It looks like there is a healthy debate coming up on the mobile apps market and that is who should we be looking at developing for.
I think I already know the answer and will put forward my argument because I want a healthy debate so I am well informed before buying my kit and jumping in.
In an earlier posting on here I was looking about for an iPhone job. I had heard rumours that the USA developers were cleaning up and in some cases demanding $200 an hour because of the demand for apps writers.
This obviously made me want to get an iPhone right away and a MacBook and get right into learning COCOA and XCode so I could claim some of this lucrative market.
Firstly I wanted to find these people that are paying extortionate amounts for developing apps. What I actually found across the Apple developer communities is people who want to sell their ideas for you to run with and see if you can make something with it, or they all want to give you the idea, have you do all the work and write it and then split any profit with them 50/50.
So it seems there are a lot of people that want to leverage the iPhone to make money from apps, but they don’t want to pay developers to do it, they all want rewards from just coming up with a concept. And while original concepts are worth paying for, most of these ideas are bound to be rehashes of current ideas.
I also thought about my own ideas for what could be handy for an iPhone developer, I had loads, from auto handwritten Postcard services from when you are travelling, to help me solve the Rubik’s cube apps.
It turns out that everything has been done before (that is why I can put some of my ideas up here because I know they have already been done).
Everything from shopping lists that are linked into your supermarket account, thru to games that use the accelerometers to bounce a basketball.
I heard recently that there are about 400 new Apps per day coming out on the iPhone so chances are whatever you want as the saying goes (there is an app for that).
So I want to see what competition is out there.
The main runners as I see it in the smart phone world are:
iPhone
Android
Palm Pre
Windows Mobile
I think personally I can dismiss Windows Mobile because even though they are trying to claw back some reputation for their ASP.NET compact framework, they are too far behind now to compete in this market and are better placed for touch screen panels and Pocket PCs and other areas.
I can also dismiss the Palm Pre, because although I love the look and idea of it, I think the fact that they are now under an O2 exclusivity contract is going to stop them from ever getting to the stage to fully compete with the iPhone.
So this leaves Android. Good old faithful Google...
I guess I started writing this post because it has just been announced that Google has launched its free Sat Nav service this week. This is a sat nav service that not only can show Google Earth photographs, but can even go down to use the new Google Street View. It can also hook up with Google traffic watch, and basically does everything that a top end Tom Tom or Road King can do (on a device that costs less and can be used as a phone as well).
I believe with one foul swoop they have probably just killed off the Sat Nav device business and firmly positioned themselves as the best and cheapest (free) service, so who can compete?
I also believe that because Android is Open and the phones aren’t locked then I can take my Vodafone pay as you go SIM and plonk it straight into an android phone and it will work (unlike the iPhone with its locked device state).
So what about the business models and their future?
The best analogy I've heard is that Android is like Windows - runs on many different hardware set-ups whereas iPhone OS only runs on iPhone hardware. So it's the classic Windows vs MAC debate all over again. And the windows approach (lots of hardware support) is the proven winner over time. I don’t want to start a Mac / Microsoft debate on here, and I am not saying which is better, Windows or MacOS, I am saying the business model is making Microsoft more profit still than Apple on the software side. If you don’t agree that Windows software is still making more profit than MacOS software please start the debate elsewhere.
AAANYWAYS..
So now I have insulted Google and called them the Microsoft of the mobile world, my serious point is: I think the Android is going to get stronger and stronger.
I think that is my informed choice of next Gen phone that is the most future proofed.
Also and most importantly. I think that is my choice of phone to start developing Apps for. One great thing about that is they haven’t already been done. I can take some of the more popular apps from the iPhone and Port them over, or I can take my ideas and run with them knowing they haven’t already been developed.
So I guess I have written enough to start the debate. What are other peoples thoughts?
Just as a side note - As for Android devices, I am thinking that the HTC Hero is currently looking like the best Android phone on the market and would be the one that I might go for as my development kit.
So after extensive research and trying to make sure I don’t follow a dead horse (VHS versus BETA MAX and Blu Ray versus HDDVD etc..)
I believe I now know what platform I want to start developing things for.
