The iPhone isn’t a true mobile computer yet, but it’s on the right track, according to a Mozilla executive.

“Getting a no-compromise web experience on devices requires significant memory (>=64MB) as well as significant CPU horsepower. High end devices today are just approaching these requirements and will be commonplace soon,” wrote Mike Schroepfer, vice president of engineering at Mozilla, in a blog post Tuesday, implying that while the iPhone and its current competitors don’t quite have what it takes under the hood to be full-fledged mobile computers, we’re not all that far away.

It seems to me like there’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg thing going on here. Are smartphones slower than people would like because the hardware is too rudimentary, or because truly useful software is too bloated for the limited memory and power requirements of smartphones? I don’t think too many people bought an iPhone expecting it would be just as zippy as their PC, but just how much slower is it than a PC?

Schroepfer thinks, based on third-party tests, that the iPhone is about 10 to 100 times slower than a MacBook Pro on scripting benchmarks and about 3 to 5 times slower than a ThinkPad T40 laptop when operating on the same Wi-Fi network. “But rapid improvements in mobile processors will close this gap within a few years,” he wrote.

He estimates that the iPhone is using about 128MB of system RAM, and a processor (known to be an ARM-based chip from Samsung) running at between 400MHz and 600MHz. Apple’s iPhone application development policy means we’re not going to see Firefox on the iPhone anytime soon, but that’s information that Mozilla is using to work on future mobile browsers for devices like the iPhone that won’t be able to run unmodified PC software for several years.

As Schroepfer notes, the nice thing about the chip industry is that we can be reasonably sure that there will be more performance to work with every couple of years. Both ARM and Intel have set aggressive performance and power consumption goals for chips due out over the next several years.

But Schoepfer seems to be operating under the assumption that it’s the hardware that is holding back a true Internet experience on a smartphone. “Up until very recently, device limitations required writing new mobile browsers from the ground up,” he wrote. I wonder if that was such a bad thing; I’m sure to save time and effort developers would rather port as much of their PC code as is feasible over to smartphones, but is it better to develop mobile software that’s designed specifically for mobile devices or to investigate ways to move the multitude of software that’s already out there for PCs to a new category of mobile devices?

Mozilla wants to work both sides of the fence, not wanting to throw away all the work they’ve done on PC development when mobile processors are bound to get more capable, but recognizing that mobile-computing requirements are different. “There is far from a dominant player in this marketplace and even the best mobile browsers today have compromises in user experience, performance, and compatibility. There is still *plenty* of room for innovation,” Schroepfer wrote.

I’m no software developer, and I’d welcome feedback about this from those who are examining this problem. It seems pretty clear to me that true mobile computing is going to require new thinking about software development in addition to faster hardware, the same way multicore processors have shaken up the PC software development industry. And those concepts are even going to merge at some point: by 2010 ARM’s partners will have multicore mobile processors on the market.

Does that mean personal-computing software development is headed down two different development paths or that smartphone developers and PC developers are converging at some point down the road? Let me know what you think.

