Category: Mobile

App store hell…

~ michael_msft ~ 3 Comments

I have written about this before and just had another experience with Apple that reminds me how broken the whole process is.

First off Google is broken but in another way – Google let’s everyone and everybody publish anything – you can steal an app, pirate content and break lots of rules but you can still publish on the Play Store until someone alerts Google. Then they may take it down but not always. Google should change their process to vetting every first time app from each developer. They check the app and if cool it hits the store. If is is not cool the developer needs to address it. If they don’t address it the app is not published and this bad mark, so to speak, is remembered. Developer tries to publish another app under the same account and the same process is repeated. Once said developer is allowed to publish a valid app then Google let’s that developer publish without anymore reviews. This would help, but not alleviate, some of the crap in the Play Store. It won’t fix it but at least create some barriers to entry. God knows there are enough apps.

On the Apple side the issue is broken the other direction. Here we have an app that has been around for a few years and still go through the same process as a new app or new developer. We have the normal review time and all that jazz. What is worse is our history means nothing and Apple does make mistakes. Their reviewers don’t always read the notes and reject the app due to not reading the notes. We lose days when this happens. Then we have to either leave rejection comments or republish the app – thus waiting the same review period. Developers should go through the review for a new app and maybe till the .2 or .3 release. Then Apple should let the developers publish at will until they do something wrong or break a rule. Then they are back to square one with some rules for getting out of the review doghouse. Not saying this is a perfect solution but something is better than waiting a week or sometimes two to publish an update to a mature app due to reviewer incompetence.

Let’s also note that this review process does not ensure quality around apps or keep the crap from proliferating in the App Store. Tons of crap and zombie apps in the App Store.

Either way I am baffled that two companies making billions off of phones and apps can’t spend some time fixing the developer process. Just Silly.

iCarsclub :: Review

~ michael_msft ~ 16 Comments

I have been quite vocal about my experience with http://www.icarsclub.com because I was looking forward to taking advantage of it in Singapore. People outside of Singapore may not know that owning a car in Singapore is for rich folks or people who don’t mind 1/3 of everything they make going to towards their car. I see in my own condo building, not high end, very expensive cars that look to be rarely driven. I am sure these folks are car poor cause if I had that kind of money I would probably be living in a bigger pad. In Singapore some locals choose to live cheap but own a car – I guess some sort of status symbol of sorts. All that being said though, it is nice to be able to get in a car once in a while, especially when one has a family. Sometimes the public transit thing is just a lot of work if one wants to roam around town on errands or go somewhere slightly further than normal – like the Kranji countryside for example. Taxis are okay in Singapore but if you were to use one all day it would be cheaper to rent a car – even UberX is awesome (prices in Singapore are the same as a taxi right now) but yet using Uber all day would still be more than renting a car.

So the idea that I can share someone else’s car for a day at reasonable rates without the hassle of dealing with a rental car company is appealing. Enter iCarsclub. Find a car near you, rent it online, go drive it and return it. Sounds great but what I discovered is the promise is so much better than the execution. I will add I successfully rented a car yesterday and all in all was a great experience but the issue is dealing with the service and the company – not the driving experience.

The way it works with iCarsclub is to go online to their site and submit the docs you need to get verified to rent cars. No biggie – it says it takes 3 days. Right. It actually took 3 weeks to get approved which I assume is just cause there is either a backlog or no one working on it. The frustrating part is when I used their support to check in on things – there was never any reply. To this day actually not one support email has been answered. Then I took to twitter – no replies. Left a message on their Facebook page – no replies. Again – to this day there has never been any replies to any of my social media messages. None.

