AsyncContext.

The code initially constructs the page with a few empty divs that will contain the pagelets, for example:

On Scaling node.js to Multiple Cores

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 15:29:11 +0100

From a thread on multicore leverage in nodejs, Edwin Khodabakchian talking about feedly:

We have an “admin” node process which is started with as input the number of “feedly” node processes it should launch and monitor. When the admin starts, it spawns multiple “feedly” node processes, padding as input the port the feedly node should listen to 9701 for the first one,…9710 for the 10th one.

On the server we have a varnish server which load balances the traffic from m.feedly.com to 127.0.0.1:9701 — 127.0.0.1:9710.

Nodes and Jetties

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 05:59:20 +0100

I am intrigued by node.js. Others are not so much. So they ask me, why node.js, why not Jetty, or Netty, or … ? Others say, and Twisted, and EventMachine? The core of the answer lies in a simple not well understood truth: concurrent programming is really hard. Concurrent programming using threads and locks to shared memory is extremely hard. Most programmers get concurrency wrong, since they don’t quite realize that threads actually execute simultaneously.

Why node.js Matters

Sun, 13 Jun 2010 15:36:30 +0100

Since the days when I coded my first reactor [POSA2] back at MIT, I have been convinced of the conceptual simplicity of non-blocking event driven server. Aside not blocking for I/O and being able to scale well beyond polling architectures, it is harder, sometimes impossible, to make concurrent programming mistakes with an event-driven programming paradigm. However, reactor servers never took off massively, probably because event based programming of server-side applications is a more complex programming paradigm for the average programmer than a thread- or process-per-request. In in a way, we have had not enough pressure to move, yet. Things would just work, reasonable well.

Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose

Sat, 29 May 2010 04:41:31 +0100

The Linked-Atom Web

Fri, 14 May 2010 05:02:08 +0100

The release of Facebook’s Open Graph Protocol has spurred renewed interest in the semantic web. I give credit to Facebook for pushing forward an RDFa derived format onto the world wide web. In fact, RDFa is the least interesting part. Producing semantic data has been around for a long time. Most importantly, I give Facebook credit for focusing on the interesting part of the problem: consumption of semantic data.

And although it's a great achievement, I regret the locked-in and centralized nature of Facebook's Open Graph Protocol. The web is an open environment, where open wins at the end.

Android Solves Rubik in 24 Seconds

Sun, 09 May 2010 16:57:39 +0100

Update (20100524): the owner of the video has removed it. That's the "beauty" of UGC.

Brilliant Tech Video Ad

Tue, 04 May 2010 21:04:08 +0100

On Apple, Flash and Java

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 23:25:43 +0000

Steve Jobs said reportedly that Flash is buggy and that it won’t make it to the iPad and iPhone. The same story was used for Java, a technology that Steve Jobs described as not worth going onto the phone. However, I call B.S. on Apple’s arguments. Apple has decided not to ship Flash and Java not because of the lack of intrinsic value and quality, but because if allowed these technologies would result in the vertical disintegration of the Apple platform.

Relocating to the US

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 07:11:40 +0100

Tomorrow, I’ll be flying to the US and leaving the UK. But this time, it’s different. Now, it’s a one way flight. But that flight is the end of a journey that started four months. A difficult journey full of live experiences.

Back in April, Yahoo made me an offer to move to California, with my family, to take on a new role. Since then, we've had twins, boy and girl, moved house once, finished our ever-lasting DIY project, a little summer bungalow in the middle of Kent, only this time using contractors, sold our cars, packed everything, cancelled the school, the utilities, the direct debits, the payments, changed addresses, changed insurance policies, and finally put our lives on a plane.

Out of the Eclipse to Netbeans

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 15:51:36 +0100

I have been using emacs and the command line for now almost 20 years. Once in a while, I dip into IDEs, but always go back to the command line. My biggest gripe with IDEs is that it keeps me away from the actual build, and that I normally have to spend time duplicating building configuration in the IDE. The canonical source for build configuration should be the build system (Make, ant, maven, etc.). With an IDE one would have to always be things in sync, leading to errors and all sort of weird stuff.

Making XMPP Work for the Mobile Environment

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 09:06:29 +0100

I’ve been thinking about a standards-based client for a mobile environment. XMPP has quite a few strong merits, against it’s competitors such as OMA IMPS and SIP Messaging. For one, it’s a community standard, and it’s actually possible to submit new specs if so required. Secondly, it’s becoming the standard protocol for IM, and it’s emergent in the open Pub/Sub infrastructure, i.e. why-polling-is-bad.

Unfortunately, there are still a couple of key problems with XMPP in a mobile environment - none of them can be solved in a standard way. I wonder if we could harvest a couple of good ideas from OMA IMPS and spec them under XMPP.

Composable and Concurrent

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 15:00:31 +0100

On my previous entry on the present and future of programming languages, I briefly covered on the reasons I think it is important to be looking at this problem now. I though I would expand the discussion.

The laws of physics that we know have stopped our ability to make chips significantly faster today, and rather hardware manufacturers now need to place more and more cores in one die. The result as software developers is that we are now faced with computers with multiple cores and multiple CPUs. It is now the norm to find computers with 2 cores, and most servers are now 4 or 8 core machines.

On Language Polyglotism

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 22:54:19 +0100

I believe being a polyglot is nothing but an advantage, and that polyglots are normally the best programmers. As a matter of fact, I challenge myself to learn a new programming language every year. Last year it was Scala, this year I’ve started learning and writing some Erlang (and yes, there is a pattern here for functional programming languages).

One of the reasons I like learning programming languages is a drive to reach the Holly Programming Grail: I find most fascinating discovering which language is better suited for which task. In other words, some languages excel at tasks where other languages fail. An organization could decide to allow all those languages to exist, and if we were doing best-of-breed in every problem domain, we would end up with a language soup. So the question then is, is such soup good or bad? In other words, when we think about developing Internet applications: which and how many languages should an organization use?

Heads or Tails

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 11:43:40 +0100

If you have been following the media industry over the last years, you’ll have surely realized that traditional media is struggling. Even before the crisis, advertisers have started switching from offline to online, and now with the crisis we see a consolidation in a few ad agencies and a few brokers.

Many magazines and newspapers are in such position that if their debt does not get re-financed they will have to file for bankruptcy. Many music labels find themselves in a very similar position, or have already gone belly up. Video houses are struggling with costs. It's not possible to compete with pirated content. TV channels are going bust.

