Carbon Travel Tracker

Okay so now in the iTunes Store is my first attempt at an application that does something actually useful. Its the Carbon Travel Tracker. I travel a lot, not as much as some but quite a lot more than most, two questions always came to mind

1) Just how much do I really travel
2) What is the Carbon impact of that

In the spirit of 'if you don't measure it you can't change it' this really was an application where I wanted it to be really hands off.  I don't want to have to enter all of my travel, I want my phone to stalk me all the time and work out what sort of travel I'm doing and what is the impact of that.

There is much more on the application on the Carbon Travel Tracker support pages but here are a few highlights

1. Tracks automatically in the background - kick it off and it just runs
2. Automatically splits travel into sections/journeys and makes an educated guess on the travel type
3. Allows you to manually override whole sections or sub-sections with the actual travel type
4. Records your distance traveled in the day, week, month, year and since the app was installed
5. Records the carbon impact of that travel
6. Tells you how many times around the world that travel equates to
7. Tells you how many trees, over the same time period, it would take to make you carbon neutral

The purpose is really to have a map so my kids can see where I've been an it sort of escalated from there.

So the map required points, points gave me distance and speed, speed & distance gave me travel types and finally that gave me the carbon impact.

So I now know that basically I don't have a Carbon Footprint, I have a Carbon Body bag.  Now as it says at the top, this app is now:

IT going backwards - Objective C is 90s retro

I've ranted quite regularly on how Enterprise IT just hasn't really developed in the last 5 years and my personal task for 2012... learning Objective C and programming for iOS has taken my disbelief to another level. Back in 2008 I learnt Python and for me it sucked. Its 'advantage' over scripting languages of the 80s and 90s was minimal and it had the most hated (for me) of things... indent sensitive code. Objective C however really has stepped it up a level.

I remember learning Ada, C and Eiffel (along with bits of LISP, Prolog, Assembler, etc) and most of all I remember being confused as to why people like coding in languages like C, where the syntax is terse bordering on emo, over languages like Ada where even non experts can have a crack. Through my career people have claimed the stupid 'less characters = language efficiency' which again matches up by saying that Martin Luther King was a crap communicator while a grunting teenager is much more efficient.

But all of this couldn't prepare me for the horror that is Objective C. SIGFAULTS in 2012? Seriously? Have years and years of exception handling been ignored? No even better than that... Objective C has exceptions but you are discouraged from using them, yup they are there but are 'resource intensive' so you shouldn't use them.

Second off we've got the wonder of memory management again, although now with 'ARC' it actually does some garbage collection, yup folks its 2012 and Apple have just caught up with the mid-90s.

All of this is annoying, and rubbish, but that would be nothing if the language had a nice syntax and logical way of working... but Objective C is like people have looked at Java, C, C++ and then sat down and though 'how could we make this really suck?'.  Yes its the same old .h/.c (or .m in this case) combination of header and code but just basic things like function calls are made excessively silly.  No simple .(, ) for Objective C... well not always, sometimes and you can do it but not normally... ahh consistency avoidance always a great way to have sucky code.  No in Objective C you call a function like this

[instance method]:param1 param2:param2

This means you end up with wonderful code that looks like

[[[eventHistory getEventAt:location date:date] calculateDistance:newLocation].doubleValue

Notice that '.doubleValue'?  Yup when using NSNumber (object for doubles) you use the old '.' notation. Perfect eh?

Then we have XCode, an IDE that seems to crash if you do anything it doesn't expect rather than a warning saying 'Fail: you didn't mean to do that'.  Some bits are nice, like some of the code generation and some of the bits, like refactoring, are pretty much up to Java IDE standards from 2001/2002.

The layout model in XCode is okay, with some nicer bits around chaining screens but seriously is it that hard to implement XmForm?  With the multiple display layouts that you get with mobile devices it really would be a cracking layout manager to have.

Then we have the iOS simulator, its great, except if you want to simulate locations that Apple hasn't thought of... the 'accuracy' if you use custom locations (for instance if you want to test something using European locations) is 150,000m... or to put it another way... a level that every decent piece of code should ignore.    Application development speed wise I'd clearly be faster in Java, but as a new language I'd say that Objective-C ranks behind C++ in terms of 'complexity' to learn and ranks significantly behind both C and C++ in terms of language efficiency.

