Category: Software development

  • iBooks is a killer app for ebooks

    If you pay any attention at all to the tech press, you’re probably sick to death of the iPad, Apple’s announced tablet device. I’m posting about it anyway, because there are two things that haven’t been discussed enough, which I think deserve a mention. One: this isn’t a device for the tech community. I think […]

  • Open data at data.gov.uk

    The British equivalent to Obama’s data.gov opened today. Over at ReadWriteWeb, Marshall Kirkpatrick points out the scale of the ambition involved: At launch, Data.gov.uk has nearly 3,000 data sets available for developers to build mashups with. The U.S. site, Data.gov, has less than 1,000 data sets today. […][Unlike the US equivalent, the site] includes 22 […]

  • Charging for software in the age of web apps

    Google was an advertising company. Back in 2005, Daring Fireball’s John Gruber described Google’s business as follows: Judged by their profits, Google is an advertising company. They don’t profit from search, they don’t profit from software. They profit by selling ads. This isn’t to belittle them — I think Google is a terrific company, and […]

  • Danger in the cloud: a proposal

    In response to recent events, I’d like to propose a different kind of web service that overcomes the privacy and reliability issues with cloud web applications, while providing a solid business model for both application developers and service providers, as well as a seamless, easy-to-use experience for end users. The T-Mobile storm Over the weekend […]