I’ll let you all know when I have developed my first app and when I have anything cool for you all to have a look at.
Regards,
Lindsay.
Showing posts with label Google. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Google. Show all posts
Friday, 30 October 2009
Wednesday, 16 January 2008
Is it worth grabbing small website jobs any more?
We've been doing small business websites, which used to be bread and butter work, especially when we were sole traders. But recently we've been making the decision to throw back some of these jobs, and give more of an advice role in the customer producing their own websites.
More often than not, the customer doesn't appreciate the work involved in doing something like set up a simple website, with contacts page, and allowing to change content on a few pages. Perhaps adding a gallery for uploading previous work.
By the time we tie down branding and logo, ease of use, navigation, and guiding the users eyes around the pages. Then building the structure and the admin side CMS, and making it SEO friendly (W3 standards, and all the Google toys set up) your looking at minimum 3 days work so over a grand and creeping up to 6K.
The customers response might be:
"Ooooph I only want a 6 page website, I was thinking more along the lines of 3 or 400 sheets?"
So is the market coming to an end for this sized customer?
We used to always take work on, and thought as long as work was coming our way then we couldn't fail.
However, this end of the market, the small business that wants an online presence, or has had a simple electronic business card type website for years and wants a little more now, is turning into a non profit minimum wage job. If another design house does manage to sell the solution at a higher price then they take the profit and pass the technical stuff to us. Either way we get squeezed to produce the mechanics. Looking to the future, it becomes hard to see how the business is going to boom. The customers are seeing more and more automatic tools for creating templated sites, and wonder why a tailoring company charges so much. They are right to feel this too, the tools out there to get yourself a web presence or online shop are now vast, and it might be better for customers to take a little time and do it themselves, or employ a student at a cheaper rate to set up the CMS packages for them.
We are now actively turning them away and giving more of an advice service to get them to use tools such as Google Apps.
We did ask, should we be developing more of a generic CMS system ourselves that allows us to quickly knock out a website for someone, but over the last 10 years I have known at least 2 other businesses that have wanted this. The theory is back 15 years ago when I was doing my Computer Science Degree, the new buzzword was Object Oriented Programming. It was this great new thing utilising Borland C++, and was the wave of the future. It was going to allow us to create objects and eventually these objects can all be pulled off of the shelf and plugged into each other making systems development easier.
Well that never really went according to plan, the way the university envisaged it, although we do write code for reuse ability, chances are when we come to reuse it, there is some new way, or new technology we have to consider and so rewrite or even recreate the object.
But like I say other companies have tried and failed at CMS systems, and when I see the successful ones (Kentico, Sharepoint, or Commonspot) then to accommodate for all of the individual things a customer might want, these have turned into a programming language in their own right that could easily have a training course purely for themselves, so have moved away from the easy off the shelf packages they first tried to be.
So where is the money now at in IT?
We are skilled, I can get a computer to do anything, so if I try and leave the minimum wage market of programming websites for other Small Businesses, then where can I go to grab the big bucks?
Creating our own products of interest to a market and getting funding.
Recently I was on a stand at the Thames Gateway Forum (ExCel centre), and competing with Gordon Brown and Ken Livingston's speeches to get my presentation across. I got loads of interest. I used to attend early morning BMI meetings and have a coffee and see how many business cards I can pass out in an hour. I hear of stories in these circles of other people in my position who secured x.x million pounds from some organisation to build something that I can do for a quarter of the price (which I have already proved by taking the audio visual system from Portcullis house, and rewriting it for a fraction of the cost for the Houses of Parliament).
How does anybody else ramp up their business to keep getting those large clients?
I see two answers, either we have to bite the bullet and employ a salesman. I know, last time I said I didn't want to go down that route, but I am now starting to see they do have a value to a team, in that they get right to the person holding the purse strings, and evaluate how much they can charge usually quite successfully. Then we can target the bigger businesses that have money to spend. Secondly we produce a product ourselves and resell it. Now that is a hard one. We have a few ideas that I have mentioned in previous blogs like the Wiimote for PC applications, and more recently we chased the idea of a Virtual Reality cricket trainer, but after research saw that we were a couple of years too late with that idea. :)
I believe we are a lot more technical than just a company that bangs out standard website templates, and we now need to consciously move away from that reputation and plant ourselves firmly in the market that can engineer full systems. We have come close to some of these dream jobs, like once I almost got to travel to Spain to kit out a posh yacht with full on automation. Once again I am wondering if we might be losing out on this slice of the cake due to underpricing ourselves which in turn undersells our skills.
