As election day gets closer, and the political pomp and circumstance gets more intense, I started to wonder…WIFT ((What’s in It For Technology)? Which candidate has the potential to make the  greatest impact (good or bad) on the field of technology? So over the next couple of weeks, I will give you a blow by blow of the issues, the math, the  reality and the analysis!  So let’s get her done…starting with Cybersecurity…don’t close your browser, I haven’t gotten all your personal information yet

Ok, before we dive into the blow by blow, let’s establish a general, and forgive me,  generic platform for each candidate when it comes to decision making.  I have created a simple formula for typically how both candidate’s want decisions to be made:

Obama =  Democrat = National Level

Romney = Republican = State (local) Level

Ok, back to the blow by blow…this time let’s see if our math adds up!

Round 1: Cybersecurity

The Issue:

Cyberwhat?  Aren’t “they” already watching everything “we” do on the internets (this is not an sp!)?  What more security could we need?  Sounds scary right?  Not really, and for most people, their is nothing to fear…except fear itself  The cybersecurity issue is primarily geared at the private sector, however, we will all be impacted, that is if you have something to “hide”.   The question for the private sector is, should we have to (read “by law! ”  ) share information with the US government, to help the U.S government investigate cyber threats and ensure the security of networks against cyberattack?  The question for the rest of us is twofold , yo Mr. Private Company, why the hell are you “sharing” my information with the government…are they “spying” on me?

The Math:

Cybersecurity = National Level Security Issue

Obama =  Democrat = National Level = Yes on Cybersecurity

Romney = Republican = State Level = No on Cybersecurity

The Reality:

Obama = Yes

Romney = Yes

The Analysis:

Cybersecurity is not in itself a partisan issue. Both Obama and Romney  agree that the threat is real and that current policies are not sufficient. They are both keeping their eyes on the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection bill that that cleared the U.S. House of Representatives in April and the impact it may have  on Internet users’ privacy and civil liberties.  Basically the bill is being pitched as a way to put the kabosh on China, Russia and Iran, some of the countries that are posing the greatest cyber-threats to the US.  But once you get past this tried and true PR tactic to get bills passed, you will hear the sound of ringing…answer…it is Big Brother calling and he already HAS your number

Recently Microsoft released the source code for the Entity Framework under an open source license. Now the whole ASP.NET MVC Stack including Web API, Razor is open source. They are open source projects but they are also supported by Microsoft and released Microsoft products suitable for use in any organization.

Visual Studio 2012 introduces much simpler API for async programming that leverages asynchronous support in the .NET framework 4.5. Asynchrony is essential for the activities that are potential blocking such as when your application accesses the web. Access to the web resource gets delayed and if such activity is blocked within a synchronous process the entire application must wait. In Asynchronous process, the application can continue further that doesn’t depend on the resource until the potentially blocking task finishes. Entity Framework 6 will support the new task-based asynchronous pattern when querying and saving data. This will greatly enhance the performance of the overall application having database connectivity (Not sure if NHibernate has road map to support this new feature in .net 4.5, any information on this is welcome!). Any ORM layer which is another layer of abstraction will introduce the overhead to the data access. With the introduction of EF 5.0, these overheads are reduced and are more focused on performance. Based on the benchmark test result, repeat execution time of the same LINQ query has be reduced by around 6 times and overall end-to-end application was found to be 67% faster. Some of the new features in EF 5.0 are Enum support, Spatial data types, performance enhancements, Data migration support, etc…

Entity framework is much more younger than its counterpart NHibernate. Nhibernate is another open source ORM (derived from Java Hibernate) having more features than Entity Framework. Nhibernate is also much harder to learn and to be productive in a short amount of time (higher learning curve). When it comes to integration with Microsoft technologies, it will come as no surprise that Entity Framework offers the best support (e.g. ASP.NET through Entity Data Source, ASP.NET Dynamic Data Services, WCF RIA Services etc.). Another point where EF is superior and where NHibernate lacks is up-to-date API reference and resources on MSDN. Both of them accomplish the same goal, which is mapping database objects to domain objects, but in different ways. Now that the EF has been made open source, more developers and their community will be working on it making it more robust, more efficient and more stable than ever.

