Good Bye Steve

It was just few weeks ago when we were talking about Steve Job's resignation and it was pretty clear it had something to do with his health I just thought he had more time :(

Steve was one of the best CEO's of this era. His passion for perfection lead Apple to its brightest years  and even when they said that working with was insane it was all because he really cared about details and excellence. Apple won't be able to replace him that is for sure. They knew this day was coming and they are prepared but they won't get another Steve there would a lot of replacements but never some one like him. They can teach his ideology and try their employees to follow it but that level of excellence needs to come from deep inside.

There are tons and tons of articles about this all over the web even James Gosling wrote about him and Google has a tribute honoring him on his home page and this is because Steve was AMAZING and he will be remembered that is for sure!

I still remember the first time I watched The Pirates of Silicon Valley which is basically a movie of Apple and Microsoft early days. It is a very good movie if you want to learn more about Steve and how he started everything.

And finally here is the famous speech he gave at Stanford back in 2005, really inspiring.




Good bye Steve we will miss you, thanks for everything!

More on Steve here:
MicroSiervos
TechCruch 1, 2 and 3
Engadget 1 and 2
OSNews
BarraPunto
SlashDot
AndroidCentral

200 Downloads and Posts

Today is a great day :) My Android application passed 200 downloads :) from all 200 40.8% are on Froyo, 30.6% on GingerBread and the rest Honeycomb so that means I need to work on the Tablet optimized version more which is something I am working on among other things. I can only tell it is going to be amazing :)

Besides that this is the 200 post :) what a coincidence isn't it? With almost 5000 page views  I started this blog just to share all the things I like and learn. I know the comments are under moderation but that is something I will try to remove in the future, please believe me :). I know I am not posting as much as before, but that is because of all the work trips, work projects and all that, I will get more time to keep sharing my hacking nights :)

So thanks for all the support, comments and all that I will keeping sharing as usual.

Happy coding :)

Happy Birthday Google

Today Google is turning 13 and as far as I know it is old enough to have a Facebook account, although not enough to have a Google+. Ironic isn't it?

Whoever knows me also knows that I love Google :) I use almost all its products if not all them. My first email from GMail is from 2004! when it was invite only and since then it is my primary email :)

I was able to go to Google IO this year which was one of my dreams and I finally could make it real :) I was selected to test their first Chrome OS Notebook a.k.a CR-48 :) I also developed my first Chrome extension and Android App and of course I got my N1 which I believe is one of the best cellphones ever :)

So it is safe to say that I am a Google fan :) and even though I haven't accomplished my dream to work there yet I am sure one day I will,

So, happy birthday Google :) and I am sure there are a lot more to come.

Here is a video which shows Google's history and I must say I have been there for most of its accomplishments :)

Google Wallet is here

I still remember the first the time Google announced Google Wallet . I said to myself this is amazing! This is going another huge step in the way people make transactions, a new experience for customers and obviously for sellers.

Technology is  moving faster really really faster. My cellphone has already replaced lots of things, Notepad, Watch, Alarm Clock, GPS, Dictionary, and now It is going to replace my wallet. How many times have you forgot your wallet? and how many times have you forgot your cellphone? These days cellphone is the primary thing everyone keeps in theirs pockets all the time! It is more personal than anything else. It makes perfect sense to handle your wallet now. If you think, it is more secure. If you loose your wallet, you need to call all your credit and debit card companies to cancel all of them and of course ask for new ones again and without mentioning that you need to update all the online stores you usually shop. On the other hand if you loose your cellphone, this information is totally encrypted and it needs an extra PIN number to have access to it. So you just need to get a new cellphone ;)

The bad news is that as technology moves, you also need to get hardware  if you want to take advantage of it. In this case the technology behind all this magic is called NFC ( Near Field Communication). Right now not so many devices have this, but as usual it is just a matter of time.

You can read the official post here to find out more about this. Meanwhile I will consider updating my N1, probably I will wait for the next Nexus device and IceCream Sandwich ;)

Enjoy the video :)

Prototyping vs Engineering

Whenever I have time I like to watch talks from people I admire and consider inspiring, you know Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt, Linus Torvalds and well lots of them. This time I was watching a QA session with James Gosling a.k.a "The father of Java".  I started my university years with Java and since then, well has been my favorite programming language :)

Anyways, one of the questions he answered [1:08:25]was: "Common mistakes software developers make" he said  "Confusing Prototyping with Engineering tends to be a big one..", "A prototype is a learning experience you hit the delete button and then you re-write it..."

That answer hit me right away and I wished some people i know could watched it and specially this specific question. Sometimes you do not have control over your projects and that is frustrating because you know when something is wrong, something could be done better and that in the future if you do not do it right, it will cause lots of problems. And when you try to say it, nobody listens to you, believe me, it feels really really bad when you have to fix all the things you had predicted but no body wanted to listen to you.

You learn about these kind of mistakes the hard way and when you do it you do learn because of these huge mistakes is that projects fail or get delayed or even worse. The best thing though is next time hopefully you won't make the same mistake.

The very first time that happened to me was years ago and I thought we have learned about it, well at least i did, but it seems some people have not and that is just sad. I see one of those situations coming soon and I do not know what should I do. I guess it is not in my hands, isn't it?

The video is worth watching so If you have some spare time, watch it you won't regret it.

Happy 3rd Birthday Chrome

I can't believe Chrome is turning 3 years!. I have been using Chrome since the very first version :) I followed all the new features one after another. I was also there when they launch ChromeOS I even still have it in a Virtual Machine and I was also one of the lucky developers who got a CR-48 from Google to test it and be part of the Pilot program and finally I was there when they sent me the Samsung ChromeBook series 5 one of the first ChromeBooks in the market. I also wrote my first extension :) it is not in the Chrome Web Store yet, it will be soon though.

My CR-48 and S5 side by side :)

So, I think I can say I live in the cloud and Chrome is a big part of it. I won't lie, I still use FF, Opera, Safari and even IE sometimes for work sometimes to test the new versions and also to have a better opinion but always go back to Chrome :)

Commemorating this day Google  put together an interactive infographic, built in HTML5 where you can see the evolution of all Web Browsers and technologies. I must say that it is amazing I have used all of this web browsers since the beginning, Am I that old? :( Anyways, there you can see how the UI has changed between them, Safari and Chrome have barely changed but Opera, FF and EI have change a lot since the first days. Also, you can see how MS took more than 5 years to update EI 6 and it is understandable it was a monopoly back then.

I am sure there will more years to come and so many cool things but so has been a great ride :)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY Chrome :)