A few days ago, the European Union decided to hit Google with a €4.3bn fine. The reasons put forward by the European Commission focus on the company’s MADA or Mobile Application Distribution Agreement, that all device manufacturers that want to license Google’s apps and include the Google Play Store with their devices are forced to […]
Ξαναγυρίζω σε ένα θέμα για το οποίο έχω γράψει αρκετά. Προ μερικών ετών, σε ένα άρθρο μου έγραφα για το ΣΑΠΕΣ, πλέον Υπερίων, το σύστημα της ΕΕΤΤ για την καταγραφή της πραγματικής ταχύτητας σύνδεσης ανα την ελληνική επικράτεια. Η ιδέα είναι πολύ απλή: γράφεσαι με το email σου και πραγματοποιείς, μέσω του δικτυακού τόπου του […]
Νεοφυείς επιχειρήσεις. Καινοτομία. Εξωστρέφεια. Επιχειρείν. Ένα μεγάλο γαϊτανάκι από εραστές του φιλελευθερισμού, πιστούς του καπιταλισμού, των αγορών, κάποιους τολμηρούς και άξιους, κάποιους — απλώς — θιασώτες της όλης υποκουλτούρας, της ‘φάσης’, του χαβαλέ και της (σαφέστατα υποκριτικής) αίσθησης της αυτονομίας, της ελευθερίας κλπ. που επικαλούνται συχνά οι δορυφόροι της επιχειρηματικότητας. Παράλληλα ένα τεράστιο κενό σοβαρών […]
So Android announced Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean), the next version of the operating system with much awaited performance improvements and some new (marginal) features, available to Galaxy Nexus users in mid-July and the remaining 99% of the Android ecosystem sometime between a year and never. Along with the new version of Android, Google announced several […]
Mere hours after pressing ‘Publish’ on the previous mini-article concerning walled gardens, an article on TechCrunch, this morning, clarified the situation we have more or less been suspecting for a while now: that Apple, after deprecating UDIDs (one of the things they truly did well in iOS from the beginning), they will start rejecting apps […]
WSJ: Before Steve Jobs of Apple Inc. died, he approached you with a buyout offer. Why did you turn it away? Mr. Ferdowsi: The problem that we're trying to solve is a problem that only an independent company can solve. We want to let you use a Mac, or Windows PC, or iPad, or Android, without having to think about any of the technical details. It isn't a problem any of those larger companies is going to be as inclined to solve in the same way we are.A very very pertinent point, seeing that we're experiencing a renaissance of massive, vertical closed systems, walled gardens and a childish desire to lock people into proprietary platforms that try to offer everything. Look at how Google, Facebook, Apple and now Microsoft are heavily promoting their respective 'authentication' platforms, playing the game of ignoring_the_competition. Facebook would certainly like you to use their APIs to authenticate your users, but they don't have to try much because they have the most powerful database right now. Microsoft heavily promotes their 'Microsoft Account' (previously known by half a dozen names) and will do even more in Windows 8, while Apple makes ever increasing use of their Apple ID, across their products and services. Google, in lieu of their recent privacy terms update, needs no introduction I think with Google+ and every other service tied to a single Google account. The fact that Dropbox fully supports practically every single system platform I can think of using is reason enough for me to prefer it from competing services (Ubuntu One, Microsoft Skydrive, iCloud etc) and a refreshingly sane choice they made contrasted heavily by that of the established market leaders who fear of inadvertently promoting their competition.
Facebook has become to the social web what Microsoft is to the desktop: mindbogglingly gargantuan, relentlessly mediocre, and almost inescapable. Like Microsoft twenty years ago, they will succeed because a bad standard is better than none: and like Microsoft ten years ago, they “innovate” by clumsily copying—and then trying to squash—the real innovators.writes Jon Evans in the linked article on TechCrunch. I find Facebook infinitely more dangerous: Microsoft established itself among a number of proprietary, closed and obscure desktop platforms. Facebook, on the other hand, threatens to engulf and absorb the Web, probably the most open, most amazing development in computing, ever. The path to openness is hard --- we need standards, modelling of semantics and relationships, but above all good implementations making use thereof. Facebook provides an easy, 'closed' alternative, as does twitter and a number of other services building upon their proprietary protocols and interfaces. That's why FOAF and OpenSocial are nowhere to be found and everyone (including us) uses Facebook widgets. Again the age-old saying: "ideas are cheap, implementations cost" rings true, and Facebook have a more popular implementation, like Microsoft did back in its heyday.