Git

One great tool I forgot to mention in Cool Technologies was git. Git is a decentralized SCM developed by Linus Torvalds. for Linux.

My experience with SCM software has been largely positive which I feel is definitely the exception. At Empirix when I first arrived they were using SourceSafe. It was clear everyone hated it and a short time after I started the switch was made to Perforce. I was really excited about this given how Linux friendly Perforce is, especially in comparison to SourceSafe. I quickly got used to the command line interface and used it almost exclusively. I will say that the GUI interface is amazing and I did use it frequently to search for changes, check diffs etc… At Empirix we were working relatively closely with the bleeding edge powerpc branch of the Linux Kernel and they were obviously using git. So I had some experience with the basics of it but we kept the Empirix kernel under Perforce and did all our development in that environment.

When it came time to determine what SCM software to use with Movolu I ended up deciding on using git. Perforce wasn’t an option because of it’s licensing which essentially left the choice between SVN and git. I had always wanted to learn more git and I thought the distributed model was just too cool. Distributed is absolutely perfect for open source projects but I really thought it would work great for a small startup like Movolu as well.

In the end I had a few general thoughts after working with it. The first is that the branching etc… is quite nice. With Perforce it’s a little bit of an adventure each time and on one occassion even resulted in a pretty major mistake. I did think git was a little overly complicated. I think simplicity is majorly important and hands down git was more complicated and more difficult to master than Perforce branching aside. I don’t think this has anything to do with the distributed model either. I also really missed having a top notch gui interface for looking at file revision history etc… I think I would use it again for my next project but if Perforce changed their license I think I would go with that (I realize it’s free up to a certain number of users but I would just fear lock in).

Wolfram Alpha

Wolfram Alpha launched last night and I’ve had a little time to play around with it and see what all the fuss was about. For those that don’t know it is described as a computational knowledge engine. In essence it’s a structured search engine. Instead of crawling pages looking for keywords, it throws information into a database and uses this structure to compute answers to your searches. My initial reaction to it is mixed. On one hand I’m extremely impressed with the amount of work required to get a service like this running but on the other hand I’m left asking the “why” question. Wolfram Alpha is not trying to go head to head with Google, it serves a very different purpose. If you have a very structured question (i.e. calories in an apple) it works well. It’s not perfect by any stretch and it’s knowledge base is a little limited, but it clearly is only going to get better. However, typing in the same search in google provides a very similar answer with the first link. So what’s the real problem it’s solving here?

Another huge conceptual difference is the way it computes searches. This really is a big difference. Do a search on a date and it will tell you exactly the number of days that have passed since then etc… I even found out my birth date fell on a Tuesday which I didn’t know! But this is only interesting if the data set it’s using is continually changing which it’s not. To be fair there is an entire set of mathematical searches you can do which become relevant here but that doesn’t fall under my typical use case (at least for me). So all in all it seems really cool, I just don’t know when I’ll use it and I guess that’s my problem with it. I think initially to be successful it’s going to need to find a few common use cases where it really outperforms Google or Wikipedia. I think this could happen though I remain skeptical in the long run.

iPhone Apps

When Apple finally opened their SDK to third party developers that’s when I made the switch to an iPhone and have never looked back. Almost a year later and here’s an inventory of all the apps I have installed:

Yelp: I find it useful, though I’ve found myself simply using the native maps app to find stuff around me. The user reviews for me are less important which I suppose is the whole point:)

Facebook: Time waster, gets some use but I find the interface too cluttered for what I want to use it for. Why haven’t they added location?

TouchTerm: One of two paid apps I have. Lets me remotely login to my Linux box via ssh. I rarely use it but it’s one of those apps I need for piece of mind!

AIM: Never use it, but it’s nice to have.

Shazam: My favorite novelty app. In my opinion the coolest app I have. With that said I rarely use it.

Flashlight: Simplest app I have but it does work as advertised.

Google: I used it frequently for a bit for the voice search ability but I’ve stopped:)

Pandora: Every so often I’ll fire it up and then I’ll remember I’ve heard all these songs before… too lazy to make a new station.

Twitterrific: Best free twitter client, doesn’t get much use.

Twitter Trend: Another time waster with little to no use under its belt.

iTrans NYC: My second paid app. This one I probably use the most believe it or not!

Skype: I made a test call and then never used it again. I’m keeping it around because I’m sure it will come in handy at some point.

Brightkite: I met a Techstars alum at one of the conferences Movolu showcased at and he convinced me to try it out. It’s well done but given the zero friends I have that use it, it’s not exactly a favorite. I keep it around because I hold LBS near and dear to my heart:)

Live Poker: Why haven’t I deleted this? It’s at least well done.

Time Crisis Light: One of my favorite Namco arcade games of all time growing up (that could be another entire post!) and one of the few iPhone games I find worthy of keeping around. It’s difficult though.

WordPress: One of the reasons I chose WordPress over Blogger. Hopefully I’ll get some use out of it!

Looking at the list to be honest I’m a little underwhelmed. The apps are great. I love being able to tag a song I hear, do a voice search on Google or ssh into my Linux box. The reality is I don’t do this kind of stuff nearly as much as I thought I would. The stuff I do use my iPhone for most are it’s great maps app, email and Safari. I actually think the SDK is still a little too closed down for a real killer app to emerge. For example take a look at Qik, it allows you to broadcast in real time video and let your friends watch. This to me could be a game changer in the way people create and share content. Unfortunately you need to jailbreak the phone, something I’m not particularly interested in doing. I also think not being able to run apps in the background is brutal and have since day one. There were a bunch of amazing services I was thinking about working on but without background processes they become utterly useless. There’s always room for improvement I suppose!