A Web Linked by Atoms

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 13:14:57 +0000

Looking back at the past 20 years of the history of the internet, one can realize that what we call today the web has changed dramatically, but that one thing is certain: it will continue to evolve. Gone are the days of manually editorialized directories, of static content, of one way conversations. Today we live in a dynamic, social, interactive web. And it’s a web that is traversing the digital realm and changing how we understand our physical world, breaking communication barriers and making information and knowledge easily accessible.

Painfully HTTP Java

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 21:03:47 +0000

I have been working on AtomPub and coding a prototype over the past few evenings to get Apache Abdera talking to CouchDB. I know there is an experimental adapter in Abdera for CouchDB, but it does not use CouchDB the way I need to.

I decided to write my own provider, workspace manager, adapter, etc. I have been using couchdb4j, the Java library binding used to talk to CouchDB, and json-lib, a JSON library for Java.

Snow blocks railway company websites

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 08:11:22 +0000

We knew it was coming. Met Office kept talking about. Heavy snow across the South East of England. Regardless, this morning is a complete mess, as expected, and the country comes to a halt, as usual.

And to a degree, it is normal. It is very difficult to size transport for peak emergencies. Possible, but costly to the tax payers. So, in a way, I understand we are stuck today.

pywbxml revisited

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 22:48:44 +0000

I know I said I was not likely to fix pywbxml, but the alternative was even less appealing. I know I have to move away from Java, so here it is how to get pywbxml working.

Continuing to use a mix of Java and PHP to leverage the PHP PECL wbxml extension creates an unnecessary complexity.
Moving the PHP code doing wbxml2xml and xml2wbxml transformations to Java is possible but I noticed lack of activity on KML at sourceforge (the project that contains the wbxml library for Java). libwbxml in contrast is owned and maintained by the opensync folks, and it’s only the python bindings that needed some love.
The XMPP library I use in Java, Smack uses a model of one-thread-per-socket, which for server-side and maintaining hundreds or thousands of users will require me to have much more memory in the box that I would like to. I rather use an event-based / reactor architectural style.

So I decided to patch the Python bindings for my needs (rather than fixing it properly by exposing the args through the API). The Python bindings seem to be generated out of SWIG, so editing src/pywbxml.pyx is enough to get the dictionary I wanted for IMPS (WBXML_LANG_WV_CSP12). The change is straight forward, simply:

Getting libwbxml on MacPorts

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 20:15:52 +0000

I need to be able to receive wbxml (binary XML) and transform it to xml using the IMPS 1.1/1.2/1.3 dictionary in Python. In PHP, I was using the PHP PECL extension wbxml, which uses libwbxml (wbxml2). In python, I need pywbxml. I like MacPorts, and I’ll use that instead of compiling myself the packages.

Install MacPorts.
Self-update:
```
sudo port -v selfupdate
```
Some general goodness I can’t live without (wget will pull a long dependency list of things we’ll need for web development):
```
sudo port install wget
```
Wait.
Install wbxml
```
sudo port install wbxml2
```

And we get an error:

$ sudo port -v install wbxml2
--->  Configuring wbxml2
Error: Target org.macports.configure returned: invalid command name "cd"
Warning: the following items did not execute (for wbxml2):
org.macports.activate org.macports.configure org.macports.build
org.macports.destroot org.macports.install
Error: Status 1 encountered during processing.

So I filed a ticket. It seems like wbxml2 ownership moved to the opensync folks since the port was added. The port builds on 0.9.0 and the latest version is 0.10.1. I don’t much (nothing?) about MacPorts, but I went ahead and I patched it. You can find the patch on the ticket itself.

Twisted Web IMPS Echo Client

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:36:54 +0000

Having a twisted environment, I have been able to write a simple web resource handler. I like twisted, although the documentation is pretty weak, so you have to go down to read the code rather frequently if you want to know how to do things.

My first task was to handle an XML post for IMPS CSP. I thought I would skip the wbxml version to start with.

So first thing was to setup the test client. Just for now, I used curl to post the data:

Twisted Virtual Environment Goodness

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:35:09 +0000

Python 2.5.1 is bundled into Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), which comes also with setuptools. The breadth of easy_install packages is available pretty much at your fingertips on Leopard.

On the downside, Leopard’s python ships with old versions of some packages, and we might need to upgrade them. We are left with three choices:

Overwrite packages with new ones.
Install new ones and set PythonPath.
Use virtualenv.

I prefer to use #3. It’s cleaner, it does not change my system, it allows as many environments as we like without one contaminating the other, while at the same time not requiring a fresh python re-install for every working environment.

Will XMPP be the messaging middleware for the REST Web?

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 11:04:21 +0000

We know the social web needs real-time event notifications, and that polling sucks. Some are wondering whether we can implement it using asynchronous messaging, ala Pub/Sub. The Publish/Subscribe is an architectural paradigm allowing asynchronous messaging from one sender (publisher) to many receivers (subscribers). PubSub is a common architecture in financial services, since it’s associated with persistence and ensured message delivery. But such qualities don’t come for free: there are complexity trade-offs.

Wireless Village Headed to the Deadpool

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 15:03:49 +0000

I wrote about this header a little while ago in my onesoup blog, but since I have received various emails from folks asking me whether I’d continue or not with onesoup. Basically, they all make the point that there is a latent customer base on old phones with the native client.

So the question really becomes: even if IMPS is a lagging technology, even if operators are unfriendly, even if nobody knows how to monetize IM, … the penetration of these clients is huge. And users seem to be waking up. So, is there really a blooming market here, especially in emerging countries?

Could the financial downturn be the end of Darwinism

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 09:04:40 +0100

Because that’s really what it is. Somebody that was not fitted and loosing big (aka Western Cultures) has just started a new game of Monopoly, and you and I are not getting any of the money in this new game. Some may call it the end of capitalism, but I would go even further, this is the end of Darwinism (and a prove that Hegel was looking at the past, and not the future like Marx wanted to see in it).

Can search be entertaining?

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 10:18:58 +0100

Definitely! I just got completely blown out by Oamos. The search experience is fantastic. Images, videos, transitions and music are wonderfully inspiring. Ping from Artur Ortega.

Why Video-On-Demand Streaming in Airlines Sucks

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 01:59:11 +0100

It’s rare to take a flight from British Airways or Virgin Atlantic where the Video-On-Demand system just works. It might be a problem only with UK airlines, but I presume this is a general issue across aviation.

Sometimes you are part of the folks in the plane for whom the system does not work. The crew will normally start rebooting your seat, then the section, and then the whole plane. I guess they do so in hopes that the operating system running the streaming adheres to the same random rules as the one running on their desktop.

