How many celebrities are the spammers able to kill in one day?

August 23, 2010 by Guillermo Acilu 4 Comments

This iPad screenshot shows the spam report of my email account last Saturday. It was a really tragic day for celebrities.

At least I know that I can turn into Hulk without a dangerous exposure to gamma radiation.

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The missing link between iOS and Minority Reports: Mac OS

August 16, 2010 by Guillermo Acilu 2 Comments

A few weeks ago there was a rumor saying that Apple will kill Mac OS X and replace it with iOS. The rumor was so strong that Steve Jobs in person answered an email denying it. Steve Jobs’s words were: ”Completely wrong. Just wait.”

The rumor was fueled by three facts:

  1. There were almost no sessions dedicated to Mac OS in the Apple Developer Connection in San Francisco,
  2. There were no announcements of a new release.
  3. The last Mac OS upgrade was pure optimization with only a few new features

So, is Apple running out of ideas? I don’t think so. So what is delaying them? I believe there are two things:

  1. They want to kill the keyboard and the mouse.
  2. I think they believe that for the keyboard and mouse paradigm the OS is good as it is.

A few months ago they have introduced the Magic Mouse and now the Magic Trackpad. So why aren’t they introducing a Touch screen computer like HP or Sony? Likely because it would be only for showing off with no much practical use whatsoever.

Knowing Apple, they probably want to totally change the way we use computers, but at the same time they want the process to feel natural and friendly.

So, in my opinion the next release of Mac OS X (if it is still called Mac OS X) will be based on the following pillars:

  1. Cocoa Touch applications (iOS apps) will be able to run on the desktop controlled by some kind remote interaction device, like giant trackpads or iPad like keyboards.
  2. Cocoa Touch will add to the desktop a new type of controls to interact with applications. For instance, not long ago there used to be scroll bars in the phones, now the standard for scrolling is swiping a finger and the inertia effect.
  3. We will see not only multitouch interaction, but also multi-hand gestures.
  4. We will see a new set of Apple computers prepared natively to run this new Cocoa Touch controls.
  5. Cocoa will slowly become deprecated when the users start adopting the new devices. And developers will of course start to complain about it.
  6. And last but not least, we will see a more modern file system (sorry this is wishful thinking)

Do you think anything different is going to happen? Please leave me your comments!

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The secret of the very simple software apps

August 11, 2010 by Guillermo Acilu Leave a Comment

As users of software applications we want simplicity. We want minimalist applications that solve our problems with just a few clicks. Or even better, with only one click.

How can a software application respond in that way? We have three ways:

Your apps are watching you

  • An exceptionally well designed application (Apple style)
  • Ultra-specialized small apps
  • Applications that know the users needs before hand

There used to be a time where the only one way to design a product according to the user needs, was paying for very expensive a market research. But in the time of Social Media the consumers change so fast, that market researches are already outdated even before they are finished.

So software applications of any nature must have a way to research the market quickly and react accordingly. Hence, apps must go ahead and study the user behavior. As more details engineers are able to collect from the end users, more simple and successful the apps will potentially become.

But there has to be a limit. Because one thing is learn from the users to simplify application designs, and another very different thing is to spy them to improve your spamming targeting.

Bottom line: the reason why Google gives you the correct search result within the first page is because they are watching you. Is it good? Is it bad? I really do not know, but I really enjoy the idea of a software application able to give me such simple, good and powerful service.

Do you have any other thoughts? Please leave me your comment!

Photo: PSD.

Filed under Apps, Collective Intelligence, Customer Service, Development Tagged with , , ,

The 7 main costs in apps development

July 26, 2010 by Guillermo Acilu Leave a Comment

With the explosion of the applications market, many people and businesses are thinking in developing mobile apps. But how expensive is this venture? Where are the main costs located?

