Global Nerdy

After a couple of weeks of neglect, Global Nerdy is back in business! Let’s start with a little French wifi humour:

Translation: “He has wifi.”

Here’s a map of my travels last week:

Click the map to see it at full size.

I started last Sunday in Tampa, flew back to Toronto, where I hung out at the airport for about four hours until I caught another flight for Calgary.

While the Tampa trip (which took place the previous week) was about seeing the Special Lady (and getting work done remotely during the day), the Calgary trip was all about business. I was there to do an assessment of the current mobile device setup for an energy company, which involved going there, doing a series of 15 or so hour-long interviews with the company’s various business units, looking at their wireless, server and application infrastructure, and doing all manner of suit-meets-geek things.

We’d start our days early with a good breakfast…

…then make our way over to the client’s building…

…where they very generously set us up in a corner office with a great view of Eau Claire and the Bow River Valley. Unfortunately, we spend the lion’s share of our time in a conference room rather than our swanky corner office, but it was still a nice place to decompress between meetings and interviews, as well as to catch up on email and other administrivia.

We also spent some time at the Calgary office of Rogers, our partners in a number of projects. As you can see in the photo, we started our days fairly early during this trip.

Our earliest day was Thursday, when we caught a 6 a.m. flight…

…to Christina Lake, where we got to see the client’s operation in action. As you can see, the “tarmac” and runway aren’t paved — that’s just flat-packed dirt:

Here’s the terminal building:

And here’s the runway:

A short bus ride down a dirt road later, we arrived at the client’s production site, where we interviewed the field people and talked about their mobile infrastructure:

With our interviews complete, we caught the last flight out of Christina Lake back to Calgary…

…where we had a precious little bit of downtime before heading back to hotel and compiling our data. A busy techie’s got to have at least a little downtime, after all!

I’m heading back to Calgary to see our client, report on our findings, give them one of those whiz-bang presentations that are my stock in trade, present them with a whole lot of recommendations and a technology roadmap, and if all goes well, earn a fair profit for my efforts. It’s a lot of work, but I rather like this job.

This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.

Modern Android Takes Over

Click the graph to see the source article.

To the great annoyance of many a developer, Android 2.3 (a.k.a. “Gingerbread”), which was originally released at the end of 2010, has been the most common version of Android in the wild. Even until late last year, the general word was that accounted for half of all Android operating systems in the market.

Here’s some good news: according to Engadget, who are going by Google’s cleaned-up metrics (which are supposed to better reflect the number of active users), modern versions of Android — that is, 4.0 and higher (“Ice Cream Sandwich” and “Jellybean”) — now account for more than half the active Android installations. I think it’s safe to say that this is being driven by big sellers like the Samsung Galaxy S3 and Galaxy Note II, and should continue with the release of the S4 and HTC One.

Who Sold How Many Tablets in 1Q13?

Click the graph to see the source article.

IDC’s report on the worldwide tablet market for the first quarter of 2013 came out yesterday, and I’ve turned their numbers into the chart above. Some numbers of note:

• Total tablet shipments for 1Q13 were 49.2 million units — that’s more than were shipped in the first half of 2012.
• The year-over-year growth in tablet shipments in 1Q13 is a healthy 142%.
• Apple’s performance — selling 19.5 tablets in 1Q13 — outperformed IDC’s projected 18.7 million.
• ASUS is now the third biggest seller of tablets, thanks to its Nexus 7 tablet.
• The combined sales of Surface RT and Surface Pro tablets make up 900,000 units in 1Q13.

iOS Users Still Way More Active

Click the graph to see the source article.

You’ve probably seen a couple of articles on how iOS users account for more online activity than Android users even though there are more Android units out there, such as GoGo: in-flight Internet use 84 percent iOS, 16 Android and Time’s iOS vs. Android article. Here’s another data point: NetMarketShare’s latest web usage share data for various mobile operating systems, which shows iOS accounting for nearly 60% of web usage, more than double Android’s share.

Click to see the Twitter search for #ThorstenTips.

Wow — Karen Geier is killing it on Twitter with her “Thorsten Tips”, a bunch of silly predictions inspired by Blackberry CEO Thorsten Heins’ crazy predictions that in five years, no one will care about tablets and that Blackberry will be the undisputed leader in mobile tech. They’re tagged with #ThorstenTips, and you should get in on the fun!

I’ve posted some of my favourites below:

in 5 years, you will have fax machines in every room of your house (even the bathroom) #thorstentips

— Karen Geier (@karengeier) April 30, 2013

in 5 years, everyone’s “playlists” will be put on a “cassette” and put into a “walkman.” Sony will be a giant. #thorstentips

— Karen Geier (@karengeier) April 30, 2013

in 5 years, no one’s going to be drinking coca-cola. it’s all going to be about elk milk #thorstentips

— Karen Geier (@karengeier) April 30, 2013

Thorsten Heins, CEO of BlackBerry, made two crazy “five years from now” predictions in an interview with Bloomberg:

• “In five years I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore. Maybe a big screen in your workspace, but not a tablet as such. Tablets themselves are not a good business model.” And yes, if you’re going solely by BlackBerry’s disastrous experience with the Playbook, then yes. However, with Apple and Samsung tying up the supply chains, Apple selling the iPad mini at lower-than-usual margins and Amazon selling Kindle devices at a loss, a new entrant in the tablet market would either have to have a killer price or killer features. BlackBerry are prepared to deliver neither.
• “In five years, I see BlackBerry to be the absolute leader in mobile computing — that’s what we’re aiming for. I want to gain as much market share as I can, but not by being a copycat.” Shooting for the top is what a company is supposed to aim for, and that’s exactly what he’s supposed to say. The more realistic goal isn’t so inspiring: “In five years, I want us to be in not-so-distant third place. Maybe if we’re extremely lucky, almost tied for second.”

