Flash and HTML are, to anyone who regularly uses them both, not inherently conflicted at all. They actually work quite well together...and to companies like Microsoft, Apple, and Adobe...perhaps too well.
A few years ago a project called "Aviary.com" presented what could be considered a complete replacement for photoshop. Given the power recently bestowed on the flash platform tools, it was possible to build almost any application one could think of in the browser itself, and this was proven by Aviary and later project Rome by adobe (rome.adobe.com).
This likely caused significant fear in the hearts of all software-for-profit folks who could see a big enough picture to realize their incredibly hard work and high investment projects could now be relegated to the same low status of a website. No more big install, no more background running, and now subservient to the browser. The OS itself could then become nothing but a wrapper to the web browser, which would now control the user experience and eventually free itself from the OS in low cost PCs. Google has uniquely taken this dream and run with it, and is already selling what is essentially just that, a 250 dollar laptop with nothing but their browser based "chrome" on it. The only thing you pay for in that case is the physical object.
Both the Rome and Aviary projects have either cut features or moved to an app model
since originally released, as you can see on their websites, but one
can see the potential there to utterly decimate the market for what is
currently a $600 graphics program available as a standalone app
(Photoshop), particularly if they managed to get a look at the earlier
iterations of these projects.
Thus one could see how it might be perceived as necessary for software companies to, by all means possible, slow or stop altogether the flow of feature rich functionality to the browser and keep it where it belongs...a content viewer and nothing more. As many pay-wall websites have come to realize, it's *incredibly* difficult to get people to pay for a website, but consumers continue to pay hundreds of dollars for what they perceive as "software", and some dollars for what they perceive as "mini software" AKA an "app", even though an app may have as much or more functionality than any standard shrink wrap software product. The main thing is, we're still physical beings. We need stuff on a shelf to show for what we bought, and websites cant offer this. All they can offer is yet another password to remember. I think that is why the app store has the "icon object" display that gives a sense of ownership to the person who bought some apps as the app stays ever present, reminding the user of all they own.
It's important to not confuse the "Cloud" with a browser based experience. The cloud is routinely accessed by non-browser based applications the same way the browser accesses it.
In the mean time, Adobe is quickly expanding the capabilities of AIR and Flash to compete with the classic major application development platforms offered around Java and C++, and subsequently many of the most popular apps on mobile are actually created with AIR and Flash then compiled for the particular device. So by no means is flash "dead", what's really being actively choked to death (most recently by Adobe themselves) is the concept of flash running in a browser with all its power and capabilities instead of as purchased standalone applications, IE where the money is.
In the mean time, the W3 (largely controlled by these interests + Google) argues about how to keep the features of HTML limited enough that it cant get out of control like flash did, and become a full blown feature rich application development environment. Aviary did have an HTML5 image editor available but the page has since been 404'd: http://www.aviary.com/html5 , probably because it clearly conflicted with their business model.
The question is, will flash just be the first of many of these kinds of technologies that put high degrees of capabilities anywhere? No one but the independently wealthy volunteer force of the open community would have any motivation to maintain something like that, but it may indeed be inevitable in a free market, either the reigns will be taken off of flash by forces outside of Adobe or we'll see HTML 5 rise to the capability at some point in the future. Either way, this is all nothing but a smoke screen and no particular technology (flash, java, html5) etc, is inherently bad and to be avoided. If anything it just means one should use the tool that best suits the business model one has.
addendum: Google Chrome OS supports flash - its integrated into Chrome OS.
http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=108086
Clearly Google sees the browser as the future, and if one were to thus "hedge their bets" on a particular technology that would allow them a single codebase for all devices and OS's, flash is certainly the winner at this point in collaboration with AIR.
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Saturday, October 27, 2012
Coders - our most precious resource.
I recently read an article talking about the scarcity of good coders who are constantly under ever increasing demand.