There are a lot of things I like about what’s around the bend with CSS3, but one of the big ones is @font-face. Traditionally, web developers and designers have had a pretty limited set of tools when typefaces were concerned on the web. A specific set of fonts were recommended because they were the fonts that almost everyone had and almost everyone thus be able to display them. Times New Roman, Arial, Garamond, Comic Sans (shudder) etc etc. all the usual suspects we all know super super well.

Yawwwwn. Luckily, @font-face allows the developer to use any font he wants. It allows a locally stored font format to be displayed through the browser. This opens up the web to an amazing variety of font styles and combinations and allows the web designer more control of the brand and message via typefaces.

My favorite application of @font-face though has to be icon fonts. These are typefaces that have been developed to be an icon suite instead of alphanumeric characters. Each one can have up to 255 different icons creating a wide array of possibilities. My personal favorite thus far is the Font Awesome collection. The great thing about using @font-face is that any css3 effect can be applied to them unlike regular images. Shadows, transforms, size, and color can all be adjusted from within the CSS.

Now, of course since this is CSS3, not every browser is going to support every font file format.

That’s lame, but web developers are used to this by now. On the upside, Every browser from IE6 up to the latest and greatest Chrome supports some kind of @font-face.  So if you can get your hands on a .WOFF, .EOT, .TTF/OTF, and .SVG version of a font and you plug them into your @font-face rule, you’ll have every browser supported. At least as far as the typeface goes, if you’re looking to apply more advanced CSS3 techniques to your fonts, the browser’s limitations still apply.

This morning we received the following correspondence from our good buddies (or so we think) at LinkedIn.  Looks like they just got dumped! It’s good to know that the concept of “unfriending” occurs even at the corporate level…hopefully with less tears and s&*% talking!

Twitter unfriends LinkedIn

Hi Ayoka,

LinkedIn and Twitter have worked together since 2009 to enable you to share your professional conversations on both platforms. Twitter recently evolved its strategy and this will result in a change to the way Tweets appear in third-party applications. Starting today Tweets will no longer be displayed on LinkedIn.

We know that sharing updates from LinkedIn to Twitter is a valuable service for our members. Moving forward, you will still be able to share updates with your Twitter audience by posting them on LinkedIn.

How can I continue to share updates on both LinkedIn and Twitter?Simply start your conversation on LinkedIn. Compose your update, check the box with the Twitter icon, and click “Share.” This will automatically push your update to both your LinkedIn connections and your Twitter followers just as before.

What changes can I expect to see on LinkedIn? Any conversation you start on Twitter will no longer be automatically shared with your LinkedIn network, even if you synced your LinkedIn and Twitter accounts.

If you would like more information about what this means for your synced LinkedIn and Twitter accounts, please visit our related Help Center topics.

Thank you,

The LinkedIn Team Twitter unfriends LinkedIn - Dislike Ok Facebook I think we are ready for y’all to create the dislike button!

Obama and Romney “spar” over outsourcing and the lowest rated Sunday news program in America – CBS – is the only news outlet that reports this news, while the article on the subject is clearly articulated and analyzed in  EVERY Indian newspaper!!! Why isn’t this important to America? Isn’t it significant that the 4th largest bank in the US, Wells Fargo, plans to move jobs to India soon to “trim cost”?

So where did this whole outsourcing / offshoring conversation come from again…this conversation is so 2006? It all started when the Washington Post released a story that claimed Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital had a monetary stake in companies that outsourced jobs overseas. According to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Romney’s financial company, Bain, a private equity firm that he founded and has been actively involved in running for nearly 15 years, owned companies that were pioneers in the practice of shipping work (call centers and factories making computer components) from the United States to low-wage countries like China and India.

Romney on offshoring and outsourcing

McKinsey Global Institute estimated in 2006 that $18.4 billion in global information technology work and $11.4 billion in business-process services have been moved by American companies overseas, especially in Asia. I can’t believe that this was the statistic in 2006? Strangely enough, I could not find a more current statistic on this subject! I guess this brings me back to my original question, Why isn’t this important to America?

