Global idea movement

Back in 2004 when I was considering doing an open source project I had many vague notions about why it would be a good idea, but now more than a decade later I can cheerfully say that my reason now for wild support is global idea movement. As I noted in my post on the 10 year anniversary of my project, it has been downloaded from over 150 countries, and could I have done that with a moneyed project?

Can you imagine trying to market a paid product in over 150 countries?

I guess Google and Facebook are learning. But even for them their base products are free: Google search, and well, Facebook.

And oddly enough Facebook came out the same month as my little app, and more power to them! I don't envy that Zuckerberg guy. But my ideas are in probably about as many countries as his.

I'll take that, thank you very much.

When it comes down to it, a few people can build a mega corporation that can handle all the issues of global marketing, production, development and sales, but many, many, many  more people can watch in awe as their open source project gets downloaded from all over the world.

So intriguingly, take the money out of it, and ideas can move--globally.

That's one of the greatest gifts of our modern web.

But then again, with the money involved they can as well. It kind of makes you wonder.

So it's kind of an interesting thing we can see in our time, which I think is remarkable--as in worth remarking upon.

And where better to remark than on my own blog where ideas rule?

But one does wonder...

Regardless I feel I can confidently say from my own experience that if you want to most easily have people all over the globe using something you developed then open source is clearly a way. For a paid product I'm sure you have a much bigger hill to climb.


James Harris

More on ESA radar satellite

Am still intrigued by the Copernicus project and so here is a link to a news story from the +European Space Agency, ESA  where having a radar satellite has made a difference:

Copernicus Sentinel-1 aids response to Namibia flood

It seems interesting to me that such satellites haven't already been in widespread use before. Oh yeah, so the point of a radar satellite is that it can penetrate through clouds making it all-weather.

Europe is pioneering a system, and I have to wonder why my country doesn't already have something like that in use for the world.

But that just goes to show you: no one country or group of countries will provide all the solutions necessary for our world.

My view on problem space and innovation

My personal philosophy on development is that the problem space is the most important thing. And the problem space has to do with: what exactly is the purpose of this application, why must it exist?

The way I think that works usually is you code something for the initial problem space, which fulfills a need, and you watch users with the thing, which can help you to better formulate the outlines of the problem space, which can push you to add features or refine the application.

And that can lead to rapid development, with lots of iterations as you approach a better and better solution to a problem space that gets ever more defined.

Or you can just solve the problem space.

For instance, my open source application Class Viewer has very few iterations, almost no innovation, and hasn't really changed very much in over 10 years!

But as far as I am concerned it solves a particular problem space, which is how to get class information quickly, about public methods, fields, constructors and get to Javadocs.

Turns out I needed that problem space solved and had been frustrated years ago with trying to do those same things by other means.

The biggest innovation from the original product has been also letting you open a Java file in a text editor.

What's interesting to me is how the simple concept of a problem space can explain when you will see a lot of iterations and innovations versus when you should not. But I think there can be a problem if someone feels they MUST have a lot of iterations just because.

Now generally you will NOT solve the problem space with a particular application but only approximate a solution with ever greater accuracy. For instance, smartphones today are vastly different from the original cellphones.

The problem space of: what should this mobile computing thing do for users?--is evolving, growing, expanding and ever changing.

It's hard to imagine when it might be completely solved!

The Java language itself operates in the problem space of: how do you best tell a computing device what to do?

And another area is the social app problem space which can probably never be completely solved and we're seeing lots of applications out there trying to solve various pieces of it and flesh out the problem space, and I use quite a few of them: Blogger, Google+, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, among others.

But that's not a surprise: being human is kind of complicated and connecting with other humans is VERY complicated. It's a wonder they're getting by with as little innovation as they're doing so far.

And that is my philosophy on how the problem space helps you understand when innovation is necessary, which also lets me explain why my own application gets away with so little.

Solving a major problem space is something very few developers will ever experience.

But if you DO solve a problem space you will look with amazement at an application which is just what it needs to be. Such a thing I suspect is like a unicorn for most of the development world, as in they have never seen it and presume it's just some mythical beastie which can not exist in the real world.


James Harris

Some disclosures May 2014

At this time I have no paid endorsements. Items I talk about on this blog including products are simply things that interest me, and I'm not getting paid anything in return for mentioning them.

If that were to change I would disclose which it turns out is what you're supposed to do if I'm correctly interpreting guidelines from the Federal Trade Commission, FTC for short, in this area. To get to those yourself you can find links in a press release from the FTC:

Federal Trade Commission Press Release

And I think it is a way to see an example of how government regulation is important.

It makes a difference whether or not something you're reading on a blog is really just someone's uncompensated opinion or if they're getting paid in some way which can influence that opinion.

Smart regulation is where the government plays an important role in protecting consumers in ways that make sense.

There are blog posts mostly from a ways back when I talked products as I had a concept for the blog at that time where it might move in a product review direction. Now I'm not interested in that path. There was no compensation for those posts. Just idle ideas I was trying as I experimented on directions for this blog.

Also there are posts in support of Chrome OS and things related to it, but that's because I consider it to be what I call a BOS, which stands for Browser Operating System. And it turns out I introduced that concept on this blog back in May 2008. I have no idea if Google is listening to me on this subject, and definitely am not getting anything from them to discuss it! If I did I'd gleefully disclose as that would also be bragging rights.

And I have my own concepts for doing endorsements if I ever do them, as I have none now, which I encapsulated into a post talking about what I called a limited endorser.


James Harris

Great on mobile

All of my blogs including this one have mobile templates so give you a solid experience on mobile devices.

So you can conveniently read this blog, anywhere, any time.

For most of you getting to it from your mobile device should be easy!

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