Archive for April, 2010
Apple States Position on Flash
Posted by Dave Jesch in Technology on April 29, 2010
Apple President Steve Jobs released an open letter describing their position on Flash.
The letter states numerous areas where Apple feels that Flash “falls short” and therefore why Apple does not wish to make it available to user’s of Apple products, like the iPhone and iPad.
Among the many comments, Jobs states that Flash is not very secure but there are other reasons such as performance and reliability as well as not being very friendly for low-power devices. I personally don’t know Flash so I can’t speak very well to its security. But I’ve worked for a very large software security company and one thing I’ve noticed about security is that most platforms are only as secure as the software being developed for them. You can have a very secure platform, but if non-secure software is installed on it then it doesn’t matter what the platform is — you’ve got holes. This means that Flash itself could be very secure — or not, but the applications written on it play a very large part in how secure their environment is going to be.
Java is a bit different. (And I’m talking Java here, not Javascript.) Unlike Flash, I have worked with Java before. Out of the box, the security layer in Java basically blocks everything. The developer has to take steps in order to consciously make an applet less secure. This is a good tactic to take. Default to “deny all,” rather than “deny none and let the developer make things more secure if he wants to.” Why is this better? Because most developers don’t think about security. They’re more concerned about getting the project done. Make it work first and worry about the fine points later. And in many cases, the fine points include performance, reliability and then security…in about that order.
The other points that Jobs makes about Flash are regarding web standards. He states that Flash is not an open standard, whereas the other web standards that the iPhone does support (such as HTML, CSS and Javascript) are open. This is interesting to me, since the iPhone OS is not open. But his position is that there shouldn’t be third party layer (in this case, Flash) coming between the developer and the iPhone OS.
I can certainly appreciate that position. Software development is difficult enough. Add in a third party’s software and their development and delivery schedule (not to mention potential bugs in their new release) to your own project’s development cycle and things can get out of hand quickly. It’s happened to me before when working on a project being developed in Java. A new version of Java was released during our development cycle. We had to implement and test with the new Java release because we knew it was possible that our customers would use it if it were available. It wasn’t much of a hit on the development side of things — few changes were necessary. But it certainly did take time to do the testing. Time that could have been spent testing other parts of the system. So speaking from experience, third party software can certainly have an effect on the development cycle.
I already knew that Flash was not going to be supported on the iPhone/iPad OS; but having a clear position statement such as Jobs’ letter certainly clears the air about the situation. I’m sure it’s in response to a lot of chatter and complaining from the development community. But the bottom line is that the iPhone is Apple’s. If they don’t want to support something, they don’t have to. But a clear position such as this at least will quiet some of the complaining. Well, maybe.
More WordPress
Posted by Dave Jesch in WordPress on April 27, 2010
This must be the WordPress weekend.
I went to the OC WordPress Meetup group meeting this evening. I heard about the group at the OC WordCamp and figured it would be a good group to join. It was a good meeting. Some of the people from the WordCamp were there — notably the guys who organized it, Jeff and Brandon.
The meeting was hosted by Steve Zehngut — who was also one of the speakers at OC WordCamp. It was his presentation on WordPress plugin development that I heard about the meetup group. He ran a pretty tight ship, keeping the meeting moving along so that all the people presenting were able to say what they came to say.
The main topics of discussion were the WordPress 3.0 Beta, The Thesis Theme (three different presenters discussing various topics regarding the theme), and a quick discussion by Steve about how to add a custom panel, or meta window to the WordPress page editor. There was also quite a bit of discussion about the new Facebook “Like” button. This discussion touched on not only how to implement the button on a site, but the security and privacy issues and concerns about the button.
As always, I learned a few things. That’s why I like going to these — there’s always something more to learn. But it’s also good to meet with other professionals and pick their brains about technology.
OC WordCamp
Posted by Dave Jesch in WordPress on April 25, 2010
I had the opportunity to attend the Orange County WordCamp event at UCI yesterday.
There were a bunch of really good speakers covering a wide variety of topics, from beginning plugin development through how to create and manage a premium WordPress plugin.
There was also a session on how to to hire and manage a developer, which as a developer myself I found very interesting. The presenter, Steve Zehngul, gave lots of tips (from both the developer’s point of view as well as the hiring client point of view) on the interview process, scoping out the work and project management.
Overall, I felt it was a great event. Lots of information and I was able to meet and talk with a lot of other very knowledgeable WordPress people. Definitely time well spent. All the session will be available as streaming video next week and I’m looking forward to seeing some of them that I missed.
Facebook Extends Protocol
Posted by Dave Jesch in Technology on April 22, 2010
Facebook announced yesterday that it has extended it’s Protocol APIs to allow developers access to their Open Graph Protocol. Most Facebook users know this as the “Like” button that they see on other users’ walls and news feeds. This move extends a user’s ability to mark the kinds of things they like across the Internet, rather than just on the Facebook website itself.
To make use of this new feature, Developers can add a single line of HTML code that makes use of the Open Graph API. Users then click on the link to indicate their preference of that content, instantly adding it to their list of other activity on their news feed. When other Facebook users visit the site, they can then see what their friends like — increasing social interaction on other web sites.
This means that a user’s identity and preferences are no longer confined to the Facebook site itself. It’s now an Internet-wide feature.
Early adopters of the feature include the popular movie website, IMDB has already implemented the new feature. A “Like” button can now be seen on every movie listed on the site. Yelp!, the product and service recommendation site in another adopter.
I think this is a huge win. By encouraging interaction with other web sites, Facebook is further entrenching themselves in their users’ Internet experience. Not only does this make it even easier for users to interact socially on the Facebook site, but it makes other web developers conscious of Facebook APIs. If they implement this feature to interact with Facebook, then implementing other features is the logical next step. The more interaction between any web site and Facebook, the more Facebook is involved in the web development environment to the exclusion of other Social Networks. And that can’t be a bad thing for Facebook.
SEO Workshop
Posted by Dave Jesch in Technology on April 15, 2010
I had the opportunity to attend an SEO Workshop this evening entitled “Advanced Link Building Strategies” hosted by Steve Wiideman (twitter: @seosteve Website: SEOExpert.tv).
The workshop presented lots of great information on link building strategies. Steve obviously really knows his SEO stuff. I can highly recommend his workshops if you ever get the opportunity to attend one.
During his presentation, he outlined eight areas that you can concentrate on to obtain all-important inbound links from other web sites. Rather than focusing on techniques and trying to get mass numbers of links, Steve recommends following strategies — a well thought out plan for getting inbound links over time. Since the search engines track the number of links over time, a strategy for obtaining these links month after month will give you much better results in the long tun.
I think the most interesting part of the presentation came at the end. Each attendee had the opportunity to tell the group about their own web site. Then Steve and everyone else discussed ideas based on the strategies outlined in the presentation on ways that one could increase their visibility and draw in traffic to their site. So not only were some great strategies presented, but practical application of them were openly discussed. The result was that everyone in the room walked away with action items for their own web sites. This kind of real hands-on information could be worth hundreds of dollars if you were contracting with an SEO consulting firm. It made the entire workshop extremely valuable.
I won’t go into all the strategies, as Steve holds his workshop quite often. If you’d like specific information about his strategies, you should go to his web site and download his eBook and try to attend one of his workshop. Its well worth your time.
