Mike Isaac sat down with Android UX design chief Matias Duarte at CES for an exclusive pre-launch interview, and picked his brain about Android, design in general, and competing operating systems like Windows Phone and webOS ? the platform he architected for Palm years ago.
Amazon will let customers run free micro-instances of Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 on its EC2 service starting now, according to a new post to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) blog.
Such try-before-you-buy tactics have helped Amazon win converts to its cloud platform by letting them test new or existing applications in its cloud for free. While Amazon offers a choice of operating systems, Microsoft licensing constraints have made running Windows workloads on AWS more expensive than running them on Linux.
In his post, Amazon’s web services evangelist Jeff Barr wrote:
The micro instances provide a small amount of consistent processing power and the ability to burst to a higher level of usage from time to time. You can use this instance to learn about Amazon EC2, support a development and test environment, build an AWS application, or host a web site (or all of the above). We’ve fine-tuned the micro instances to make them even better at running Microsoft Windows Server.
The AWS Free Usage Tier has until now let customers run small instances of Linux or other Amazon services for free for 750 hours per month as a way to let customers kick the tires of its cloud-based services. The “micro instances” for 32- or 64-bit Linux and now Windows can utilize 613 MB of memory. Customers can use the free usage tier for a year, according to Amazon.
Users of this free usage tier have access to Amazon S3, Elastic Block Store, Elastic Load Balancing and AWS data transfer services. The new Windows Server free usage instances are available across AWS regions except for the GovCloud.
This news comes at an interesting time. Amazon’s popular infrastructure-as-a-service and Microsoft’s Azure platform-as-a-service are increasingly competing with Amazon adding more PaaS-like capabilities and Microsoft working on IaaS capabilities. Both companies plan web briefings this week on their cloud strategies — Microsoft has a webcast slated for Tuesday, Amazon hosts one on Wednesday.
As more companies weigh putting workloads onto public or private clouds, hold on for more competitive moves by these cloud giants.
Photo courtesy of Flickr user liber
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There's a lot competition to beat. Windows has long been the dominant operating system since the first days of personalized computing and its latest and best avatar is Windows 7, miles better than the unfortunate Vista. Software architecture has always been extremely complicated and a programme like Windows is just large and vast. Hence, to make things simple, there are several different courses accessible for people that wish to master MCITP Server Administrator.
There are several skill levels and after you master the elementary ones you can move on to the advanced ones. Given below is an outline of some of the courses available which will help you take the Windows 7 exam and eventually become a Windows 7 MCTS.
XP was the dominant operating software and a lot of folk are practiced in XP. There are XP to Windows 7 transition courses. It's got a fully revamped look and layout, quicker network stack, advanced security features and large enhancements in the network and storage area. To become a Windows 7 MCTS, you need to be acquainted with all this. However it is quite different from XP.
there were a lot of changes and improvements form XP and things work very differently here. Therefore, there are courses specially designed for XP specialists who want to shift to Windows 7. But you do not necessarily need to be an all-knowing expert in XP, any person with a fairly good knowledge of Windows can gain benefit from this course.
There are courses designed for applicant who need to take a Win 7 examination to achieve advanced certification which may enable them to employ and install at concern level. Some level of experience is needed to be able to join such a course. The preliminaries are that the applicant is well-versed and skillful when it comes to installation, configuration and network administration, managing clients and servers. Understanding of operating systems and application deployment and familiarity with System Center suite and Windows Server will be terribly beneficial.
And of course, there is one very important aspect you should focus on when preparing for a Microsoft Exam – support and troubleshooting. This require the specialist to be very comfortable and familiar with the application and MCSE 2003 Certification are designed that will help the specialist identify commonly encountered problems and apply industry best practices to solve them.
While Android and iOS continue to control the top of the smartphone market, we keep wondering when an ascendent third-place challenger will appear. New data from Nielsen helps explain why placing a strong third may be tough. Nielsen says that in the U.S., Android and iOS account for 71 percent of all smartphones in use, which leaves little room for competitors. But among smartphone users who downloaded an app in the last 30 days, the competition is even more lopsided: 83 percent used either an iPhone or Android.
Now, on a surface level this might seem intuitive considering how many apps are available on the two platforms. But the figures show that the top two operating systems account for a bigger chunk of app downloads than their relative footprint would logically suggest. Competitors also have apps, but these two are the leading destinations for people who are eager for mobile software.
That shows why it’s hard to break into the top of the smartphone market, which is dominated by what the New York Times‘ David Pogue calls “app phones.” It’s not enough to have elegant hardware, you have to bring a very vibrant and broad app market to consumers, too. That’s partly why iOS and Android are sitting pretty: they offer a lot of very compelling apps that make money for developers, more so on iOS but increasingly so on Android.
For competitors like BlackBerry or Windows Phone 7 to compete, they need to really bring the app heat as well. Both are working hard on doing so, but it’s hard to close the distance when iOS and Android have such a lead. And that lead also benefits Google and Apple through app lock-in, in which consumers may be reluctant to leave a platform because they have a lot of apps and data tied into one operating system. Getting someone to switch to a new platform requires a big commitment from a user, who has to know that the apps they want will be waiting for them on a new platform and that the transition, which may involve losing data, will be worth it.