I have put together a description of the most common costs that this kind of venture have. Here is the list:

  1. If you develop it yourself: The most obvious of all the costs. Developing good software application costs money, it’s true. But it is not as bad as you might think. If you plan to develop it yourself, think that even the most innovative apps are mostly built on a combination of layers of already written pieces of code, so you do not have to reinvent the wheel. Just google the keywords that identify the functionality that you need, and there is a good chance that  you will get many of hits with perfectly usable libraries. With that said, I need to add that putting together different existing libraries it is not always an easy task and it is not always applicable. To sell well, the apps should be innovative, and most of the time innovation requires high effort. Note: if your are going to use open source code or freeware in your app, do not forget to check the license agreement to see that you’re fulfilling all the conditions. And last but not least, if you see a badge with the word “Donation” in the developer’s site, it is not a bad idea to follow it and donate some money to the developers. After all, they are making your life easier.


  2. If you hire a third party developer or company: There are many, many companies with qualified developers that can help you with this task. The main problem is to find somebody you can trust. I would start searching in sites like odesk.com or elance.com to find freelancers or third party companies specialized in mobile development. If you find find candidates, try to find references. Google their names, follow them in the social networks. See previous works. Once you have all the information, take the decision. And one last advise: Cheap is good, we all want cheap, but if you want your app to succeed, aim for quality.


  3. Design: This cost is not so obvious but it is the most important one. You have developed a great application? Good for you. Does it look good? Is it clear for the end user? No? Sorry, you won’t sell any. The design is the single most important cost. The code could be just good enough to make the app run, but if the design is not perfect, your app will not perform well in sales. Design apps that are clear for the user. The purpose of your app must be clear in the first screen, if it is not, rethink your design.


  4. Sales & Marketing: Today the distribution channel for software applications is the Internet. So, this is where your marketing should be located. Internet Social Media channels are the ideal place to perform marketing campaigns, and if you do it good, it can be almost free. But keep something in mind: what makes your marketing campaign successful in social media? Your app, and specially your app design.


  5. Sales Administration: Two words for this: Application Stores. The reduction in the complexity in the invoicing, contracts, receivables, sales statistics, etc, is unbelievable. It was never easier. I prefer to pay the 30% to Apple, Google, BlackBerry or whoever, than deal with accounting and administration. And believe me this, I live and work with the not so efficient German bureaucracy.


  6. Customer Service: Houston we have a problem! If your application is a simple small video game, you won’t have mayor problems. But If you application is the front end of a broader service or it has more complex functionalities, you need to pick up those calls, answer those emails, monitor Twitter and Facebook, host and moderate a forum, etc. I would say that customer service is the Achilles’ heel in this business. You could fail in many places and your business will survive, but if you fail in your customer service, there won’t be anybody in Houston to save you.


  7. Operations: This cost is only present if your application offers some kind of service. This is the cost involved in running the service itself. In my company we use all cloud based services. On-demand services are the best suitable for start-ups since they usually require low or no up-front cost. In our case we use Amazon Web Services with Ubuntu Linux servers and Squarespace for our web site. We administer the services ourselves from our iPhones with a couple of very useful apps. We use iAWSManager to administer the Amazon EC2 instances, we use iSSH as a secure shell and Squarespace for iPhone to administer our website.


There is an extra cost that I personally recommend. Look for advise from experts. I have read a very good post sometime ago called 4 secrets of the world’s most successful businesses where this particular suggestion is described in detail.

Did I forget anything? If you know other important costs that I am missing, just let me know your comments.

Filed under Apps, Development, Technology, iphone Tagged with , , ,

5 Reasons why Apps will win!

July 19, 2010 by Guillermo Acilu 10 Comments

Ten years ago I worked to a company called PeopleSoft. Do you remember it? It was killed by Oracle. Sorry, let me rephrase that: It was taken over by Oracle. PeopleSoft introduced a technology in 2000, called PeopleSoft Internet Architecture or PIA for short.

It was a 100% HTML based business application.

At the beginning, everyone was thinking that engineers at PeopleSoft had gone mad! People were saying you can’t compare a simple HTML page, with a full featured, windows-based client. Well, today we have hundreds of HTML based software applications. PeopleSoft was not only right. They marked the way for the next decade!

Windows vs Web was the discussion of the beginning of the first decade of this century. The second decade is presenting us a new one: Apps vs Web. I believe that the battle will be won by the apps.

