All posts by onlyconnect

adobe, microsoft, silverlight, sony, xbox

Sony’s Flash advantage for PlayStation 3 vs Xbox 360

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Sony’s PlayStation 3 includes a web browser and for some time it has been possible to view BBC iPlayer content there. The iPlayer is based on Adobe Flash. The attraction of this approach is that the console is already plugged into the home TV, so it is a relatively seamless shift from conventional broadcasting, provided you can figure out how to operate it using a game controller.

According to the BBC’s Anthony Rose, people are figuring this out big time, now that Sony has both enhanced Flash with h.264 support and full-screen hardware acceleration, and added an iPlayer icon to the PS3 menu (I should think the latter counted for more than the former). He’s revealed on the BBC Internet blog that:

… iPlayer on PS3 now accounts for a massive ~10% of all iPlayer viewing, overtaking Mac (8.5%) to be our 2nd most popular platform for IP-delivered content.

I find that impressive given that the PS3 is still marketed primarily as a games console.

The obvious question: what about Xbox 360, which is inherently more than capable of the same feat? The problem is that Flash is not supported on the 360, nor does it have a web browser. You can watch TV via a 360, by using it as a Media Center Extender, but that means getting quite a few other pieces in place in your digital home, including a Media Center PC with a TV aerial plugged into it – and even then, you are not getting iPlayer, just digital TV.

There are a couple of solutions that come to mind. One is that Microsoft could get together with Adobe and support Flash on the 360. The other is that Microsoft could get a move on with its Silverlight support on 360 and persuade the BBC to serve up iPlayer content for Silverlight as well as Flash. Both are technically feasible; the first would be easier for the BBC but embarrassing for Microsoft, which is promoting its own video streaming technology, while the second would be expensive for the BBC.

Another party which is likely to be watching with interest is ITV, which has its own catch-up service. This used to be based on Silverlight but now seems to be pretty much all Flash, perhaps because of quality problems or simply to take advantage of the wider deployment of the Flash runtime. Even though it does not have its own icon on a PS3, you could watch ITV Player via the browser.

Catch-up viewing is popular, and this sensible Flash-based development alongside existing Blu-ray support gives Sony’s machine a substantial advantage over the 360 when considered as a home entertainment device, rather than merely a games console. I’d expect this to be a significant factor as buyers make their choices in the coming Christmas season.

Finally, I wonder what other interesting potential there is for runtimes like Flash or Silverlight on a game console that is wired directly into the family home? Could there be a PS3 app store in the console’s future?

Update: A couple of informative comments below observe that there is a way to get iPlayer on the 360 via WMV download and Media Center; and that Sky Player is Silverlight-based and coming to Xbox. So it is not game over yet.

adobe, eclipse, flash, microsoft, silverlight, software development, web authoring

The desktop versus web application debate

8 Comments

I posted a piece entitled Desktop applications are dead which attracted the following comment:

Web apps have plenty of cons too. You seem to only be looking to the Pros.

There’s something in it; though the article is a little more nuanced than its title. There’s also another debate to be had around the question of what a web application really is. If thousands of lines of JavaScript are executing on the client, is it a web app? If it is running in Flash or Silverlight is it a web app? If it is running out of browser (Adobe AIR, Silverlight, JavaFX) has it crossed the border to become a desktop app? This last case is particularly interesting, since although something like AIR should probably be categorised as desktop, its programming model is normally that of a web application with an offline cache.

The semantic discussion can distract from the real issues. The ascendancy of web applications has a lot to teach software developers. The enforced simplicity, even crudeness, in the user interface of early web applications brought some surprising benefits: users generally liked the minimalist approach and ease of navigation. The page model, intended for documents, turns out to work for applications as well.

Another big lesson: users value zero-install extremely highly. The routine of go to the web page – run the app is easy to understand. Some find it easier than finding an application shortcut in the Windows Start menu, and that is after the potentially painful business of running setup.

Still, I am slipping into reiterating the advantages of web apps. What about their cons? What about the pros of desktop applications?