Approved and ready to rock I started to find a car. The selection is actually pretty good and I was surprised to find some pretty cool cars but I was looking for cheap and no too far away from me. This is where I found the service to be badly implemented in that it looks like pretty much all cars are always available but what happens is that the owners of the cars are not blocking their own usage. It only shows when someone else has rented the car. For the first car I rented, which means you have to pay all the fees associated with it – will discuss the payment stuff more later, everything appeared to work fine. Yet moments after reserving the car and paying for it the system would sms tell me the owner rejected my request. Of course being the ass that I am I would sms the owner back to ask why – first owner said his car was in use every Sunday and I asked him why he didn’t block it as so. He said he wasn’t aware of needing to do that. So the owners are just accepting or rejecting based on their schedule versus updating the system to say the car is blocked. Lame. What’s lamer is I as the user can’t leave a review on that car since one can only leave reviews when you have rented the car already. This is silly.

So minutes later I found another car, I got the refund from the last attempt which is not a refund but a credit to the rental account. This is not a huge deal but when you get rejected a lot this could be frustrating but it seems there is a way to force a refund but I didn’t try it. The next rental went the same way – the user rejected it mins later. I again sms’d them and the owner said they were using the car for personal use. Again I asked why they didn’t block it and they didn’t reply. It seems the owners are not at all aware of how to use the system properly.

Finally I rented a car and everything was confirmed for Sunday at 2pm. Around Sunday at 12 I sms’d the owner to confirm pickup spot. Owner replied that he had canceled the rental due to car trouble. Did I get a cancellation message – no. Owner said to call iCarsclub but I didn’t have a number. No where in all the emails and sms’s did I see a number. While this was happening someone called me from iCarsclub. A no caller ID call that I almost didn’t pick up – I don’t get why they can’t use caller ID so that one can at least see a number and call back. I answered and they said they were canceling the car and the money would be back in my account and that I would need to find another car.

Since I finally had someone on the line I decide to go all in and ask what the fuck was wrong with them.

Let me summarize some of this:

Q/A –

Why is no one responding to FB or twitter :: They don’t think they need to reply to social media. Plus they are busy opening China.

Why does no one respond to the online help system (powered by Zopim) :: They never got any emails from me. (I sent 4).

Why do the owners constantly cancel versus blocking their cars :: They probably don’t know how or are lazy.

Why can’t we complain in same way about these owners :: They don’t want any bad feedback about owners since they may leave the system.

Isn’t the users renting just as important as the owners when it comes to service :: No comment.

I tried to dig in more but the guy obviously didn’t know much and said he would try to find another car and sms where it was. I still needed to go online and book it.

Which I did and the request was confirmed by the owner. He sms’d me to say where is was, same as what the system was saying, and that it would be unlocked with the keys in the glove box. Now this is where it is weird in that with a country like Singapore this might work but in most countries I would want that car locked until it unlocked for me. How else would you know you are safe or that someone did not tamper with the car resulting in some damage that I might have to pay for. For this transaction it was on a nice street and in broad daylight but who would want to rent a car at night that was unlocked for example? Not me. This is where I am not sure if they don’t have the tech to remote unlock and lock stuff or if this is just how the owner does it. It worked in this situation but I don’t think this is scalable or would work outside of ultra safe countries like Singapore.

I grabbed the car and settled in. One thing I forgot was to get my own cash card for ERP and parking – I don’t remember this being in the tutorial but is pretty important in Singapore since pretty hard to get around without it. Fortunately I could stop into any gas station and buy one. Small Singapore formality that cannot be forgotten. I used the car almost all day and even extended it by 30 mins cause we were late getting home.

The return consisted of parking it back on the street in that same place and putting the keys back where I found them. Of course the car was unlocked since that is how I found it. I did use the system to end the time and stop the insurance but this did not involve remote locking it. Once again I see where this could be problematic – what if someone stole it right after me or took something from it. My time would be marked as over but would it come back on me in any way? The system should do remote lock and unlock or something more secure.

It cost me bout 85 SGD for everything. I don’t know how that compares to a car rental – I need to check but my experience with any car rental is this was less hassle. All of our trips on public transit would obviously be much less but I don’t think we could have covered the same ground by bus and train in the same time period. Taxi’s or uber covering all the same ground would be much more. A combo of transit and uber would be much less and doable but still the hassle factor is much higher.

