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Why good design matters

Why good design matters

We live in an increasingly diverse world. A world of Apple-style hi-tech product development and an ever-expanding internet. As a result, our expectations of what makes a good product are more than likely biased by our best experiences. We expect everything to be as good as our best experience and when it’s not that good we vent our disapproval, often with vitriol, on internet forums and in social media.

The problem hare is a mixed one, it’s a problem of managing expectation and balancing the cost of developing good products. If we move the discussion in the web space, we find similar issues. On the one hand we’re working on multi-billion dollar platform like Facebook and in the next browser tab were interacting with a website built to a tiny budget using off-the-shelf technology.

However, even budget websites can benefit from good design and not just aesthetics but good user experience. It’s true that most web developers are almost completely blind to the needs of user experience, they’re more interested in functionality. So how do we address this slowly emerging corner of the Internet? Thankfully, user experience or UX is starting to become a more common feature of the middle-weight website world. Look out for good website experiences and let us know what you find in the comments below.

Why good design matters

What’s up with WhatsApp?

As we are all too aware right now, Apple’s conflict with the Federal Government has come to an abrupt and unsatisfying end. This episode is made all the more bizarre by the recent WatsApp announcement. The end-to-end encryption in WhatsApp will pit privacy and data security against national security and bring the company into conflict with governments around the world.

In fact the app could soon find itself banned in India. WhatsApp could have accidentally entered into troubled waters in India by enabling its end-to-end encryption for all. The new security feature by WhatsApp is not what is required by the Indian telecom rules and WhatsApp could face a ban, if the rules are not adhered to.

Could WhatsApp be the tip of the iceberg in the what will surely be an ongoing and epic battle between governments, data privacy advocates and security pundits.

 

 

 

 

 

Why good design matters

Security out-of-mind

It takes place in San Francisco (and selected venues around the world), so many of you may not be aware that the RSA Security Conference has just wrapped up.

For some exceptional insights into the state of our industry, I encourage you to visit the video page of the website: http://www.rsaconference.com/videos

Meet the Man Behind Hadoop

Meet the Man Behind Hadoop

Tomorrow night (Wednesday), meet the mind (and the man) behind one of Big Data’s greatest tools.

It’s not every day that we get to meet the minds behind the great technologies of our time. But tomorrow night is just such a time.

Join TDWI and speaker, Doug Cutting, Cloudera’s Chief Architect and the founder of numerous successful open source projects, including Lucene, Nutch, Avro and Hadoop.

Doug Cutting (@cutting) joined Cloudera in 2009 from Yahoo!, where he was a key member of the team that built and deployed a production Hadoop storage and analysis cluster for mission-critical business analytics. Doug holds a Bachelor’s degree from Stanford University and is the former Chairman of the Board of the Apache Software Foundation.

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Welcome to 2016!

Welcome to 2016!

With CES 2016 starting on Wednesday, Jan 6 – I thought I’d update my list of Tech Trends from last week to include a few more consumer specific trends.

Rise of the Drones.

Drones have been with us a while now but expect to see a huge increase in consumer drones this year.  With the FAA’s speedy announcement that all recreational drone users will be required to register whether they’re used for commercial, media, research, aid or recreational purposes, wxpect to see the rise of the Drone Police.

Augmented Reality.

Expect a lot of chatter about VR – but the more sophisticated working platforms and products won’t be rolling out until later in 2016. Keep your eyes peeled for VR cameras. Early examples of VR cameras include the Jump Camera Rig which patches together 16 camera modules in a circular array. Or Nokia’s Ozo, which captures 360 degree video and surround sound.

Cars.

Expect to see announcements regarding 2nd generation electric cars, driverless car evolution and energy-efficient vehicles. Chevrolet will roll out its Bolt all-electric vehicle at CES. The Bolt – not to be confused with Chevy’s plug-in hybrid Volt – is General Motors first all-electric long-range vehicle, with an expected battery-only range of 200 miles. Ford and Google are expected to announce a collaboration on self-driving, aka autonomous, vehicles. Toyota is also slated to show off autonomous car tech. The autonomous electric vehicle is a red-hot area of R&D for vehicle makers globally. U.S. carmaker Tesla is leading the way by already offering limited self-driving on its Model S and Model X electric vehicles that are on the road today.

Cybersecurity will go mainstream / end-to-end encryption will take-off.

Expect to see simplified rhetoric and more accessible technology driving companies and end-users to buy into the security paradigm. Investment should start to pour in as tech companies embrace the challenge of cybersecurity for all. Despite the tug-of-war between government and tech Cos., expect end-to-end encryption to take a strong foot hold among a wider range of end users.

PHP 7 will start rolling-out to web servers near you.

This is the most important change for PHP since the release of PHP 5 in 2004. Thanks to the new Zend Engine 3.0, apps should see up to 2x faster performance and 50% better memory consumption than PHP 5.6, allowing sites to serve more concurrent users without adding any hardware. However, expect many ISPs to be slow to support PHP 7 on their web-servers.

Cord-cutting will continue.

This is really good news as it is clearly incentivizing many traditional media groups to add streaming services to their bouquets. On the down-side is the ongoing debate between the FCC and service providers regarding how they charge for data usage. Many providers are excluding ‘streaming’ from the clients data caps.

Screens will get bigger and smaller.

As we see the maturity of wearables and the evolution of 4K Ultra-HD TV, we see 2 sides of the same coin; one focused on the small personal world and the other focused on the larger-than-life personal world of home entertainment. Expect to see wearables becoming more functional as they integrate to IoT devices.

IoT will invade your home.

Expect the Internet of Things to make an appearance in your home in 2016. Perhaps it will be a thermostat or smart lighting or in-home surveillance. There is no doubt that the IoT will invade homes as tech manufactures find new and interesting products to separate consumers from their cash.

5 Tech Trends for 2016

5 Tech Trends for 2016

2015 is almost over and what a great year it’s been. We’ve seen Apple watch, virtual reality and the rise of drones. Here are 5 trends to watch for 2016.

Cybersecurity will go mainstream / end-to-end encryption will take-off.

Expect to see simplified rhetoric and more accessible technology driving companies and end-users to buy into the security paradigm. Investment should start to pour in as tech companies embrace the challenge of cybersecurity for all. Despite the tug-of-war between government and tech Cos., expect end-to-end encryption to take a strong foot hold among a wider range of end users.

PHP 7 will start rolling-out to web servers near you.

This is the most important change for PHP since the release of PHP 5 in 2004. Thanks to the new Zend Engine 3.0, apps should see up to 2x faster performance and 50% better memory consumption than PHP 5.6, allowing sites to serve more concurrent users without adding any hardware. However, expect many ISPs to be slow to support PHP 7 on their web-servers.

Cord-cutting will continue.

This is really good news as it is clearly incentivizing many traditional media groups to add streaming services to their bouquets. On the down-side is the ongoing debate between the FCC and service providers regarding how they charge for data usage. Many providers are excluding ‘streaming’ from the clients data caps.

Screens will get bigger and smaller.

As we see the maturity of wearables and the evolution of 4K Ultra-HD TV, we see 2 sides of the same coin; one focused on the small personal world and the other focused on the larger-than-life personal world of home entertainment. Expect to see wearables becoming more functional as they integrate to IoT devices.

IoT will invade your home.

Expect the Internet of Things to make an appearance in your home in 2016. Perhaps it will be a thermostat or smart lighting or in-home surveillance. There is no doubt that the IoT will invade homes as tech manufactures find new and interesting products to separate consumers from their cash.