I still use desktop applications a great deal: Microsoft Office, Live Writer, Foobar, Visual Studio, Eclipse, all the things I listed in 10 Mac alternatives to Windows utilities. Doesn’t that prove that desktop applications are still important?

It does; but there is an important qualification. None of these are line of business applications of the type which occupy so much of the time of corporate software developers and contractors.

The real point: if there is a discussion about whether a particular project should be implemented as a desktop or web application, it is not the web application advocates who need to make their case. Rather, it is the desktop advocates who need to show the particular reasons (which may be good ones) why only a traditional local install will do.

It is also important to follow the curve on the graph. The list of things that can only be done by desktop applications gets shorter with every upgrade to the web platform – whether you think of that as HTML/AJAX, Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, or [insert your favourite web technology].

Ten years ago, a web version of Photoshop seemed an unlikely prospect. Today, here it is. Office and email is going the same way, even if it is not quite ready for all of us; Microsoft will have to accept that or lose its business.

I don’t follow Rich Internet Applications with such interest because they are cool, but because they are the future of the client – and increasingly the present as well.

beatles, general

The Beatles, iTunes, and 09 09 09

Apple (computer) held a press event yesterday, one that had been buzzed extensively ahead of time. The date was 9th September 2009, or 09/09/09, and the same date as the worldwide release of the Beatles remasters. The date ties in with a song on Let it Be, One after 909, and a song on the White Album called Revolution 9.

Despite the enduring popularity of the band, the Beatles music is not available on iTunes … yet. Naturally, the pundits foresaw a Beatlish announcement.

It seemed obvious; but doubts were raised when the official invitations went out. The invitations bore a lyric not from Lennon and/or McCartney, but rather from the Rolling Stones: It’s only rock and roll, but we like it.

As it turned out, Apple (computer) announced new iPods and an update to iTunes, but there was nothing about the Beatles.

What goes on? It’s now clear that the remastered Beatles were headed for iTunes – and probably still are – but whatever deal was in place fell through. The first evidence was a rapidly withdrawn comment from Yoko Ono shortly before the press event. Now we have confirmation from Bob Smeaton, who created mini-documentaries that are included with the new CDs:

Originally what happened was, the albums were going to be released on iTunes but that deal, you know, fell through for whatever reason. Some sort of political reason. So we actually set about creating a mini-documentary for each of the albums, so that when you bought the albums on iTunes, if you bought the whole album, because on iTunes you can pick like one song, right, if you bought the whole album, as an incentive to buy the whole album rather than just to cherry-pick songs, you would get this mini-documentary.

Indeed, this idea of bonus non-musical content that you get when purchasing an entire album from iTunes was announced yesterday. The concept is imaginatively called the iTunes LP – but only a few examples are available so far, just six according to Cult of Mac – Dylan’s Highway 61, The Doors 40th anniversary hits, American Beauty by the Grateful Dead, and albums by the Dave Matthews Band, Tyrese Gibson and Norah Jones. Pretty unexciting, especially when compared to a might-have-been announcement of all the Beatles albums appearing on iTunes for the first time and in the snazzy new format.

Of course you can have the Beatles in iTunes if you want to. Just buy the CDs and import them; and I’ve heard tell of other methods that fall foul of copyright.

Still, it seems Apple (computer) vs Apple (corps) is not quite over yet. No wonder Steve Jobs chose a lyric from that other Sixties band to launch the iTunes LP.

amazon, internet, web authoring

Amazon’s sneakernet for the cloud

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I’m not writing as much about Amazon Web Services as I once did – not because they are less interesting, but because they are so successful and well covered. Still, one thing that did catch my eye recently is the new import/export feature, now in beta. The idea seems contrary at first: deliver or export data from your Amazon internet storage using the latest variant of sneakernet – copy stuff to a drive, and take it physically to the destination.

The thing is, copying data over the Internet is relatively slow and expensive. Once the volume of data gets beyond a certain point, it is cheaper to transport a hard drive. I remember Sun telling me the same thing in relation to its data centers: for large volumes of data, the most cost effective way to shift it is on a truck.

