Just in case you haven’t noticed the explosion of devices and consumer based applications is beginning to challenge IT departments.  Do you allow your employees to use their own devices?  What about applications?  How do you deploy and manage security?  These are all questions that just about every IT shop in the world is having to answer.  It doesn’t matter if you’re a multi billion dollar conglomerate or supporting the local church.  The consumerization of IT is here, and I predict here to stay. 

The question of managing this phenomenon is not if you should allow it.  That battle has already been fought.  Devices and applications are being used because they are convenient or introduce efficiencies.  You cannot stop this wave.  Imagine being the head of a pager company and you just saw your first cell phone in action.  You need to start making cell phones, not scoff at the idea that cell phones will never catch on!  The real question is how do you take advantage of this movement.

Make no mistake, this is a paradigm changer and you need to think of ways to take advantage of this.  So what in the world am I talking about?  I remember when I first started working in the 90’s.  You hardly ever saw a laptop.  They were reserved for the ‘high-ups’.  They were cool and a status symbol.  Fast forward 10 years and now all you see is laptops.  They are now the standard of a productive work culture allowing people to work from anywhere, and unfortunately for this guy, at anytime of the day or night.  Laptops stopped being a status symbol and the hallmark of productivity.   They changed the paradigm. 

Today we have devices and applications that take full advantage of sleek form factors and the cloud.  Paradigm changer?  No doubt.  I, myself, own 3 laptops and two iPads.  I have the ability to work from anywhere and at anytime.  Couple that with some slick collaboration apps like Lync, Skype, Facetime and a host of other cloud based collaboration utilities there is no need for me to go into the office.  So why do we continue to build applications, corporate infrastructures and offices like it’s the 1990’s?  Do I really need a cube, an office or a desk phone?  No, what I need is a power strip. 

So what is the next model?  The next laptop transformation?  First, I think IT needs to look at how we allocate IT assets.  Why buy me a laptop?  I have three.  And they are far superior to the one you will probably provide me.  Why not give me a stipend so I can purchase my own equipment?  Why not give me a stipend for being an employee?  Chances are if you are like me you even dislike the office supplies!  I’ll buy my own pens and paper! 

Imagine how that would change the way you not only build out an office, but your approach to building business solutions!  Your external customers and internal customers become one in the same. All rely on the ability to use your product anytime and anywhere.

Sometimes it's odd that you come across an article or video that just speaks to you and your current mindset.  I'm no fan of Steve Jobs but somehow I came across his Stanford graduation speech today.  Something I've seen before but this time it spoke to me (No I don't have cancer).  The speach is about living life and persuing dreams.  Very good.

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I came across this great presentation today talking about the challenges of Social Networking and what the next generation might look like.  The presentation is by a guy named Paul Adams who is a UX researcher at Google.

I think the recent comments by Steve Jobs have been well documented.  I don’t discount his evaluation of Flash.  It’s his opinion and it’s his company.  He should be able to do what he wants.  However, Job’s is putting a lot of money on one factor he has no control over.  Developers.  Dare I say that Steve Ballmer was right?  It’s Developer, Developers, Developers!

As a technologist I think it’s absolutely absurd to say that the adoption rate of HTML will be non-existent.  I wrote a Blog post back in January 2009 arguing that Silverlight would be adopted in spite of Flash.  I still feel the same holds true for HTML 5.  If you make an application ‘cool’ enough they will come.  I think that HTML 5 has real promise. 

The problem will be the adoption rate by developers.  Apple does not have enough market share to convince me to convert to HTML 5.  That doesn’t mean that it will not.  It just means that in the foreseeable future I have no plans to replace my Silverlight or Flash plugins by implementing HTML 5.  Completing an asp.net site will pretty much cost me as much as doing a Silverlight based site.  In fact, my UX guys will probably use Adobe Photoshop to do most of the images so including Flash probably won’t be that much either!

Secondly, I would argue that Apple is approaching a new phase in its life as a product company.  For the longest time Apple has enjoyed a dedicated following, otherwise known as ‘Fanboys’.  Remember your old art teacher in grade school with the Mac?  I bet he/she is still a rabid Mac fan.   Unfortunately Apple is beginning to appeal to the masses.  They are no longer a niche player in the world of computing.  I know countless Apple converts who until recently could only brag about the sleekness of Apple products.   Now  they complain about compatibility, battery life and gasp!, crashes and viruses. 

The point is that Apple will eventually need to cater to these new expectations and user base.  Even if only some of them.  They have a taste of success and they are going to want to keep it, if not for the sake of their shareholders.  At some point they may have to, and should, listen to their customer needs.  Including the support for Flash and Silverlight might be one of the many things they need to do.  It will be the converts that lead the growth for Apple not the current base of dedicated art teachers!

I just added the Google Voice widget to the blog.  I’m a little apprehensive about adding the ability to call a number directly on the site, but let’s see how it goes.

I’m going to tell you the tale of two software shops.  Both shops have incredible Engineers,  great Product Managers and excellent processes.  The only thing that separates these two shops is release night.  One shop knocks out the change in minimal time, the other is working through the weekend to fix issues.  This anomaly has nothing to do with platform choice, complexity of the stack or location.  The problem is universal across all of these.  The difference between these two shops, a release engineer.

Typically a release engineer is a person, or team of people, who are familiar with the build, deployment and configuration of a product.  This is important because one thing I can tell you for sure, your production environment is not exactly the same as your lower environment.  Even more sure is that your production support team has even less knowledge on how to trouble shoot release issues.  You absolutely need someone who is familiar with your configuration.

