I found it interesting that the researcher thought that there was no possibility of receiving external funding for something like this. I would have thought the opposite. In fact I can think of a bunch of companies who would be only too happy to throw money at so ething like this.
If you've tried to use GreenSock on a mobile device, you'd see that it stutters quite a bit depending on the number and size of elements. I've tried all the famo.us demos on basic mobile phones and for the most part they all perform well in terms of fps. That is their main advantage, I think.
In terms of introducing new mind blowing things, I agree that 2013 was not good at all (the new consoles deserve a special mention for completely failing to generated any enthusiasm at all) I also think though, that it was an incredible year for bridging a gap - specifically, the number of people becoming comfortable with using technology in their daily lives, and much more common than 2012. The sheer number of gadgets I see on a daily basis on my commute is unbelievable and very exciting. I think we have finally jumped over a hump where even grandparents have at least one decent device (ipads seem to be the most common). The coming years will only be more exciting because of the legwork done by this year.
I'm going to reiterate as others have done - this is an area where a good graph database would blow all the others out of the water. I am currently using neo4j for a web app and find it to be extremely good in terms of performance. There is really only one downside to using a graph database - they are not really scalable horizontally as you might want. They need a fair bit of resources. But in terms of querying, they would be unparalleled in this particular use-case.
They are also not in infancy - they are in use in many places where you wouldn't expect them and which aren't discussed. One big area is network management - at least one major telecom uses a particular graph db to manage nodes in real-time.
It is an interesting question. I'd like to see what HNers think about it. Personally, I would think that offering dev services or tutoring (sencha, red hat, SPServices, etc.), restrictive licensing (Green sock, sencha again, neo4j) would be more likely to self-sustain than payment offerings (donations, crowdsourcing, etc). I guess a good company to watch is famo.us since they are currently making the rounds after being funded.
Hilarious. I wonder what the "proper channels" are that are in the official statement. I was one of the people who downloaded this, but after I read the message about needing to wait in line for the privilege, I promptly uninstalled. Blackberry has fallen so fast and hard, it hurts to watch. I owned a 9700 for a log time and was writing apps for it but now I can't even fathom why anybody would think of getting a blackberry device, and after this, I can't imagine anyone wanting to use BBM either. If it weren't for nostalgia, I wouldn't have bothered.
These are interesting scenarios. Each of them could probably use some additional context but overall I think the problem is one of practicality vs idealism. I have been in both parties over the years and have more often than not been in the camp of over-architecting a solution. I think that on the surface, he does sound like a very practical programmer who is cognizant of the bottom line. If you are not going to be paid extra to implement something, then sometimes it doesn't make business sense to implement it. It is sad but true and you will sometimes feel the same if freelancing. To me, I would not turn my back on this guy - it does seem like there is stuff to be learnt from him. Nobody has all the answers though, so it is good for you to question him. If it is possible, maybe open dialogue with him about these would be beneficial to you both.
I am 33 as well and have been working in web development for about 10 years. I still wonder the same thing, myself. An interesting thing about this field is that although things change constantly, there are concepts that are transferable from one to the other. If you build a good foundation on those things and keep trying to learn new things,your age never enters the equation.
Since you already have a design background, I think it would be well worth your while to just learn how to use HTML, CSS and javascript effectively. You should be able to learn them inside and out in comparatively short amount of time compared to something like objective-C. There is also a big market for designers who can work with code (script?).
I don't get it. Configuring email on your phone should allow you to respond or read them as quickly as a txt. I am pretty sure that an educational institution would have a pretty good email system set up. is it a matter of students not knowing how to configure email on their phones?
I always wondered about this and always came to the same conclusion: the old java-based and the new QNX o/s is just not going to fit with the MS ecosystem. I don't think they are compatible at all.
I am of the opposite mindset. I think there are just way too many apps out there and apps lack many things that HTML has - discoverability, cross-platform deploys, reusability and other things. HTML is not for every use case, and native is definitely not the hammer for all use cases. Every time I go to a forum and see the giant display to download a whole app just to see their forum, it makes me throw up a little.
There are quite a few startups that use MS but they are largely using it because of the bizspark programme. I think it is largely to do with cutting costs and thinking down the road.
It also possibly has something to do with the type of person that decides to branch out to working in a startup - its my opinion that vested .net developers are more oriented towards working in the enterprise than in a startup.
It might just be me, and since this is Apple vs. Samsung I am sure there will be lots of heated viewpoints on the topic, but to me it seems that this is going to be largely political. Apple is going to seem like a US-based company trying to move its operations back to boost the US economy, whereas Samsung is the external threat from overseas that is going to stifle the domestic market. I am not from either country, but that is how I see this playing out.
Heroku at the moment. It has a good selection of add-ons (neo4j hosted for free) and I've found it "good enough". I have used nodejitsu before but when they bumped up all their prices for seemingly no reason, I left. Nodejitsu supports websockets whereas heroku only supports polling. Deploying to nodejitsu was a tonne faster than heroku.
The single biggest thing for me was the framework for deploying "apps" through azure. You can create webparts or other bits of functionality that can be reused but hosted externally on Azure. There is a self-hosted option where the URL is a generated one but has a trust setup already; but there is also the option to use your own azure hosting but you need configure the trust yourself. One other thing I liked is that there is no more need for a SharePoint Designer - there is a new method of designing sites that is way more configurable than in the past. You can configure almost everything, but as it always is, you will find that you need to do quite a bit of research on your own to get things 100%.
All in all though, it is a very solid offering from MS that nobody really talks about. One of the main pain points from the past is that everyone thought it was a CMS when really it was a document management system. Now it actually can be both. There is a talk on YouTube from the unveiling of 2013 that is well worth a watch (although it is over an hour long)