Enterprisey Architects

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 07:50:46 +0100

No, it’s not a typo. I have been daring to write this for ages, but somehow I always refrained myself from doing it. But here it is, this post is about the propeller heads, the skyrocket scientists designing systems in the enterprise world (mostly in the financial services and telco world). Because guys, it’s time to call it a day and move on. Time to stop building the Winchester House.

what the iPhone is that Symbian isn't

Tue, 13 May 2008 09:52:25 +0100

one of the key strategic questions that developers looking into creating successful mobile applications need to answer is the choice of platform. we see an increasing consumer demand for desktop-like rich applications on the phone, but somehow the promise of such applications remains undelivered. developers can chose between the smartphone centric OSes, Windows CE and Symbian, or the desktop centric OSes, Linux and OS X. so which one should we chose to build those future desktop-like applications?

Why facebook is just a game

Fri, 02 May 2008 16:26:54 +0100

I keep saying that the web follows the pattern of the fashion industry. It’s about image, it’s about fun, it’s about entertaining. Sure, you can also buy stuff and do useful things. But that’s what you have to do, not what you want to do.

That's why facebook is popular - it's fun, it's about image, it's about entertainment.

And now, to prove it, a nice chart for the breakout of Facebook applications.

Want to colonize Mars?

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 09:50:12 +0100

Why not give it a go? Or perhaps, here or here. Or even, here.

I gotta love it.

http://www.google.com/virgle/index.html

AOL Opens Up AIM

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 14:44:41 +0000

AOL has published the protocol powering both AIM and ICQ (code-named OSCAR). Although the protocol was already well known through reverse engineering, even if it’s significantly more complex and chatty than MSN’s or YMSG, this is really good news since it formalizes AOL supporting third party clients, including Yamigo. Additionally, besides publishing the protocol documentation, AOL has released an AIM SDK for C/C++ and Java, and the ability for creating protocol plugins that can even be monetized through revenue-sharing with AOL. Altogether, a good move from AOL.

Are Java web frameworks ready for building frontends?

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 21:02:31 +0000

Once every year I like to spend some time revisiting a personal itch of mine: is Java ready for web prime-time? Sadly, although Java has clearly proven its place in the server-side, it has failed in the frontend, last bit of the server-side, the thin layer that transforms business data into rendered HTML. This is what Rasmus Lerdorf calls the “glue” (PHP is the glue), basically a thin layer of presentational representation that links your server pre-assembled data.

Bad technology choices will chase you

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 15:55:07 +0000

We, as engineers, are frequently faced with solving business problems, or sometimes technology problems, that really move the needle. We, as engineers, are usually never happy with any of the technologies in our tool chest. There is a place for every technology, but it always seems like our favorite technologies fall behind the cool kids in the block.

It is attractive to bet on emerging technologies. They are sexy, cool, promising high productivity gains, and in a way, good technologies are disruptive, not only to the technology landscape, but to the business landscape, since they change what can be achieved with technology.

Andrea Ayuso Morillo, Au Pair Vanished in Thin Air

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 23:10:09 +0000

We got a new au pair in January from Spain, Andrea Ayuso Morillo, for our daughter. Our previous au pair had been Finnish, and Anaïs did learn pretty good language skills from her. We now wanted a Spanish girl to take care of our daughter Anaïs, to ensure her Spanish would improve. We found Andrea on a specialized site, au-pair world, and after a few calls and email exchanges she seemed like a really nice girl.

We are here to stay

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 11:18:55 +0000

This is mostly to recruiters and speculators alike. No, I have not been laid off. No, I don’t know anything about the Microsoft bid. And no, I am not moving.

So that's clear: I love Yahoo!, and we have kick ass engineers producing kick ass technology. We rock, man! We are so cool!

Moving Blog to Home Server

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 19:44:50 +0000

I have been running this blog on a slicehost VPS with excellent results so far. However, I am at the point where I need a bit more flexibility and I can’t justify the $20 monthly fee to my home CFO. So, I did setup myself to move the server back home this weekend, where funny enough, I used to host this blog.

The first choice came down to choice of OS. I had been running Gentoo, but I have found this distribution bad for very low spec hardware. I am running on a fanless and rather exotic VIA C3 533Mhz chip, and compiling packages isn't particularly a fast thing on this box. I tried Gentoo a couple of years back on it, and getting gcc to compile would take a couple of days. Plus at some point it stopped working because of not sufficient memory.

Will Nokia change Trolltech's Qt GPL licensing?

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 11:36:17 +0000

It seems like it’s open source buying season, with now Nokia buying Trolltech. I feel very happy for the Trolltech folks. We already talked about it, that Trolltech needed some fresh funding to change its business model.

Since my first EPOC apps on a then Nokia Communicator prototype phone back in 2000, I have never been a Symbian fan (Symbian's SDK custom half-baked toolchain, the libraries solving C++ problems that should be left to the compiler, and most importantly, not running on Linux have always put me back from Symbian). Qt, is by far, the best UI toolkit, but Qt has not grown to its full potential because of it being GPL.

Oops, Trying out Yahoo!'s OpenID V2

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 15:48:29 +0000

I set myself to write last night a simple PHP OpenID consumer for Yahoo’s! However, I have encountered the Oops message that most folks have also faced:

Ooops...
Hey there! You have stopped by a bit sooner than we had expected. This feature is still being tested, so please check back later.

Anyhow, I think it's really cool, both for users and for application providers, for a whole number of reasons:

Sun Microsystems set to buy MySQL

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 14:35:24 +0000

This is truly amazing. Sun and Oracle are set to buy all letters on the LAMP stack, with now Sun buying MySQL for 1 billion dollars (thanks Pascal for the ping). Maybe now Monty and David will start competing with Larry Ellison’s extravagant yacht department. Seriously, 1 billion dollars is a record price for any open source company. Will Oracle now finally buy RedHat to put pressure on SUN?

I am hoping to see the JAVA ticker symbol company improve MySQL support, and licensing, for Java. Since, honestly, right now it sucks so much that one would say the only viable RDBMS alternative for Linux and Java is Oracle (please don't get me started with DB2).

Being Phileas Fogg, Day 5

Sat, 08 Sep 2007 23:37:51 +0100

The flight to Singapore left close to midnight, and I had to go through only 6 security checks, one person checking after another that the previous one had done their job. It’s always surprising to me to see how in India things are not necessarily always done in the most efficient ways. But then again, it is in fact and optimal utility point, since given the low cost of labour there is no incentive for being efficient in manual processes.