Amazon’s system is not normally on that scale, but it is the same principle: you send them a portable hard drive. There’s even a handy chart explaining how much data you need for this to be worth doing:

Available Internet Connection Theoretical Min. Number of Days to Transfer 1TB at 80% Network Utilization When to Consider AWS Import/Export?
T1 (1.544Mbps) 82 days 100GB or more
10Mbps 13 days 600GB or more
T3 (44.736Mbps) 3 days 2TB or more
100Mbps 1 to 2 days 5TB or more
1000Mbps Less than 1 day 60TB or more

The cost? $80 per storage device, plus $2.49 per data-loading hour.

Many home and small business users have ADSL with a maximum upload speed of 1Mb – slower than anything considered on the chart above. If you have a large database or media collection to put on S3, sneakernet soon makes sense.

facebook, google, security, twitter, web authoring

O2 router attack shows danger of staying logged in

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Concerned about web security? One thing that may prove more valuable than any amount of supposed security software (anti-virus and the like) is the simple good practice of logging out of web sites at the end of each session.

Here’s the reason. Let’s say you are logged into some site – could be Facebook, or Google, or the admin screen on your router, and you’ve left checked the option that says “keep me logged in”. Then you visit some other site. The vast majority of web pages today run JavaScript code in the background, and these scripts execute on your computer, not on the web server. What if one of those scripts sends a request to a site where you are logged in? The request comes from your computer, so it looks like you to the web site. If you are unlucky, the script will be able to perform any action you could perform, but without your awareness – such as changing your password, or reading confidential information.

For this hack to work, a couple of things need to have gone wrong:

1. You are running a malicious script. This implies that the site you are visiting has been hacked, or has a vulnerability such as forum software which allows users to post content that might trigger a script. Even a link to an image in a forum post might be sufficient.

2. The site where you are logged in doesn’t make any additional checks on the source of the script. Although it is running on your computer, the HTTP request generally includes referrer data, revealing the URL of the page from which the script came. By checking this value, the site can figure out that there is something wrong. Another idea is to have unpredictable URLs for sensitive data.

Still, you’ll notice that neither of these things are under your control, whereas generally the option to log out of a site is under your control. Even that might not always be true – a developer could code a site without an option to log out – but that is unusual.

The O2 attack referenced above exploits this flaw to get into your router admin, if you are running an O2-supplied broadband router. It is a huge vulnerability, since if the router is re-configured a wide range of further attacks are possible. One example is DNS poisoning, where familiar URLs might take you to malicious destinations. It could also disable firewall protection and redirect external requests to one of your home or small business PCs – very nasty.

Here’s a couple of things that will improve security:

1. Don’t use the broadband supplier’s equipment, if it is not entirely under your control. Use your own; turn off universal pnp, change the admin password, don’t stay logged into the admin.

2. Don’t stay logged into any site which matters. Even sites which don’t appear to matter can be a security risk, if they expose passwords or security questions that you use elsewhere, for example. Personally I always log out of Facebook, Google and Twitter, for example, even though sites like these should be aware of the risks and be coded appropriately – they mostly are, but mistakes happen.

Unfortunately many sites encourage you to stay logged in, because it reduces the friction of using the site. Still, there are compromises which work. I notice with Amazon for example, that it uses cookies to give you personalized information even when not logged in, but displays password prompts with boring regularity for actions that spend money – though Amazon also advises you to log out completely if using a public or shared computer.

microsoft, windows

Why you probably don’t want to buy Microsoft SBS 2008 Premium CALs

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I’ve been trying to figure out licensing for Microsoft’s Small Business Server 2008. It’s somewhat perplexing. There are two editions, Standard and Premium, but you can apparently use Standard CALs with the Premium SBS. The Premium edition offers two extra features over the Standard:

1. A second server license for Windows Server 2008.

2. SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition.

So what’s the difference between Standard and Premium CALs? First of all, price. A pack of 5 standard CALs is $385 full retail, while 5 Premium CALs is $945 – that’s 245% more, real money.