So this worked for me. I got to use a car for a part of the day. We will most likely do it again and I don’t think there is another option besides iCarsclub but this product could use a lot of help. On the payments since this service suffers from what a lot of services in Singapore suffer from – they only accept PayPal for credit cards via PayPal. No drama since credit cards are the norm here but the process is so cumbersome and web only. Payments in Singapore for online services need some competition from the likes of Strip and others ASAP.

ICarsclub needs to hire some real product folks to make this work.

AWS does need to get a mobile story together

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

I am a big fan of AWS but I will call a spade a spade – their mobile services suck but really they just don’t have any.

Good article on the current situation is here :: http://gigaom.com/2014/07/08/cloud-favorite-aws-is-finally-ready-to-join-the-mobile-development-services-party/

We love AWS at Spuul and wouldn’t be here without it. Yes – you can find cheaper services to run virtual machines on – we know that but when it comes to running a global service with servers we can spin up around the globe – I still think AWS has no equals. None.

However doing some simple things on AWS for mobile is well – not simple. We tried to build our push messaging stack around it and we hit too many walls and had our messages capped per day. AWS had no concept of our user base and the ability for us to buy messages in volume. We went to PushWoosh cause it was simple and cheap. Everything else we do we hand roll behind an API that we run on AWS using AWS services. We always try to use a service versus install code on a server so we have less things to support and update. This keeps our admin headcount low. I won’t tell you how low but let’s say it can’t go any lower.

MSFT is doing a good job with mobile services but I have no first hand experience with it but I know they make some things dead simple – like push messaging, among others. AWS is never really dead simple but it works and you know what you are dealing with.

Mobile is the thing and my guess even the next thing is all about – mobile.

AWS needs to up their mobile game.

I am watching.

Any yes – Brazil really did get spanked.

The 3rd one

~ michael_msft ~ 3 Comments

It’s more a question than a statement. All one has to do is watch WWDC and Google I/O to see that Apple and Google are in a league of their own.

I keep thinking that Windows Phone is the one holding on to 3rd place but it seems like they are barely holding on according to this – http://gigaom.com/2014/06/30/windows-phone-sales-are-falling-in-the-u-s-and-china-according-to-new-survey/. Meaning they are only going to get 3rd place cause no one else is doing better than MSFT. Kind of a sad state.

I still think a healthy ecosystem in mobile phones would be the best thing for all of us product folks but of course I say that knowing the truth of the paradox – I am rooting for a 3rd place but I am not using anything or building anything for the runner up. There in lies the issue – if no one builds for #3 then there won’t be a #3. We want there to be one but we are not really supporting anyone right now apart from the two lead dogs.

This is kind of scary.

I played around with Firefox OS some and well – it’s interesting but has a long ways to go before I would use it or build on it.

We can see BlackBerry is still trying, http://crackberry.com/exclusive-pre-release-review-blackberry-passport, but seriously would you buy one of these phones? I wouldn’t. Someone might but I think BB will be a niche hardware maker with an OS not many developers are going to build for. I guess they may eventually make a great takeover target for some Chinese handset maker wanting to hedge their android bets.

So where does that leave the playing field?

Apple and Google getting it all or will MSFT do something cool – other than add folders?

Glimpses of a new, more open Apple

~ michael_msft ~ 2 Comments

One of these days I will make it to the WWDC conference but so far the gods of always conspired against me. I got a ticket last year and gave it up so our iOS dev could go but this year I did not win the lottery and apple refused my request to go as media guy with a huge blog. 😉

Since I didn’t make it I have been watching the videos, reading and talking to our iOS dev who did go. The haters can hate but let’s face it – whether you like Apple or not, one cannot ignore them. For the moment the future of everything mobile is a two horse race with Apple and Google and MSFT doing their best to stay in a distant third position. I for one hope MSFT can even things up a bit which would be good for all of us.

