Check out this website if you need to quickly create a sequence diagram to show to a colleague.  Just type in words what the sequence should look like and the web page auto updates with appropriate sequence.  You can even save you text and reload it back later and best of all save image and send to your colleague for further discussion.  This is great for those quick ideas and best all you can collaborate with friends on designs.

Unified Communication (UC), is a term used by most tech people and companies to describe different ways of communicating. It is the mashup of realtime communications such as (voice, video, IM, presence) with non realtime communications (fax, email, voicemail). A lot of these technologies have been around for years, decades in some cases, but UC allows all of these different interaction methods to be monetized under a single solution/product offering in the market. Great for big vendors such as Cisco and Avaya who want to sell into the fortune 500 and enterprise market. Not so great for those mom and pop shops struggling to build a business from ground up. Sure this model of packaging UC and selling to businesses has been around for a long time, where vendors sell to distributors and in turn directly sell to customers. This model is old school. Today technology is no longer the issue, there is enough fiber on the planet to last the world for years to come, smartphones are everywhere and is growing faster every day. People are naturally incline to connect with other people, friends and co-workers. So why is UC limited to enterprises, in fact why can’t everyday people use it. Yes I know Skype is available and so is Yahoo Messenger not to mention the social aspect of Google+, Facebook and Twitter. However, these methods of communicating are so overlapping hard to decide how best to communicate with someone. Should I send Skype message to someone, but wait the person is not online, oh check their facebook account to see if they are vacation then post twitter message about upcoming places to connect. There are so many different permutations to consider. Why is UC so complicated to use?

The future of unified communications is not about the technology, but more about the end user. People just want to connect in the most simplistic manner possible, the web. The web is available to every modern home in the world, people can access it on mobile phones and people of all ages can use the web. The web browser has been and still is the main interface for accessing information through world wide web, so why can’t we have realtime communications supported just like GUI widgets are supported on the web through HTML tags? Just the same way that Google was able to monetize the web through online advertisements using AdWords and AdSense to allow developers to easily place small advertisement widgets related to search results, similar types of widgets can also be developed to allow people to talk directly to customer service agent. This is just the tip of the iceberg, the following sections intend to give more of a manifesto for how UC could evolve to be much more.

Current Landscape

I don’t want to bore people with a lot of market research, but identifying the current state of the industry will help provide a understanding for why change is needed and provide a sense of urgency that could help identify areas for improvement.

Timeliness of this article is really comes on the heal of two other articles Magic Quadrant for Unified Communication and Dealing with Disruptors. First off the UC market:

Gartner 2009

The market diagram provided by Gartner outlines four quadrants where UC vendors are positioned. The bottom axis identifies vendors completeness of product portfolio offering in the UC market. While the left axis identifies how the vendor is organized in terms of execution and delivery into the market. A brief explanation of these quadrants are necessary to help outline some points that I will mention later on.

Leaders

Vendors selling comprehensive UC suites that are coupled with broad communications and collaboration portfolios and strong technology partnerships. These vendors and their channel partners, have experience delivering UC to broad range of enterprise types and in most geographical regions. The obvious leaders come to mind, Cisco and Avaya, but surprisingly Microsoft is ranked up there with Lync product that used to be call Office Communicator Suit (OCS). With the new addition of Skype, I am sure Microsoft is looking to have tight integration with Lync product at the same time end-of-life Communicator client and replace it with Skype. Although, Cisco has made made progress on simplifying, consolidating and unifying its massive communications portfolio, elements of its product remain complex to understand and manage. The same can be said about Avaya, providing different products for different industries. Apart from the technology, these companies have a vast group of distributors in specific territories to provide first line support and direct customer engagement. Most UC vendors act as second or third line support for products. This distribution model is no different from other companies in other quadrants. In fact this tends to be the de facto standard for distribution to end customers.

Challengers

Offer solutions and capabilities with the potential to move into the leadership position, but lack critical elements in their suites or don’t have sufficient maturity in the broader market. One such company is IBM offering Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) portfolio based on Sametime collaboration products include IM, presence and web conferencing. The strategy is clear, by offering strong back-end server hardware and software combined with front end Sametime clients, IT managers can rest assured that interoperability will be smooth sailing. However, PBX related functionality is left to partners more verse in the capabilities of IP-PBX functionality. This will leave IBM at a disadvantage with enterprises that want to consider single-vendor solution for the entire suite.