Good coders become scarce due to retirement, getting hired by competitors, or starting their own venture. I've personally experienced lost opportunities to hire great coders from each of these things, particularly the last one.
Often as well good coders tend to form collectives that bill as an agency rather than individually, and while sometimes this works in the short term, my experience indicates that these kinds of organizations often prioritize strictly on cash being payed at any given time, and have no loyalty or affinity for any particular client. Especially clients who are suffering change and need that creativity the most, but can't necessarily provide extra financial motivations. They also tend to reserve their top folks for internal projects that will ideally get them out of the service industry and into the royalty collecting business.
Additionally, these pressures are exacerbated by a decrease in educational quality and a general lack of interest in the passion for disciplines around coding. Of course there's always a "nerd" around, but the demands are increasing exponentially while the supply is stagnant or even on the decline.
So I have some general heuristics to mitigate some of these things.
1. Hire coders internally and treat them as well as you possibly can. Give them whatever motivation they need to stay - mainly a sense of control and ownership of their products, as well as every incentive you can to keep them engaged and enthusiastic about the project.
2. Let them brag. Often I've seen coders want to share their code with their community of peers, but a closed, proprietary code base makes that impossible and that frustrates coders. They constantly pull from the open source community, and often find pride in contributing to it. If any of your code base can be "open sourced" and kept in the community as part of the collective knowledge of mankind without jeopardizing your competitive advantage…work to find and exploit those things.
3. Leverage the unpopular. Right now flash, for example, is suffering a lot of bad PR due - clearly - to fear around losing short term perceived financial gain of moving the app/game market to walled gardens instead of keeping it open and free on the regular internet. The truth, however, is that flash developers are legion (over 3 million of them), and write in a highly standardized language (almost identical to java, C++, PHP, C# etc.) that ports to any and all devices and app stores OR the www, and since the flash platform is so well designed and intuitive with the capability to be a single code base deployed across platforms, they LIKE using it.
So, by exploiting the ignorance in the market about what flash is / does, we can get developers who are eager to use the language because they enjoy it, and still have code that is easily translatable and reusable under almost any architecture and discipline. In short, we're investing in the skill set and discipline of coding, rather than a particular architecture, and while our competition is "wound up over HTML5" we can zoom past them with superior technology that delivers in less time and for less cost. Check out these stats if you're convinced "html5" is the future. News: its not actually anything. Do some homework on what it actually is, and you'll see its really got nothing to do with flash at all.
4. Understand good coders can't really be off-shored, particularly senior ones. A senior architecture designer has to have the ability to understand the cultural context and language of the market end user AND the sophistication of the architecture and nuance of the technology. Having "less expensive" coders work offshore can work in very special circumstances but often if a coder is fully qualified and happens to live in an area where cost of living is lower, they can be easily poached by any of the competition and will thus be able to demand wage parity anyway. Geographic location of the coder really should be close to both you and your customers, particularly if you are less than willing or able to have an intimate understanding of your own code base.
Competitively, having a group of coders as the primary investment instead of thinking of the core product as some body of code is far more agile and adept at flexing to market demands and opportunities. If the coders are always there, then at any time code can be dumped and rewritten without worrying about engaging and educating a new vendor or contractor.
In short, if you plan to be a sustainable company with long term viability and ability to flex and evolve with market demand, invest in people - your coders, and dont ever get too attached to your code base. Coders are the most precious resource of any company today.
Good coders become scarce due to retirement, getting hired by competitors, or starting their own venture. I've personally experienced lost opportunities to hire great coders from each of these things, particularly the last one.
Often as well good coders tend to form collectives that bill as an agency rather than individually, and while sometimes this works in the short term, my experience indicates that these kinds of organizations often prioritize strictly on cash being payed at any given time, and have no loyalty or affinity for any particular client. Especially clients who are suffering change and need that creativity the most, but can't necessarily provide extra financial motivations. They also tend to reserve their top folks for internal projects that will ideally get them out of the service industry and into the royalty collecting business.
