Continuous Integration and its benefits

A key attribute to developing software rapidly as possible is continuous integration. This is a practice where members of a development team integrate their work frequently; typically each developer integrates their working copy several times a day, which by extension, leads to multiple integrations per day. The integrations are continually verified by an automated testing process (which is an essential component of continuous integration) as they come in, in order to detect bugs as quickly as possible. This process of rapid integration and iteration usually leads to significantly reduced integration problems and allows a team to develop better software faster. Benefits include: reduced risk (issues are uncovered more rapidly), easier to find and remove bugs (which are usually cumulative, the sooner a bug can be found and eliminated the better), and if you are looking to deploy more frequently (who isn’t) it can help increase your overall throughput and quality in order to reach that goal.


See how base2Services can help you achieve Continuous Integration here

Apache Harmony - The Java Fork In Waiting

After driving Apache Harmony by contributing the bulk of the founding code, and by 2006 12 out of the 16 developers working on the project, IBM has now abandoned Harmony in favour of the Oracle based Open JDK project. The aim of Harmony is to create a compatible, independent implementation of the Java SE 5 (6, 7...) JDK under the Apache License v2 which is comprised of a community-developed modular runtime (VM and class library) architecture.

Is is hypothesised that this effort on IBM's part, in conjunction with their support for the OSGi Alliance via the Eclipse foundation, has been to build an entirely freestanding java based enterprise platform, enabling the choice to move away from the overcooked J2EE component set called Websphere, or more probably keeping the name Websphere and changing what it means to be a set of tools centred around Eclipse Equinox, rather than the current Websphere J2EE App Server. And so the strategy goes, this platform was all going to run on the elegant, modularised, super lean, Harmony JVM. This was the line being run by IBM as recently as last month at the OSGi Community Event in London.

Then came the wrecking ball - the Harmony based Google Android Dalvik. Sooner or later the Oracle lawyers were going to get to the part of the Apache Harmony / Sun Java agreements that effectively says that Harmony cannot be put to Mobile Use via the Sun imposed 'Field Of Use Restrictions'. It seems that as soon as they discovered them the lawyers pulled the trigger on Dalvik, and that act that has brought the Java world to the brink. The historical record is clear that IBM was not happy with the Field of Use restrictions on the Harmony TCK, but given that for IBM Harmony was an enterprise play, it was not a show-stopper in going forward with the development of Harmony.

It seems IBM decided they might suddenly be drawn into a very large dispute in which they had no benefit in being forced to take sides. Hence the IBM top down push to bail out of Harmony and announce a love in with OpenJDK and Oracle. Presumably the IBM lawyers have decided this would be a big enough firewall between themselves and Oracle v Google to comfortably sit on the sidelines until it is over. But the outcome of the battle has enormous implications for Java. Either way in my view the Java technology landscape is going to permanently change.

If:

Oracle Wins :- The JVM as the the ubiquitous byte-code-platform-for-the-foreseeable-future is dead. Google will produce the Javakiller platform, based on the Register Oriented architecture of Dalvik, without the Harmony libraries. Most of the Open Source Community will go with this, including Springsource. Apache Felix will probably produce a clean implementation of the OSGi container on this platform, possibly in conjunction with Atlassian, who are tinkering with such a thing on Java today. Redhat-JBoss will probably be the Open Source standout here, and stay Java. IBM will possibly stay Java bases along with the Eclipse foundation, or they may decide to straddle both camps.

Google Wins :- Apache Harmony will fork Java at JDK 1.6, everybody will go with the fork except Oracle.

OSGi Community Event

I have just come back from the OSGi Community Event in London (Sept 29, 30 2010). I have been aware of OSGi for a number of years without ever having taken a good look. base2's recent partnering with FUSE has changed all that, and I thought attending this conference would be one way to catch up on all the things that have been happening.

After the first couple of hours of the conference I realised we have got a very very great deal of catching up to do. Sometime in the next year OSGi is going to be an 'overnight sensation' - which I'm sure will bring a wry smile to the faces of the people I met at the conference who have been beavering away with the OSGi technology and concepts - for up to 10 years in some cases. So for all of you technologists who are where I was at a couple of months ago, if you want to get your head around OSGi, where it is today, and why it is coming your way soon - here is a some reading to get started with in your idle moments.

First thing you need to read are these four articles on the OSGi Alliance site. It is quite likely that you will follow some of the links in the getting started article and never get back here, but if you do there is more interesting material below.