Visionaries

Demonstrate a clear understanding of the UC market and offer a strong and differentiating approach to one or more core areas. However, these vendors lack the ability to execute across the entire set of requirements and markets, or have marketing and distribution limits to their ability to challenge the leading providers. The only vendor in this category is Mitel. This company has grown significantly after the merger with Inter-Tel, a similar company to Mitel in terms of product offering but with large distribution network in US.

Niche Players

Offer solutions that are particularly strong in one or more UC areas, but do not have a comprehensive product or they have a solution that has limited market reach. Niche players apply the traditional business way of thinking, do one thing really well then apply this concept to other areas of the product while slowly building out a product portfolio. Huawei is one such vendor with vast number of engineers working at providing cheaper solutions over competitors is primarily focus on Asian market, but recently has expanded into North America and Europe. While ShoreTel and Interactive Intelligence has focus around providing UC appliance solution that contains an out-of-box UC solution for enterprises targeted at less than 1000 users. Interactive lacks web conferencing and videoconferencing functionality that other vendors provide.

Disruptors

The last category which is not part of the Gartner quadrants are the disruptors. This category of vendors are brought on by the report from Telco 2.0 about disruptors in telecommunications market. Players in the category are Google, Apple, Facebook and Skype. One of the main reasons for not being included in Gartner report is lack of distribution network. However, I would argue that in this day in age distribution is a thing of the past. Internet is so fast with the possibility of reaching so many people and the advances in software has changed how we see products. Case in point an article “Why software is eating the world“, talks about companies moving away from proprietary hardware solutions to software only solutions. Take for example how IBM changed its entire business model of building mainframes and PCs to a software and services organization. Keep in mind this was a painful process for IBM but well worth the investment and ROI for investors who stayed with the company. Avaya is one such company that was trying to do this transition back when they were public company. Now that Avaya is private they can move much faster towards a software based company.

More on the topic of disruptors, one of the main reasons these companies can have a major impact is their speed to market without the bureaucracy of large organization. Other factors include their engineering approach towards solving problems with a user focus on providing simple solutions that are easy to use. Take Google, a company that prides itself on engineering solutions and is one of the first innovators of cloud computing. Google core competence is searching and the ability to index trillion of web pages all over the world and return a search result in meer milliseconds. Surrounding the core technology are products such as Google Docs, Google+, Google Talk, Gmail, Android, Chrome OS, and Chrome Browser just to name a few. Even though there may be many pieces to the puzzle and there is no official statement, but Google has silently mass a portfolio of products to challenge the UC market. They possess the tools for collaboration, voice capabilities for people to talk over internet, social presence to provide crowd sourcing or peer-to-peer conversations and video chat. Not to mention the strong cloud presence allows Google to provide free or even pay-per-use that users can easily adopt solutions with little or no capital expenditures.

Apple has been a disruptor for many years, first with introduction of ipod and cheap downloadable music affecting the music industry that once had total control over music distribution. With introduction of iphone, Apple has once again created an user experience unlike any other smartphone that has disrupted and dominates mobile phone industry revenue. What has long been viewed as telco controlled in terms of applications residing on feature and smartphones, Apple is able to allow users download apps that utilize valuable wireless network bandwidth.

Models to Consider

Stop the walled garden.  UC vendors have long used the approach of attracting customers to use their system, but once hooked customers are powerless to change the way things work.  Customers are locked into used complicated phone systems with many buttons, not the mention the awkward user interface trying to remember how to transfer a person on hold to another extension.  In fact a number of advance PBX functionality are tied so tightly with phone systems that switching to alternate phones would in fact cripple a company and day-to-day operations.  Choice for customers is no longer possible.  The logical reasoning behind such an approach is supported by the age old marketing concept around companies spend less money on existing customers than new customers, so better to keep customers with walled gardens.  This age old thinking has been superseded  with the advent of internet and world wide web.  Nowadays, new smaller more nimble companies are starting to open up communication services by providing simple to use APIs based on common web friendly scripting languages (Javascript, Groovy).  Take for example Twilio a company located in San Francisco is providing APIs using XML to make simple voice calls and text messaging over the internet.  A similar company called Tropo is backed Voxeo and provides similar type of service.  Both these companies are opening up voice services by providing APIs that make it easy to integrate with web applications.  End result is to open up communications so that users can develop their own way of communicating also giving them the freedom to choose how best to communicate with end-customers.