Being Phileas Fogg, Day 4

Sat, 08 Sep 2007 23:37:17 +0100

While talking this morning to the cab driver taking me to our EGL office in Bangalore, when for some unknown reason, the driver told me that his boss was paying him 3,400 rupees per month, and that after 22 years of service. That actually got me thinking.

The taxi company appointed by the hotel is paying a monthly contract fee of 60,000 rupees to the hotel. There are 30 drivers on contract. Each driver makes 3 to 4 trips a day, each bringing in 400 to 800 in sales. I'll let you do the numbers, but even considering extremely expensive car leases, gasoline, insurance, etc. you'll find out that this taxi business runs easily at close to 90% margins.

Being Phileas Fogg, Day 3

Sat, 08 Sep 2007 23:35:04 +0100

I was reading today during breakfast the Economic Times of India when I came across a really interesting interview with the CEO of Airtel India, Mr. Sunil Bharti Mittal. He was making the point that given the development cycle in which India is in mobile is as important as broadband. According to the CEO of Airtel, consumers expect in India expect a seamless experience from broadband to mobile, and from mobile to TV.

Being Phileas Fogg, Day 2

Sat, 08 Sep 2007 19:36:43 +0100

After a peaceful flight, and a short sleep, we landed at 4.30AM in Bangalore. Getting through immigration in Indian airports is always a unique experience, but this I time I really flew throw passport control and customs, especially since I only had carry on luggage. Note to self: never check-in luggage.

The problem was outside. My driver from Le Méridean was not there. There was another driver from the hotel waiting, but for another guest. I had to wait. And after more than 10 hours on a plane, with little sleep, I was wondering why I had to wait for my driver. Anyway, after a few calls, he did finally show up, claiming he had had trouble parking. I mean, how difficult is it parking at 4.30AM in an almost empty car park? No tip.

Being Phileas Fogg, Day 1

Sun, 02 Sep 2007 12:15:02 +0100

Yes, you are right, not Malkovich, but Phileas Fogg. At exactly 10.30am sharp today, I popped into a taxi that took me to Heathrow Terminal 4. I am currently writing from the BA Business Lounge waiting for my plane and ahead of my tour “Around the World in 15 days”. And yes, I am beating Mr. Fogg by an impressive 65 days (although a good 137 years later to tell the truth)!

Day Off, Installing a Satellite Dish

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 08:08:38 +0100

When you put all three together, you’ll find out why. 1) Today is a bank holiday in the UK. 2) We don’t have and we can’t have aerial TV coverage, we can’t have cable TV, and we can’t have Sky because I am not willing to pay anything beyond what we already pay in tax for TV; 3) They are playing the 2007 World Champs in Athletics that we really want to watch. So, I have been assigned a little project: get us the games on TV.

SUNW becomes JAVA

Sun, 26 Aug 2007 11:54:13 +0100

Sun is changing its ticker symbol from SUNW to JAVA, as announced in Sun’s CEO Jonathan Schwartz’s Weblog on Thursday 23rd August. There has been a lot of mixed feedback. Most techies and engineers inside and outside Sun are criticizing the decision, as they see it narrowing Sun to Java technology. However, Wall Street did not seem to care much.

The stock went up 1.62%, while the Nasdaq index recovered 1.38% so one can possibly assume the market was insensitive to the change. While the volume was double the average, so was the market's, so again no change.

Stall by Incremental Releases

Sun, 26 Aug 2007 09:51:57 +0100

Have you have ever been part of the inception of a software system that later became big and complex? Have you later felt the frustration of not being able to make further changes to the core architecture? Did you end up being taken hostage by the software? I did.

We hope as developers to be able to adapt software as requirements and bugs arise, and to be able to organize our software releases accordingly. By doing incremental releases we hope to work with a stable code-base where we can release often. We then receive feedback more often and we are therefore agile and responsive to business needs.

Open LinkedIn Platform Should Focus on Privacy

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 08:06:31 +0100

LinkedIn’s CEO Reid Hoffman promised at the end of June to open the LinkedIn platform, very much aligned with Facebook’s publishing its developer APIs, and surely trying to experience some of the same growth Facebook is receiving thanks to opening their APIs. I hope however that LinkedIn is thinking about all the risks associated with opening up a business community.

LinkedIn will need to review and approve every single application out there consuming their services. The last thing you want is a pile a lawsuits on your desk because of misapproprated data, especially personal data covered by the EU/95 Privacy Directive, also implemented in the UK via the Data Protection Act, and somehow applicable to US companies under the Safe Harbor Agreements.

Why Trolltech's Qt GPL license is hurting the Linux desktop

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 08:56:12 +0100

After my move away from Gnome and Evolution, I have now been running KDE for three weeks straight and still going. I have found KDE to be a surprisingly stable and reliable platform. It’s hard to find something to criticize in KDE. It’s a really nice desktop setup: well oiled machinery where everything seems to run smoothly. Inter-application communication and integration of all the KDE applications is simply superb, and I don’t think there is any other desktop out there, proprietary or open source, where you can see such tight integration of its parts. And this is mainly thanks to Trolltech’s fantastic toolkit, Qt.

Three Weeks of KDE, Too Much Configuration

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 08:55:39 +0100

After moving to KDE three weeks ago now, I am staying. At least for now. If I had to pick on something, my main point for feedback would be that the graphical user interface feels crowded, and its usage metaphors, albeit consistent, are rather complicated.

In KDE, configuration options are scattered all around the place. KDE is a great platform for the power user, familiar with tweaking and working with plenty of configuration options, but for the rest of us who just want to get on using the applications and not waste our time fighting with configuration options, a simpler paradigm for desktop and programs alike would be more useful. That simplicity is one of the design goals of Gnome: sane defaults, clean UI and few configuration options. Unfortunately Gnome has gone too far, and makes it sometimes either impossible or very hard for the power user to configure the desktop or an application to its own liking. While preserving for KDE's power users the current ability to configure practically anything, the majority of users would however benefit from a cleaner and more modern user interface metaphor.

Measuring time spent at a site rather than hits

Sun, 19 Aug 2007 10:38:54 +0100

In July, Nielsen’s NetRatings changed its web traffic measurements to focus on time spent at a given site rather than the traditional page views, and page views per user (PV/UU). Since then, many web 2.0 sites, including communities, gaming, video, etc. have received this change as the Holy Grail of web ratings, even those whose ranking went down.

