My “iPhone Experience”

I think that all developers should have an iPhone experience. What is this you ask?

I recently got an iPhone for the first time after years of having a Blackberry and more recently an Android phone. My first impressions were that it’s sexy, relatively easy to setup and the number of apps available are amazing.

Oh, but then.... I tried to configure something my way, a little different and I hit a brick wall. Very quickly I found that this started happening more and more.

It then dawned on me, Apple only let you do things they think you should do!
If you look closely at most of the very successful Internet apps, in the early stages of their explosive growth they offer relatively limited functionality.

I realised that with the recent development projects I've managed, I have tended to present to the user with how I think they should engage the application. And .... I am not the user. The user does not necessarily want to "peek under the hood", they just want to get the job done.

Today I read an article by Andreas Bonini, "Users Don’t Like Choices" bit.ly/Z6SkZQ. It reiterated to me that users like applications that present them with and unambiguous straightforward functionality that gets the job done.

I still have the iPhone … it’s my daily reminder that users are not programmers.

The API is the Computer?

There has been much talk around open standards, open software, big data and more recently open API’s. To me, an example of this is the Open Bank Project, “…empowers retail banks to dramatically enhance their online offering by opening transaction data to wider groups of people (including the public) and software applications via an open source powered API…”

Investors and innovation facilitators are now looking to back projects that facilitate the creation of API’s, in particular those which have the potential to change the way we do things for the better.  Large potential benefactors of this are social enterprise, education and health. I think that the UK Government is proving itself as a leader in this domain with its efforts around open data [http://data.gov.uk/] and its general design principles statement [https://www.gov.uk/designprinciples].

 I was reading an article today and the phrase “The API is the Computer” came to mind. I found no existing references to this after a quick search, but hey who knows.

This reminded me of the marketing tagline by Sun Microsystems some years back, “The network is the computer”. I am sure more recently someone must have quoted the “the cloud is the computer”.

I think that “the network is the computer”, “the cloud is the computer” and “the API is the computer” are all more or less the same thing. Each, a concept reflecting the current focus or perspective on technology evolution.

The idea that the API is the computer got me thinking. My colleagues and I have been working on a project named Landfall, we have already made this available as a product and have published some information on our website if you want to know more [http://www.navohpartners.com/tech_landfall]. Landfall is a generic application-building framework built upon open software and open standards. 

“The API is the computer” is one concept to me that makes Landfall standout from other generic frameworks. I believe that this API approach is innovation we have contributed to for which we have a working example of. We call this pattern Landfall is built on, Genoa.

 To test the effectiveness of this innovation, we have prototyped several different application models to access its effectiveness in time to implement, scaling, performance, flexibility and user experience. We have been very impressed; you are very welcome to contact us directly for more information on these.

Enlightenment

This must be one of the first chances I have had to reflect on the past few months. Family and work have taken all the time I have and more. Then .... every once in a while there is an event that forces one to take stock.

For me this was a burst appendix, for a rare moment in my life I have not been able to try and juggle all the things I normally do. And as a result I have had a brief chance to see the wood for the trees. It's also a great experience to see all the people that really care for you.

I have also have a chance to read more and listen what other people are saying particularly around Open Source. Its been a great boost that there is now far more consensus around what I have believed for some time and I think validates the projects we are busy with at Navoh Partners .

The essence off what I see happening around open source software is that the general connotation is moving away from the view that Open Source is just free software. The benefits of transparency, community scrutiny and validation,  security and open standards are now widely recognised and valued.

I will expand on this over the next little while looking at how these benefits and more  relate to real opportunities for both software developers and companies requiring technology solutions.

Introducing Unify

Here is it .... Unify

A trade management and middle office application for alternative investment firms. There are two things I want to emphasise in this post, firstly a proper solution to cash management, reconciliation, process management and secondly a wholly Python solution.

Unify is a good fit for buy side firms with sell side trading or portfolio management systems, firms keen on developing their own proprietary execution and risk manage solutions.  

There is not much choice out there for Python related trading and portfolio management applications. With Unify we have tried to solve the common requirements in particularly the buy side space like trade life cycle management, reconciliation, cash management, managed accounts, end of day process workflow, file feeds etc. These things we aim to execute very well.

Although 100% Python, integration with other languages and platforms is central to Unify. It is designed to co-operate within an ecosystem of different systems or run standalone if required.

Take a look at the website www.navohpartners.com for more info on Unify. I would be real interested to hear from Python Finance development teams rolling out similar solutions.

It has been a while

Howdy

Wow over a year and a half since my last post. It has been bussy shall we say, both work wise and personally. A lot of my time and those of my colleagues have culminated into something called Unify. and what is Unify.....

 Unify is our continuous effort to build a useful trade management application, it incorporates various iterations of previous efforts and experiences trying to get square pegs to fit into round holes. There are two things about Unify that excite me, the user experience around it challenging a lot of preconceived ideas (legacy baggage) and also the technology it's built upon.

 I will expand on both of these in forthcoming posts keeping you updated on this journey.

 Rob

How much carbon is around to effect massive climate change?

I read a news report today about Barack Obama easing permissions for offshore drilling of oil and gas. I expect the usual backlash of of various interested parties regarding this news. I see the point from both sides, those vehemently against any kind of fossil fuel exploration and of the USA trying to protect its national interests and lessen its dependancy on foreign supplies.

I watch the third BBC episode, Tropic of Cancer and listened to Steven Reeve talk to government official from Oman about how they must invest in tourism because one day the oil will run out. This reminded me of a talk I heard many years ago about how demand and supply will naturally protect diminishing resources like rain forests.

I suddenly got this thought.... is there not a finite supply of carbon on the planet? The carbon that was collected by the plants and animals which in time turned into the fossil fuels we have today had to come from somewhere.

How much carbon in various forms (e.g. CO2 and Methane) can our environment cope with? Once we have consumed all fossil fuel reserves we will have a plan for alternative energy, demand and supply will dictate this in some shape or fashion. At that point our environment will be able to recover (unless we have found another poison).

The question is: will we have the luxury to witness this? I still don't really have a strong personal view on the full extent of the carbon impact on our environment, largely due to all the contrasting opinions. What motivates me is the enormous amounts of waist in our modern day lifestyles and I feel this has a far greater general impact on the world around us.

So is there enough carbon around to change our environment enough to seriously threaten our existance? I really don't know and I would love to hear your views.

Brilliant! Use Skype for 0800 calls

I had a problem today with my telephone handset as it was not ringing. I also had to make calls to a few utility companies and you know how long you can be tied up on the phone!! I used the callback feature from on of the utility companies an got onto a call with the next one. So between calls and the fact that my phone was not ringing I missed all of them as wasted 2 hours.

I just hate spending time and occupying my phone lines while on hold with 0800 numbers. I then got an idea to use Skype and googled to see if anyone knew about calling 0800 numbers at discounted rate or for free.

Well you can and for free! I found out that people from France, Poland, the UK, and the U.S. can call 0800 numbers in their respective countries for free. I tried it and it works ... you don't even need to by any Skype call credits.

So if you are at work, don't want to use mobile phone minutes or don't want to clog up your phone lines try Skype for 0800 numbers!