Open standards base solution that promotes interoperability.  The two main standards organizations that come to mind are IETF and W3C.  Both look at developing standards but from different perspective.  IETF looks at defining protocols and services that serve in the best interest of Internet.  While W3C looks at developing standards for accessing information on Internet.  Standards need to be developed and characterize to provide consistency and a reference point for vendors and implementors.  However, standards take time to fully develop and get buy in from all parties involve.  However, innovation shouldn’t wait for standards to finalize before starting.  Take for example, Architectural Framework for Browser-Based Real-Time Communication by Jonathan Rosenberg (SIP author now with Skype/Microsoft).  This framework certainly in draft form, envisions a different way of communicating, using browsers as smart terminals to allow communications.  Certainly a bold leap, but the proposal looks at using existing standards such as HTTP to connect browsers with backend server functionality.  A protocol that has long been used for its simplicity and ease of integration.  As oppose to proprietary protocols that lock customers in and provide no means to customize and extend functionality.  Openness will help fuel innovation.

New wave for UC called UC Social has been tooted as the next best thing for UC. In fact UC Social is not about using social media (Facebook, Twitter) and looking for ways to monetize this new form of connecting with context, but more related to concepts used at the core of Google, links. The link revolutionize how the web is used. Links connect people base on context.  So how can this apply to UC.  Well think of links not only of connecting web pages, but also people, content, places, things and documents.  Links can connect people just same way as social networking by allowing people to reach out and be reached.  In addition, apply metadata to these links such as date/time, location, click counts, etc… this information can be used in searches be provide greater search control.  Links can be used to reference documents or event phrases in a paragraph to help gain better understanding.  Think of an entire conversation glue together by a series of links that can be categorized by metadata.  This information can then be shared with colleagues to help collaborate on an idea.  Bring this all in the context of UC space and we have a means to search and be social to collaborate using voice, instant messaging and video.

UC User, how can unified communications help people who just want to connect. Focus should be on simplicity and latency.  Simplicity of using UC services without complicated user interfaces that require ten different steps in order to complete something.  Latency is a term used to monitor network quality, but can also be used as a gage for how well a service is being offer.  If people can count how long it takes for a service to respond then the service is too slow.  This is common practice at Google where Larry Page would count how long a response would take.  If response took longer than 1 sec then back to the drawing board to improve performance.  The same can be said about UC services, if phone takes more than 1 second to respond then the service is not acceptable to consumers.  People just hate waiting, so why should UC services force people to wait.  Customers would gladly promote a service that is responsive and quick, but a service that is slow and non responsive will not gain any points with customers.  Another aspect of UC User is Trust vs Control and how one affects the other.  Trust is inversely proportional to control, than means that in order to gain a users trust relinquishing control is necessary by UC vendor.  This implies letting people decide how they want to communicate and be reached.  But also giving the flexibility to let other third party applications control over how best to communicate with someone.  All of these points may seem like a mashup of different concepts, but in the end it is all about letting the user decide.

Mobile UC and the adoption of mobile apps…

Long Tail, picture worth thousand words.  A graph used in Chris Anderson’s blog, to depict how companies are selling large volume of unique items as oppose to selling fewer popular items in large quantities.  Good example of this is Amazon and Netflix, both companies promote the fact that they offer hard to find movies and videos to anyone.  Certainly, this depicts the long portion of the graph where small number of movies are sold to many customers.  So, how can this apply to UC market, well think about the many different IP Centrex or PBX related features provided.  There are most likely in the hundreds of different and custom features catering to hundreds of enterprises.  What if there was a way of offering these many features in an open market?  Would there be demand for feature X that was so unique that only a select few would buy it?  More importantly would there be enough demand coming from a mass of enterprises willing to pay for unique services?  Certainly questions worth considering.

