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• Dr. Dobb’s | Identifying Top Developers – Great notes on how to interview and hire developers.

The extreme press coverage is no doubt due to the simple fact that it is Google offering the service. Amazon has had some what similar services for a while and has received a fraction of the press that Google has or will garner over this platform. However, there is still some very important differences about Google’s offering.

1. It’s dead simple. Amazon’s services still require a lot of very technical IT knowledge to utilize. If the video demos of Google’s version are to be believed, the developers need not worry about these system details.
2. It integrates with Google’s account services. This means it’s very easy to build a web application that allows logging in via Google. I’m not sure if this is a pro or a con and I believe only time will tell on this one.
3. It only has support for Python. Sorry PHP and Rails developers. However, they have said they will release other languages after some intial feedback. My money is that PHP will be the first.

So here’s my thoughts. When they open it to PHP, a ton of PHP developers will flock to it. It will be free, or at least very cheap, and much easier to manage then a shared host or a dedicated server. Google will continue to roll out objects/modules that make it easy to integrate with other sites and services, and since it will be on the Google infrastructure, it will be easier for Google to aquire the popular apps and integrate them into their services.

So who wins?

Google does because it means more page inventory that they can sell advertising on. More data in their database that they can organize and present in different ways. More adoption of their technologies like GFS and Big Table.

Developers do because it means scalability and rock bottom costs. It means a farm system for exit strategies. It means feeling like you are “part of Google” without being employed there.

Who do you think wins?

1. Requirements Gathering
2. Design Phase
3. Implementation Phase
4. Verification Phase
5. Maintenance Phase

Presumably at each phase of the project, there are sign offs and reviews with the stakeholders, the end users of the software. Sometimes you’ll hear phase 3 referred to as the big bang phase. This is because after phase 1 & 2 are complete, the developer(s) goes off for a period of time, codes the application and bang, delivers it for phase 4. In fact, most the time, phase 3 is going to be the longest phase (not counting continued maintenance).

This is exactly why the waterfall method sucks. The developer – and other team members – better hope they ask a cubic ton of questions in phase 1 and can accurately convey the project in phase 2. They also better hope that the stakeholders know exactly what they want. Because if not, phase 4 is going to put developers in an agitated state. In my experience, most stakeholders only have a slight idea of what they want. They aren’t techies and can’t tell you with 100% confidence if they want their software to bake bread or make toast – subtle difference right?

So you’re team rolls into phase 4 and the stakeholders are like, “OMG! WTF?” And you’re like, “What?! It does what you wanted. Don’t you remember us going over it when we showed you those diagrams and schemas?” And they’re still like, “OMG! WTF?”

This is why the iterative approach – sometimes referred to as agile development – has become so popular. It allows developers to use rapid application development (RAD) to prototype software.  So there is never a “surprise, here it is” moment. Instead the stakeholder moves down the process with you taking ownership into the final product. It’s some what similar to the creative design process, but for geeks.

Word of warning though, don’t expect developers to jump on this model though. They tend to prefer having a set of specs, sitting down and coding to those, and then moving on. They may see iterations and undocumented changes as something bad.

Anyway, not writing a book here. Let me know your experiences with software development. Do you prefer agile interative development or waterfall development?

Most – I won’t say all – video podcasts are in one of the following formats: Quicktime, mpeg-4, or h.264. This means up till this point, I couldn’t stream them from the XP MCE to the 360. That is, until Microsoft released support for mpeg-4 and h.264 with their 360 Dashboard update that just hit.

Last night, I upgraded the Dashboard – thanks Microsoft for asking rather then just forcing it. I opened up iTunes on the MCE and subscribed to four video podcasts. I set iTunes to download them to one of the shared directories so the 360 would see them. At this point, I’m almost giddy with excitement. I just saved $300 on an AppleTV.

And boy was I disappointed…not a single one of them would play. They all said invalid file format or unsupported codec when I tried to play through the MCE Extender software or didn’t even show up when I tried to play them through the Dashboard software.

I didn’t expect any quicktime encoded videos to work, so I looked for podcasts that were in mpeg-4 format. The only way I could tell was by file extension, which probably isn’t the best way. The point isn’t whether or not I can find podcasts that will work. The point is that I want to be able to watch the podcasts I want to watch. Maybe I will have to get an AppleTV after all.

UPDATE: Microsoft posted a handy FAQ on the new video features available from the update. First, the new video formats are not supported through Windows Media Center Extender which explains why that didn’t work. Second, the new video formats are not supported via Windows Media Connect, which would explain why trying to play the software through the Dashboard didn’t work. You have to either use a removable media or optical media (i.e. CD or DVD) since Windows Media Player 11 won’t stream either mpeg-4 or h.264 to the 360 from another computer. So while I can now watch the content on my 360, I have to use a thumb drive or disk to transfer it. Arg!

Tags: AppleTV, Xbox 360, MCE, Podcasts

Anyone have cool use cases to point to besides the ones on Microsoft’s site?

However, Amazon offers online storage as part of their S3 web services. The way they charge is a little different. They charge a monthly fee for the amount of space you are taking up on their servers as well as a monthly fee for data transfer. With two fees compared to Mozy’s one, you would think Mozy would be the cheaper alternative. Except that Amazon is dirt cheap. They charge $0.15 per GB of space used and, with their lower price going into effect as of June 1st, charge only $0.10 per GB uploaded (there is a tiered fee for downloading data that ranges from $0.13 to $0.18 per GB). That means for a backup solution, you’re costs will be front loaded but month over month costs should be cheaper. For $4.95 per month, you can house 33GB of data a month – assuming no uploading or downloading. And since you only pay for what you use, you may not have need to backup 33GB – making it cheaper than Mozy in the long run.

This is unless you have more than 33GB of data. If you have more than that, use Mozy. And if you have less than 2GB of data, use Mozy (it’s free). So, the Amazon sweet spot is between 2GB and 33GB. This is what’s making it hard. I’m in the Amazon sweet spot. But I don’t want to have to change my backup plan when I reach 33GB. Arg!

As for the software, for Amazon I’m using Jungle Disk. The nice thing about Jungle Disk is it lets you not only run incremental backups on change files, but it lets you mount the S3 service as a drive on your Mac.

Setup was a breeze. The install was via a pkg install which was effortless and they even included an uninstall app – rare with Mac software. After installing, I logged into my account – the one I created when I downloaded the software. Mozy scanned my documents and then asked which files I would like to back up. One cool feature is the ability to backup using backup sets or by selecting individual files and folders. An example of a backup set is Microsoft Excel Spreadsheets or iPhoto Library. As I started selecting items to backup, it kept a running total of how much of my free 2GB of backup space I was using.

It was a great experience. I used to program in PHP a few years back and found this environment easy to learn and fun to code in. I basically coded two applications from the tutorials and started a third on my own. I can’t wait to learn more (I just bought Agile Web Development with Rails from The Pragmatic Programmer site).