While it is true that time spent at a site increases exposure to ad display, and possibly CPM, the time-based measurement paradigm is only applicable to countries with deep internet and broadbrand penetration. In countries in Eastern Europe, Russia, South America, Africa and South-East Asia, much of the population still connects via dial-up modems and hits are a much better metric. The ability to watch streamed audio and video in these markets is very limited; gaming is not responsive enough; and the engagement in social networking is rather limited. Or as Yahoo Peter Daboll put it: "You're never going to have one metric that's the holy grail of Internet measurement."

Posh-Wannabes: Wannabe-A-Fly?

Sun, 19 Aug 2007 09:45:25 +0100

This 70s sunglasses retro-look inspired by our very own Victoria Beckham, “posh”, and America’s greatest exhibitionist Paris Hilton, is starting to become annoying. Strikingly similar to a fly’s eyes, generally esthetically unpleasant sunglasses are taking over London this summer. People covering their eyes with black lenses of the size of satellite dishes. Men and women, alike, being fashionable human flies.

I had never seen flies in the London underground, until now. A pest of human flies with big dark black eyes has taken over. Strange looking aliens from the X-Files are invading the tube.

Google News Limited Comments, Not Cool, Not Evil, Just Careless

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 08:27:18 +0100

It’s all around the blogosphere, Google News is going to allow limited editorial comments from those involved in the news. Basically, you get a chance to tell your side of the story if you are involved. Big wow factor. Google, our savor. Well, perhaps not.

For starters, Google TOS and robots.txt restrict others from accessing Google News content, i.e. you can't crawl Google News, including those limited "editorial" comments. So whereas Google can scrape the Belgian newspapers, bend their arm, and get away with it, Google won't allow its editorial content to be indexed elsewhere. Some talk about how Evil the corporation has become. Techcrunch talks about hypocresy

Yahoo! ROBO: Research Online, Buy Offline

Wed, 08 Aug 2007 09:10:30 +0100

Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog published last week a study showing that online exposure to product and retailer information, as well as ads, changes consumers behavior. Yahoo! calls that Research Online, Buy Offline, or ROBO (btw, ROBO means theft in Spanish).

I can easily identify myself as one of those consumers in the study. It's much easier to use the internet to find out exactly what one is looking for. Sometimes, I want (need?) to buy something, but I am unclear about what is available in the market that would suit my needs. For example, I want to install a multi-room sound system. However, as I do research on the internet, I happen to find many different types of solutions to this problem: wired, wireless, bluetooth controlled, streaming, centrally amplified, room-amplified, etc. So I end up doing my market taxonomy, then market research, then learning about the vendors and their products, and finally finding the retailers in my area where I can take a look at the actual products. I will then go visit the retailer and possibly buy offline. That's what Yahoo! calls ROBO.

NatWest Online Banking: Card Reader

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 13:07:27 +0100

On Friday I received and “Online Banking Card Reader” from NatWest, my bank here in the UK. Let me tell you, it is one of a curious kind.

NatWest issued me a new debit card a few weeks back now, although it was actually not due. The chip in the new card looked slightly different from the one on the last one, but it is still an EPROM with 255 bytes of storage. I have not read its contents yet ... I am sure I am bound by some dubious legal agreement not to do it anyway.

Make your code obvious, or remove it

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 13:41:21 +0100

We have recently moved into a new house. The house is pre-wired with all sort of things one can imagine, for sound, video, network, motion, alarms, etc. It’s really cool! But guess what, all wiring is behind plasterboards, and we don’t have any instructions as of what and where it is. One end of all wires end up in one of the rooms, so I could put a high frequency pulse generator and trace down the wires behind the drywall. Sorted.

A week of KDE (killall evolution-data-server)

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 16:06:58 +0100

See, I can live with Evolution crashing once in a while. Hell, it’s software, it’s meant to fail. But another thing is when the whole damn thing fails silently and in consequence kills your productivity. Evolution has managed to randomly delete part of my calendars, appointments here and there, and multiple appointments moved in time. End result, missing meetings and looking like a complete idiot. The top of the iceberg happened on Monday when Evolution corrupted one of IMAP folders. Ouch! Pain, I know, I hear you.

Memory-lean nginx on a VPS

Tue, 08 May 2007 16:32:48 +0100

I spent this weekend testing and installing nginx and I have said Adios to Apache! Let me tell you why I have done that.

I am running this blog on a slicehost.com 256Mb Xen VPS, using WordPress. I have been using Apache 2.2 for almost a year now without any problems. But recently I deployed a little Ruby on Rails application using mongrel for my wife's business, and then suddenly I ran out of memory. Each Apache worker was easily taking 15 to 20Mb, even with a really cut-down configuration and built on Gentoo. With three Mongrel backends and the MySQL server I was starting to swap to disk.

The Semantic Desktop, The Semantic OS

Tue, 01 May 2007 20:29:50 +0100

One of the most useful recent additions to my Gnome desktop has been Beagle, Nat’s personal desktop search daemon. I also discovered that in Ubuntu Feisty there is a deskbar that traces all the actions you do from your desktop, including your web activity and beagle searches. The more you use it, the more relevant it becomes since humans are repetitive.

Then, it happened: Tim pointed me this morning to Beagle++, a semantic desktop search engine based on Beagle, and that triggered the thought.

Gnome Hack Idea: FreeMind, Tomboy and EDS

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 08:49:05 +0100

I take notes in meetings using FreeMind. Every time I identify a task I mark the node down using an icon and after the meeting I follow up creating the necessary tasks in Evolution. I would like to be able to link my mindmaps to tasks in Evolution. Hopefully it can be done using FreeMind, or perhaps we need to invest in Psycho or something similar tighter to the Gnome desktop. If we decide not to use FreeMind, the tool of choice should use FreeMind’s XML schema to ensure interoperability with folks running other desktops.

Silence

Sun, 15 Apr 2007 06:28:15 +0100

I have been very much silent on my blog for the last 6 weeks. The reason has been me changing jobs to become Yahoo’s Chief Architect of International Engineering. The first weeks at work have been absolutely thrilling and I am highly delighted to be working in such an amazingly skilled and enthusiastic team. I really look forward at the challenge ahead. Unfortunately being able to take on this challenge requires absolute dedication, and my ability to blog will be somehow more limited than in the past. So if you are a usual reader, please bear with me for a little longer: posts will be coming back in no time.

To SaaS or not to SaaS, a Utility-Based Decision

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 08:30:40 +0000

I remain skeptic about any attempts to break out SaaS value/price in a pure TCO, like in this article by Barry Rosenberg and Craig Wright on techweb. If nothing else, simply because of the (human) random nature of choosing between intangibles such as security, mobility, usability, … which are all perceptions.