Impediments to Change

Controversy

Walled garden, distribution and middle-man and organizational structure.  Dawn of internet age has given birth to direct sell, direct marketing, direct support, everything is direct to customer.  So why is there distributors selling UC solution out in the market. One can argue that distributors know their customer better than anyone else.  They provide direct support that is unparalleled to vendor support.  However, one could argue that the distributor limits customer interaction with UC vendor, further creating separation between customer and vendor.  Gaining understanding of customer pain points is limited through the lens of the distributor and provides little value to the overall eco-system of Unified Communication.

Standards are important but not when it comes to the web, take Session Initiating Protocol (SIP) as an example. The protocol was meant to follow HTTP standard for communicating between browsers and servers but applied to phone system. Instead the standard has grown beyond comprehension with many RFCs to replicate old PSTN functionality. At the same time while SIP drowns in its own standard, HTTP has been allowed to flourish by designers creating new and innovative ways to use the protocol. One such approach is the development of websockets over HTTP.  An innovative way to leverage HTTP for its firewall agnostic approach to tunnelling through and providing async communication.

Guidelines

Reach out to users to identify what users want from UCC.

Customer knows best, customer is in control, share ideas, critique products, add value.

It’s about people and making new connections, it all comes back to relationships in UCC market.

Create a forum for users to express their issues and problems on UCC solutions in the market (Avaya, Cisco).  Just the same way Jeff Jarvis did when he started a blog about Dell customer products and customer support.  This started a fire storm of people commenting on how Dell values its customers.  The same can be said about UC vendors, what are they doing well and what can they improve, are just some of questions to ask.

Trust vs Control aspect that just mentioned earlier when developing UC products.

Vision & Direction

TBD

Applications

New applications for UCC include crowd sourcing, crowd casting and peer-to-peer communications.

Hope this article was helpful and enlightening, please post your comments, thanks.

Copyright 2011 Henry Chin

Email: hchin67@gmail.com Linkedin: hchin Twitter: hoichin

RIM recently announced a new cloud service to lure music enthusiast to use BlackBerry mobile devices.  In part this is an attempt by music industry to make up for lost revenues.  Current trends for CD sales are down ~13% as mentioned in article from artistpr.com website.  People are opting to go with direct streaming services such as Pandora, Spotify and iTunes.  Not to mention another announcement by Facebook looking to also get into social music as a move to create communities of music lovers.  The music industry deals with service providers represent new channel to market for the big players in music since they do not have the capabilities to create such services.

BBM Music Service Comparison

The new music service offer by RIM provides $4.99/month allowing up to 50 songs.  The one advantage is the people can listen to friends music as well.  So in theory the more friends I have that use the BBM Music service the more songs I can listen, leading to a network of music, potentially up to 50 x N friends of music.  Does not appear to be any limit on number of friends to listen music from.  This presents a social networking environment targeting some of the more younger generation.  For young people this is a great service to start off with especially if you have a large social network of friends to share with.  Recent trends in BlackBerry OS show demographics changing towards younger generation as shown from comScore diagram.

RIMs Drive for Younger Users

BBM Music service will have serious issues when competing against music enthusiast who already have a stockpile of music (1000′s songs).  Service offered by Amazon looks more appealing giving people access to thousands of songs for just $5/year.  While iTunes is providing a matching service that does not require uploading your songs, if the same song exists in iTunes then people have access to the same song even if the sound quality is better for just $25/year.

I do not want to rain down on RIM (considering they are canadian, hey!), certainly a good attempt to lock in younger generation with limit cash to spend.  But as the user grows and wants to expand their music collection this will be difficult considering the 50 song limit.  From the get go this service will be under tough competition, but I do see some possibilities for RIM to expand the service by providing incentives to link other BBM services together with music.  Another crazy idea to promote social music is by increasing monthly song limit base on number of social music friends in your network.  So for example say I like top 40, pop, rock and jazz categories.  By creating a social network of friends that exceed 20 friends I would get 5 more songs allowed in my monthly limit.  Doubling this to 40 friends gives 10 more songs, get it.  Only time will tell, but hopefully this service will do better than BB App World.