Unfortunately release engineers are somewhat of a luxury for many shops.  They are an unappreciated component of a successful software shop. If you can’t get the budget to hire one I have a suggestion that has worked for me time and time again.  Appoint one of your developers (and a backup) as the designated release engineer.  This makes on person solely responsible for the success of your pushes. 

There is a cost associated with dedicating on of your developers.  I generally find it amounts to 10 hours a week as the developer builds and defines the process, approximately 6 weeks total.  After that, maybe 1 hour a week to maintain the process.  It sounds like a modest investment, but it will pay off the first time you have 6 developers working all week to make a deployment successful. 

The last few weeks I’ve used two new technology offerings that I thought were just fantastic.  Here are my reviews:

Google Voice 

I received an invitation to beta test the new Google Voice feature about a week ago.  Basically Google voice provides you with a phone number, a local one at that, that you use to hook all your phones up to.  When someone calls this number you can configure your settings to ring your cell, work and home phone.  Setup was a breeze!

Additional features include VM notifications via text message, gmail, etc.  They also let you call out using the phone number.  You select a contact, click call.  The service first calls your cell, then calls the other party.  Very cool.  However, my favorite feature is the voice to text.  I’m not sure about you but I hate listening to VM’s.  I can scan an email a lot faster than I can listen to a complete VM.

There is some room for improvement.  The voice to text is sketchy at best.  I found that during some limited testing  the VM to text missed more than it got correct.  The other thing I didn’t like was the fact that when someone first calls you (read the first time) from a number the service asks for the callers name.  A few people I had test the service found this annoying at best.

I’m looking forward to more testing…

Verizon Fios

The other offering is from Verizon Fios.  Verizon just release a new set of ‘widgets’ available via its Fios TV service.  They added widgets for Twitter and Facebook along with a few others.  I was a bit skeptical at first.  I mean how easy could surfing your Facebook be using a remote?  To my surprise Verizon’s developers made it easy and intuitive. 

Now for the really cool thing.  Verizon is taking applications to develop widgets for its service.  I’ve signed up and will post again when I get the SDK!

Sorry, I just had to post these.  Too Funny!

I’ve recently found a site named dzone.com.  Dzone is a lot like Digg.com where you can vote articles up or down based on its merits.  What makes Dzone.com different is that it’s Technologist centric but not biased towards any one technology.  There are articles from Enterprise Architects, UX Designers, Developers, and IT Management (links are sprinkled with all kinds of views).  I have found more interesting articles here than anywhere else. 

It’s a great community and I would highly recommend that any serious technologist book mark this site, read it often, and participate in the voting and discussions.  Not to mention it’s a well designed site.  The Ajax scrolling feature is hot!

Any web developer that’s been around a while remembers the magic of table layouts.  It was part of every tutorial on how to create a website.  The days have changed and now we see a big push for CSS everywhere.  CSS zealots are everywhere, almost as prolific and dedicated as Mac fans!  But is CSS evangelism all it’s cracked up to be?

I recently read a blog post named The shallowness of CSS evangelism.  Clearly titled to get a hair raising out of any CSS fan-boy.  The post was debunking some of the common myths of the CSS vs. Table layout debate put forth in this blog post.  To be honest I’ve been exposed to the ‘CSS is the best way to go’ line for so long that I’ve become to take it as fact.  I’ve clearly broken the unwritten cardinal rule of coding: Keep it Simple Stupid (KISS).    So here comes the wakeup call:

CSS versus tables is another known permathread. It's only recently that the voice in favour of tables layout has improved it's position significantly. Unfortunately the same cannot be said about the rabid pro-CSS group. They continue to spout nonsense and hope no-one looks too deeply at the arguments, and hope enough commenters reply that it couldn't have been said better. Except there is large room for improvement, or perhaps reformulating the argument into something that is backed by real world evidence.

The pro-CSS article lays out 13 ways that CSS trumps table based design.  These are:

1.Faster page loading
2.Lowered hosting costs
3.Redesigns are more efficient
4.Redesigns are less expensive
5.Visual consistency maintained throughout website(s)
6.Better for SEO
7.Accessibility
8.Competitive edge (job security)
9.Quick website-wide updates
10.Easier for teams to maintain (and individuals)
11.Increased usability
12.More complex layouts and designs
13.No spacer gifs

The pro-Table author does a good job to debunk all of these.  The ones that I found questionable that the pro-CSS article even made were: 6) Better for SEO, 11) Increased usability, and 10) Easier for teams to maintain.  The anti-CSS post did a good job debunking, but I would like to add to these three, and who knows, maybe add them to my standard interview questions.

6) Better for SEO

I have no idea how you could even make this argument.  It’s all about the content, and it always has been.  In fact you could make the arguments that, for the most popular search engines it’s all about back links. 

11) Increased Usability

If anything it complicates usability.  Make all the print-friendly arguments you want, but have you tried to keep up with the browser market lately?  Most browsers interpret a table layout the same way.

10) Easier for teams to maintain

I just got this picture in my head of my test automation guy blowing a gasket.  All pages in the site are updated?  One layout change can have a significant impact on other teams.  It’s not trivial and can add risk and time to any project.  I wonder what the project guys at Microsoft, Google, or Amazon would say if some developer ‘easily’ changed some menu layouts!

This is an interesting argument, one in which I agree with the anti-CSS post, we need to have an open dialog before accepting something as fact.  It’s a lesson for me and I hope you can learn from it as well.