But that said the example code pieces are good and the online manuals are good as well and I knocked up the second stage of my application on a flight across the Atlantic.  Basically however it feels like using C++/Motif with Emacs and the TeleUSE UI builder.  Its 2012, shouldn't it feel like we've progressed?  What it really feels like is some sort of retro homage to the 90s wrapped in a shiny and expensive new package.

From now on I'm only coding for iOS while listening to an iPhone playlist 'Songs of the 90s', it helps get my mind in the iOS Zone.

Technorati Tags: iPhone, iOS

NFC - What Apple does next? Buy Amex?

Chatting around on the iPhone 5 I have to say its all rather dull, yes they'll fix the antenna, yes the camera might get better and the processor faster. But really is that a big deal? So what could Apple announce either now or next year that would really blow people away.

I travel a lot, and one thing I see around Europe is the rise of NFC, so the use of 'smart'cards on the Underground, Metro, Dutch rail and elsewhere. The technology is basically the same everytime, Chip with some form of RFID or NFC is swiped over a sensor and your trip is paid for. Around the globe we are seeing MasterCard and Visa both include NFC to their cards so you can just wave the card around and get charged for things.

Now MasterCard and Visa get a percentage of the transaction, there are normally companies providing the Smartcard services for public transport. But what stops Apple creating or leveraging a 'standard' for NFC to cover these cases. Think 'Airplay' over six inches. Now Apple have said NFC won't be in iPhone 5, which indicates... well not much. But the key question here isn't so much when NFC will be included but the impact this will have on the market.

Lets say in the UK my Oyster card can be replaced with my iPhone and my iPhone can be linked to my Credit Card. Suddenly Apple are taking a slice not just of my iTunes transactions but of pretty much everything I do, and they have clarity via GPS on where I'm doing it. I can also charge via this system on the French, Dutch, etc networks without having to buy a ticket or going to a ticket office, think of the staff savings....

Now for fraud reasons it would be good to track the GPS so if I do an iPhone transaction in Utrecht and then there is a card transaction in London 10 minutes later then the odds are that one is fraudulent. This fraud protection would give Apple the reason to store and analyse this information, and of course provide it to the credit-card provider. All very open, if more than a little big brother.

The point here is that integrating NFC into the iPhone and driving a standard due to the massive market volumes that the iPhone has, something no-one else can currently do unless Google dictates hardware standards a bit more, would mean that governments and companies could massively reduce the timescales for adopting NFC and start decreasing their operating costs by relying on iPhone users to self-serve. This would have a knock-on effect of driving iPhone sales because with iPhone being the 'preferred' mechanism it becomes simpler to own one rather than not. Thus Apple provide to the credit card companies and other organisations a platform for NFC which gives Apple revenue and companies the leverage that a standardised market brings (think 802.11x against proprietary approaches).

That then got me thinking. Apple quite like being in control and have $76bn in cash, what could you buy for that which would really kick this up a level? How about VISA($63bn), Mastercard($44bn) or American Express($60bn) themselves? Apple could buy, for cash, anyone of these. So instead of having an open system for all of the providers it suddenly would become a closed system where you are best off having a specific card provider if you get an iPhone. Given the demographic target of Apple, and their larger charges over the competition, AMEX would seem to be a good fit.

Sometimes its scary when you join the dots.

Technorati Tags: SOA, Service Architecture

Windows 7 - more proof on why iPhone is better

A while back I posted why Phone adverts tell you that the phone is rubbish

Well lets compare

Windows 7 Mobile


Apple FaceTime


The difference remains. Apple have the confidence to show you people actually using their phone, Microsoft have the confidence to not show you people actually using the phone but doing other stuff to pretend that their phone is cool

If people can't even fake an advert to make a phone look useable, what does that say about the devices themselves?

Technorati Tags: SOA, Service Architecture

Apple TV - it's just a dongle

With the various reviews of the Apple TV device I think that people, including Apple, have missed the point. This shouldn't be a device via which you stream and buy content it should simply be considered as a dongle, which in future can be integrated into the TV, car or what ever to stream content from a portable device. $99 is quite a bit for a dongle but Apple have actually over speced the Apple TV device so it will stand alone, the smart move in future will be that it is simply an extension to TVs in the way they have iPod connectivity today. The storage is on your PC, Mac, iPod, iPhone or iPad and then you simply stream to the various different displays that are available.

So you carry around your movies, in conjunction with your Apple cloud service and thus it is all on demand as you travel around your life. Get in the car and the kids can get it, get home and you can use the TV. Go to a friends house and it is all sorted.