Google will buy Motorola Mobility for $2.5B pending regulatory approval.  Interesting move by Google, I guess they realized the benefits that Apple was doing by providing specialized software for dedicated mobile handsets.  By taking advantage of the tight integration between both hardware and software can lead to more enrich user experience.  This has certainly been the way of Apple and now that Google now has this ability consumers will reap the benefits.  This places Google and Apple on similar playing field, now if Microsoft and Nokia can get something going then we can truly see a three horse race.  Though do not discount RIM out the picture just yet.  Their QNX operating system has the potential but I truly thing they are at least 6 to 9 months away from making this happen on their blackberry devices.

Google now has the ability to marry Android OS with Motorola handsets, something that Google has lacked since the beginning of Android.  Google tried with Nexus One by partnering with HTC, but this was a flop (http://techchunks.com/technology/the-nexus-one-is-a-flop-135000-phones-sold-in-74-days/).  Google had very little control over the design and the ability to marry Android custom features in with the phone was not possible.

Patent Fight

A key driver for buying Motorola Mobility is the recent fight for intellectual assets.  There is certainly interest from all high-tech companies to protect what they have, but more and more companies are using it as a strategic advantage (i.e. offence) over their competitors.  This is especially noticeable with Apple when it comes to protecting their brand and related look and feel consumers get when holding an Apple product.  By getting a hold of such patents, Google now has the ability to enforce their own look and feel that is unique to Android.  Something that will differiate Google phones from Apple phones.

Some speculate if Google would of bought Motorola Mobility if they did not lose the bidding for Notel patents.  Recent weeks has showed considerable interest in Interdigital patents, considering they have 8,800 issued patents and over 10,000 in the pipe.  Apple now owns Nortel patents (mostly communication related), forces Google hand to buy Motorola Mobility in order to beef up their patent fight.  Interesting how Motorola was able to in few short years able to issue over 17,000 patents and 7,500 pending patents.  Could be that Motorola strategy was to sell off their division all along.  Especially, since Motorola just announced $56 M Q2 loss (http://www.engadget.com/2011/07/28/motorola-mobility-reports-56-million-net-loss-in-q2-3-3-billi/).

Cost of Buying Earlier

Arstechnica has an interesting article on what if scenario of Google buying Motorola unit back in 2010 (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/08/what-google-lostand-gainedby-not-buying-moto-in-2010.ars). Basically, Google could of saved $6B if they had bought out MM earlier. Not to mention saving even more money with the failed Nexus One phone. Oh well live and learn, but now Google embarks on new journey that involves both hardware and software. Something they have little experience with.

Post Motorola Dilema

Here is an interesting article from visionmobile that talks about the different business models of Google and Motorola and the apparent reasoning for buying Motorola was mostly for the patents.  Another interesting point about the article is the control Google will have over OEM vendors in terms of software dictatorship and compliance towards the Google Android way.  Kind of reminds me of how Apple has total control over their value chain and the strict requirements.

Update

It appears Google overpaid for Motorola due to the interest in IP rights.  SEC filings show initial offer at $30 but quickly moved to $43.50 over concerns of competing bids.

Step 1

Create a new XCode project by selecting File->New->New Project.  Which should bring up template window that shows various templates to choose from.  Select View Based Application and press next button.  Next enter product name, company identifier and select iPad for Device Family.

Default ScreenDrawApp project settings

By default SampleDrawApp folder contains three sets of files.  The first set is SampleDrawAppDelegate files that include header (.h) and source (.m) files.  Next is the controller files (SampleDrawAppViewController) including nib file.  Finally is the MainWindow.xib file to round out the files in this folder.