Additionally, these pressures are exacerbated by a decrease in educational quality and a general lack of interest in the passion for disciplines around coding. Of course there's always a "nerd" around, but the demands are increasing exponentially while the supply is stagnant or even on the decline.
So I have some general heuristics to mitigate some of these things.
1. Hire coders internally and treat them as well as you possibly can. Give them whatever motivation they need to stay - mainly a sense of control and ownership of their products, as well as every incentive you can to keep them engaged and enthusiastic about the project.
2. Let them brag. Often I've seen coders want to share their code with their community of peers, but a closed, proprietary code base makes that impossible and that frustrates coders. They constantly pull from the open source community, and often find pride in contributing to it. If any of your code base can be "open sourced" and kept in the community as part of the collective knowledge of mankind without jeopardizing your competitive advantage…work to find and exploit those things.
3. Leverage the unpopular. Right now flash, for example, is suffering a lot of bad PR due - clearly - to fear around losing short term perceived financial gain of moving the app/game market to walled gardens instead of keeping it open and free on the regular internet. The truth, however, is that flash developers are legion (over 3 million of them), and write in a highly standardized language (almost identical to java, C++, PHP, C# etc.) that ports to any and all devices and app stores OR the www, and since the flash platform is so well designed and intuitive with the capability to be a single code base deployed across platforms, they LIKE using it.
So, by exploiting the ignorance in the market about what flash is / does, we can get developers who are eager to use the language because they enjoy it, and still have code that is easily translatable and reusable under almost any architecture and discipline. In short, we're investing in the skill set and discipline of coding, rather than a particular architecture, and while our competition is "wound up over HTML5" we can zoom past them with superior technology that delivers in less time and for less cost. Check out these stats if you're convinced "html5" is the future. News: its not actually anything. Do some homework on what it actually is, and you'll see its really got nothing to do with flash at all.
4. Understand good coders can't really be off-shored, particularly senior ones. A senior architecture designer has to have the ability to understand the cultural context and language of the market end user AND the sophistication of the architecture and nuance of the technology. Having "less expensive" coders work offshore can work in very special circumstances but often if a coder is fully qualified and happens to live in an area where cost of living is lower, they can be easily poached by any of the competition and will thus be able to demand wage parity anyway. Geographic location of the coder really should be close to both you and your customers, particularly if you are less than willing or able to have an intimate understanding of your own code base.
Competitively, having a group of coders as the primary investment instead of thinking of the core product as some body of code is far more agile and adept at flexing to market demands and opportunities. If the coders are always there, then at any time code can be dumped and rewritten without worrying about engaging and educating a new vendor or contractor.
In short, if you plan to be a sustainable company with long term viability and ability to flex and evolve with market demand, invest in people - your coders, and dont ever get too attached to your code base. Coders are the most precious resource of any company today.
Friday, July 6, 2012
Flash Shrugged
Lately I've been experiencing even more HTML5 concerns, recently over the android 4.1 announcement by Adobe that they won't be supporting it.
My theory on the strategy here is that Adobe is simply following the money, and realizing that the developers actually paying for their tools are likely employed by or working on projects that are not free or ad supported. Their projects are most likely well funded and involve some kind of subscription model that provides real value to end users that those end users are willing to pay for, be it an Appstore app, or a PC application that is membership or premium based. Sure, they might have lost leaders, but in the end they have to charge for services or they cant continue to buy the expensive tools like Creative Suite etc.
Adobe themselves are obviously aware of this as they are offering their services in a subscription model, and those of us working in the training industry have been using this kind of model for years, and likely represent a large portion of Adobe's paying customers. Adobe doesn't (and shouldn't) be interested in AS 3 developers who simply skim off the .swf technology and use tools like FlashDevelop or writing open source free code bases. That community of free laborers contributing to the common good is great, and all, but they dont pay the monthly bills we all have, and we all gotta eat.