Whereas I agree with the authors that the key challenge in comparing licensed to hosted software is establishing a common measuring tape to avoid comparing apples and pears, I don't agree that it's possible to quantify such measuring tape as a TCO model, simply because of the random nature of perception.

Increased Transparency Shows Value of YPN

Mon, 26 Feb 2007 21:40:29 +0000

Yahoo!’s new search platform, project Panama, is already showing a win over the last month. A study by comScore shows significant increases in Yahoo’s click through rates, and ad effectiveness when compared to normal links. But to me what is more important, is that Yahoo! is showing due transparency to publishers. Google’s lack of visibility is an abuse to 99% of publishers who have absolutely no idea of what goes on with click-through revenue sharing. And Google it’s not only a black box: it’s an abuse (don’t be evil!??). Yahoo! is certainly hitting Google right where it hurts with YPN.

Open APIs Attract Postini and Avaya to Google Apps

Mon, 26 Feb 2007 21:33:33 +0000

Google Apps is already grabbing corporate attention. It’s not the Google apps’ themselves, but the APIs to allow ISVs and other power software houses can use to write applications that extend or integrate with Google Apps. Whereas security was already a known concern about Google Apps, and Postini is certainly betting on the right horse, Avaya is being innovative and extending its IVR portfolio into the SaaS space. The full article is here.

Extremely Aggresive Pricing Makes Google Apps Premier Edition Sexy to Small and Medium Sized Businesses

Thu, 22 Feb 2007 23:03:52 +0000

It seems like the SaaS media relationships departments have been busy since last night. Microsoft and BT are talking about BT Application Marketplace, Salesforce is hinting about its 25,000 user customer and Google is in fanfarre-mode with Apps Premier Edition. It’s a busy today for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), but I am not sure it’s a coincidence but a follow up on last night’s rumour, now confirmed, about Google’s launch of Google Apps Premier Edition.

Besides the news fanfare, I am afraid there isn't much new technology onto Google's announcement, but a rebranding of the existing Google Apps for your Domain (GMail, Google Calendar, and Google Talk) joined with Google Spreadsheet and Docs.

On Levying ISPs for DRM-Free Content

Sun, 18 Feb 2007 09:01:26 +0000

It should not be a surprise by now to see lawyers and politicians arguing bizarre things about the Internet. First, it was the infamous Senator Ted Stevens and his “series of tubes”, and now it is the Spanish Authors Association (SGAE) proposing to charge the ISPs and operators for illegal P2P downloads. Sort of a road-tax, but on the ISPs.

The challenge with SGAE’s proposal is that it is highly short-eyed and not understanding of the nature of the internet. It sadly follows the current trend across st1:place st1:placeEurope</st1:place></st1:place>, which makes our politicians think that they can fix any problem by imposing additional regulation.

Rails, Django, CodeIgniter, Symfony Performance Compared

Sat, 17 Feb 2007 09:18:18 +0000

Surely performance is not the prime criteria for selecting a framework. Most people will say developer productivity, ease of maintenance, security and scalability are the most important factors.

I love the Ruby language and its expresiveness. And Rails has been a truly inspiring web framework. This is why I think the web frameworks performance test results run by Alrond (and an update here) are highly disappointing for Rails. In Alrond's tests we find that Django giving up to 4x faster response times, and 2x more throughput. But I guess this is not a surprise, we always knew Python was faster than Ruby by just looking at Debian's language shootout.

Microsoft's Guidance on SaaS

Tue, 13 Feb 2007 07:33:16 +0000

Eweek reports about Microsoft’s architecture guidance on SaaS (Software as a Service). There is code, a video and a screencast released on MSDN which I highly recommend watching. Well done, Microsoft.

Corporate Technologities: Keep the Power On!

Tue, 13 Feb 2007 07:18:17 +0000

Any small startup that succeeds and grows to become a big corporation will suffer from technologitis, this is, the inflamation of technology and detachment from the business body.

Seriously, the startup mode, where technology governance is not necessarily as important as time-to-market, allows for dynamic environments that allow quick growth. But at the cost of increasing operational costs due to technologitis: most of the IT budget being spent in operations, in keeping the power on, and only a little fraction of the budget is actually spent in new business initiatives. Certainly not the place the business would like to be in.

Locked out of Yahoo! Instant Messenger

Sun, 11 Feb 2007 18:11:53 +0000

I have been using Yahoo! IM since 1999, but unable to log onto it over the last couple of years because of my employer’s URL filtering system and firewall settings. It seems like my account has been deactivated by Yahoo! Customer Service.

My trouble is that I have lost all my contacts! Anybody, how do I get these back?

Failure and Success of Enterprise Architecture

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 13:40:42 +0000

Reading an article about the usual failures of Enterprise Architecture in Skyscrapr I draw the following summary about what successful enterprise architectures have in common.

Decrease complexity by partitioning problems into smaller non-overlapping problems.
Increase probability of success by using fast iterations (rather than long iterations focusing too much on quality). The keyword here is fast. The faster the iteration in OOPA (observe, orientate, plan, act) the higher the likelihood of success.
Create business architecture design, technical architecture design, implementation, testing and deployment for each partition. Don't move to another partition until the last one was completed. This is what the author calls iterative partitioning.
Prioritise the iterative partitions considering Time-to-Value, Return-on-Investment. Focus first on "low-hanging fruit" to establish credibility.
Think big, start small.
Stay away from application architectures and focus on interoperability (ie don't try to standardise on the implementation).

I highly recommend the article. Straight to the point -- it's definitely not the typical abstract enterprise framework discussion.

smart2go Free Mobile Maps Service Competes with Tom-Tom

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 08:03:43 +0000

Today’s TechnNews article about Nokia’s smart2go brings up an interesting business model competing with GPS navigation devices such as Tom-Tom. Nokia’s German-based Gate5 smart2go is a free map service based on Symbian EPOC for Series 60, although probably we will see across other Nokia phones. smart2go offers free maps, which can be downloaded from a PC (I guess for planned usual routes) or over the air and bluetooth (for unplanned routes – oops, I am lost!) One can store map files to the phone’s MMC (obviously to its storage limit).

Feed aggregator: Pipes at Yahoo!

Thu, 08 Feb 2007 13:10:44 +0000

I had a quick go at Yahoo!’s new pipes product. Yahoo! pipes is an aggregator product (not intended for end-consumers) to visually program/constract feed aggregators from any sources. It looks complex as a consumer concept, and it is, but it’s actually really easy to use as a programming tool. It took me less than 5 minutes to create a feed aggregator for stock news.

It would be really interesting now if the aggregated feed results ("pipe output") could be mashed up into other sources, like Yahoo! Maps, etc. using GeoRSS, KML or alike. That would then become a true consumer product!