1. Management has renamed its Waterfall process to Agile Waterfall
2. You start hiring consultants so they can take the blame
3. The Continuous Integration server has returned the error message “Fuck it, I give up”
4. You have implemented your own Ruby framework that uses XML configuration files
5. Your eldest team member references Martin Fowler as a ’snot-nosed punk’
6. Your source code control system is a series of folders on a shared drive
7. Allocated QA time is for Q and A why your crap is broken
8. All of your requirements are written on a used cocktail napkin
9. You start considering a new job so you don’t have to maintain the application you are building
10. The lead web developer thinks the X in XHTML means ‘extreme’
11. Ever iteration meeting starts with “Do you want the good news or the bad news…”
12. Your team still gives a crap about its CMM Level
13. Progress is now measured by the number of fixed bugs and not completed features
14. Continuous Integration is getting new employees to read the employee handbook
15. You are friends with the janitor
16. The SCRUM master doesn’t really care what you did yesterday or what you will do today
17. Every milestone ends in a dead sprint
18. Your best developer only has his A+ Certification
19. You do not understand the acronyms DRY, YAGNI, or KISS; but you do understand WTF, PHB, and FUBAR
20. Your manager could be replaced by an email redirection batch file
21. The only certification your software process has is ISO 9001/2000
22. Your manager thinks ‘Metrics’ is a type of protein drink
23. Every bug is prioritized as Critical
24. Every feature is prioritized as Trivial
25. Project estimates magically match the budget
26. Developers use the excuse of ’self documenting code’ for no comments
27. Your favorite software pattern is God Object
28. You still believe compiling is a form of testing
29. Developers still use Notepad as an IDE
30. Your manager wastes 7 hours a week asking for progress reports (true story)
31. You do not have your own machine and you are not doing pair programming
32. Team Rule – No meetings until 10 AM since we were all here until 2 AM
33. Your team believes ORM is a ‘fad’
34. Your team believes the transition from VB6 to VB.NET will be ’seamless’
35. Your manager thinks MS Project is the best management tool the market offers
36. Your spouse only gets to see you on a webcam
37. None of your unit tests have asserts in them
38. FrontPage is your web page editor of choice
39. You get into flame wars if { should be on new line, but you are impartial to patterns such as MVC
40. The company motto is ‘Do more with less’
41. The phrase ‘It works on my machine’ is heard more than once a day
42. The last conference your .NET team attended was Apple WWDC 2000
43. Your manager insists that you track all activity but never uses the information to make decisions
44. All debugging occurs on the live server
45. Your manager does not know how to check email
46. Your manager thinks being SOX compliant means not working on baseball nights
47. The company hires Senetor Ted Stevens to give your project kick-off inspiration speech
48. The last book you read – Visual InterDev 6 Bible
49. The overall budget is mistaken for your weekly Mountain Dew bill
50. Your manager spends his lunch hour crying in his car (another true story)
51. Your lead web developer defines AJAX as a cleaning product
52. Your boss expects you to spend the next 2 days creating a purchase request for a $50 component
53. The sales team decreased your estimates because they believe you can work faster
54. Requirement – Rank #1 on Google
55. Everyday you work until Midnight, everyday your boss leaves at 4:30
56. Your manager loves to say “Why do the developers care? They get paid by the hour.”
57. The night shift at Starbucks knows you by name
58. Management can not understand why anyone needs more than a single monitor
59. Your development team only uses source control as a power failure backup system
60. Developers are not responsible for any testing
61. The team does not use SVN because they believe the merge algorithms are black voodoo magic
62. Your white boards are mostly white (VersionOne)
63. The client continually mistakes your burn-down chart for a burn-up chart
64. The project code name is renamed to ‘The Death March’
65. Now it physically pains you to say the word – Yes
66. Your teammates don’t refactor, they refuctor
67. To reward you for all of your overtime your boss purchases a new coffee maker
68. Your project budget is entered in the company ledger as ‘Corporate Overhead’
69. You secretly outsource pieces of the project so you can blog at work
70. A Change Control Board is created and your product isn’t even its first alpha version
71. Daily you consider breaking your fingers for the short term disability check
72. The deadline has been renamed a ‘milestone’…just like the last ‘milestone’
73. Your project managers ‘open door’ policy only applies between 5:01 PM – 7:59 AM
74. Your boss argues “Why buy it when we can built it!”
75. You bring beer to the office during your 2nd shift
76. The project manager is spotted consulting a Ouija board
77. You give misinformation to your teammates so you look better on your personal review
78. All code reviews are scheduled a week before product launch
79. Budget for testing exists as “if we have time”
80. The client will only talk about the requirements after they receive a fixed estimation
81. The boss does not find the humor in Dilbert
82. You start noticing your boss’s poker tells during planning poker
83. You start wondering if working 2 shifts at Pizza Hut is a better career alternative
84. All performance issues are resolved by getting larger machines
85. The project has been demoted to being released as a permanent ‘Beta’ version
86. Your car is towed from the office parking lot as it was thought to be abandoned
87. The project manager likes to doodle during requirements gathering meetings
88. Your SCRUM team consists of 1
89. Your timesheet looks like a Powerball ticket
90. The web developer thinks being 508 means looking good in her Levi Red Tabs
91. You think you need Multiple Personality Disorder medication because you are Mort, Elvis, and Einstein
92. Your manager substitutes professional consultant advice for a Magic 8 Ball
93. You know exactly how many compile warnings cause an ‘Out of Memory’ exception in your IDE
94. I have used IDE twice in this list and you still don’t know what it stands for
95. You have cut and pasted code from The Daily WTF
96. Broken unit tests are deleted because they are obviously out of date
97. You are sent to a conference to learn, but you skip sessions to go hunting for swag
98. QA has nicknamed you Chief Off-By-One
99. You are using MOSS 2007
100. You have been 90% complete 90% of the time
101. “Oh, oh, and I almost forgot. Ahh, I’m also gonna need you to go ahead and come in on Sunday, too… thanks” [by codesqueeze]

Top 10 Ways to Know Your Software Project is Doomed

Here is my top 10 from this list of 101 ways to know your software project is doomed:

1. Developers use the excuse of “self documenting code” for no comments
2. All of your requirements are written on a used cocktail napkin
3. Progress is now measured by the number of fixed bugs and not completed features
4. Your source code control system is a series of folders on a shared drive
5. Your manager wastes 7 hours a week asking for progress reports
6. The phrase “It works on my machine” is heard more than once a day
7. Developers are not responsible for any testing
8. All code reviews are scheduled a week before product launch
9. You have cut and pasted code from The Daily WTF
10. The last book you read: Oracle 8i A Beginner’s Guide.

What’s your favorite one?