So what happens when Adobe abandons the browser? Well its not bad news for adobe developers, it certainly isnt the death of flash. Quite the opposite actually. Adobe is simply cutting off the free flow of support and help to freeloaders who dont pay them, and concentrating on supporting their paying customers. Its a wise, prudent business move for adobe. The people who SHOULD be worried are the HTML 5 nuts themselves, because they just lost a serious heavyweight that keeps users in the browser paradigm.
Browsers are entirely unnecessary. One can use twitter, facebook, CNN, Youtube, and many others with standalone apps or desktop applications like Facebook Messenger. If mobile is indeed a bellwether, then think about it, who uses facebook in a browser on mobile devices? I certainly dont, I use the free facebook app. And, I cant help but notice the URL's I launch, and the videos I watch all happen inside that app. As the app grows, I have less and less reason to leave it on my phone.
By kicking sand in Flash's face, the HTML5 crowd has unnecessarily lost a great ally in their battle to keep the browser relevant and open. Flash represents a HUGE amount of content, and now that the flash community has been sucker punched by the HTML5 community, they have taken their ball and gone home, and the browser is left without a ball. The content available on the browser for Android just went way down.
So if there's little of interest on the browser, it will simply become less and less interesting for users, and less frequently used, until they are rarely opened at all. This is already the trend on mobile devices and I see it occurring on PC's as browsers continue to fight with each other on standards and take *a geologic era in tech terms* to get to consensus on relatively insignificant feature updates.
Lots of very successful and internet based communities already exist in proprietary clients, like Steam, Games for Windows, Second Life and its various iterations, Facebook, countless apps in the Android market and Apple app stores, and if you're looking for rich online experiences, this is where the trend is going, not towards HTML. HTML is a tired, limited technology that simply cannot evolve fast enough to keep up with consumer demand, and flash shrugging its shoulders and walking away hurts it more than it cares to understand or realize.
My theory on the strategy here is that Adobe is simply following the money, and realizing that the developers actually paying for their tools are likely employed by or working on projects that are not free or ad supported. Their projects are most likely well funded and involve some kind of subscription model that provides real value to end users that those end users are willing to pay for, be it an Appstore app, or a PC application that is membership or premium based. Sure, they might have lost leaders, but in the end they have to charge for services or they cant continue to buy the expensive tools like Creative Suite etc.
Adobe themselves are obviously aware of this as they are offering their services in a subscription model, and those of us working in the training industry have been using this kind of model for years, and likely represent a large portion of Adobe's paying customers. Adobe doesn't (and shouldn't) be interested in AS 3 developers who simply skim off the .swf technology and use tools like FlashDevelop or writing open source free code bases. That community of free laborers contributing to the common good is great, and all, but they dont pay the monthly bills we all have, and we all gotta eat.
So what happens when Adobe abandons the browser? Well its not bad news for adobe developers, it certainly isnt the death of flash. Quite the opposite actually. Adobe is simply cutting off the free flow of support and help to freeloaders who dont pay them, and concentrating on supporting their paying customers. Its a wise, prudent business move for adobe. The people who SHOULD be worried are the HTML 5 nuts themselves, because they just lost a serious heavyweight that keeps users in the browser paradigm.
Browsers are entirely unnecessary. One can use twitter, facebook, CNN, Youtube, and many others with standalone apps or desktop applications like Facebook Messenger. If mobile is indeed a bellwether, then think about it, who uses facebook in a browser on mobile devices? I certainly dont, I use the free facebook app. And, I cant help but notice the URL's I launch, and the videos I watch all happen inside that app. As the app grows, I have less and less reason to leave it on my phone.
By kicking sand in Flash's face, the HTML5 crowd has unnecessarily lost a great ally in their battle to keep the browser relevant and open. Flash represents a HUGE amount of content, and now that the flash community has been sucker punched by the HTML5 community, they have taken their ball and gone home, and the browser is left without a ball. The content available on the browser for Android just went way down.