I am not a cold caller, so am at present trying a bit of networking on UK forums to see what might come of it, but if any of you successful entrepreneurs out there want to give me some advice then please leave a comment.
Anyway, rant / findings over for now.
Lets try a little marketing and see what I can drum up.
Cheers for reading,
Lindsay.
More often than not, the customer doesn't appreciate the work involved in doing something like set up a simple website, with contacts page, and allowing to change content on a few pages. Perhaps adding a gallery for uploading previous work.
By the time we tie down branding and logo, ease of use, navigation, and guiding the users eyes around the pages. Then building the structure and the admin side CMS, and making it SEO friendly (W3 standards, and all the Google toys set up) your looking at minimum 3 days work so over a grand and creeping up to 6K.
The customers response might be:
"Ooooph I only want a 6 page website, I was thinking more along the lines of 3 or 400 sheets?"
So is the market coming to an end for this sized customer?
We used to always take work on, and thought as long as work was coming our way then we couldn't fail.
However, this end of the market, the small business that wants an online presence, or has had a simple electronic business card type website for years and wants a little more now, is turning into a non profit minimum wage job. If another design house does manage to sell the solution at a higher price then they take the profit and pass the technical stuff to us. Either way we get squeezed to produce the mechanics. Looking to the future, it becomes hard to see how the business is going to boom. The customers are seeing more and more automatic tools for creating templated sites, and wonder why a tailoring company charges so much. They are right to feel this too, the tools out there to get yourself a web presence or online shop are now vast, and it might be better for customers to take a little time and do it themselves, or employ a student at a cheaper rate to set up the CMS packages for them.
We are now actively turning them away and giving more of an advice service to get them to use tools such as Google Apps.
We did ask, should we be developing more of a generic CMS system ourselves that allows us to quickly knock out a website for someone, but over the last 10 years I have known at least 2 other businesses that have wanted this. The theory is back 15 years ago when I was doing my Computer Science Degree, the new buzzword was Object Oriented Programming. It was this great new thing utilising Borland C++, and was the wave of the future. It was going to allow us to create objects and eventually these objects can all be pulled off of the shelf and plugged into each other making systems development easier.
Well that never really went according to plan, the way the university envisaged it, although we do write code for reuse ability, chances are when we come to reuse it, there is some new way, or new technology we have to consider and so rewrite or even recreate the object.
But like I say other companies have tried and failed at CMS systems, and when I see the successful ones (Kentico, Sharepoint, or Commonspot) then to accommodate for all of the individual things a customer might want, these have turned into a programming language in their own right that could easily have a training course purely for themselves, so have moved away from the easy off the shelf packages they first tried to be.
So where is the money now at in IT?
We are skilled, I can get a computer to do anything, so if I try and leave the minimum wage market of programming websites for other Small Businesses, then where can I go to grab the big bucks?
Creating our own products of interest to a market and getting funding.
Recently I was on a stand at the Thames Gateway Forum (ExCel centre), and competing with Gordon Brown and Ken Livingston's speeches to get my presentation across. I got loads of interest. I used to attend early morning BMI meetings and have a coffee and see how many business cards I can pass out in an hour. I hear of stories in these circles of other people in my position who secured x.x million pounds from some organisation to build something that I can do for a quarter of the price (which I have already proved by taking the audio visual system from Portcullis house, and rewriting it for a fraction of the cost for the Houses of Parliament).
How does anybody else ramp up their business to keep getting those large clients?
