I’ve read a multitude of blogs out there in the last day about how people were incredibly disappointed in what was actually shown at the 2008 WWDC yesterday. Whereas I can understand the disappointment for things like dual cameras for conferencing on the phone, I also understand that most wireless networks do not yet have the infrastructure to handle this sort of bandwidth. Let’s say you start selling 5-10MM more iPhones around the world and these people start to take advantage of this feature on a daily basis, whereas in the US we might be able to ramp up the necessary bandwidth, I hardly believe Denmark, Malta, Peru or Madagascar could handle this out of the box. Out of the box, everything works is Apple’s bread and butter. They understand that people will suffer with a few less features for a user experience not plagued with slow of buggy features (the Windows Mobile Task Manager is a perfect example of the sort of hack Apple has a knack for avoiding).
With all that said, what was shown was absolutely mind blowing. The developers who demoed their products simply blew me out of the water. I recall developing games in Microsoft’s MFC development environment in high school and simply being stonewalled at the obscurity and limiting nature of a development environment. I then look at a combination of what’s in the SDK (I downloaded it shortly after watching the Keynote video) and what was shown and I’m almost ready to delve into trying to create an iPhone app TODAY. The 3D game shown was nothing short of astonishing. The music app, Band, sold me when they got to the “Blues Music Keyboard” and seeing all the Modality Apps made me want to become a doctor. It may sound dumb to you, but this device is more than Apple’s next big money making scheme, this device really can enable the dreams of others (to quote Randy Pausch) by allowing greater flexibility in their day to day life. From presenting information never available to the public in such a rich manner (again, Modality apps) to keeping track of all your information in a centralized location with no fear of losing the data (MobileMe) to sharing your life and everyday adventures with the easy of taking pictures and blogging through the iPhone 3G, I’m floored and almost ready to be one of the idiots in line on day one for these phones.
This phone is right now for the bleeding edge customer. The power user. We know what we’re doing and we use all features of the iPhone on a daily basis. However, the average user like my Mom, my Dad, my Fiancee and my Brother are simply going to be overwhelmed by a phone with many more features than it has. Apple is slowly allowing people to test and try the iPhone and get used to a PDA that works for the average person. Society as a whole is still getting used to the mobile enabled citizen and if they’re going to release a product that lives up to what we expect from Apple (ie. Perfection), they’re going to need more time to ensure that both the product works flawlessly and people are able to use this in such a way that their cited 90% satisfaction rate isn’t tarnished.
But that’s just my take on it, and though I always want more, I also want time to learn some of these features from a developer’s perspective before some more of these great jumps in mobile awesomeness.
Do any of you know any developers that fit the following?
Who We Are Looking For:
We are looking for a senior level php developer who understands what it’s like to work for an unfunded startup to take us to the next level. (Yes, we know you could very easily still be a student at one of the local colleges.)
You must know php, mysql, html, ajax, CSS, JavaScript and apache intimately to apply. (If you have a blog that talks about php or apache that is a plus. Having successfully exited a previous web based startups is a HUGE plus!)
Our basic site already works and now we’re looking for someone who can come in, update it for SEO, squash all the bugs and tune it for enterprise level performance. Ideally you can come in as a startup sniper and do all the work mentioned above within 2-5 months. (If you don’t know SEO, we can teach you!) Either way, this would a great experience for both parties to learn as well as make a very profitable site.
More work will exist after the 2-5 months, but skillz and speed is of the essence for what we currently need.
If you think you qualify and would like more information (and our URL), please shoot us an email along with your resume, sample URLs, your contributions to those URLs and/or development blog. If you’re a good fit, we’ll be happy to discuss what we’re doing, as well as what we are expecting from the developer.
Thanks!
Wei on March 30th 2008 in Personnel, Programming
So… we are due to launch the beta in five days. To be brutally honest, we’re not ready and I don’t foresee us to be completely bug free in five days. However, if history has ever taught me anything, it’s that perfect launches do not guarantee success but hiding in pre-launch mode indefinitely does guarantee failure.
While this website probably won’t meet my personal standard of launch-acceptableness in five days, hopefully by having the website being live will push us to work even harder and faster to crunch the bugs.
On the bright side, the public seems to be pretty forgiving these days with flawed websites and maybe improving the site with the audience instead of for the audience will help build a loyal following.
After working with our developers in both India and America over the past month, I have come to think about various differences between the two. I have started to see similarities in people I know here in the US and able to divide them into groups with respect to the skills needed to be an entrepreneur. For example, our American developer is a very independent person who can take an idea and run with it. He lays out a variety of prospective directions to take a project and goes out of his way to present the best solution for a given project. With his knowledge, we’ll be able to use Amazon Web Services and EC2 services to process a large portion of the code we’ll have to run on a daily basis. It will cost us money, but in the long term it may save us quite a bit due to the costs of maintaining hardware and the omnipresent possibility of hardware failure. He’s creative and really knows everything within and surrounding the scope of what we need, allowing us to expand what we would otherwise be able to do.
On the other hand, we have our Indian developers who are very strict about what they do. Any questions and there is constant contact. There is very little initiative and creativity involved in their development. Much of the project is done with a lot of hand holding. There’s not as much initiative. There is, however, consistency. I can expect consistent updates. I can expect questions every few days. And in the end, we do still get excellent code that works.
What this all comes down to is Americans value creativity and innovative thinking well above and beyond most other cultures. I had read an article a long time ago about why startups work in America the best and one reason was our educational system. It’s unique structure often allows for children to go through 21 years of schooling and still not know what they want to do when they grow up. It allows for a higher degree of success (and failure). It values hard work and creativity above pure intelligence (Warren Buffett is a very smart person, but if you’ve read his biography you’ll see that hard work and creativity got him where he is today). That’s what entrepeneurialism is all about: hard work and creativity. It’s the reason you go out and start you own company. It’s the same need for freedom, not the “promise” of security, that drives people to put time and effort into a project that may or may not succeed. It’s faith in something you’re passionate about.
My father has this saying, “Never stop learning.” He’s in his mid-70s and he’s always trying to learn new things. Mind you, he has a B.S. in Chemistry, Masters of Public Health and a Ph.D in Toxiology, so he’s got no shortage on knowledge already stored up in his noggin. With this said, every challenge you take up in life should be a learning experience. You should be looking to expand your horizons and grown in your professional. Without going beyond what you normally do and what you already know, you tend to stagnate.
Early in our projects life, I felt like after the initial startup period and development, I stalled as a person. I was using all my acquired IT skills in a very comfortable manner. To a certain degree, we had the basic site and communications up in a timely manner. However, when the actual site development came into play, I’ve found my current system of site development is too slow and methodical for our purposes. My experience comes from projects that have high availability and mission critical reliability needs. We do testing to no end. We come up with programming plans, have code reviews and reliability is job one. However, EasyAutoSales.com is a highly agile, web marketing company that needs to exeute quickly for maximum effectiveness.
In a few situations, my programming methods have had to be replaced with a small development team that can work more quickly. I’ve had to change my role and learn to be a manager. Wei has pushed me to contact developers via Guru, oDesk and any PHP forums and choose a team that reports to me, and in turn him. In this, I’ve had to admit to myself that I didn’t have an answer for every programming situation. I like to think I’m a pretty stout developer, but learning how to change my role is something I need to learn for this project and future projects.
My advice to anyone starting up a new business (online or otherwise), roll with the punches. You’re going to have to learn new skills and expand your horizons. Don’t fight it. You’re going to have to choose to pick your battles about doing things “your way” versus whatever it takes to get things done.