I have written before that there are areas that Google is making Apple look silly and fortunately some of my issues, but not all, were addressed at WWDC.

– App Store to have more data and information about how people go to the apps and better selling details. Awesome news and looking forward to seeing how this beats the info we get from the Google Play.

– Apple is finally opening up in app purchases to a broader set of items. Specifically one can now use consumable purchases for rentals or PPV type media models. This was a glaring omission for years and was frankly just a move to protect iTunes but Apple has changed. Literally post WWDC one can use IAP for creating PPV movie rental apps where prior to WWDC one could not. This has been okay on both the MSFT and Google stores for some time. Apple is playing catchup and I wonder if this point to something new around Apple TV or an entertainment device since now the economics for building PPV like experiences are possible.

– I think the new Swift language is showing that Apple is still a thought leading company that knows the future is in make sure they have good tools to build apps. This is a forward thinking move that I think will pay off for years to come in the iOS development community.

– extensions, continuity and metal – just show that apple is opening up the broad base to developers that can use these frameworks to build things that previously would be impossible on iOS/OS X. This is just killer news and I think no one even knows what new types of apps can be built yet. The future is hard to define now.

I still have some niggles and one of the main ones is payments. Apple is far too draconian in limiting their payments to Apple only in light of the fact that they are doing nothing, absolutely nothing around carrier payments. This is a huge problem for folks like us doing development for apps in emerging markets where we want to charge for things in the app but users don’t have credit cards. Apple could easily fix this by partnering with some on carrier payments or by working with telcos that they are already married that could provide telco payments. Google is slowly doing this but at the same time Google is mostly allowing developers to add their own in the app anyway. Maybe Apple just doesn’t care about the emerging markets yet but I sure wish they did.

Google is up next – and I am sure they are going to answer back on a few of things and push some new stuff of their own.

At the moment – when it comes to mobile ecosystems – these are the only two worth watching when it comes to production apps that want to make money.

have fun

Another tech article written without the tech…

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

I always find that when someone makes some sort of sweeping statement they should at least be able to support their statement with enough technical reasons to make a convincing argument. Usually TNW gets it right but on this one the writer failed pretty miserably.

http://thenextweb.com/dd/2014/04/19/rip-flash-html5-will-take-video-web-year/

First off let’s admit that flash is doing its job with video pretty well which is why it hasn’t died on the desktop as quick as everyone claimed it would. For reliable, secure and performant desktop streaming video – flash is still alive and well and won’t die in 2014. It will die only when there is a satisfactory replacement for it. At the moment there is not.

With OSMF framework players and all the plugin work going on – flash is still powering most of the world’s steaming video and is doing a fine job of it. Flash is not perfect and many would love to replace it, including me, but there is not a suitable production replacement at this time.

Is 2014 the year for flash to die. Not likely.

All this aside it usually helps to understand the tech more and to correctly understand what is keeping flash from dying and what might take its place? Also it is important not to lump mobile and desktop into the same bucket and pretend it’s all the same thing – cause it is not.

For starters mobile was never going to use flash but at the same time mobile is not using HTML 5 as a replacement for it either. Most premium mobile video apps are using native code and players – not HTML 5 anyway. I still feel native offers the better user experience and better streaming but people can always argue otherwise.

However lets cut to the chase as to why desktop is still dominated by flash and why mobile is dominated by native video players – it’s for one simple reason and one the author of the article didn’t even talk about which is security. I will delve into this further but for the moment I will use the term security versus DRM cause in my opinion they are not the same thing. Currently HTML 5 has no cross browser standard for implementing secure streams so that whatever is streamed is not easily stolen. Until this is fixed flash won’t die and native code will trump HTML 5.