I see two answers, either we have to bite the bullet and employ a salesman. I know, last time I said I didn't want to go down that route, but I am now starting to see they do have a value to a team, in that they get right to the person holding the purse strings, and evaluate how much they can charge usually quite successfully. Then we can target the bigger businesses that have money to spend. Secondly we produce a product ourselves and resell it. Now that is a hard one. We have a few ideas that I have mentioned in previous blogs like the Wiimote for PC applications, and more recently we chased the idea of a Virtual Reality cricket trainer, but after research saw that we were a couple of years too late with that idea. :)
I believe we are a lot more technical than just a company that bangs out standard website templates, and we now need to consciously move away from that reputation and plant ourselves firmly in the market that can engineer full systems. We have come close to some of these dream jobs, like once I almost got to travel to Spain to kit out a posh yacht with full on automation. Once again I am wondering if we might be losing out on this slice of the cake due to underpricing ourselves which in turn undersells our skills.
I am not a cold caller, so am at present trying a bit of networking on UK forums to see what might come of it, but if any of you successful entrepreneurs out there want to give me some advice then please leave a comment.
Anyway, rant / findings over for now.
Lets try a little marketing and see what I can drum up.
Cheers for reading,
Lindsay.
Monday, 12 March 2007
altFusion is now running on other domain names.
We have recently registered some other domain names.
I know that this doesn’t help out with Search Engine Optimisation for our main Cambridge and Peterborough Software IT website, but it does stop anybody else buying up the domains and hurting our web presence. Each domain also has their own page ranking for the pages inside them, and although I am not actively going to promote the other domains, they might bring more traffic in just by being there and allowing indexing over time.
Domains we have now registered and a brief description about that type of domain top level extension are:
1/
http://www.altfusion.biz/ - A general online business extension and altFusion is an IT online business.
2/
http://www.altfusion.net/ - A general extension to say we are on the Internet.
3/
http://www.altfusion.org/ - A worldwide organisation domain. As long as it isn’t postfixed with the uk subdomain then there aren’t restrictions on it like it having to be a charity organisation.
4/
http://www.altfusion.eu/ - A European Union domain extension, that suggests that altFusion is a European company that offers IT solutions and applications for the whole of Europe as well as the UK.
5/
http://www.altfusion.info/ - This is for an information website, and along with this blog I believe that altFusion can always be welcome to offer advice to somebody as well as to provide a full IT system or software application.
We dont see any need to register any other domain names at the moment.
Just as a side note, I have already mentioned that we have got a fun website filled with Games and Gadgets and Widgets and things to experiment with here.
I know that this doesn’t help out with Search Engine Optimisation for our main Cambridge and Peterborough Software IT website, but it does stop anybody else buying up the domains and hurting our web presence. Each domain also has their own page ranking for the pages inside them, and although I am not actively going to promote the other domains, they might bring more traffic in just by being there and allowing indexing over time.
Domains we have now registered and a brief description about that type of domain top level extension are:
1/
http://www.altfusion.biz/ - A general online business extension and altFusion is an IT online business.
2/
http://www.altfusion.net/ - A general extension to say we are on the Internet.
3/
http://www.altfusion.org/ - A worldwide organisation domain. As long as it isn’t postfixed with the uk subdomain then there aren’t restrictions on it like it having to be a charity organisation.
4/
http://www.altfusion.eu/ - A European Union domain extension, that suggests that altFusion is a European company that offers IT solutions and applications for the whole of Europe as well as the UK.
5/
http://www.altfusion.info/ - This is for an information website, and along with this blog I believe that altFusion can always be welcome to offer advice to somebody as well as to provide a full IT system or software application.
We dont see any need to register any other domain names at the moment.
Just as a side note, I have already mentioned that we have got a fun website filled with Games and Gadgets and Widgets and things to experiment with here.
Monday, 5 March 2007
Google Apps.
It was brought to my attention recently that Google Apps had re-branded and are now trying out different tools to help people with their web presence.
We wanted to register a new domain to have a play around with this, so I joined up and registered a test domain here:
Cambridge and Peterborough software developers test partner website.
So I signed up at the Google Apps pages, and registered the domain.
From the front menu there is a bit of confusion with 2 categories of pages to sort out. There is a link to sort out the start pages, and there is a link to sort out the web pages.
I didn’t know the difference, so I thought I would sort out the start pages seeing as it makes sense to start at the start.