Skype, Ebay and Google

Wed, 07 Feb 2007 08:28:15 +0000

Skype asked me yesterday to upgrade last night to the final 3.0 (I use Skype for video conferencing because of its ability to go through firewalls by tunneling on port 80). So having run the beta for over 3 months now, I thought it would be a good idea. During the install I was prompted to whether I wanted the Google toolbar installed, at which point I stopped the install and uninstalled Skype (I hate when install programs creep with toolbars, and all other sort of rubbish plugins that I did not ask for).

Apple Cool and Insecure

Sat, 03 Feb 2007 14:14:51 +0000

Apple has made significant (relative) intakes into the OS business. I mean, wow, Apple is cool. I like the Aqua looks, the whole iPod culture (which to be true is the one making Apple popular – I even bought a pink mini for my daughter Anaïs). But a mouse with one button? Hell … if a command line guy like me is really desperate to get a mouse, he certainly won’t be getting a mouse without a middle button, not to talk about a mouse with a single button! I still think the single coolest feature in X11 for donkey years has been the middle button. Anyway, I am digressing.

Moved to hosted Wordpress

Sat, 03 Feb 2007 11:08:08 +0000

I hate information locking and since I am paying for virtual private hosting I thought I would move out of blogger. I also changed the layout significantly, and used a theme by Neil Merton.

The B2B of Mashups: Mashboards

Thu, 14 Sep 2006 08:45:00 +0100

I came some time ago across an interesting buzzword, mashboards, which is really starting to show that at the end of the day what really matters is systems integration. Where we had mashups in the B2C world, we now have mashboards in the B2B world.

Mashboards will become a flourishing area for SaaS. They target the SMB market and address exactly the customer pain. I can see how we'll be hearing about SOA for web in no time, or web-driven business processes, ... Let's wait and see how the analysts call this one. For the time being I'll call them mashboards.

The future of hosted software

Fri, 08 Sep 2006 07:47:00 +0100

As we discussed originally while looking at Web 2.0 software-as-a-service business models, we saw how hosted software is not a competitive offering for mid- to large companies over 500 employees. New research by Quocirca and Forrester now comes to a similar conclusion, and they add that there is a grey zone between 250 and 500 employees where it’s not clear the value in hosted services. Quocirca concludes saying that hosted services are rarely cheaper than in-house services, overseeing the 5.7 million businesses in the US under 500 employees. I am still to read both research reports to understand the full details.

Web 2.0, The New Old?

Mon, 21 Aug 2006 22:13:00 +0100

There seems to be at least 17 startups taking on the A-Team of the desktop applications, and possibly another hundred thousand teenagers creating their own little Web 2.0 application-du-jour in communities like entrepreneur extraordinaire Mark Andressen’s Ning.

Since the software-as-a-service business model is mainly only attractive for smaller to medium companies, why are there so many web 2.0 applications popping out everywhere?

I believe the catalyst has been a generational change. Web 2.0 is not anymore an emerging phenomena only found among geeks playing with XML, and asynchronous HTTP requests. The generation of young adults in their early- to mid-twenties have grown using the internet as a routine. They learned how to collaborate online using Yahoo!, how to use Google to find the solution to their assignment or homework, how to download MP3s using eMule, etc. and most importantly how to skim through the rubbish to get the very simple: content. The internet is just one more thing they use in their lifes, just like a phone. Given that they have grown on it, doing homework and making friends on the web, it is the collaborative aspect of the internet what possibly makes software-as-a-service interesting. It's Wiki-Extreme if you let me put it that way.

Transport and Housing: Chicken and the Egg?

Wed, 02 Aug 2006 23:22:00 +0100

British policy makers seem to have a tendency to first develop land and then put suitable transport infrastructure in place. Obviously, a significant factor for people choosing their next residence is road infrastructure and, to a lesser degree, public transport. Current government plans include creating over 100,000 new houses in regions like the South East, partially to release some pressure from the already overcrowded London. In cities like Ashford, in Kent, the local job market is almost non-existent, and the only population that can potentially be attracted to these new developments are London commuters which move their residence but keep their jobs in London.

Pricing Models for Web 2.0 Software as Services

Sun, 30 Jul 2006 10:05:00 +0100

The recent advent of Web 2.0 no-software start-ups like 37signals, salesforce.com, Writely, etc. is getting plenty of attention by the media and VCs alike, but I have not seem much about the pricing model of these no-software business models.

The basic idea, repeated all over the place in Web 2.0 start-ups, is that one can develop very rich user interfaces using thin client technology. Instead of installing a local copy of Microsoft Word, you use Writely. Instead of installing Siebel in your enterprise as a CRM solution, you use Salesforce.com. And so forth. Even Microsoft's Bill Gates, highly concerned about the future of Microsoft in a world of "applications built from the grassroots" is putting forward an online Microsoft Live CRM service.

Taking the Rails to Django

Tue, 20 Jun 2006 21:08:00 +0100

While developing our trading application, I have come across two key things Rails does not have.

Transactions. Rails does not offer distributed transaction management. This does not bother me much, since I am not a fan of having transactions span across multiple datasources. However, Rails does not offer cross entity transaction management on a single datasource for unrelated entities. The Rails model works well for ensuring autocommits on parent-child relationships, but anything beyond that requires extensive work and bookeeping in your controllers. For most jobs, the Rails model is enough, and does the job. It actually does the job pretty well. But there are jobs, such as updating multiple trading and position tables where Rails is not the right tool.
Security. Rails is absolutely agnostic of security. Authentication, authorisation and Access-Control Lists are foreign to the framework, by design. The whole plumbing required may become daunting, and while there are engines and plugins out there doing part of the job, I truly hate taking ownership for the security bits within my application.

Localisation and internationalisation is yet another third a bit weak in Rails, but I am yet to have true requirements in this area to be able to give an opinion.

Enterprise Architecture: The Ends Don't Justify the Means

Tue, 13 Jun 2006 14:51:00 +0100

No, they never do. Here is the deal. A centralized Enterprise Architecture (EA) function represents a compromise between the distributed functions in the enterprise. The distributed functions give up some control to invest in the enterprise technology strategy. As with any good investment, the returns need to outweighed the risk profile, otherwise the business functions will pull out of the whole EA thingy.

If the Enterprise Architecture function does not clearly articulate the returns on investment in technology, it will have trouble to enforce architecture governance. As much as the return may seem obvious to those situated in the realm of the enterprise -- nevertheless detached from the actual business functions -- returns on investment in technology need to be articulated, forecasted and measured on an ongoing basis to provide adequate architectural steering.