I think the most promising work is around MPEG-DASH + CENC common encryption scheme. Dash is a new way of doing streaming media – kind of a better form of apple’s HLS and the CENC work is to come up with a cross browser of way of encrypting it. If you talk to folks in the biz – this and the new h265 stuff are getting the most attention but none of them would promise you a 2014 delivery date. Given that, it is ludicrous to purport that flash will die in 2014 since the replacement for it is not ready.

Now that we have covered that flash is not dead yet it is worth spending some time on the whole DRM debate cause I think it is misunderstood at times. DRM to me is usually associated with the notion of buying some content like a cd or a DVD and being prevented by tech from copying it or watching it wherever you want. I think if you have bought something you should be able to copy or watch where you want but you shouldn’t be able to sell it again, stream it for profit or make copies for others who might sell it. So in my opinion if you buy it and you want to put it online for others to pirate it then it is wrong and if tech can help prevent that it should. Problem is that same tech can sometimes prevent the person who bought it from using it the way they want. That is the bad part about DRM but that aside this is different from security.

Security in my opinion is the tech to prevent someone from stealing it who didn’t pay for it. It’s that simple. Meaning if you pay for a streaming service then you should be able to watch it on all the devices that service offers cause you paid to do so. However let’s say you want to make a copy of the movie to store it for later or to give to a friend. If the service does not offer that then in my mind the user doesn’t get that but if the service never purported to offer it then the user has to live with those parameters. Some would say the user should be able to then take the movie to do with it how they please but to me that is the stealing part. Streaming services are not selling movies but selling the ability to watch where the service is offered. Normally this is why subscription services are cheaper per month than buying movies.

Others would argue that anything on a screen can be stolen so why bother trying to protect it but that is an easy one to answer. If you are an independent film maker and you debut something on a streaming service you are hoping that, although it is never 100 percent, that the service is not an easy source for people to steal the content. Otherwise the movie is better off in the theaters versus streaming. Any company who is in the business of streaming doesn’t want to lose this relationship with the content owners so they try to ensure they can offer a safe platform that does not contribute to the overall piracy problem.

So companies in the business of streaming have to take security seriously and in most cases security is not the same as DRM because the goal is to not make it hard on people who pay but to prevent those who don’t want to pay from petty theft. I personally think stealing streams is theft and is no different from stealing a book or a meal. Taking something you don’t want to pay for doesn’t look any different to me for a physical item or a digital item. It’s theft. Pay for it. If you don’t want to pay for it then you can’t have it.

So for the moment flash offers streaming companies a safer place to stream movies than HTML 5 does. Yes it will change but not this year.

Koprol – The Inside Story. Part 1

~ michael_msft ~ 4 Comments

What kicked this all off :: http://www.nokpis.com/2014/02/27/thinking-about-koprol-2-0-2/

I think enough time and emotions have passed that now is the moment to start writing some of the story about Koprol. I have had two larger than life moments in my tech career. The first was being a systems (sales) engineer at Weblogic which eventually got bought by BEA Systems, later acquired by Oracle. I still am in touch with many of the people I took that journey with and much of that success helped me arrive to where I am today.

Small side trip – karma, whether you believe in it or not – is very real. What I mean is the relationships you foster in your career with people you work with or encounter while working will inevitably lead to being useful or destructive to your present career. I fondly remember where I was an ass when working or where I was being a nice person. I should have been nice more but fortunately the relationships I made at Weblogic are very much intact and basically lead to my short career at Yahoo.

I need to, at this point, give you some more background about myself. Also I have decided that the best way to tell the inside story is to only name myself. There are so many people involved in this story but I don’t want to point fingers, celebritize, or ruffle any more feathers than I already have at this point. The thesis for writing about Koprol is to possibly explain some of what I was trying to do and to hopefully share the experiences of acquiring and trying to make something big out of an emerging markets product and team.