But what else? You would have thought that a Premium CAL would be needed to access Premium SBS, but this is not the case. The Pricing page says:

Microsoft offers several flexible licensing options to allow for complete scalability of your cost in relation to your usage, including various CAL quantities to suit your specific needs as well as the ability to purchase SBS 2008 CAL Suite for Premium Users or Devices for only those users or devices accessing the “premium” features.

OK, so what are the “premium” features? Does this mean anyone accessing the second server? Apparently not. The Licensing FAQ says:

The Windows Small Business Server 2008 CAL Suite for Premium Users or Devices should be purchased for only those users or devices accessing the SQL Server 2008 Standard for Small Business shipped as part of Windows Small Business Server 2008 Premium server software.

Now we are getting there. It seems that the “premium features” boil down to just one feature: SQL Server 2008 Standard.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that SBS 2008 can be used by a maximum of 75 users; and that Microsoft offers a free version of SQL Server 2008 called Express which is limited to using a single processor, 1GB RAM and 4GB maximum database size.

It follows that small businesses only need Premium CALs if they are running a SQL Server 2008 application that is beyond the capabilities of Express, and even then only for those users who access that application.

SBS 2008 Premium Edition comes with 5 Premium CALs and costs $1899 full retail, vs $1089 full retail for the Standard Edition. Real-world prices are likely to be less.

My conclusion is that Premium Edition plus Standard CALs is good value if you can make use of the second server, whereas Premium Edition with Premium CALs (beyond the bundled 5) is poor value for the majority of small businesses, who simply do not need those SQL CALs.

Microsoft could make this much clearer by striking out all the references to “Premium features” in its publicity for SBS 2008, and replacing it with “SQL Server 2008 Standard” – unless it is hoping to sell Premium CALs to customers who do not need them.

microsoft, windows

Microsoft’s confusing web sites

Scott Barnes draws attention to this study which compares the usability of the Apple vs the Microsoft web sites.

Some things are bad for so long that you stop complaining about them. This is one of them. Let’s acknowledge though that there are mitigating factors:

  • Microsoft is a huge organisation, has a vast number of products, and creating a coherent web presence that covers everything is a monumental task.
  • The goals and technical abilities of visitors to Microsoft’s web properties vary enormously.
  • Staying up-to-date is a challenge.

Against that though, Microsoft is in the IT business and supplies both web design and web server technology; it regularly talks up the importance of “user experience” and must be aware that potential users will judge to some extent by what they find.

I use “web sites” in the plural because there are many Microsoft web sites. Perhaps there should be one; but as the referenced study observes, there are numerous different designs. There are different domains too, such as Silverlight.net, ASP.Net and so on.

Take my experience this morning for example. My question: how many processors are supported by Windows Small Business Server 2008? My Google search got me to here, an overview showing the two editions, Standard and Premium. I clicked Compare Features and got to here, which says I have to visit the Server 2008 web site to find out more about the “Server 2008 product technologies”. I click the link, and now I am looking at info on Server 2008 R2 – only I know already that SBS is based on the original Server 2008, not the R2 version. It’s not clear where to go next, other than back to Google.

Some general observations, after clicking around various SBS sites (I had some other questions too):

  • It’s hard to get past the marketing blather to clear information
  • Too many links lead to menu pages with further links – sometimes it feels like an endless loop
  • I found lots of information in the future tense, clearly prepared before launch and not updated
  • Regionalisation is poor. You can start on the UK site but end up with pricing and availability information applicable only to the US
  • There’s a Technet site as well as a general site and the differentiation is not clear. I suppose the general site is meant to be more business/marketing focused, but there’s plenty of overlap
  • In general pages are too busy with each one offering a splurge of choices
  • Some things are just inherently confusing – like the CAL policy, which has four different types of CAL (user and device in combination with standard and premium) that can be mixed and matched: you can use standard CALs with SBS Premium if they are not used with “Premium features”. Whoever dreamt that up has never worked in a small business.