So if there's little of interest on the browser, it will simply become less and less interesting for users, and less frequently used, until they are rarely opened at all. This is already the trend on mobile devices and I see it occurring on PC's as browsers continue to fight with each other on standards and take *a geologic era in tech terms* to get to consensus on relatively insignificant feature updates.
Lots of very successful and internet based communities already exist in proprietary clients, like Steam, Games for Windows, Second Life and its various iterations, Facebook, countless apps in the Android market and Apple app stores, and if you're looking for rich online experiences, this is where the trend is going, not towards HTML. HTML is a tired, limited technology that simply cannot evolve fast enough to keep up with consumer demand, and flash shrugging its shoulders and walking away hurts it more than it cares to understand or realize.
Sunday, June 24, 2012
Another reason why HTML5 is entirely irrelevant to flash
http://vimeo.com/19970665
Demonstrates flash running on Android and IOS via the Scaleform player, proving that avoiding flash on mobile again is not a technical constraint due to limitations with flash, its a political situation and always has been. As with all technological evolution, we can always count on it getting more complex, feature rich, and meeting demands placed on it over time. The HTML 5 "debate" was always based on an imaginary constraint that Apple simply made up, but here we can see it being reduced to dust by reality.
So viva flash, its got a long future ahead of it as a display technology. Of course, viva HTML 5 too, its also got a long future ahead of it as a different kind of display tech for those who dont like using flash for whatever reason. Its not a contest, I certainly never felt it should have been necessary to denigrate html technology in order to defend flash.
Demonstrates flash running on Android and IOS via the Scaleform player, proving that avoiding flash on mobile again is not a technical constraint due to limitations with flash, its a political situation and always has been. As with all technological evolution, we can always count on it getting more complex, feature rich, and meeting demands placed on it over time. The HTML 5 "debate" was always based on an imaginary constraint that Apple simply made up, but here we can see it being reduced to dust by reality.
So viva flash, its got a long future ahead of it as a display technology. Of course, viva HTML 5 too, its also got a long future ahead of it as a different kind of display tech for those who dont like using flash for whatever reason. Its not a contest, I certainly never felt it should have been necessary to denigrate html technology in order to defend flash.
Thursday, April 19, 2012
facebooks logical killer will grow up inside facebook
I wanted to get this down for posterity, I've been saying this for months, but dont have an early record of it and as I watch it happen exactly as I predicted it, I should get it down, I think.
Branchout today is a "linkedin" killer that is growing up inside facebook. Instagram grew up inside facebook and was perceived as such a threat by facebook that they bought it for 1Billion.
The new market is this mysterious mountain thats always been there, I call it the "human interaction mountain" that up to recently has been something a lot of people saw value in, but only a few managed to begin to wrap their heads around it.
Google and Wikipedia were early adaptors, building the roads and trails to it, and documenting how it got their, and describing it, and they've built their fortunes on that defining process.
Facebook went in and cut off all the trees, and managed to "harvest" all the wood products and that has led to a trillion dollar IPO possibly.
Apple has built the cars and infrastructure to navigate it. Instagram and Hipstamatic and Twitter obviously found value in areas where facebook wasnt, but its still as I'd consider on the surface of this giant mountain of data. This is because all of these services allow for sharing and consuming of what is essentially 1 way non interactive content.
I would lump gaming in here too, because while it is interactive, the relationship between the user and the content simply loops, and ultimately the user is going through a series of pre-programmed motions and the game scope is not effected by individual users.
Branchout and Linkedin have begun to scratch that surface and go a little deeper, and content through programs like that, which enable new content to literally form out of relationships between the users. Facebook has some of this concept in "pages" and "groups" but it is all still very generic, beginning stages.