This blog is not an attempt to be political. It is certainly not my intention to point the finger at one candidate or another. The subject of outsourcing / offshoring jobs overseas, especially in technology, is near and dear to Ayoka. 10 years ago when we started this company we were committed to American Competitiveness. Our enthusiasms continues to build over the years as we work side by side with our country’s greatest innovators (our clients!). From manufacturing to animal husbandry, Americans are doing great things with technology! And we have an continue to be engaged in the fight to keep jobs in the United States.

Americans are doing great things with technology!

Let’s be real… LinkedIn is for job hoppers, job poachers and job boasters. In this WIFM (what’s in it for me) economic environment, everyone is a social climber. I guess it is quintessential Survival of the Fittest. Think of LinkedIn as a wild kingdom with 3 types of animals, those looking to conquer others to gain status (job hoppers), those looking to use other animals to boost their status (job poachers (read recruiters)) and those just wanting to flaunt their status (job boasters). It’s a crazy world out there and watch out – because in LinkedIn kingdom, sometimes zebras do change their stripes.

According to Jeff Weiner, the CEO of LinkedIn , there is a greater purpose for this “professional” environment. According to Weiner “…Part of our vision is building off of this professional graph to create an economic graph. So, imagine a world where every job and economic opportunity is digitally represented, and the skills required to get those jobs is digitally represented, and the companies offering these jobs have a profile that’s available on the web, and you can see who you know at these companies up to 3 degrees, and that every individual, every professional worldwide — you know, there’s 3.3 billion people in the global workforce — that every professional, someone that earns a living from their skill, on a global basis has their digital profile and identity available.” It is Weiner’s goal to use this “data” to “literally start to improve the productivity of the global economy, making it easier for capital, both human capital and resources, to flow to where they can best be leveraged.”

Lofty idea huh!!!! This is all great and dandy and feeds right into the WIFM generation, but there is business to be done. Human capital… Really? When will we move away from this individualistic culture to one in which we see each other as being on the same team? Moreover, a team that needs to work together to improve America’s current unstable economic environment.

So in summary, a suggestion for the future of LinkedIn, try to connect businesses not people. Why not utilize “professionals” to build businesses not individuals?

All is not well in the Technology world, especially the booming mobile sector. Large corporations are in an arms race for broad and overly general patents, most of which cover designs and software they didn’t even invent. Those with the means to do so are buying old patents from failing companies and patent holding firms for billions of dollars (Google bought Motorolla’s mobility patents for 12.5 billion dollars, Microsoft just dropped 1 billion on old AOL patents, Nortel’s patent portfolio was scavenged for 4.5 billion by various companies).

Why spend astronomical sums on old patents? To protect themselves from litigation and to use the old patents as landmines for other companies to step into and explode themselves into a courtroom. There they can expect to spend upwards of 2 million dollars in legal fees. The consequences of losing, however, could be worse than that. Apple, for instance, is trying to block the sale of Samsung’s upcoming blockbuster Galaxy S III. And that’s not all Apple is trying to shut down with patents. HTC models are being held up from being sold in the US while HTC changes its software due to Apple’s civil suits against the company. All of Apple’s patent suits against phone manufacturers are in fact a proxy war against Google’s Android. The rulings Cupertino are looking for are so broad that the ramifications of adverse decisions for the defendants impact how Android fundamentally works.

Apple isn’t the only company using the blunt instrument of court action to secure its market share and stifle the competition. Microsoft, Oracle, RIM, even Kodak and a plethora of others are using their existing patents and patents they have purchased to drag each other into court. If this is bad, then the “Patent Trolls” or non-practicing entities are worse. Non-practicing entities are patent holding firms who buy patents, and that’s it. They amass hundreds of patents on the claim that they simply try to defend the interests of inventors without the means to defend those interests themselves. In practice, they hunt down any possible or imagined patent infringement and try to beat a settlement or licensing agreement out of defendants. One such company, Intellectual Ventures, has raided $5 billion dollars from the tech industry. Intellectual Ventures and companies like them now earn 77% of the average total damages awarded in US patent lawsuits.