Benefits of using OSGi

The OSGi Architecture

OSGi Technology Overview

Getting Started With OSGi

Firstly Eclipse is all about OSGi, all Eclipse plugins are OSGi bundles being deployed into Eclipse Equinox (3rd party ones at that, which is why occasionally they don't work so well - the plugin author is often creating their very first OSGi bundle). Some Eclipse projects using/providing OSGi that I know about are:

One of the two pre-eminent OSGi containers - Equinox

An OSGi Application Server - Virgo

The BIRT Reporting Application

Then there is the Apache work:

The other pre-eminent OSGi container - Felix

The FUSE ESB centrepiece - ServiceMix

An OSGi runtime to house an OSGi container - Karaf

Distributed OSGi RI (AKA FUSE Services Framework) - CFX

The JMS Provider (AKA FUSE Messaging) - Active MQ

The Enterprise Toolkit - Aries

Now - Remember Roy Fielding and all that REST - Sling

There is the whole world of stuff happening at WSO2 - dont go in there - you'll get lost -but - the Stratos Cloud platform based on the OSGi compliant Carbon looks pretty amazing; and anybody that has been looking for an Atom based RESTful Registry with comprehensive Repository capabilities, as I have for quite some time - Governance Registry ticks all my function points.

Then there is Nimble - if you have got this far you can figure it out for yourself - it looks pretty slick, I think we will be using it

Now we are getting to the extreme end of the world - actually that just means I haven't figured out what it is for yet - but Peaberry - check it out.

Good luck with all that

Neil

Answering the iPhone developer wish list

The iPhone 3.0 software announcement this morning really answered the majority of wish lists in an amazingly comprehensive manner. Most of what is left; camera quality, video, video chat, battery life, is all hardware related. So we can now all look forward to the next Apple announcement in the northern summer when presumably the software will be launched alongside the next generation of iPhone.

The consumer features are getting wide coverage on a large number of sites but lets take a look from our perspective of a business considering entering the App market with consumer or business applications.

The State of the Market
Penetration

• 80 countries (77 now have App Store access)
• 17 million iPhones sold to the end of calendar 2008
• 30 million phones & iPod Touches total. For most apps this is the new addressable number.

In the development market there is remarkable interest with 800,000 SDK Downloads and 50,000 signed developers, 60% of them new to Apple development.

Outcomes
25,000 Apps with 800 million downloads in just eight months. The previously highly ambitious billion download forecast in the first year, now looks like a very modest goal.

From a business perspective there are now new ways to monetize development and improve returns. Strangely upgrading from a Free to a Paid version of an App is not one of them, according to Apple it would have confused the user. If you like the Lite version you need to go back to the App store to buy the full featured version. However charge $0.99 in the first place and you can then start to sell upgrade packs, subscriptions and new content directly within your app.

The In-App purchase method supports periodic memberships or subscriptions to magazines, newspapers or trade information. It allows the purchase of new levels or add on packs in an app. It can be used to unlock downloaded features or premium content or within a reader purchase new books or multimedia content.

The caution is of course the proposition still has to be compelling enough to win an audience. We now have a whole new world of discovery ahead around what the product levers are and how to maneuver them. The recent research by Pinch Media really highlights how few apps most users, use regularly. Get the value proposition wrong with these extra options and you could kill app usage very quickly as well as earn the kinds of reviews that can badly hurt your business.

In terms of the other APIs, there is a social theme to many that Apple announced today. Peer to Peer discovery allows apps to find each other locally and co-operate for multiplayer games or sharing of effort or info. You can even visualize each other’s locations with maps now able to be built into the app

The ability to interact with accessories opens up a whole range of new possibilities. For example with a barcode scanner, collaborative collection and sharing of information and pricing. With data collection instruments, logging and analyzing data in the field as well as transmitting it back to a computer.

The final release of Push Notification was welcome, as was the admission by Apple that they got the scale of what was needed wrong by a massive factor. After the MobileMe launch they were obviously very cautious and have now completely re-architected for scale and interestingly worked with all their carriers to ensure there are no bottlenecks on their networks in pushing the info to customers. I for one am happy to see them back off and fix it well before it became a disaster.

They did touch again on background apps and provided examples of what running one polling app in the background does to standby battery life. This is running the app but with no actual activity on other mobile OS’s. According to their research standby time is reduced by 80% or more. Their push notification still reduces standby time but by a more modest 23%. I still think there is a case for some background apps, for example logging geo locations on a route while using other apps. Hopefully as battery life improves they will enable some mechanism for doing some of these things.

Some of the other features you can now build into your apps are in-app email to mail content directly from you app, access to the iPod media library and use of the proximity sensor. Video streams will now also automatically scale to the connection bandwidth available to a user, so you can now provide high quality video and no longer have to focus on the lowest common denominator.

So now all you need is the next right idea

Is developing iPhone Apps a waste of time?

Pinch Media recently released a presentation they made to the New York iPhone Developers Meetup on Feb 18th. Reaction in some circles would suggest iPhone App development is not worth the time and effort. Yet applying some business basics to the data shared by Pinch suggests otherwise.

I took a look at the presentation at the time and thought it offered some interesting insights, was quite logical and gave some good tips on being successful. And there is one slide (5) that gives a very interest insight into pricing to drive demand that is gold. Take a look if you haven't yet seen it.

iPhone AppStore Secrets - Pinch Media

View more presentations from pinchmedia. (tags: pinch media)

So I’ve watched other blogs cover it over the last week or so and the headlines have ranged from the sky is falling, through a couple that seem to seem to be on the same wave length as my thinking, namely there are no guarantees of success but this is a viable and growing market and you can succeed if the product, pricing and marketing are solid.