Step 2

Create canvas class to allow 2D draw objects to be drawn on. This class will serve as the main UIView that will allow sub-views to add/remove draw objects later on. In addition, this class will be used to link ViewController with custom UIView class (i.e. Canvas). To create a new class first select SampleDrawApp folder in the left-hand pane. From main menu select File -> New -> New File menu item. Dialog box will appear, select Objective-C Class icon. Two files will be automatically created, Canvas.h and Canvas.m. Modify Canvas.h to include three new properties called origin, width and height. Make sure to synthesize the properties in corresponding class file. Here is what it should look like. Canvas.h

#import @interface Canvas : UIView {
CGPoint origin; CGFloat width; CGFloat height;
}
@property (nonatomic, assign) CGPoint origin;
@property (nonatomic, assign) CGFloat width;
@property (nonatomic, assign) CGFloat height;
@end

Canvas.m

#import "Canvas.h"
@implementation Canvas
@synthesize origin;
@synthesize width;
@synthesize height;
- (id)initWithFrame:(CGRect)frame {
self = [super initWithFrame:frame];
return self;
}
/* // Only override drawRect: if you perform custom drawing.
// An empty implementation adversely affects performance during animation.
- (void)drawRect:(CGRect)rect { // Drawing code
} */
- (void)dealloc { [super dealloc]; } @end

Next link SampleDrawAppViewController.xib file to Canvas custom class by selecting the xib file to bring up Interface Builder.  Select Canvas view and bring up Identify Inspector pane.  Under Custom Class select Canvas and save the file.  Now comes the interesting part where we make changes to Canvas.m to support drawing 2D objects.

Step 3

Add initWithCoder method instead of initWithFrame method when initializing a UIView class from xib file. Normally, you would overwrite initWithFrame, but this is a special case where xib file is creating the UIView. Set default properties for origin, width and height to look something like this.

- (id) initWithCoder:(NSCoder *)aDecoder {
self = [super initWithCoder:aDecoder];
if (self) {
NSLog(@"initWithCoder");
self.origin = CGPointMake(0,0);
self.width = 0; self.height = 0;
}
return self;
}


Step 4

drawRect() method is the main callback that enables the app to draw custom drawing on user interface. In order to draw the app uses Core Graphics API to perform a lot of the drawing. To start off, the CGContextRef is used to provide a context for drawing. Therefore any drawing must pass along CGContextRef object. Before we can draw anything, we need to get acces to the context to begin with. By default Core Graphics will instantiate an instance of this object before calling drawRect method. This allows the code to call UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext() to retrieve the context. Note, calling this method from within another method (other than drawRect) will cause UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext() to return nil instance. To see a line on the screen you need to set the line width by calling CGContextSetLineWidth(context, 2.0). This creates a line of width 2 pixels wide. The default color for any line is black so setting the color will be helpful visually. Use the command CGContextSetStrokeColorWithColor(context, [UIColor blueColor].CGColor);to change to color to blue. Next create CGRect object to store origin, width and height information. Here is what it should look like:

- (void)drawRect:(CGRect)rect {
NSLog(@"drawRec"); // Get current context
CGContextRef context = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext();
// Set line width
CGContextSetLineWidth(context, 2.0);
// Set color
CGContextSetStrokeColorWithColor(context, [UIColor blueColor].CGColor);
// Create rectangle co-ordinates to draw
CGRect rectangle = CGRectMake(self.origin.x,self.origin.y,self.width,self.height);
if (self.width != 0 && self.height != 0) {
[Canvas drawRectangle:context useDimension:rectangle];
}
}

Ignore the method call for drawRectangle for now, I will talk about this in the next step.

Step 5

drawRectangle method takes CGRect information and draws a simple rectangle using Core Graphics. To draw a rectangle use CGContextAddRect method. To add some visual appeal fill the rectangle with red color like this:

+ (void) drawRectangle:(CGContextRef)context useDimension:(CGRect)rectangle {
NSLog(@"drawRectangle");
CGContextAddRect(context, rectangle);
CGContextStrokePath(context);
CGContextSetFillColorWithColor(context, [UIColor redColor].CGColor); CGContextFillRect(context, rectangle);
}

Notice that this method is define as a class method so make sure to add method definition in the interface file.

Step 6

Next step involves implementing UIResponder touch methods to process when a user touch the screen and how user interface should respond. Here is the code for now, I will explain the content in more details later.