A slight bit about me. I was in Thailand for about five years trying to make a go of being a non-techy. Let’s just say I jettisoned from Hong Kong and the enterprise software scene to see if I could make it as pub owner who dabbled in tech. Well – take a look at what is happening in Bangkok now and put yourself back a few years to when this first happened but imagine trying to run a business in that very same climate. Let’s just say I didn’t do to well and realized that I was better off being a techy.

I learned a lot about myself and other people, which I think is why I am better at what I do today – I am also not afraid anymore. You might ask what that means but I will just simply say that I think a lot of us might be afraid of what people think or are afraid of the powers that be. After my years in the trenches of the pubs of Bangkok I am just not afraid of the normal work world or the startup scene. I have a lot more confidence now.

So there I was in Thailand and needing a job. I put out my feelers and turned the bat light back on. Sure enough it was the people that I knew from my Weblogic days who helped me out. I was out of work for five years and suddenly I had a few bites. I hopped on the plane to Singapore and within a few days had a written offer from Yahoo. Some very special people in Sunnyvale and Singapore took a chance on me and I am forever grateful to those people. I was back in the game and loving it. Great title, awesome pay and a charter to try and help Yahoo win back some audience and developers. Of course this was a doomed mission cause Yahoo was doomed (I learned this later) but I will save that for another thread. I didn’t care so much cause I had a line to Sunnyvale and I was looking at all of Southeast Asia as my playground. Rocking.

How does this all lead to Koprol? Good question.

On my numerous trips to Sunnyvale, Yahoo HQ, I happened to get connected to a very cool team called the IGTF. I am sure the team involved made up their team name just like I made up my title – Director of Global Tech Initiatives. The International Growth Task Force had an awesome charter. They traveled around the globe studying other products and trends to see if they could figure out ways to get Yahoo’s core products growing again and to see if there might be new ideas to experiment with. They had a list of interesting trends or concepts that they shared with me to see if I could spot any companies in SEA that might fit one of the trends they were focusing on.

One of the trends was:

People/Location/Conversations.

Ding!

So with that need in my head and the team willing to sponsor a small acquisition, my job of running around SEA talking about YDN (Yahoo Developer Network) suddenly was more interesting. Since the hope was I could find a small company in SEA that might jumpstart Yahoo’s work around – People/Location/Conversations.

Part 2 :: http://www.nokpis.com/2014/03/01/koprol-the-inside-story-part-2/

Thinking about Koprol 2.0

~ michael_msft ~ 2 Comments

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Microsoft

~ michael_msft ~ 1 Comment

Microsoft has a new CEO. I know little about him but he seems to curry favor with the troops and judging by what is being written about him I am guessing he looks to be the right guy to turn the place around. Yes – it needs turning around. Why you might ask? Cause tech folks like myself don’t really use anything from Microsoft anymore. I practically cut my computing teeth on everything Microsoft but now I use mostly Apple products, iOS (and the many made for iOS apps), and lots of other services in the cloud of which none of them are made by Microsoft.

However the world needs competition. A google and apple world is not great for any of us.

BB is dead – let’s not even pretend to think otherwise.

I would love to see bing compete.

I would love to see windows phone compete.

I would love, also very surprised, to see windows wow me with stuff that might tease me away from OSX.

I would love to see azure, or whatever name you call Microsoft cloud services, compete head on with AWS.

I would love to see xbox own the living room, I don’t give a SHIT about gaming, and challenge the notions of what a home entertainment (console) device could do when everything is connected up.

Lately I have been somewhat surprised at working with Microsoft around some Spuul stuff. They have engineered some good tech and offer good support but they still seem to focus everything around windows versus windows phone. Mobile and cloud is where it is at. Bottom line – they need to sort that out quick.

Office – yes I still use it unfortunately but I am miffed they don’t properly support it across all of my iOS devices well. I am guessing the new guy will change that.

So Microsoft is back in the spotlight and people like me are quietly cheering them on. Maybe even less quietly now that they have a CEO that isn’t going to mock or berate people like me.

The clock is ticking but I expect to see the new Microsoft slowly appear this year.