Archive for January, 2010

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gClouds and iDevices

The recent unveiling of the Apple iPad is portent for the evolution for Mac OS X towards the iPhone OS. Existing iPhone apps will run on the iPad, with presumably the same App Store model. Apple has also (carefully, purposely) not included Adobe Flash support for the iPhone and now the iPad. This implies that Apple is deadly serious about creating a third party developer ecosystem that is tied to its own SDK, licensing, runtime and payment mechanism.

While Webkit and Safari remain at the forefront of web, HTML5 and Javascript support, given the evolution of Apple devices and custom interface gestures (e.g. pinch, expand, hold, etc.) as well as new revenue models through App Store downloads and in-app purchases, there is an emerging Dilemma for software developers and small companies to consider.

Do you want to be in the cloud or on the device? Read the rest of this entry »

Posted on January 30th 2010 in ideas, insights | No Comments »

UI-driven Database Snapshot & Restore

For most people, backing application databases is usually (touch wood) a one-way operation. You take your precautionary measures, employ some kind of hosted or scripted backup solution, and hope that you only infrequently, if ever, have to restore from an old database.

But, what if you want to take a database snapshot at any time, keep a list of such snapshots and restore at will from any of them at any time? And you want to do it from the UI? Sounds far-fetched?

Here is one scenario.

  1. Your sales guy has lined up multiple demos for your app and he wants to tailor the data and demo aspects for each client.
  2. Your dev team is too busy to spend time crafting a whole new admin console just to make a whiz-bang demo.
  3. ssh? mysqldump? redirect output? >, < #@*?

With Rails and Rake, here is how you can make your sales guy happy and get him to buy you some Mai Tais. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted on January 7th 2010 in hacking | No Comments »