I think the real deep market that exists and represents a much lower hype, longer lifespan market that will be resistant to commoditization is this deeper "mining" of the mountain.
This means more sophisticated product offerings, more complex models that literally discover and mine various kinds of data models that are for now largely unknown, but thanks to the Googles, the Facebooks, the Apples, these new models are more discoverable than ever.
on a somewhat related note:
If this interests you, there is more down this rabbit hole. The "giant data mountain" that is essentially made of human interaction and information itself, is not only abstract, but quickly merging with the physical world, which is one reason why its particularly important. Right now, using any 3d printing system, we can convert pure data into physical objects. These can be artistic expressions, physical tools or parts of tools, and even human organs (kidneys, bladders and other organs have already been successfully implanted for years)
The "word became flesh" is more true than ever. This kind of merging of physical and data is where we are headed, and these interactions will more and more rapidly be indistinguishable from our physical world as "we" become the data we create and interact with.
This is why, to me, the understanding of the relationship of content and human interaction is crucial and a massive investment/market opportunity. Soon it will "be" the market, literally. The most valuable product will not be a physical commodity, it will be ideas, connections, algorithms, virtual systems. We're literally witnessing the dawning of an entirely new reality, and the market leading visionaries are capitalizing on it now so they can be positioned to be the custodians of this new reality as it continues to evolve.
Branchout today is a "linkedin" killer that is growing up inside facebook. Instagram grew up inside facebook and was perceived as such a threat by facebook that they bought it for 1Billion.
The new market is this mysterious mountain thats always been there, I call it the "human interaction mountain" that up to recently has been something a lot of people saw value in, but only a few managed to begin to wrap their heads around it.
Google and Wikipedia were early adaptors, building the roads and trails to it, and documenting how it got their, and describing it, and they've built their fortunes on that defining process.
Facebook went in and cut off all the trees, and managed to "harvest" all the wood products and that has led to a trillion dollar IPO possibly.
Apple has built the cars and infrastructure to navigate it. Instagram and Hipstamatic and Twitter obviously found value in areas where facebook wasnt, but its still as I'd consider on the surface of this giant mountain of data. This is because all of these services allow for sharing and consuming of what is essentially 1 way non interactive content.
I would lump gaming in here too, because while it is interactive, the relationship between the user and the content simply loops, and ultimately the user is going through a series of pre-programmed motions and the game scope is not effected by individual users.
Branchout and Linkedin have begun to scratch that surface and go a little deeper, and content through programs like that, which enable new content to literally form out of relationships between the users. Facebook has some of this concept in "pages" and "groups" but it is all still very generic, beginning stages.
I think the real deep market that exists and represents a much lower hype, longer lifespan market that will be resistant to commoditization is this deeper "mining" of the mountain.
This means more sophisticated product offerings, more complex models that literally discover and mine various kinds of data models that are for now largely unknown, but thanks to the Googles, the Facebooks, the Apples, these new models are more discoverable than ever.
on a somewhat related note:
If this interests you, there is more down this rabbit hole. The "giant data mountain" that is essentially made of human interaction and information itself, is not only abstract, but quickly merging with the physical world, which is one reason why its particularly important. Right now, using any 3d printing system, we can convert pure data into physical objects. These can be artistic expressions, physical tools or parts of tools, and even human organs (kidneys, bladders and other organs have already been successfully implanted for years)
The "word became flesh" is more true than ever. This kind of merging of physical and data is where we are headed, and these interactions will more and more rapidly be indistinguishable from our physical world as "we" become the data we create and interact with.
This is why, to me, the understanding of the relationship of content and human interaction is crucial and a massive investment/market opportunity. Soon it will "be" the market, literally. The most valuable product will not be a physical commodity, it will be ideas, connections, algorithms, virtual systems. We're literally witnessing the dawning of an entirely new reality, and the market leading visionaries are capitalizing on it now so they can be positioned to be the custodians of this new reality as it continues to evolve.
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