// touch gesture has begun, collect touch point
- (void) touchesBegan:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event {
UITouch *touch = [[event allTouches] anyObject];
self.origin = [touch locationInView:touch.view];
self.width = 0;
self.height = 0;
NSLog(@"xOrigin=%f, yOrigin=%f", self.origin.x, self.origin.y);
}
// touch gesture movement detected, set width and height measurements
- (void) touchesMoved:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event { // get current X,Y co-ordinates
UITouch *touch = [[event allTouches] anyObject];
CGPoint offset = [touch locationInView:touch.view];
self.width = offset.x - self.origin.x;
self.height = offset.y - self.origin.y;
// update display to dynamically show object being drawn
[self setNeedsDisplay];
}
// touch gesture ended, finalize any drawings details
- (void) touchesEnded:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event { // store co-ordinates in drawObject for display for drawRect method
if (self.width != 0 && self.height != 0) {
// add object to canvas for display
self.width = 0;
self.height = 0;
// update display
[self setNeedsDisplay];
}
}
// touch gesture canceled
- (void) touchesCancelled:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event{
// NSLog(@">>>touchesCancelled");
}


Step 7

Run the app and see what it does. When you run the app tap and drag and you will see a red rectangle being drawn. When you let go notice how the image disappears. Well this is because the image is not being stored as a UIView subview to the Canvas. More on this later.

Developers that come with java background shouldn’t have a big problem transitioning over to Objective-C (OC), many of the OO concepts still apply here.  One thing common in most OO languages is the concept of creating an instance and initializing the object.  People familiar with old C style memory management can remember the common memory function malloc or calloc.  No different here in OC, main difference is you do not need to specify the size of memory to allocate.  For example:

MyObject *someObj = [MyObject alloc];

Simple isn’t it!  So what about the init message.  Well there appears to be no hard requirement for all objects to implement the init method.  So what is the purpose of this method?  As with any new object that is instantiated, default settings need to be defined.  If MyObject class has two variables called geoLocationLat and geoLocationLong then theses variables should be initialized to default values (i.e. zero). But keep in mind if you decide not to set default values this can be potential bug in future when you try to figure why MyObject is using weird values. Here is some info from Apple describing the use of init method.

An object isn’t ready to be used until it has been initialized.  The init method defined in NSObject class does no initialization, it simply returns self.

Simply put, this means the init instance method (denoted by minus sign in front) is a placeholder for tasks that some classes need to perform before they are used.  NSObject related objects do not have to initialize anything.  However, it is good programming practice to always run the init method after allocating a new object in case the parent class may have some custom initialization code that needs to be executed.

Another related class method (denoted by plus sign in front of method) is called initialize.  The runtime system sends an initialize message to every class object before the class receives any other messages and after its superclass has received the initialize message. This gives the class a chance to set up its runtime environment before it’s used. If no initialization is required, you don’t need to write an initialize method to respond to the message (Reference: The Objective-C Programming Language by Apple)

With all these initialization methods this allows the developer to provide consistency when developing applications but more importantly provides a programming paradigm that is well-regarded in OO community.

With all the data coming out of the wood work, is it fair to compare these two operating systems just on numbers.  Another comparison point is the feature set that these two systems provide.  A lot of people are blogging about the hardware capabilities that each phone provides (iPhone 4 vs. HTC EVO 4G).  The real comparison is the firmware/operating system that runs on top of the device.  As a side note, I remember talking to a RIM engineer and all the person could talk about was the hardware specs.  I don’t think this person realize the key success factor for Apple iPhone is the user interface.  This is what started the smartphone wave to begin with.  The one-touch access to apps, touch gestures, and the ease of use.  Google is catching up with user experience on Android, but Apple has the advantage.

One aspect that people seem to forget is that these two systems have a different market strategy.  The Apple brand name is strong, in fact it one of the most recognized brands in the world.  The iPhone is geared for consumer market with emphasis on style and luxury.  While Android is nerd version of iOS, meant for practical and efficient use.  In addition, Android is expanding into consumer play onto a number of third party devices, tablets and TV set top boxes.  Googles dominance in the advertising space will grow at an astonishing rate.