Of course, the app market and the growth of the platforms are somewhat intertwined. Developers like to place their bets on the biggest and most profitable platforms and a big library of apps can help sell a platform. For someone who’s starting behind on apps, or whose device sales are fading or sluggish, it’s tough to break that cycle after it’s well under way. I think Windows Phone 7 probably has the best shot at escaping the downward spiral and gaining some momentum, but looking at the competition through the lens of the app advantage, I think it will be a harder road for Microsoft then the rosy projections painted by Gartner and IDC, who predict WP7 displacing iOS by 2015 as the chief rival to Android. The app ecosystem is a key factor to achieving that uptake.
Nokia chief Stephen Elop said as much when he announced that the move to Windows Phone 7 for Nokia smartphones was led by the need to compete on ecosystems. But I think it’s tough to keep building that ecosystem when you’re not selling that many phones. Nokia’s introduction of new phones will certainly help, but consumers are still going to see more apps on Android and iOS. And developers are going to need to see a lot more momentum before they really support WP7. There is hope for WP7, based on a recent Appcelerator/IDC developer survey, which found that WP7 was pulling away from BlackBerry as the third most popular smartphone option for developers. But WP7 will also have to vie for developer attention with the Kindle Fire, which is now the top Android tablet in the minds of Appcelerator developers.
I still hope that we’ll see more than just a two-horse race in smartphones. And it’s certainly possible we will see WP7 and BlackBerry rise to the challenge. But they’re going to have to offer competitive app marketplaces for consumers and developers. The emergence of HTML5 web apps might offset some of the existing advantage, but even if it does, it will likely take a while to really get going. For now, Android and iOS, with their app advantage, are enjoying the view from the top, without much fear of tumbling from their perch.
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A few months ago I tweeted this: “If I were a publisher I would either: a) pull my app from the App Store or b) invest all available cash in Apple stock.” The latter piece of advice was probably pretty solid, if not very practical — Apple’s stock has been performing like no other in recent history.
But my former piece of advice for publishers – to pull their apps from the App Store – doesn’t seem to have resonated much, as many publishers keep pushing out their respective iPhone and iPad apps. That said, I’m betting this trend is a short-term fad that will eventually reverse, and here’s why:
The beauty of the Web is that it standardized access to information across machines, operating systems, and browsers. No more rewriting code to be Mac-, PC- and Unix-compatible, etc. Publish once on the Web, and the information will be accessible by all of humanity regardless of any configuration they might use to access it. Recently, the various app stores have again started fragmenting a world that had largely become defragmented. A fragmented dev world imposes costs and headaches on those that choose to support the various apps. That might not be a huge tax on tech companies, per se, but for publishers, supporting multiple apps will become a headache and a totally unnecessary tax, which leads me to my next point.
A native app is a great way for developers to create functionality that’s not possible with a web page (or that might otherwise require the use of Flash in a web page). Games are a perfect example of this. For a publisher whose product is words and pictures, it is unclear what additional functionality an app can provide that a well-designed Web page cannot. Sure, it’s always possible to slap some artificial stuff on an app (and The Daily is a great example of things that can be done on a publisher app), but the question is whether those things are done because it’s possible to do them, or because they are actually useful.
I’d argue that the most useful mobile reading experience is on Instapaper, which is a clean presentation of the text with proper typography — attributes that are all perfectly achievable in a well-designed mobile website. The only two exceptions here might be: a) video and b) offline reading. The gap on both is closing with HTML5, and soon even these “app excuses” won’t be a valid reason for justifying development of proprietary mobile apps.
When deciding to publish content in an app rather than a mobile website, it’s important to understand that the value of links, as we know them on the Web, is greatly diminished. Because an app is a standalone program, not a part of the open Web, linking to other pages is clunky at best. You cannot link to content on other apps. And links to websites, while possible, require switching the user to another application (AKA a mobile browser) and disrupting the user experience between articles.
Lastly, and possibly most importantly, is the ownership of the platform on which you publish. No one owns the Web, and therefore no company can impose new rules, pricing, censorship or other surprises along the way (FCC regulation aside, of course).
When developing a mobile app, a publisher technically becomes a node within someone else’s platform — namely Apple or Google — and is bound by their rules and whims. Apple’s decision to impose a 30 percent tax on all publisher subscriptions done within apps is just one example of this. The Financial Times created a lot of buzz with their decision to fully withdraw from the App Store and go all-in with their mobile Web app. Developing an app for someone else’s platform might give the illusion of a new marketing channel, but in reality it means becoming a node in someone else’s business model.
All that said, a mobile app can be a decent marketing channel, and there is value for publishers in having a presence inside the various app stores. But if you peel away all the other layers of what an app can be and focus on it exclusively as a marketing channel, then the conclusion is that an app for publishers is basically a bookmark on people’s phone screens. That’s it — a reminder to consume the publisher’s content, and a quick link to do so.
I urge (and predict!) that publishers stick to these principles after the “we need to have an iPhone/iPad/Android/WebOS/Win7/etc. app” hype passes:
Mobile is putting pressure on publishers to quickly adapt and successfully deliver. In a “sink or swim” environment, the hype of apps is ultimately going to weigh publishers down. There is no real reason for publishers to spread their dev resources thin, supporting multiple proprietary apps that break links and really serve someone else’s strategy more than their own.
Yaron Galai is the CEO and co-founder of Outbrain, a web-based recommendation engine.
We’ll discuss the app economy, its rise and possible fall, and the opportunities presented by HTML5 at our annual Mobilize event in San Francisco, September 26 and 27th.
Image courtesy of Flickr user Sean MacEntee.
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