Welcome to the Jungle (Redux)

My friend Diego Mariño has announced in his blog that they have succesfully connected a printer to a computing grid. Think in Grid is a startup from Barcelona with an innovative Grid computing framework. They claim to be able to integrate all kind of devices in a computing grid, just like this printer:

Coming from the M2M busines I know that the Holy Grail of this business is not only the transparent connectivity of heterogenous devices through non-reliable (wireless) networks, but the capability to split and perform complex operations remotely just like if they were performed locally.

Obviously, it sounds promising.

Yesterday we discover that Mowser, the project founded by famous blogger Russell Beattie (and former colleague) was in the deadpool. Russ claimed that he ran out of money and had serious trouble with his finances.
Everyday startups are created and abandoned, but the point in this story is that he could not raise funds to continue with the project. We see almost everyday projects raising a lot of money for nothing, so why an authority in the mobile world cannot pass the first round? Well, honestly I don't know, but from my experience in Amplia, mobile and M2M markets are really really hard. Everybody recognizes the potential but nobody knows what are the killer applications of the mobile business.
Mobile applications are radically different of 'Fixed' applications, and they should have different attributes:

• Mobile applications don't need permanent interaction. You only interact with the application when an event occurs that requires your attention.
• Mobile applications are by the lack of reliability of the wireless networks- error prone. A good mobile application should hide the user of the status of the underlying connection. When the connection comes back, then it should restore the status with the remote services transparently.
• The mobile application must be 'always on'. Again, event driven interactivity.
• Mobile applications must be fasts. The less time the user is interrupted by the mobile device, the better.
• Data traffic shall not be a concern. Help users to know how much will they pay to their operator. The success of RIM comes of the fact that users know in advance how much will they pay for the service.
• If a user is always connected to the network or 'always on', don't make them login again in your service. Use the authentication and authorization services of your operators if possible, or find a smart way to keep the user information linked to his/her device.
  

Yesterday I was in the event organized by Facebook in Madrid, The Madrid Facebook Developer Garage. The event was organized by FON, the Wifi company owned by Martin Varsavsky. I think Mr. Varsavsky is doing a great job trying to give visibility of the European and specially Spanish companies in Silicon Valley. The event took place in Teatro Lara, a old-fashioned theater in the heart of Madrid. A nice place, nothing to do with a garage.
Just like the content of the event: nothing to do with a developers garage. It was more like an introduction to Facebook. They sold the announcement of Facebook in spanish like an event for developers. Crap. Not a single word about how to develop applications. It was clearly an event focused on entrepreneurs and companies, not on developers. If I read 'garage' and 'developer', it sounds to me like something closer to the bare metal, right? But it wasn't.
A waste of time. I hope Facebook will learn from this mistake and will make things better next time.

This week I have visited the ESOC (The European Space Operations Centre) as part of my new job in The Server Labs. It has been a long time since I was in Germany last time, in the Due Diligence for the acquisition of JobPilot by Adecco (I was staff of Adecco). I think things have not change a lot: Germany is a good place to work if you are in technology: there are good companies, cutting edge research and development, multicultural environment, and people are really, really nice at work. This is also something I felt when I was working in Consors , and I have felt the same in the ESOC.
In Spain people the attitude of people is more 'defensive' and it can sometimes hurt the relationship between client and customer from the early beginning. And it's not possible to compare the number of technological companies in Spain and in Germany.
Still, I really missed something: the colours. May be it's because of the weather, or because of the functional mentality of the people, but I missed the colours and the sun of Madrid.