In the end, I think iOS and Android devices will have a bigger market share over other smartphones such as Nokia and RIM.  While Microsoft will all suffer and lose market share.  In particular, Microsoft is always a late comer and will have little impact on the mobile OS market share.  RIM will have the biggest lost.  There is very little interest in BlackBerry App World and the BlackBerry Storm was suppose to be the iPhone killer (just like Palm Pre) but only 500,000 units sold in first month (http://moconews.net/article/419-blackberry-storm-sales-promising-but-not-spectacular/), shows promise but not the iPhone killer that they once hoped.  While Nokia continues to lose market share quarter-over-quarter.  Just like App World, Nokia’s version called Ovi is not doing well at all.  This just shows how strong iOS and Android are positioning themselves to become a dominate force within mobile operating system market space.

Update: June 5

Found an interesting article from Mashable (iOS vs Android: Developers Weigh In) summarizing original report from Appcelerator about Mobile Developer Survey concerning the level of interest between iOS and Android development.

• Interest in tablet development has spiked since Apple introduced iPad.
• Short-term interest in Apple iOS, while Android remains as a long-term interest.
• Second-tier platform, such as Nokia, RIM and Windows Mobile lost ground.  The confirms my thoughts going forward for these platforms.
• Large enterprises are seeking mobile development as oppose to small enterprises.
• Porting applications across platforms is the number one pain for developers.

How many developers develop for iOS vs. Android?  Here is a visual image of the current market.

Ever since Avaya coined the phrase Communication Enabled Business Process (CEBP) and Gartner decided to use the same term, this technology has been all hype.  Since mid 2000′s CEBP technology has been an early adopter technology.  However, there is growing interest in the past few years (2008) to reconsider CEBP to be at early stages of mainstream adoption.  This is where Geoffrey A. Moore and crossing the chasm has some relevance.   Of course, there have been announcements by big players (Nortel – now defunct, Cisco Pulse, Avaya), indicating successful win with major fortune 500 companies.  Just look at the list of case studies provided Unified Communications Strategies website (http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-case-study-library.aspx).  Majority of these wins are big name fortune 500 companies, while other case studies talk about technology and not the value add to businesses.

The more interesting use cases are the ones related to small / medium companies that have limited resources and capital at their disposal.  Think about it, if a large companies can fork out a few hundred thousand for an all in one solution then what’s the difficultly or challenge in doing that.  The servers and hardware have already been tested in lab environments and external integration with actual business process is limited to a few database queries or web service calls.  A small company has to be truly agile and cost conscious. The head techie has to worry about keeping everything running smoothly or else shit hits the fan and someone’s gotta pink slip.  IT folks want minimal overhead when adopting or using new technology.  The current big players have a tough battle to win over SME market.  But that’s where I think the money lies, 85% of businesses in North America are SME.

So what are the options out there besides the big players, well there are few startups that are looking interesting.  One player called Ribbit was bought out by BT.  Ribbit has gone silent in the last while, understandable since the take over.  VoiceSage and IfByPhone look promising.  In fact the VoiceSage blog has some interesting comments on CEBP in general.

Final comment, CEBP has potential to break out in the next couple of years.  The real market potential is in the SME market.  The real question is identifying the niche market where SME can gain real business value with little hassle and greater top line return on investment.

Apple is certainly keeping pace with competitors and in some cases staying one step ahead of the game.  The new display (from what I heard) is amazing.  Way better than EVO and Droid.

The big feature, or as Steve calls it the “surprise” that no one expected is the FaceTime video chat.  Only draw back is that people have to use over WiFi, so not a true mobile offering.  This feature starts to open doors for a number of markets.  For example collaboration software can enhance user experience by using direct face-to-face with people to see situations first hand (think news reporter) or quick whiteboard sessions with R&D folks half way around the world.  No more complicated video conference service.  The power is in the hands of user.

This will be a game changer for Skype.  Now, people can chat directly using video instead of using Skype service or client.  VoIP is already bundled in with iPhone.  Think of the apps that geeks are developing right this minute to take advantage of FaceTime.

Certainly a worth while device to consider for people who have 2G and 3G versions of the iPhone.