Clearly this is not a simple problem to solve. At the same time, it is hard to understand why it is so bad. It is a large company problem: maybe too much bureaucracy, conflicting kingdoms, little budget following initial launch, everyone knows it is a problem but nobody knows who should be fixing it, that kind of thing.

Incidentally, I think the processor limit is actually the same in SBS 2008 Standard as in Server 2008 Standard R2, and this chart shows it to be 4 sockets. In other words, you can have up to four physical processors and still benefit from multiple cores. Probably.

database, open source, oracle, Sun

Why the EU should not worry about Oracle and MySQL

The European Commission is examining Oracle’s acquisition of Sun and has concerns about the implications for MySQL:

Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said: “The Commission has to examine very carefully the effects on competition in Europe when the world’s leading proprietary database company proposes to take over the world’s leading open source database company. In particular, the Commission has an obligation to ensure that customers would not face reduced choice or higher prices as a result of this takeover. Databases are a key element of company IT systems. In the current economic context, all companies are looking for cost-effective IT solutions, and systems based on open-source software are increasingly emerging as viable alternatives to proprietary solutions. The Commission has to ensure that such alternatives would continue to be available”.

The most remarkable thing about this investigation is that it exists. One of the supposed benefits of open source is that, come what may, your product cannot be abandoned at the whim of some commercial giant; you have the code, and as long as a viable community of users and developers exists, its future is in your hands. So why is the EU worried?

The issue I suppose is that while Oracle cannot remove code from the community, it would have it in its power to disrupt MySQL – in fact, that is happening already. It could refuse to invest in further development, and encourage customers with support agreements to move to the latest Oracle solution instead. I am not saying that is likely; I have no idea what Oracle plans, and it already owns Innobase, which supplies the most widely-used transactional engine for MySQL, without obvious adverse affects.

Still, it is important to think clearly about the case. I’ve just been talking to Simon Cattlin at Ingres, who is using the opportunity to mention that worried MySQL customers are making enquiries at his company. He also argues that the EU’s intervention proves the increasing importance of open source technology.

That latter point is true; but there is some doublethink going on here. There are two sides to MySQL. On one side it’s powering a zillion mostly non-critical web applications for free, while on the other it is a serious business contender covered by support contracts. It is all the free users that make it “the world’s leading open source database company”, not the relatively small number of commercial licensees; and it was Sun’s failure to shift users from one to the other that accounted (among other things) for its decline.

So which of these groups is the EU concerned about? If it’s the free users, I don’t think it should worry too much. The existing product works, the community will maintain it, and forks are already appearing, not least MariaDB from a company started by MySQL creator Monty Widenius.

On the other hand, if it is the Enterprise users, I don’t think the EU should worry either, because it is not a big enough deal to warrant anti-competitive concerns. Cattlin told me that Ingres actually had higher revenue that MySQL at the time of the Sun takeover.

It makes no sense to conflate the free and commercial users into one, and use the number of free users to justify action which mainly concerns the commercial users.

That said, it’s true that having an open source product owned and mainly developed by a commercial company is always somewhat uncomfortable. One of the reasons the Apache web server succeeds is because it belongs to an independent foundation. There is rarely a clean separation between what is commercial and what is open source though: the money has to come from somewhere, and entities like Apache and Eclipse survive on staff and funds contributed by profit-making companies.

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logitech, multimedia, spotify

Logitech Squeezebox Radio has social features, unsocial price

Logitech has announced the Squeezebox Radio, similar in concept to the Squeezebox Boom which I reviewed earlier this year, but smaller, cheaper, and with a colour screen. It’s set to go on sale soon at $199.00.

 

The Squeezebox Radio has a trendy new feature: Facebook integration:

Say you just discovered a new track listening to Pandora® on your Squeezebox Radio. Now you can tell your friends about it instantly. You can display your Facebook page right on the screen; and send music recommendations to your Facebook friends the moment you hear that amazing new track.

There’s no remote included as standard, but a $50 accessory pack will provide both a remote and a rechargeable battery, for portable use (but don’t go too far, because it depends on a wi-fi connection).

