Teachers don't seem to have a problem with whiteboards and chalkboards. Painters who use easels don't seem to have problem working on vertical surfaces. The problem isn't with the vertical surface. The problem is entirely related to manufacturing and design of the technology. Like requiring pens, for example. Or not having multi-touch capabilities (major ergonomic feature there - being able to use gestures - that wasn't present in earlier touchscreen form factors, due to manufacturing and programming challenges).

Here's the problem with your argument: Chalkboards. And whiteboards.

As I recall, chalkboards and whiteboards have been used everywhere for the last 30 years. The problem hasn't been vertical surfaces, gorilla arm, fatigue, and what not. Teachers and other professions deal with those issues all the time. The issue has been processing power, form factor, and ergonomics. But not ergonomics in the gorilla arm sense. Ergonomics in the sense of requiring specialized pens that can't be easily replaced, and requires exotic device drivers and software.

Can anyone say 'exocortex'? The only thing missing are the right apps and software stack.

accelerando
http://manybooks.net/titles/strosscother05accelerando-txt.html

A pair of prescription eyeglasses with designer frames can easily cost upwards of $1000 dollars or more. Project Glass is going disrupt the current eyeglass industry, as a whole new augmented eyeglasses market is going to open up. It's going to be very interesting times for LensCrafters, Cohen Fashion Optical, Pearle Vision... (and I'd be selling their stock right now if I owned any). Will they go the way of the recording industry and resist the change? Or will they be more like Barnes and Noble and try to adapt with a not-quite-successful proprietary solution? Will Google acquire LensCrafters and will we be able to buy a pair of Ray-Bans running Android? Will Pearle Vision try to avoid a buy-out by building their own Ubuntu powered glasses (sans dedicated hardware like accelerometers and microphones) and wind up being the eyeglass version of the Nook (versus the iPad)?

How about it being biological in nature? The bias comes about in the way that we perceive and identify patterns through shape, color, repetition, etc. The bias is located in the rods, cones, optic nerve, and visual cortex. And it's inherently and axiomatically in all people who have eyes and ears, in the same way that it's axiomatic that all people breath and metabolize energy. The entire field of cognitive neurobiology provides a compelling reason to treat bias as axiomatic.

One consideration to think about is that the people who are recommending you release as open source may, in reality, simply be advocating for the ability to make customizations and build on top of the framework you're developing. An open API made actually serve their needs; and may be something they haven't considered, or don't know to ask about. So, open API, proprietary framework is one possibility.

Second, consider a subscription model to a proprietary database. It's a classic business model, and can be added to most any project relatively easily. Even open source ones. On the support side, the proprietary database may be a) premium support forum, b) bleeding edge features not incorporated into the base build, c) recent bug fixes and security patches not incorporated into the base build. On the feature side, there are countless opportunities, but they'll be dependent upon your framework and what it does. For example, if you have a service that is geolocation aware, your propietary database might be a list of locations of interest.

I disagree. Outsourcing is driven by a high demand for programming talent, and a supply of cheap programming labor from developing countries. But here's the thing: we're quickly exhausting the availability of untapped labor forces. India, Russia, Brazil, China... they've all been brought online and the candidates for IT and programming position have been incorporated into the global workforce. As that happens, they're stop being cheap programming labor. But the demand continues. When globalization finishes running its course, and we effectively get global internet coverage, things are going to get better in North America with regards to programming work. There's *still* going to be a demand for programming talents; but there won't be a trade imbalance which encourages outsourcing. No, this next decade is going to be marked by quit a bit of insourcing.

Here's the thing: you *can* start practicing medicine, prescribing drugs, charging for advice on the law, auditing financials, etc. Without a degree. Or without a license. But it becomes a matter of risks and rewards and liability. Without the proper education, credentials, licensures, and professional memberships; you can't expect the state, employers, or other individuals to protect you from liability in the case something goes wrong. If you're willing to accept the liability yourself, or have some method of limiting your liability, then do what you will. If you're working with a group of individuals you know aren't going to claim damages or press charges, then the matter of licensing, credentials, etc doesn't matter.

As some examples:
- providing financial auditing to crooks and thieves (the crooks and thieves are motivated not to use the legal system);
- charging money as a consultant to provide (law) advice on a particular topic one may be an expert in (supply/demand economics may allow him to operate in that particular capacity without fear of damages being brought against him; for instance, political pundits, economists, etc );
- going over case history and drug interactions of family members (the person going over drug interactions knows the family member isn't going to sue them); - starting a business and writing software which prescribes drugs and/or evaluates drug interactions, etc (the entrepreneur/programmer has a limited liability corp and software audits protecting her);
The point being that in each of these cases, liability is contained in some way.