Here you have five reasons why:

1. The App Stores: The app stores are changing the way software is sold and distributed. They offer services that other software distributions channels do not. It is true that the concept already existed with web sites like download.com, versiontracker.com and others. However, the level of centralizations that the app stores are introducing are adding greater control to the users and another level of simplicity. See the examples of the iTunes App Store, Android Market, BlackBerry App World, etc.

2. Optimized for the Hardware: Native apps run much faster than HTML, Javascript or Flash. They consume far fewer resources and they can exploit the unique capabilities of the devices where they run. The user experience is much better and personal with apps than with web pages. The developers also have far more options to present information and interact with the users.

3. Diversity of devices: The diversity of devices makes it very difficult for standard technologies to succeed. How would you navigate an HTML page in a television? What about in a car? Maybe you would do it using voice commands? Each device has its own characteristics and they can only be exploited correctly if the software does it. Standards grow much slower than specialized hardware and software and in current times, it is all about speed.

4. The users: People like Apps and use them. This is by far the most important reason.

5. The power of the internet is also behind the apps: Web pages and applications are just a tool to distribute web services. Apps are also tools but they are much more capable of taking advantage of the Internet. Web sites are everywhere, but apps are not only everywhere, they are specialized in only one specific task and device, which is the one you need in the moment you need it.

So, do you agree or disagree? It would be great to get your feedback, so let us know what YOU think!

Filed under Apps, Internet Architecture, Technology, iphone Tagged with , , , ,

dotTribes Support Web Site updated

July 10, 2010 by Guillermo Acilu Leave a Comment

We have updated the structure of our Support web site in order to improve our communications with the users.
We have added a Customer Support blog where we will be informing details about the products and services and also details about the availability of the dotTribes servers.
We have also simplified the access to the support web site adding it to the top navigation bar of dottribes.com.
You can access to the support blog in this link.

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The dotTribes platform release 1.2 is on its way

June 11, 2010 by Guillermo Acilu Leave a Comment

The first release of the dotTribes platform version 1.2 and its client apps will be ready in the upcoming weeks.

The biggest new feature is the integration of twitter lists to the tribes and the possibility to share tribe content within user’s networks in twitter.

We are also integrating twitter analytics information limited only to the particular tribes. Users will be able to see the most popular content in the tribe, the most influencer twitter users within the tribe, tribe trending topics and more.

Stay updated subscribing to this blog. We are only a few weeks away!

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Developers: proprietary platforms are good for us! Stop complaining about Apple!

May 7, 2010 by Guillermo Acilu Leave a Comment

Guys, it’s really very simple. Apple controls around 15% of the smartphone market share, Nokia about 45%, RIM about 20%, and so on.

Imagine that you are an iPhone developer, and you have developed a cool app.  You, therefore, want to port it to Android. You have two choices:  You develop it in Flash and have it running in all the platforms at once, or you call a colleague who specializes in Android and tell him/her, “Hey, I will develop your app in iPhone, and you’ll develop my app in Android. I’ll get 50% of your iPhone sales, and you will get 50% of my Android sales.”  You can then also do this with a RIM developer, Nokia, Microsoft, etc.

If you develop it in Flash, you will be competing with one million Flash developers for applications that cost only a penny. However, if you partner with a colleague, you will get more out of your apps and your skills!! Native apps are faster, more reliable and take more advantage of the device, (note my previous post on this topic).

Developing Flash solely benefits Adobe, and developing Silverlight only benefits Microsoft, etc. These are the facts with any cross-platform framework.

Specialization and partnerships are the way to go. If this works for me, it should certainly work for you as well.

Filed under Apple, Development, Technology, iphone Tagged with , , ,

Flash: a simple list of advantages and disadvantages for users and developers

May 5, 2010 by Guillermo Acilu 1 Comment

I’ve been reading a lot about the Apple vs. Adobe war. Most of the posts are talking in adjectives rather than facts, and this is never helpful when you want to learn from them.

So I’ve put together a list of advantages and disadvantages of using Flash, as well as other cross-platform technologies, to build applications in general.