I am a big fan of the Squeezebox system, though it is not the easiest thing to explain in a few words. It’s interesting that Logitech is choosing to emphasise the internet radio aspect – handy for UK listeners threatened with the loss of FM – rather than the networked music player using a local server that is the original Squeezebox concept. I’ve used Squeezebox in conjunction with a Napster all-you-can-eat subscription, and the combination works very well indeed. Logitech needs to support Spotify, which has faster start-up and more mindshare than Napster. It’s a logical move for both companies. Facebook support on the other hand I can live without.

The snag with selling this as a radio is that it looks very expensive for what it is. $199 for a radio with Facebook support? The high price together with the complexity of setting up SqueezeCenter (if you do) is what holds the system back.

Logitech Squeezebox Radio on Amazon.com (Black)

Logitech Squeezebox Radio on Amazon.com (Red)

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apple, blogging, microsoft, twitter, windows, windows 7

10 Mac alternatives to Windows utilities

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I’ve been spending an extended time on the Mac in order to explore Snow Leopard. As far as possible, I’ve done all my work on the Mac since its release. The trial will be over soon … but in the meantime I’m sharing notes on some of the utilities I used for tasks I normally do on Windows, in no particular order.

1 Capturing screenshots

On Windows I press PrintScreen or Alt-PrintScreen (for the current window), then paste into an ancient copy of Paint Shop Pro 5.0 for trimming and re-sizing. No, it’s not PhotoShop, but it loads in a blink.

For the Mac I use Ctrl-Command-Shift-3 (whole screen) or Ctrl-Command-Shift-4 (selectable area) which adds a screenshot to the clipboard. Then I use the latest Preview, which has a File – New from Clipboard option. I love Preview – it has tools for further trimming and resizing, and when you save it shows the file size as you select different formats. Since I often want to minimise the size for a web page, it’s ideal.

2 Secure file transfer

I avoid FTP for security reasons, so on Windows I normally use WinSCP for secure file transfer.

On the Mac I use Fugu, and of the two I prefer it.

3 Word processing

On Windows I use Microsoft Word. On the Mac I mainly use NeoOffice, which actually felt a bit nicer than its parent, OpenOffice. I also spent some time with Word 2008 (good for compatibility, but slow) and Apple’s Pages from iWork 09. One nice feature of Pages, for journalism, is the stats window that shows the word count as you type.

4 Web browsing

I used Safari, in order to get the most complete Apple experience. I’m getting to like the Top Sites feature, though it’s hardly essential, especially the way it shows at a glance which pages have changed.

5 Sound editing

On Windows I use Audacity. On the Mac I use … Audacity, though for some reason I found it slightly less smooth.

6 Playing FLAC

Apple is still stubbornly refusing to support FLAC in iTunes or Quicktime. My solution was Songbird, a great alternative, which supports FLAC straight out of the box, or rather download.

For converting to FLAC I used MacFLAC, though I found it less than robust. I missed dbPowerAmp (Windows).

7 Remote desktop

I find Remote Desktop invaluable for managing servers. On the Mac I used the official Remote Desktop client, which worked well though it falls slightly short of the Windows version (perhaps this is a policy!).

8 Twitter

I use Twhirl on both Mac and Windows, an Adobe AIR application. One oddity (getting picky): the font spacing is slightly better on Windows. In the word Blog, for example, there is too much space between the B and the l, but only on the Mac.

9 Email

I never thought I’d say I missed Outlook, but I did. The thing is, after much experimentation I’ve found a permutation that works really well on Windows: 64-bit Windows and Outlook 2007 SP2 in online mode (only for a desktop, of course).

On the Mac I use Mail, but I’ve found it less than satisfactory even though I run Exchange 2007 with all the required configuration.

10 Blog authoring

On Windows I use Live Writer, which is superb.

On the Mac I write posts (like this one) in the WordPress online editor. I don’t like it as much, but it does the job.

11 Bridge

Now this one is a problem :-). I find JackBridge ideal for those moments when I need a break from work. It won this year’s World Champion computer bridge contest.

The Mac is not so well served, but I have trialled Bridge Baron and found it not bad at all.