Long time ago Network Solutions was the only domain registrar of .com domains, and so you had to pay them for the registration. But the monopoly ended several years ago, and discount domain registars are eating their business. They still charge $35 per year for a .com registration when you can find registrars for less than $9. Obviously they still get a lot of money from renewals, but I guess they business is not growing anymore, because they don't want to compete with discount registrars.
In a good example of a stupid business decission that can definitely kill your business, if a user does a search on the site for a domain, they inmemediately register it in Network Solutions name! If the user goes to a discount registrar, the domain is not available. Then, the user must register the domain with Network Solutions. This kind of business actions have a name: captive customers or hijacked customers. Customers that cannot choose their provider because otherwise the customer cannot continue with their business. This is the worst scenario for a customer, and it's typical when doing business with a monopoly.
Nowadays reputation and authority are words in the mouth of all people that use the internet on a daily basis for their business or leisure. Building a reputation in the net is hard (just like in the real world), but destroying it is easy, very easy and can take just hours. Network Solutions did not have good or bad reputation (it was an expensive dinosaur, that's all) but from now on they are pure evil for the blogsphere. They can justify that they have implemented this 'feature' to protect their customers automatically registering the domain just in time they search for it, but obviously you don't need to be registered to perform a search in their site, and there is not visible information about the new 'feature'. If the search feature is public, basically you are hijacking domains of your potential customers. Pure evil.
Network Solutions, you should disable the feature and apologizes for this bad practice.

Last years have been a wonderful time in Amplía Soluciones S.L., but nothing is forever and I think it's time for a change. I will continue as a partner of the company but I will look for new challenges and adventures out there. You can read my public linkedin profile if you want to know a bit about my skills and experience.

Today Microsoft has acquired 1.6% of Facebook, paying 240 million dollars. So the smart guys from Redmon (and their strategic consultants, of course) think Facebook has a value of 15 billion dollars! That's a lot of money for a company with 300 employees! But it's not about the employees talent, it's about the 50 million active users of the platform where the value is. And it's really high, around 300 bucks per active user.
Now I think to myself... can they really get 300 dollars from the average user?
It smells like dotcom boom reborn...

Today I have discovered the existence of G2One.com. This is the company created by the people behind Grails. Following the business model 'It is all about the Services, stupid!' they have jumped into the bandwagon of companies that:

1. create a framework
2. work hard to make it first class
3. create or find a necessity in the community
4. offer their services as gurus to the companies

The shortage of Telecommunications Engineers and Computer Engineers is becoming a serious problem for the Spanish economy. Today we can read in the news we will need to import 30000 foreign graduates for our market in the next five years. The option is obvious: bring people from India and China.
I don't know if these politicians know anything about the IT and Telecommunications Global Market. How the hell are we going to attract foreign skilled workers? With paella, siesta and sangria?
The salary of a Java developer ranges from 18000€ to 35000€ in Madrid. Barcelona and the rest of Spain salaries are lower. So if you follow the salaries in UK or USA it's crystal clear that Spain won't be the first options. Most of the IT crowd in Spain can't barely speak English so the fact is that international workplaces in Spain are just a few compared to USA or the EU.
Hence if you want to work in Spain, you will have to accept a low salary and speak fluent Spanish. It does not sound very attractive, even having paella every weekend and Sangria in the evening...

And no, nobody has siesta in Spain in the workplaces and we don't dress like bullfighters when we visit our customers (You cannot imagine how many people have asked me if we have siesta in our workplaces in Spain...).

Today in several RSS feeds I have found the same news: Google has a new patent for mobile micropayments. Micropayments using a cell phone is not new at all. I have seen some projects in Europe, specially the Spanish Mobipay. It's a mature technology, but it's not very successful. There are several reasons but it's not clear why mobile micropayments are not growing. In my opinion:

• The fee is charged directly to the customer. If you buy a Coke in a vending machine and you pay 1€ with a coin, you have to pay 1.10€ with mobile micropayments. So the micropayment is the last option.
• For more expensive goods Credit Cards or Cash are preferred. Why? Again because the Credit Card fee is charged to the seller, not to the customer.
  
• With mobile micropayments your credit is given by the Mobile Operator. The Mobile Operator needs to cover the risk, and this is an overhead compared to the credit card model (everybody knows how a Credit Card works, isn't?)