(Oh no)

App Store grows, but apps are seldom used (Macworld)

Most iPhone applications gathering dust (CNet)

Apple App Store Downloads Often Abandoned (Infoworld)

Apple App Store grows, but iPhone apps are seldom used (Computerworld)

(more realistic)

Pinch Media Data Shows The Average Shelf Life Of An iPhone App Is Less Than 30 Days (techcrunch)

Why To Charge For Your iPhone App: Ad Revenue Stinks

1. We know the app store now offers a vast choice of apps
2. We know overall usage blows every other mobile platform of the map
3. We know price barriers to downloading and trying apps are low and encourage trial
4. We know from the number of downloads that people are doing just that.

So I am wondering what I am missing that the sky is falling writers are getting?

My iPhone usage is not typical. I use it heavily. But having talked to a number of other users this last week ranging from very light users through to nearly as bad as me, there seems to be a reasonable pattern.

• We all have a small number of core apps we use 2-5 times a week and rely on. How many of core apps seems to be the biggest difference between light, medium and heavy users.
• We have some games that we try once or twice and discard. Some games that we use heavily for a while, then get bored with a move on and one or two we are addicted to (for the moment)
• And a lot of specific situation apps and utilities that we use from once a week to once in a blue moon when the situation calls for it
• and most of us could do with a clean out of stuff we tried and didn’t like.

In my case it looks like of the 103 icons on my phone, 68 are third party apps and the rest Apple installed apps or web bookmarks

Again I am not saying this is typical but it seems to be close to the Pinch data and highly reasonable. It is actually a lot like my everyday use of computer applications. One difference is the "as needed" type applications. On the phone these tend to be one off situational apps eg I need a good meal so I use urbanspoon, I want to identify a song so I use Shazam. On the computer "as needed" use for me tends to be driven by projects, so I might use an app for a week, then not touch it again for 12 months.

The very nature of apps lends them to this very specific tasks, very occasionally model. It does however reinforce the message about not expecting reward from advertising. A developer needs to be paid for the app either by the user or by a company commissioning a branded app as a service for customers.

iPhone still growing in mobile browsing share

Net Applications are now measuring mobile Market Share. According to their first mobile report, the iPhone commanded two thirds of all mobile browsing in February.

Other analysts have previously credited Apple products with high US usage using various methodologies but not this dominant. Net Applications measure web use by device and browser globally for around 160 million users a month. They have become a de-facto industry measure of browser and OS share in web browsing and are undoubtedly hoping to repeat that in mobile.

The other good news for developers is that Android users seem to also be very high internet users given the installed base of the platform.

Although the iPhone has a commanding lead in mobile browsing share, Android and BlackBerry are rapidly gaining market share. This does not mean that iPhone web browsing is shrinking, because the overall market is growing rapidly. Android has garnered over 6% of mobile web browsing since its release in October.

Mobile Browsing by Platform Market Share

February, 2009

Mobile Browsing by Platform

Total Market Share

iPhone

66.44%

Java ME

9.11%

Windows Mobile

6.90%

Android

6.26%

Symbian

6.17%

Palm

2.37%

BlackBerry

2.24%

BREW

0.51%

Report generated Tuesday, March 03, 2009 3:57:39 AM

Holy App Store Batman

500 in July to 10,000 in December took five months. Two months later the number of iPhone apps in the iTunes App Store has doubled to 20,000. We've touched on some the pluses and minuses of such explosive growth before, but its worth looking at some aspects again.

This is unprecedented growth, much faster than the original music store in iTunes and shows an incredible amount of global developer activity. The acceptance of the platform is amazing.

On the downside:

• It presents late entrants with a much greater barrier to getting exposure. Marketing strategies gain more importance everyday.
• It presents users with a real issue in working out what apps are worthwhile. Apple need to continue to improve the tools in the App Store
• It puts continuing pressure on potential earnings for developers

On the upside:

• Downloads appear to be keeping pace and people are actually using apps
• Users are investing emotionally and financially in personalizing their iPhone creating stickiness
• The critical mass of the iPhone platform continues to gather steam making it easier for businesses to justify investing in developing on a single mobile platform for sometime to come.
• The success of the App Store will continue to drive iPhone sales. The size of the market becomes more viable everyday, for collaborative or aggregation type opportunities as well as just selling apps.

Conclusions

Somewhere, sometime, someone will probably say 20,000 apps is enough and there is nothing else left to build ... just before the next killer app is launched. 

The market for iPhone and iPod Touch Apps is maturing. It now requires more traditional business planning, particularly around market sizing, ensuring your investment in development is appropriate for the risk and that you have a strong marketing plan to make sure you stand out.

However the world is always ready for the next great innovation. If you have got "the idea" for the next unique or highly targeted app, it doesn't matter if you are competing with 100,000 there is still room to go for it.

Here's how to become an iPhone Developer in 8 easy steps, or just talk to us.