You'll find that entrepreneurs and PhD level professionals regularly are involved in practicing medicine/psychiatry/law/accounting/etc without official licensure and certification, etc. They're simply willing to accept liability or have the necessary protections in place (such as ownership of an LLC).

Now, with regards to IT and software professionals. It's a dumping ground for many of the same underlying reasons. 1) no professional licensure or certification bodies. 2) liability is difficult to track and account for because most IT workers are employees and aren't contracting fee-for-service. But even if you had those things in place, people could still come along without a CS degree or board certification in C++ programming, by way of simply starting their own business and assuming liability and risks themselves.

Agreed. People don't have the time or necessary context to parse text and lots of numbers during presentations. Graphs, diagrams, and photos are what really works for presentations.

Also, the transition effect is 100% spot on. Specifically, simple fade effects between graphs to give a before/after. If you create a series of diagrams or graphs, all with the same width, height, margins, padding, etc; and so they're all positioned exactly the same; you can use the fade effect in PowerPoint to achieve smooth transitions from slide to slide; and it appears that you've animated the graphs or diagrams. I can't recommend this technique enough. From the observers perspective, there's no context change when this happens; no need for the eye to rescan the image; no need for the user to jump to a new context. All the viewer knows is that an element was either added or removed from the image. This allows you to walk the user through a complex concepts.

For instance, when adding a new industrial plant machine to a shop floor (MRI scanner, 3D printer, robotic welder; whaterver); you might start with a network diagram with everything installed. Then, working backwards, selectively hide one element at a time, and save out a PNG or JPEG image. Keep saving out copies of the network diagram with one fewer piece of supporting equipment or change to the network layout, until you get to the current network state. You should wind up with a half-dozen or dozen network diagrams; all the same shape/size etc, each differing from the next by the addition of one new piece of equipment to the network. When you take this series of images and put them into PowerPoint and add a fade transition, you can walk people through the complex process of installing a modern piece of equipment on the shop floor or in the server room. Or restructuring a department. Or refactoring code. Or whatever other complex process you're doing.

Mod parent up. d3.js is becoming one of the slickest libraries around.
Add jquery.mobile.js in the mix for CSS optimized page transitions and single-page web designs.
And maybe a dash of webgl.js.


I second the notion that I'm *really* starting to like Javascript. At this point, I'm consider 100% javascript applications; since things like node.js and mongodb are now available.

I second processing. Also, if his project is going to be in HTML/HTML5, he should check out the javascript successor to processing.org, which is d3.js.

Oh dear. That seems like quite a muddled way to view web development. But who am I to say? If you wish to use a confused metaphor, that's your prerogative. :shrug: From my own experience, the HTML/CSS/Javascript translation as Model/View/Controller works like a charm, and helps me keep everything very orderly and organized. Are you using HTML5?

Also, probably too late for this overall conversation, but in case you're interested, it just occurred to me where the strongly typed data types are in the HTML5/Javascript paradigm... in the HTML5! There are specific data-type and data-role attributes you can give to tags in HTML5. So, if you need strongly typed variables in you web application, all you would need to do is write a single javascript function, probably using jquery selectors, to locate the 'data-type' and 'data-role' elements in the HTML5 tag, and perform whatever type checking you want. Then you just reuse that javascript function in all of your event code and callback code.

First, get thee Aptana for development.

Second, download thee jQuery. I would also recommend jQuery Mobile and jQuery.tools.

Third, dig around in jquery until you find qunit for unit testing.

Fourth, do a refresher on Lisp and functional languages. They say that javascript got it's fathers curly braces and it's mothers lexical scope. It may *look* like C/C++/Java, but under the hood is ActionScript ala Scheme ala Lisp. And it a very real difference which gets played out in copious usage of events and callback functions. As a refresher, the HTML5 paradigm is basically an MVC paradigm, where HTML is handling the Model, CSS is handling the View, and Javascript is handling all the controller functions. Phrased differently, the HTML is describing the What is displayed; CSS is describing How it should be displayed, and Javascript is describing When it should be displayed. And the When gets implemented as callbacks and events. And it just so happens that functional languages are ideally suited for that kind of work (ala lambda calculus, etc).

Lastly, if you're brave, check out Node.js.

Mod parent up! This is a strong move by Twitter to contain censorship, track it, and route around it. We should be glad for the work they've done!