Category Archives: Web

SaaS: A Double-Edged Sword

Cloud Computing, Software, Technology, Web

SaaS (Software-as-a-Service, Cloud Services, etc.) are a fact of life for most people and companies. If you are using Gmail, or YouTube, or Campfire, or Basecamp, or GitHub … you are using software housed on someone else’s servers.

SaaS

This is wonderful on many levels. You don’t have to worry about the software, they’ve taken care of that for you. You can access the software from any relatively modern internet-connected computer from almost anywhere in the world. Your information is store, backed-up (hopefully), and watched-over by someone else on their own time.

These are all very cool things.

However, the power of SaaS cuts both ways, and recently that has been made abundantly clear by Google Apps for Education.

Google made the new compose feature the default about 3 weeks ago, and it has been rocky for some people. While a relatively minor change overall, it is still a change which affects how many people use email every single day. It had been there, of course, for a very long time as an option for people to try out, but they flipped the switch and no-one was able to stop them.

Google Apps also had a major outage this morning, with their Control Panel along with many services being down for about a half-hour this morning. This has happened in the past a number of times as well.

While it is nice to be able to tell people “it is a Google outage, nothing we can do about it”, it still stinks when that is the ONLY thing you can tell them.

The worst part is the loss of control. You can’t “wait” on features: they get rolled out constantly and sometimes, more often than I wish, they can break something in a really strange way.

As an example, Gmail recently would flash onscreen and then it would just go white. Every other webpage I tried would work, but Gmail just would not work. Came in the next morning and *poof* it was working correctly.

Frustrating.

You are at the whim of your service provider, and that can be a little frightening when you are a small private college because you have no clout at all. When Google drops support for versions of Internet Explorer, you now have to carve out time to make sure everyone has access to their email by updating browsers or even whole operating systems so that they can have an updated version of Internet Explorer.

That might have been something that could have waited until the next hardware update, but not anymore. Email is too important.

SaaS is wonderful and it is not going away, but native applications with version numbers can be nice as well. The amount of control you have can be a real asset.

Remember that ceding control to someone else is just that, handing over control of some portion of your technological destiny. As long as you are aware of that, it can be very beneficial.

However, that blade cuts both ways. Watch out.

Trying App.net

Life, Technology, Web

I’ve been a member of Twitter for a few years now and it has been very good to me. Recently, however, my curiosity has been piqued by App.net.

I’m not going to rehash what App.net is or why it even exists because I really don’t think it matters all that much. The fact is that it started off as a Twitter-like service in the wake of one of the developer agreement changes from Twitter. It is also extremely limited in number of users compared to Twitter.

With the recent introduction of free accounts, the opportunity arose for me to try out the service without having to pay for the privilege.

Riposte

So I grabbed an invite from someone offering one on Twitter (that’s funny) and then headed over and setup my account. I also went ahead and tried out a bunch of different applications from the App Store. Right now the main way I consume App.net is using an app called Riposte on my iPhone. Currently Riposte is not available on the iPad, so I’m still bouncing among a few apps on the iPad (including Netbot, which is good … but doesn’t feel quite as “at home” with App.net as Riposte does).

So, how is it going overall?

I, surprising myself at least, really like the service. I’ve been able to stay under the 40-follow mark for free accounts, but I’m already getting to the point where I could see myself paying for a year just to see how things go. The discussion has been cordial and high-concept so far, and I’m following people on App.net that I might not have followed on Twitter.

Can it replace Twitter? Probably not, but I do find the smaller audience to be a nice change. With fewer people, seemingly, come fewer problems. There are issues around a self-selecting group being on App.net because in the past there was only a paid-tier to have entry and it also is HIGHLY developer-centric (I mostly follow Apple developers on App.net at the moment), but maybe those aren’t bad things overall.

I tend to think that the Internet is big, but that smaller groups can form on the greater internet to more-easily keep in touch with each other. Not every service needs to be all-inclusive because the Internet is all-inclusive. Being a part of many different services and groups is a good thing.

Besides, you want diversity of thought, right?

Google Killing Google Reader

Google, Technology, Web

Good bye old friend.

Google Reader

And like that, Google has decided to kill off Google Reader after 8 years.

Google Reader is really what I cut my teeth on for RSS, and I’ve had the same account syncing my RSS subscriptions since then. First I worked with Google Reader in iGoogle (which they are also killing) and then moved to Reeder when I picked up my first iPhone in 2009.

However, come July 1, that will all come to an end. I’m going to be on the lookout for an alternative until it finally shuts completely down, but I’m hoping, like Marco Arment, that this will maybe usher in a new era of innovation for RSS. Maybe the death of the 800 pound gorilla who killed all other RSS readers will allow others to come in and really spread their wings.

Alright, that last sentence was terrible. Forgive me.

On the bright side, this is one less thing I will be relying on Google for. This really just leaves Google Talk and Google Docs/Drive as the only services Google provides that I could not easily go elsewhere for.

Maybe they will be replaced in the future … or Google will just decide to kill them off for me.

TextMate Updates File Browser

Design, Development, Programming, Web

I still use TextMate 2 as my editor-of-choice.

Recently the pace of the updates has increased and some semi-major changes are being released into the open.

Build r9345 has this in the release notes:

File browser has a new navigation bar. This is work in progress. You can find most actions of the old bar in the Go menu (where you can also see the key equivalents). Presently missing is “Show Hidden Items”, a toolbar below the file browser will soon appear.

And it’s true!

TM2 File Browser

It is nice to see some of the visual refreshes coming into the editor. I’m waiting to see what they decide to do with the toolbar at the bottom and whatever else they might have in store. TextMate 2 has been the beneficiary of opening up its source to the world on GitHub.

Fear of Imperfection

Business, Life, Programming, Technology, Web

When I get stuck, I tend to try and think my way out.

As my wife of almost six years would tell you, that’s probably not the best thing for me to do. However, it is a habit I cannot seem to break.

In my current rut of which I am stuck in I’ve been doing some reflection on why I’m in this rut. It is not a fun rut. I really don’t like being here and I know that things are better when I am out of this said rut but … here I sit. Stuck. In a rut.

Here’s the thing, I’m afraid.

I’m not afraid of failing, per say, or of the unknown (because who really knows what is going to happen even when we do think we have a decent idea of where things are going). No, I’m afraid of doing some imperfect.

Mainly this revolves around programming. What is stuck in my head is that I can’t do anything unless the entire project, from start to finish and every step in between, is going to be perfect. Every step clear. Every decision the correct one. Every line of code exactly where it should be and typed the correct way the first time. Having to clean up later or remove code that really didn’t need to be there is not acceptable. In my head, it shouldn’t be that way. Not that this should be easy, but that I should be able to, somehow, do it perfectly even if it is hard.

I’m not wholly sure where this has come from or how long it has been here, but that is what has been surfaced during my current reflection. It is amazing what a person can find out about themselves even after 26 years.

So what to do? Really, it is to get the fingers moving and the code going again. It is to force through even if things aren’t going perfectly. Embrace the ugly, as it may be in a way. Focus on small wins.

All stuff I know.

It also means putting down the books and tutorials, at least in the obsessive, “this will surely teach me the perfect way” style that I have been reading books recently. What good is the knowledge if not harnessed for something bigger, for moving ahead? It isn’t worth anything except to help me sound smarter when sitting around the table.

What good is that last part anyway? Meaningless.

So I move ahead, with fits and starts, with ideas. With failure behind and ahead and move forward, hoping to find something and knowing that going anywhere is infinitely better than standing still.