Here’s the interview in which Heins talked about these predictions:

Heins says that he’s going after the hard-working “crazy multitaskers”, but the problem is that they’re digital omnivores — people who have a laptop, a smartphone and a tablet, and they like using all three. In fact, according to Deloitte’s recent “State of the Media Democracy” survey, these people make about 26% of the U.S. population.

Sure, he sounds delusional, but he’s saying what he has to say. If you really want delusional, you have to go back in time to 2010, at the “funeral” held for Android and iOS when Windows Phone went golden master. I was still working at Microsoft at the time — as a Windows Phone Champ, no less — and I was embarrassed.

The question they always ask at Toronto-based Unspace, the local heroes behind such get-togethers as Toronto’s Rails Pub Nite, RubyFringe, FutureRuby and Throne of .js is “Is there a better way to do this?” Their quest for better ways to do things extends to finding better development tools, which led to their early adoption of Ruby on Rails, and more recently, JavaScript-based frameworks (hence their Throne of .js conference last summer). Having been to several Rails Pub Nites, RubyFringe and FutureRuby, I can also say that they also do developer gatherings better than most.

Embergarten!

Unspace have announced their next developer get-together: Embergarten, a workshop where beginner and intermediate Ember developers can learn how to use Ember.js, the JavaScript framework whose site describes it as “a framework for creating ambitious web applications” and which developer Joachim Haagen Skeie (author of the upcoming book Ember.js in Action) describes as “web applications done right”.

The event will take place over two days, with the Beginner day taking place on Saturday, May 18 and the Intermediate day happening on Sunday, May 19. Unspace will be working with the development/consulting/training shop Tilde, Jeff “Coding Horror” Atwood’s excellent discussion forum Discourse, and the wonderful coworking space Foundery to make Embergarten a top-notch learning experience. Here’s their proposed syllabus:

• Beginner – Day 1 (Saturday, May 18)
  • Basic app structure, routing and (of course) conventions
  • Ember’s object model
  • Ember MVC
  • Simple debugging
• Intermediate – Day 2 (Sunday, May 19)
  • Managing data and persistence
  • Performance strategies
  • UI modelling
  • Testing

The sessions will come with pre-training packages and take-home materials, and there will be on-site mentors to help you as you build your first Ember.js application. If past history is any indicator, it will be fun, and there may even be some take-home swag.

The registration fee for each day is $400, or $700 if you want to attend both. If you’re serious about attending, register soon — Unspace events are popular and have a tendency to fill up rather quickly.

The Afterparty!

Ain’t no party like an Unspace party!
Photo by Andrew Louis. Click to see the original.

It wouldn’t be an Unspace event without a party, and this is no exception. Whether you’re attending Embergarten or not, you can RSVP for the Embergarten Afterparty taking place at 6:30 p.m. on Saturday, May 18 on Unspace’s lovely rooftop patio, and it’s free-as-in-beer. Sign up quickly, as these slots are likely to vanish!

Getting Started with Ember.js

If you’re curious about Ember.js, here are some resources to get you started:

• The Ember.js site: The first place you should go. Download Ember, read the docs, take it for a spin!
• Emberwatch: A continually-updated listing of Ember.js resources.
• Ember.js – Web Applications Done Right: An InfoQ article that walks you through the building of a photo album app in Ember.
• Getting into Ember.js: Rey Bango’s tutorial.
• Ember.js in Action: An upcoming book on Ember. You can get a regularly-updated advance copy via Manning’s MEAP program.
• Why Discourse Uses Ember.js: Discourse developer Robin Ward — who’ll be one of the teachers at Embergarten — explains all.

Software development is one of those fields that’s classified as “professional”, yet doesn’t have strict educational requirements as other fields, such as medicine, engineering and law do. Some of the biggest names in software come without academic credentials: consider Jobs, Gates and Zuckerberg, as well as some lesser-known-among-laypeople ones including Anders Hejlberg (creator of Turbo Pascal, chief architect of Delphi and later C#), John Carmack (lead programmer of Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake and other id software games), David Karp (Tumblr; and he doesn’t even have a high school degree), and Jamie “jwz” Zawinski (Netscape and XScreenSaver), just to name a few off the top of my head. Sooner or later, in a group of developers, you’ll hear some kind of debate as to whether a formal computer science education is truly necessary.

The debate is even more applicable for game development. Most universities have a game development course or two in their computer science offerings, but full game development academic programs seem to be offered mostly by what we in Canada call “colleges” (“community colleges” in the U.S.) or post-secondary vocational colleges like triOS. WIth relatively few avenues for formal training in game development, is there any value in being certified?

Hence the Class Warfare panel being hosted at the University of Toronto’s Bahen Centre for Information Technology (40 St. George Street) taking place this Thursday, April 25th at 7:00 p.m.. Moderated by Sheridan College’s Avrim Katzman, coordinator of their Bachelor of Game Design program, the panel will feature (listed in alphabetical order of their surnamesP:

• Dan Cox, Ubisoft Toronto / Seneca College
• Ryan Creighton, Untold Entertainment
• Steve Engels, University of Toronto
• Michael Todd, Michael Todd Games
• Emma Westecott, OCAD University

In the discussion, the panelists plan to “address the current state of post-secondary game design programs and their value in equipping the next generation with the right tools to succeed in the industry.” The event will be followed by the Hand Eye Society’s (that’s Toronto’s videogame arts organization) at the nearby pub Molly Bloom’s (191 College Street) for their monthly social.

This sounds interesting to me, and I think I’ll catch this one.