iPhone - creating client app kind of UI for safari browser (web)

On my exploration to build client application for iPhone, I started looking into the internal API's of iPhone SDK, at least seem to be lot more learning on Objective-C, Cocoa, iUI etc before I could make a dent into writting my first iPhone client application... but found a short cut / alternative approach for building iPhone client application look & feel on safari - WebApp.net, I would like to use this post to provide some quick tips on using WebApp.net.

WebApp.net / WAn - is simple collection of CSS, JS elements that help create iPhone client kind of look & feel application on the safari browser:

• Simple & easy steps to create your app looking like a iPhone app on the safari
• Use of div & CSS to make the HTML elements similar to iPhone client app controls - like textbox, radio option, list etc
• Use a single HTML or page - for all the sub-pages of the web application, so that it loads fast & does not have any delay in loading subsequent pages
• Sample works well on Firefox browser for testing on desktop before testing on iPhone

That's it - for now on iPhone exploration, hope to write more frequent on iPhone application building ASAP.

-Bhaskara

Innovation - transformations in new age?

I will write a detailed book review in later post, but this is only quick summary of new book from "CK Prahalad" - "the new age of innovation"... amazing book that is backed with 3+ yrs of research by CK Prahalad, his books are a treat to read & flow of the book is excellent... I finished 30% of the book in one read tonight, will be finishing it in one or 2 more sittings.

Book is about 2 new concepts "N = 1" & "R = G" - a new theory for competition & innovation that companies should perform in the new age:

N=1 - concentrate on 1 customer at a time & look at how services or offering can be customized to meet each customer need, co-create the value with each customer

R=G - Companies will have to face the resources being global & build the process, operations to handle these global resources

It is a must read book, get your copy today! for more on this book visit - http://www.newageofinnovation.com

-Bhaskara

Being Entrepreneur @ Employed Job?

Do you have to start your own enterprise to be an "Entrepreneur"? Answer is a NO - being & displaying the entrepreneur is all abut the attitude, which can very well be demonstrated even being on an employed job... do you think it would be any good - if everyone of us started an enterprise, then who would be your customers or employees?

Few attitudes in my opinion that are important to demonstrate your entrepreneur skills on your employed job are:

Ownership & Accountability - Important attitude for an entrepreneur, is to demonstrate the ownership & accountability, if you start a new enterprise you will be owner for everything - but when you are employed - you need to ensure that you take complete ownership for the functions or projects that you head, in other words you be the CEO for your group. You do not have to start a new enterprise to become a CEO, you are the one - for the group that you head... just go beyond the basic day-to-day duties & assume the role of a CEO

Lead without Title - Interesting concept that I read in Robin Sharma's "The Greatness Guide" - basically it means, you do not have or need to have a title to take actions or lead or make decisions - as long as the acts or decisions are within company policy limits & you are making an impact on the end customer. Ex: you have a customer requesting for something urgently to be done - go ahead & make a decision to put the required resource & get it done, if you are unable to get the required approval from your boss in-time, what is important that you touched a customer, made him happy & meet his expectations.

Execution & Completion - Important aspect to any assignment or job that you own, need to ensure that you are providing more than 200% to the job, perfecting on your execution everytime, ensure that items taken-up see the end of the tunnel & do not get killed or dropped in-between. Very powerful & essential aspect, to learn before you eventually start a new enterprise - so take your working job as a ground to horn or build your skills

Making an impact to end customer - touching the customer & creating value to end customer is important, "customer is boss" (interesting chapter on this in Don's - Wal-Mart Way) - you should demonstrate your entrepreneurial skills by ensuring that you think "how" & "what" act of yours will keep the customer satisfied & go in that direction - do not take the route of... "I have finished what customer initially asked for" - I don't care if that does not help him anymore.

Awareness of impact on your acts on company performance -
above all... in any acts or actions that you take, it is very important that you are operating within the limits of boundaries that company has established, ensure the required targets or margins are maintained in any actions that you take, there is no value - if you keep a customer satisfied at the cost of affecting company revenues for a long time

Master the above list... then you are good to head on to start your enterprise, while on a working job, use the time & resources available to make maximum use of the same!

Thanks
Bhaskara

iPhone SDK vs Android

This is a short post, talking about initial set of differences that I have observed so far, I will probably present this in a matrix format in my subsequent post - but here is a quick one:

Language - Objective-C vs Java
iPhone SDK requires you to be a pro on Objective-C language, the custom language Mac OSX developers are traditionally used to, as against Java based language for Android - this difference may lead an abundance of users available for Android programming as again lesser percentage of people for iPhone SDK

Device - to play with vs only emulators
iPhone developers have the advantage of creating the app, running it on their iPhone for testing it & playing around with the app as against Android programmers will have to wait for a while before the 1st handset with Android is released

Compilers - Apple vs Multiple
Apple will be the sole compiler for iPhone SDK, which may avoid any confusions around versions or flavors of the SDK, hope Android also remains like that & not become like C Compilers that got created back in C days & developer had to worry about compiler internals for his programs

Dev Environment - Mac vs Anything
iPhone SDK is only available for Mac & not for windows or Linux, this in my knowledge is a strategy used by Apple to increase Mac penetration into enterprise domains, forcing CIO's to purchase Mac's for development purposes. Android as against iPhone SDK is java based & can be built on any platforms

-Bhaskara

How consumer based products become an instant success?

All products start small, humble, with minimal traffic on their sites... facebook, myspace, linkedin - all started with few hundreds, thousands of users before it became millions - in this post, I wanted to share how typical growth trend looks to be for a consumer product.

Usually the traffic jumps in multitudes of 100x, for example - if this week traffic was 100 unique visitors, it could easily become 10,000 unique visitors next week or in next month... it is very important for the product to be ready for this sudden jump in traffic, you will not have time to go down, bring down the site, redo the web front or backend to handle the new found traffic - the winner is who... expects this sudden jump in traffic & just waiting for that to come, if you take the route of... "let the traffic come, then I will solve my scalability problem" - then you may be too late - as the users who may see your site slow or unresponsive because of heavy traffic - will never come back & it will start spreading negative word about your site & chances of getting such a traffic again will be hard or impossible.

Lesson... if you think the site is for millions of users & you want it to be scalable, build it that way - there is nothing like, I will build it to handle current load, will solve the scalability problem later.

-Bhaskara