Seriously is it that hard to spot? Apple TV isn't a product its just a dongle that can be integrated into TVs based on the iPod, iPhone, iPad dominance. Airplay is the real thing, Apple aren't aiming at the set top box market or even the movie rental market, they want the last metre between you and the display.

Orange say that the iPhone 4 has been recalled

Okay so I've just got off the phone from Orange on the non-delivery of my iPhone and here are the litany of excuses

1) They ran out of stock

So I pointed out that they'd accepted the order from me, given me a fixed delivery date (the order went in at 2am on the Thursday and was confirmed at 9:05am). This seemed rather bizarre that they'd run out of stock that quickly

That is when it got a lot more interesting.

Then I was told that

2) "The phones have all been recalled as they've got an antenna problem and they keep crashing"

I pushed on this just to check and it was confirmed that the reason that Orange don't have any stock is because their has been a recall due to the antenna issue. The call centre drone said that the iPhone antenna issue was one thing and also that the phones kept on crashing.

I asked why, if it was a result of a recall why they hadn't emailed me about it, the reason was that

3) Their system was so overloaded that it couldn't handle the volumes.

I pointed out that they regularly seem to spam in pretty large volumes but apparently the iPhone is much higher in volume.

There was no hint of an apology and the stock line was "7-10 days or a full refund".

So either its straight Orange incompetence with a rubbish excuse or there are some major league iPhone 4 issues.

iPhone as a corporate device

Okay, since the 3G came out I've been using it as a corporate device which means email/calendar/contacts. Previously I was on a windows mobile device with a slide out keyboard, which is touted sometimes as being the "best" for corporate comms.

As a corporate device the iPhone was simply superb. There have been some people citing some minor security pieces but seriously the odds of my losing the iPhone as opposed to the last device? My last device was stolen at Seattle Airport by a pick-pocket. My iPhone however was in a more secure pocket... because I care about it.

So lets just look at usability.

Exchange.... well the push sync was as good as expected and it burnt the battery as expected. But the big question is whether the touch keyboard was as "good" as the old slide out. Once yes, Twice yes, a hundred times yes. Simply put its become a joy to use. The only slight niggle I have is that cut-and-paste would help.

Calendar was great, contacts worked great, wish there was voice dialing as standard but its still superb.

And the best bit?

ITS A BRILLIANT PHONE

Which is where most of the Windows Mobile devices I've had fall down. They've been okay as a mobile office client but rubbish as phones. The iPhone is a good phone. It switches to phone mode really well (and from anywhere) the call quality is good and its never dropped a call.

So my conclusion is that not unsurprisingly the iPhone is a great corporate device because its a usable device. Now what would really help for corporate adopt is a "local" version of the iTunes store as a way to manage enterprise client application deployment, deploying corporate apps has long been a pain onto mobile devices, either "click on this link and pray" or "Insert this SD card" with the challenges around updates that this brings. A Corporate iTunes store and iTunes extension would solve all of that. No idea if Apple would do it, but that would turn them from being the cool device in the corporation to being the managed cool device in the corporation.

Technorati Tags: SOA, Service Architecture

I hate technology, I love solutions

I've begun to realise something recently, I don't like technology. I love working in IT but its never the technology bits that get me excited, its always what you can do with them this is why I loathe discussions on "X is better than Y" as its really about what can you do with X and Y. Most of the time you can do the same thing, but maybe one of them makes it easier to reach the end goal.

This came home to me today when I took delivery of my lush new 3G iPhone. Seriously I've not been this excited about a gadget since the PS2 came out. The reason I like it isn't that its a smartphone or that its 3G, my work phone is 3G and its a smartphone and I loathe and detest it with a passion. No the reason I like it is because its such a damn smooth solution it just plain works. I don't care if they use Linux, OSX, Windows or Symbian, I don't care whether the applications "look the same" as the ones on my laptop (which is a Mac), I just care that it works and it gets the hell out of my way when I want to do things.

Oh but woe is me, the registration doesn't work their servers are getting canned and falling over. That is the technology part of the equation, someone somewhere hasn't scaled the infrastructure correctly and done the right sort of caching to make it all work. This first of all tells me I've been a complete sheep in buying the 3G iPhone because clearly there are loads of other people doing the same thing and secondly that technology breaks.

That is the difference, solutions are the bits that you use as an end-user. You only find out about the technology when it breaks.


Anyway its all gone through now and the bit I loved best.... when it rejected the default browser on my desktop VM because it fired up IE ;)

Technorati Tags: iPhone