What happened then was I sorted out the content, and put on a couple of blogs, a weather report, and a calendar.
I then waited to see this start page turn up at the http://www.altfuzion.com and after about a week, it still never turned up. It always stayed at start.altfuzion.com
So I went back and re visited the account and saw that the webpages were still blank even though the start page was set up. I then set up the webpages which at the moment is a title and a piece of text just introducing what I am trying to do with the Google Apps account.
That now does come up at the intended application URL.
Because I now have an ASP.NET (dot net) website that I don’t want to break so I will leave that alone, and I can now use www.altfuzion.com as a blank canvas to try out any number of tools and technologies.
I have found so far that Google states they do not give any preferential treatment to pages or websites that are held and created on Google Page Creator.
It just has the same precedence as any other website on the internet.
It should be worth mentioning: We have registered our test domain http://www.altfuzion.com to run through googlepages, although with my googlepages account I can actually register 4 domains in total to have other domains to experiment with. These domains are all within the http://########.googlepages.com area however so I don’t really see a need to explore this further, I will be sticking with http://www.altfuzion.com which points to http://www.altfuzion.com-a.googlepages.com/ only for my experiments.
I am now looking into Google Gadgets and Widgets to see what it is about, and there seems to be a wealth of Widgets that have been written for google pages.
Some of these are free and some are costly, but all are supposedly easy to install through my main Google Page Creator.
I am going to have a test page to hold gadgets and widgets that I will make public.
You can view my google widgets test page here.
Questions I have to be answered are:
Can I make a robots.txt and sitemap.XML ?
It does state there is 100MB of storage space. Can I upload pages directly to my space, or do I have to go through their interface.
If I can upload pages, can I upload aspx (ASP.NET) pages, or is there any kind of server side technology that I can utilize?
Is there any database technology that I can utilize on their storage space?
We wanted to register a new domain to have a play around with this, so I joined up and registered a test domain here:
Cambridge and Peterborough software developers test partner website.
So I signed up at the Google Apps pages, and registered the domain.
From the front menu there is a bit of confusion with 2 categories of pages to sort out. There is a link to sort out the start pages, and there is a link to sort out the web pages.
I didn’t know the difference, so I thought I would sort out the start pages seeing as it makes sense to start at the start.
What happened then was I sorted out the content, and put on a couple of blogs, a weather report, and a calendar.
I then waited to see this start page turn up at the http://www.altfuzion.com and after about a week, it still never turned up. It always stayed at start.altfuzion.com
So I went back and re visited the account and saw that the webpages were still blank even though the start page was set up. I then set up the webpages which at the moment is a title and a piece of text just introducing what I am trying to do with the Google Apps account.
That now does come up at the intended application URL.
Because I now have an ASP.NET (dot net) website that I don’t want to break so I will leave that alone, and I can now use www.altfuzion.com as a blank canvas to try out any number of tools and technologies.
I have found so far that Google states they do not give any preferential treatment to pages or websites that are held and created on Google Page Creator.
It just has the same precedence as any other website on the internet.
It should be worth mentioning: We have registered our test domain http://www.altfuzion.com to run through googlepages, although with my googlepages account I can actually register 4 domains in total to have other domains to experiment with. These domains are all within the http://########.googlepages.com area however so I don’t really see a need to explore this further, I will be sticking with http://www.altfuzion.com which points to http://www.altfuzion.com-a.googlepages.com/ only for my experiments.
I am now looking into Google Gadgets and Widgets to see what it is about, and there seems to be a wealth of Widgets that have been written for google pages.
Some of these are free and some are costly, but all are supposedly easy to install through my main Google Page Creator.
I am going to have a test page to hold gadgets and widgets that I will make public.
You can view my google widgets test page here.
Questions I have to be answered are:
Can I make a robots.txt and sitemap.XML ?
It does state there is 100MB of storage space. Can I upload pages directly to my space, or do I have to go through their interface.
If I can upload pages, can I upload aspx (ASP.NET) pages, or is there any kind of server side technology that I can utilize?
Is there any database technology that I can utilize on their storage space?
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