Java EE 5, still too complex

Mon, 12 Jun 2006 10:52:00 +0100

The Java EE 5 architecture, with its use of annotations brings the Java world close to being agile. The architecture is absolutely fantastic and powerful, with superb messaging (JMS), persistence (EJB3), transactions (JTA), and integration (JCA) capabilities.

However, on the presentation side, for the web world, Java is still behind both .NET and agile frameworks like Rails or Django. JSF is cumbersome, and still too attached to the systems-programming intensive request-response Model2 that ended up in JSPs and Struts. Wicket and Tapestry are possibly the top component-based development web frameworks for Java. But they are both only used by a relatively small community, and documentation, mostly in the case of Wicket, is deficient, especially when it comes to topics such as integration with persistence frameworks.

Wicket and EJB3

Sun, 04 Jun 2006 13:16:00 +0100

I have tried for the last couple of days to overcome some of the transaction management problems I was having with Rails, and the more I look at it, the more I am convinced Rails is not right for my trading application. Rails has its sweet spot, and for me, there won’t be anymore PHP.

I came back to my usual Java stack, with the usual suspects, Tapestry, Spring and Hibernate. But, after the Rails experience, it was just ... yuck! The development environment is complex to setup, there are library dependencies, tons and tons of XML sit-ups! Enough!

Globus, something is not right

Sat, 03 Jun 2006 18:12:00 +0100

I was reading yesterday the tutorial for the Globus Toolkit 4 (GT4), especifically this and this page. It highly disturbs me. Something is not right. It reminds me of the CORBA, and early day’s of EJBs. 90% systems programming, for 10% application programming. Thankfully AOP, Spring, Hibernate and friends kicked in to help, and introduced Inversion of Control to the masses. Hollywood’s principle for everybody.

In GT4, you code manually the WSDL, and your Java classes reference directly the framework and XSD namespaces.

One thousand paintings

Sat, 03 Jun 2006 17:41:00 +0100

Scarcity is a requirement for a good to be economic. However, http://www.onethousandpaintings.com/ offer something that could be offered by thousands of artists out there. So, it is not scarce. Or is it?

Painting a Miro or a Picasso is only within the painters' own ability, and I don't want to buy some cheap street plagiarism. But some people actually do, and these copied paintings sell on the streets. They don't probably sell to me and you, but they sell to a few to which the good is scarce. To those few, the painting either has an economic value, or its utility is fully artistic and they assign zero value to money. Assuming they are not infinitely rich, because they could buy the original Miro or Picasso, it only leaves us with two options: either they are infinitely stupid not to assign value to money, or the copied painting truly has some economic value.

Transactions in Rails

Mon, 29 May 2006 14:18:00 +0100

Transactions in Rails are starting to bother me, and quite a lot. Once in a while I dive into my latest application,booki.es, a web application for trading long-term futures using play money.

Rails was fantastic for building my wife's eCommerce site: fairly static content and not many associations between entities. Rails transactional block was sufficient, something of the sorts of:

Account.transaction do
account1.deposit(100)
account2.withdraw(100)
end

Account.transaction(peter, paul) do
paul.deposit(350)
peter.withdraw(350)
end

SOA, can it scale?

Mon, 09 Jan 2006 16:23:00 +0000

SOA means a lot of different things to different people. Now, if I go by the W3C’s definition, it’s about processes that assemble services and an organisation that owns the processes and the services.

However, to me, SOA is simply distributed computing over web services. I have been building distributed component applications since 2000 that were exposed as business processes. We did not have web services, but the facade was a process interface, and the execution was managed by a simple workflow engine. BPEL and SOAP were not yet mainstraim, still our application was based on a SOA.

Ruby on Rails and J2EE

Thu, 05 Jan 2006 16:40:00 +0000

I have spent some time over Christmas period playing here and there with Ruby on Rails and getting an overdose of AJAX. I really wanted to see whether all the hype and marketing from 37things.com and associates makes any sense.

I have two objectives in mind:

Should I throw away J2EE for Rails?
Should I throw away PHP for Rails?

My impression of Rails has been extremely good so far. However, I am really more pleased with Ruby than I am with Rails itself. Rails is interesting, don't get me wrong, but far from being revolutionary. All concepts and patterns in Rails have existed for a while in the Java and J2EE world for a while now. If so, why is Rails so cool and sexy? I'll give you a few reasons I found for myself:

AJAX Performance

Tue, 29 Nov 2005 14:42:00 +0000

AJAX is the new pink. In fact, Web 2.0 could be the internet revolution that makes even Bill Gates wonder about the future of software. The enhanced usability in AJAX implies a couple of things for web applications.

Some of the controller logic is moved from the server to the client. Less CPU cycles on the server per page, more on the client.
Clients make more frequent requests to the server, but with significantly smaller payloads. The business logic on the server is broken up into smaller, more self-contained XML services (SOAP, REST). In essence, same aggregate CPU, more I/O.

Add to that a higher level of concurrency. More frequent, less expensive requests, same user, results in higher transaction rates, which will require more concurrent threads. More threads will consume more resources, both CPU and I/O.

SOAP and RMI

Thu, 03 Nov 2005 07:52:00 +0000

Latest benchmark results on WebSphere 6.0.1 seem to indicate that SOAP/HTTP outperforms RMI/IIOP. Interesting, it makes me wonder if the reason comes down to IBM abandoning CORBA and placing the best developers on the SOA field. Otherwise there is really no other explanation I can think of. I’ll have to instrument some code to understand the why.

First Entry

Tue, 01 Nov 2005 11:03:00 +0000

Not my first blog, and likely not the last one. Sadly I lost my posts since 2000. Too many tasks, and short of time. Priorities change. And here I am on a new blog, tired of running my own. I don’t like the chores blogging, and I hate the whole ‘hoo, haa, I got trizillion hits’.

Anyway, to the point, the objective of this blog is to prepare short articles for my forthcoming book on performance analysis for web applications.

About

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I am a cafe dude, a technology entrepreneur and a wanna-be triathlete age grouper. I am obsessed by technical prowess and creating new business opportunities driven by technology. I highly enjoy coding, and the mental state it drives. In fact, I don’t think it’s possible to remain a technologist without coding on a regular basis.

I am currently running Nexar together with my co-founder, Eran Shir, making driving on the roads safer, today. We are applying computer vision, machine learning, deep learning, and generally Artificial Intelligence, to make safer driving accessible to the 1.2 billion vehicles out there, regardless of make, model, or age.