As it stands, if you are a small company making innovative products and don’t have millions of dollars to throw around at lawyers, then it is not a good time to be you. The Patent Wars make it very hard to be a smaller company with new ideas as you absolutely must hold a patent now, lest some larger company patent your idea first then sue you for licensing. Congress has enacted laws in a rare show of bipartisanship to help streamline the patent filing process and to try and stem the tide of frivolous lawsuits. As per usual,  however, the value of this law is big on intention and short on deliverables for small business.

In short, the patent system in the United States is stacked, not only against the little guy, but everyone. No one, at least they claim, likes all the litigation and legal headaches of the patent system as it is implemented today. For things to get better, drastic steps will need to be made to software patents.

For a really cool interactive, this flash application shows who is gunning after who in the Patent Wars, and this infographic lays out all the information pretty well too.

Like most observers, I witnessed the WWDC from my office chair. There was a lot of ooooh and aaaaah moments of course, but I couldn’t help but be less than impressed with the showing from Cupertino.

That is one expensive computer.

Admittedly, the new computer line up looked great, the sleek got sleeker and new features were added like an HDMI port on the MacBook Pro . But, there wasn’t much to justify the, in my opinion, exorbitant cost. The aforementioned MacBook Pro reportedly starts at a staggering $2,199 USD.  What do you get for the price? A 2.5GHz dual-core processor, 4 GB of RAM and a 500GB hard drive. Now, that is a SSD drive, which naturally will be expensive, but man! That’s a lot for what it is. But, I remain skeptical, not doubtful, that it is worth the price. It’s supposed to have a retina display, but reports still mention a remarkably glossy screen.

But hey, iOS6 is what this thing was really all about, right?

iOS6 was debuted, with a suite of 200 new features and a new level of usability in an updated Siri. Apple has made the use of their phone and tablet even easier with advanced integration in the form of consolidating a user’s Apple ID, making an iPhone and iPad more synchronous. Also, big moves into integrating with Facebook, like voice updating statuses by voice. It also seems like Apple could be moving to abandon its iTunes based social media platform “Ping” in favor of allowing a Facebook user to “like” movies and apps in Apple’s iTunes store. And it seems Apple resents the mere presence of Google on their devices and have moved to create their own Map application.

Yeah, but still – SmartGlass!!!!

But is that enough? I kinda feel like Microsoft has more to offer this year with SmartGlass and (the hotly debated) Windows 8. And even despite the arguments over how good Windows 8 will be, you can’t deny it is a move that shows the company from Redmond is appreciating and implementing some significant changes. In a weird twist of irony, Microsoft is the innovator this year, as Apple curates its image and refines established paradigms.

The Electronic Entertainment Expo, or more widely known as E3, is a video games conference based out of LA. Ok, Ok, Ok, it is THE video games conference. It’s an event some wait all year for. It’s where publishers, hardware producers, and smaller indy development houses all converge at the LA Convention Center for what is a huge industry event. The event is so large that it has ramifications for the tech industry at large. Case in point – Microsoft’s latest coolness: SmartGlass.

SmartGlass from Microsoft binds all your devices to the XBox360, making it overlord of your living room.

SmartGlass will be the glue that binds all your devices to your Xbox 360, making it an advanced media hub. On the gaming side, your mobile devices morph into extra controllers when you play video games on the 360. Part of the SmartGlass demonstration at E3 was using a tablet to act as kind of a playbook when playing Madden.  Outside of the realm of video games, your tablet and/or smartphone could become mediums for metadata content like, as was demoed at E3, maps for Game of Thrones or cast biographies for School of Rock.

While this is great for media like video games and movies, the details are far and few between out there for how it could play out on the Internet at large. Mentioned at E3 was how a mobile device would become a traditional keyboard and mouse for navigating Internet Explorer from your Xbox using your TV as a screen. This is neat, but a little uninspired.

What is more exciting is what this new way of interfacing could mean further on. Imagine you are on a site: For the most part your tablet or phone would be a mouse until you clicked into a field. At that point the interface on the device would change to a keyboard. That’s all fairly elementary cool, but what if you could alter the way a user interfaces beyond the mouse+keyboard skeuomorphic? Drawing apps, html5 games, basically anything the UI designer can imagine can be accomplished and tailored to an individual website experience. The problem with this, of course, is the chaos of the near limitless ways a person could interface with websites. If you thought the ever dizzying array of display resolutions was a headache, imagine the growing pains of establishing best practices for the multitude of ways to interact with a site that could crop up.

