Jun 12 2008

Download Firefox 3 on June 17, 2008

The release date for the Firefox 3 will be five days from now on June 17. A challenge was imagemade to set a Guinness world record with the most downloads in a 24 hour period. On May 29th, about 28,800 people around the world pledged to download the new Firefox. The current count is at 1,074,688.

If you haven’t pledged yet to download Firefox, enter your e-mail address on the Download Day 2008 pledge page. Let’s set a world record and make history with Firefox.

By Johan • Applications • 0

Jun 9 2008

Relaxing in the Comfort Zone

Let’s face it. Most people hate change. They like to keep things the way they are because its safe. This way there are no surprises and no creative thinking is needed to solve problems. It’s really an issue of control. When everything is the same, we’re in control and don’t risk making fools of ourselves. The comfort zone is very comfortable.

One example of the fear of change is the recent attention given to The Hockey Theme that was played at beginning of the Hockey Night in Canada TV program. There was a contract dispute between CBC and Copyright Music and Visuals. It seemed like the long time traditional tune would no longer be played before hockey games and CBC was preparing to hold a nationwide contest to pick a new theme. There was, however, a large public movement to keep things the way they are. CTV came forwards and purchased the theme. So, the tradition continues and no new innovation comes to televised hockey in Canada.

Microsoft is very familiar with challenging the comfort zone. It took many years for Microsoft Office to replace the applications that had market dominance. It was Word vs. WordPerfect, Excel vs. Lotus 1-2-3, and Access vs. dBase. MS Office was superior to the competition, but the competitors had loyal followers who weren’t interested in trying a newer and better application.

How do you convince people to switch away from a product they are familiar and comfortable with to a newer one which may be better? In the Get a Mac campaign, Apple take the approach of misrepresenting Windows and ridiculing it. People who use Windows surely must be fools and wise, intelligent people use Macs.

This technique may work with people who have never purchased either computer, but is a Windows user going to buy a Mac after being told they’re an idiot? Probably not. The one thing I remember from my archaeology class in university was that you will never convince someone your right by insulting them. The way you change someone’s opinion is to change how they feel towards it. There is a reason why soft drink companies hire celebrities to promote their product. If you like the celebrity, you’ll be happy watching the ad and being in a happy state of mind triggers a bias in favour of the product being sold.

How does a software developer change the minds of potential customers who are using the competition’s products? You need to build positive relationships with them and change how they feel about you, your business, and your product line. Social networking sites, forums, and blogs are great ways to build your fan base. Giving away useful software is another good way to build customer loyalty. A customer who likes who you are and what you represent has a greater chance of becoming a paying customer as opposed to someone who doesn’t know you and only sees your ads claiming your the best.

By Johan • General • 0

Jun 7 2008

PHP 5 Going Mainstream

Every PHP programmer wants their application to run on as many servers and web applications as possible. In order to do this, you need to write for PHP 4. Unfortunately, PHP 4 has been discontinued, PHP 5 has been here for 3 years and PHP 6 is right around the corner.

There weren’t very many web hosts supporting PHP 5 a few months ago. Things have been changing due to the effort of many PHP 5 evangelists. The new PHP is a better, more secure language. The many security issues of PHP 4 will not be available in PHP 6. Version 5 is meant to be a transition to convert code for the upcoming major release.

I’ve written WordPressXmlRpc for PHP 5. When I released it, there were a few people who wanted it run on PHP 4 so I converted it. The application is relatively simple so it wasn’t much of an effort. I’ve also written a PHP application for backing up databases and folders on my web hosting account. This application will be released in the coming weeks. Its written in PHP 5 and is very object oriented. Converting it to PHP 4 will be quite a task and not one I’m interested in doing. There are so many web hosts that support PHP 5 and it takes too many resources maintaining two versions of the same software.

All PHP applications should be written for version 5 and there is still plenty of time to convert older applications before version 6 is released.

By Johan • Programming • 0

Jun 6 2008

Philippe’s Law

In a 1992 keynote speech at COMDEX , Philippe Kahn gave a formula on software development productivity which he called Philippe’s Law. The law states that the productivity of a software developer in a team of N people is diminished by dividing it by the cube root of N. In other words,

Philippe's Law

This is very much in line with the old saying of “too many cooks spoiling the broth”. You can do more with a small group of skilled engineers than a large group of moderately talented ones.

Hire good staff and treat them them well, and they will produce award winning applications.

By Johan • Programming • 0

Jun 5 2008

30 Years of Intel’s x86

On June 8, 1978, Intel released the 8086, the world’s first 16-bit microprocessor. This CPU was vastly superior to the existing 8-bit processors used on computers at the time. The family of x86 refers to the instruction set of microprocessors used from the 8086 to today’s modern Pentium 4 processors.

Intel has effectively won the war for microprocessors. I remember the intense competition in the 80′s and 90′s between Intel and Motorola. PC’s used the Intel chip, and Apple, Commodore, and Atari used Motorola’s 68000 series CPU’s. Eventually, Commodore’s Amiga and Atari’s ST computers were discontinued, and Apple recently switched to Intel to drive their new Macs.

In 1965, Gordon Moore predicted that the number of transistors in a semiconductor chip will double every two years. This has been accurate over the last 30 years with Intel’s CPU’s. There is concern that we’re approaching a physical limit to Moore’s Law, but a new technology may emerge which could continue it.

Intel will likely dominate the next decade with its microprocessors. Its only real competition is with AMD, a company that creates x86 architecture CPU’s.

By Johan • Technology • 0

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