What is a cross-platform technology?

It means write once, run everywhere. Developers write a program and they are sure that it will run in the same way on Windows, Mac, Linux or any other platform. In the case of Flash, it even provides this uniform behavior in multiple browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera, etc.

So, is this an open standard? The answer is NO (in capital letters). There are several cross-platform technologies: Java is one, Microsoft Silverlight is another, and there are many more. Flash is only the most commonly used.

Advantages for developers:

  • There is only one platform to maintain, which means less work to do.
  • The costs are much lower.
  • There is only one thing to learn.

Advantages for users:

  • They can change the platform or browser and have the same user experience with each application or site.
  • The applications will be cheaper since the cost to build them is lower.

Disadvantages for developers:

  • Let’s say that Nokia adds a sensor to its phones that can smell things. Flash developers will not be able to use this sensor until Adobe adds support to it. Native developers will have access to it immediately.
  • To be cross-platform, technologies need to run things that most platforms support. So if there are features present in only a couple of phones in the market, Flash will not be able to manage them because it wouldn’t be cross-platform anymore. Flash will only add support once the majority of platforms support it.
  • There is more code to run, meaning a higher possibility of bugs. Your application will run on several layers of programs: first the machine/phone operating system, then the cross-platform OS – Flash player or Java Virtual Machine. The final quality of your app depends on more factors. A simple upgrade of the Flash player could break your app.
  • Faster commoditization of the software development industry due to even cheaper apps (if it is not a commodity already): customers already assume that they can get high value for free when in reality high value costs a lot of money.

Disadvantages for users:

  • Slower performance: the computer/phone must run two applications instead of one. It runs the application you want to run, plus the application that runs your application (Flash player, for instance).
  • More power consumption: since users run two apps instead of one, they consume more power, which is a problem for portable devices.
  • Less stability: users are running more code, which means a greater threat from bugs. More code = more bugs. That’s a fact.
  • Fewer device choices: if the same apps run everywhere in the same way and do not take advantage of the last technical improvements of the system, your choices are reduced to the devices’ shapes, colors and megapixels. Forget about the smell sensor for several years.
  • A confusing customer experience: applications are potentially all different for the users. The user experience could be 100% different between one app and another. Users will not be able to identify basic functionalities because they are implemented in a very different way.

Please let know me your comments. Perhaps I have missed some advantages or disadvantages that you are aware of.

Filed under Apple, Technology, iphone Tagged with , , , , ,

Four reasons why Apple is not being anticompetitive against Adobe

May 3, 2010 by Guillermo Acilu Leave a Comment

We can be sure that there will not be any actions against Apple due to anticompetitive behavior because of the SDK limitations of using languages other than C, C++ and JavaScript. I am stating that because of the following reasons:

  1. Adobe Flash and Apple iPhone/iPad are not competitors. You cannot be anticompetitive towards somebody who is not a competitor, can you?
  2. There are plenty of platforms allowing developers to use Flash, Java, Microsoft or any other development languages or frameworks. Limiting the availability of programming languages in iPhone OS does not affect consumer’s choices in any way.
  3. Let’s imagine for a moment that iPhone allows Flash, Java and Silverlight apps to run. Let’s also imagine that Android, Symbian and Microsoft also do it. Now let’s imagine that LG, Samsung and other proprietary smartphone vendors allow them as well. How can one phone be different from another? In terms of competition, the customers have more options with Apple’s approach.
  4. Compared with other cases in the software industry, the Apple vs Adobe conflict has a minimal impact in its industry. For instance, Oracle has swallowed PeopleSoft, Siebel and JD Edwards in less than two years, leaving the enterprise software applications market with only two big players. These massive extinction processes passed the antitrust inquiries without major problems. Why is Apple going to have any issues?

As I wrote in a previous post I strongly believe that Apple has no problems with Adobe itself. Apple wants to keep control over its ability to be competitive in a very dynamic market. Allowing cross-platform development frameworks like Flash or Java will accelerate the commoditization process of the smartphone applications market. As a developer I applaud Apple’s approach!

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