So ,while not explicitly for the web development or web design fields, this news from E3 is exciting to us nonetheless. Keep your eyes open a few years down the line on SmartGlass because, if it takes off like I think it will, it’s going to be a very interesting time for user interfaces.

There exists, as there often does, 2 sides of user interface design. One is the side that hopefully most of us are acquainted with, a side that has the best interest of the user at heart. We strive to make things easy and intuitive for our users, to shepherd them through unfamiliar processes with minimal effort. In doing this, user experience professionals follow good design “patterns.” These concepts are essentially best practices for user interface design. They use established user data to create interfaces that are easy to follow, and most importantly – honest.  Ignoring these, you can find yourself in the land of “anti-patterns” or practices that can confuse and bewilder a user. These are usually just mistakes and development versus any kind of out and out malignancy. But, there also exist “Dark Patterns;” patterns that are used with just as much (if not more) thought but not toward a user’s benefit. Instead these tricks, cheats, and charlatans would con the user into signing up for things they don’t want, buy services they don’t need, and agreeing to things they never would otherwise do. Let me be your Defense Against The Dark Arts instructor as we take a look at some common Dark Pattern um…patterns.

The Pre-Checked Checkbox

The first is so common it seems like most just accept that it’s how the internet works.  It’s the “enabled checkbox” dark pattern. Tucked into things you usually would check like “create a desktop icon” or “create a start menu icon” there will be an invitation to “Download the NotMalwareWeSuperPromise Toolbar.” Users don’t want this toolbar. No one wants this toolbar. Why is it there? And furthermore why is it checked? If the person who had designed the UI had the user’s best interest at heart, he would have realized the user wanted the product he downloaded, and not a totally unrelated one. It’s disingenuous at best and downright dirty at worst.  It’s present in websites as well. When signing up for a site you will often find the options for signing up for the newsletter, the “sure, I want ‘value added’ emails”, and “Some other entity you’re not telling me the name of wants to send me spam too? SIGN ME UP!” checkboxes already filled in. Thanks but no thanks, Internet. These options exist simply to trick a user to agree to things he doesn’t want to.

I see you want this bit of freeware, could I interest you in this totally harmless horse statue as well?

Trick Wordplay

Like the pre-checked checkbox, but more insidious because it comes without the visual cue, trick wordplay is designed in such a way as to make the user seem like he’s agreeing to one thing but in actuality is agreeing to something completely different.  This is sometimes done by combining different ways of asking the same thing. Take this example:

At Next.Co.Uk, the user has a litany of questions he or she must muddle through in order to complete their order. Say the user plays their shell game and wants to save 25 cents and get free delivery. The Terms and Conditions, which only 7% of users read, lets the user know that he or she has just signed up for a subscription to the Next Catalog. You’re welcome, user.

The Roach Motel

Like Hotel California, some services on the web let you check in buy never leave. Signing up for a service is easy on some sites, sometimes too easy. But once a user is tired of an inbox crammed with a newsletter that is no longer relevant to their interests, alongside all the spam they inadvertently signed up for, getting out seems like a game of hide and seek. LA Fitness (full disclosure – I totally fell for this one) lets you sign up for their memberships online. It’s super easy to do. Don’t want to be a member anymore? Well apparently, while they have the technology to allow you to join their service, they have to use analog mail to let you quit. That’s right, you can sign up online but have to use stamp and paper to get out.

These tricks and tactics provide great short term rewards for their practitioners. I’m still a member of LA Fitness. Not because I like how I was treated, but because I’m too lazy to quit. They got me. It’s easy to catch people off guard on the internet, a world of small print and shady tactics. You have to stay on guard to keep your wallet secure, your inbox clear, and your computer bloatware free.

And if you’re a UI/UX professional, really think twice about a tactic if it is going to do anything but help your brand in the long run.