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Everyday thousands of websites are being created based on the needs of website owners and not the needs of their visitors. Visitors are being ignored which is the biggest reason most websites are not successful; here are 5 ways to optimize your design:

1. Become the visitor
   Put yourself in the visitor’s shoes. What would a visitor browsing your website want? The goal of your website should not just be to fulfill your needs, but also fulfill the visitors needs. A good way to figure out what a visitor would want is to survey a few people who are interested in your products and services and adjust your design to fit their needs as well as your needs. This does not always have to cost money, no reason why you can’t just ask a few of your friends.
2. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication
   If you look at some of the most successful websites on the web such as Google, Flickr, and Blogger they are all simple. Why add bloated features to your website when 80 percent of your visitors will only use 20 percent of these features. Keep your goals as well as your visitors’ needs in mind when adding a feature.
3. Content is king
   Make sure the content on the website is laid out in an effective way. If you just concentrate on the look and feel of a website and ignore the content, how high of a conversion rate do you think you will have? You need a concise, convincing message and solid information architecture if you want your visitors to buy your product or service. And most importantly, make sure that the content is readable and easy to understand.
4. It’s the little things that make a big difference
   Every aspect of your website design needs to be thought out and scrutinized. Things such as colors, shapes and even gradients can make a big impact on the overall message. Using colors such as blue, green, turquoise, and silver can create a calm effect. Using rounded corners instead of hard edges within your design can enable a soft and personalized feeling. By combining color, shapes, pictures and effects together you can create a strong message that can help create a memorable experience for your visitors.
5. Guide your visitors
   You don’t want your visitors clicking all over your website just to find a product. Reduce confusion and guide your visitors through links, navigation menus, and call to actions. Show them the right path so they only have to make a few clicks instead of 10 to buy a product. By reducing the amount of clicks your visitors make you will decrease their frustration and increase your conversion rate.

These methods of optimizing your design may seem simple, but in most cases they are overlooked. Give them a try; you might be shocked on how effective they can be and how much you can save on advertising by maximizing your design.

Written by Neil Patel

Do you ever want to start your own company, but you’re too afraid to lose that steady paycheck from your day job? What if I told you, that you could start your own company from the very cubicle you’re sitting in? Sound too good to be true? Not so. I’m a great believer in entrepreneurship and the following article from Business 2.0 (my favorite business magazine for those wondering) suggests different ways to build a new company from your current gig.

The 5 Ways to Start a Company (Without Quitting Your Day Job)

1. Use Your Salary as Funding
Finance your idea from your paycheck for as long as possible before selling a big stake to early investors.

2. Turn Common Complaints Into a Business Plan
Just because the company you are working for isn’t filling a customer need doesn’t mean you can’t go off on your own to fill it.

3. Make Your Boss a Beta Tester
Try your product out first on your employer, and then perfect it.

4. Cash In On Your Company’s Reputation
Use your connection to your former employer to open doors.

5. Convert Your Employer Into a Business Partner
Convince your company to spin off your unit.

Happy venturing to those considering, and let me know of any success stories!

I receive many emails from people that basically ask the same question: How can I keep myself motivated long term? This seems to be quite a common dilemma for many people so I want to address it because it can be done! Here are my tips for staying motivated:
Get motivated every day.

Zig Ziglar was once confronted about being a “motivational speaker.” The guy said to him, “You guys come and get people hyped up and then you leave and the motivation goes away. It doesn’t last, and then you have to get motivated again.” Zig reminded the gentleman that baths are the same way but we think it is a good idea to take a bath every day!
It is true that motivation doesn’t last. We have to renew it each and every day. That is okay. It doesn’t make motivation a bad thing. We simply have to realize that if we want to stay motivated over the long term, it is something we will have to apply to ourselves each and every day.
Have a vision for your life.

The root word of motivation is “motive.” The definition of motive is, “A reason to act.” This is the cognitive or rational side of motivation. It is your vision. You have to have a vision that is big enough to motivate you. If you are making $50,000 a year, it isn’t going to motivate you to set your goal at $52,000 a year. You just won’t get motivated for that because the reward isn’t enough. Maybe $70,000 a year would work for you. Set out a vision and a strategy for getting there. Have a plan and work the plan.
Fuel your passion.

Much of motivation is emotional. I don’t know quite how it works but I do know THAT it works. Emotion is a powerful force in getting us going. Passion is an emotion, so fuel your passion. “Well, I like to work on logic,” you may say. Great, now work on your passion. Set yourself on a course to have a consuming desire for your goal, whatever it is. Do whatever you can to feel the emotion and use it to your advantage!
Work hard enough to get results.

You can build on your motivation by getting results. The harder you work, the more results you will get and the more results you get, the more you will be motivated to get more. These things all build on one another. If you want to lose weight, then lose the first few pounds. When the belt moves to the next notch you will get fired up to get it to the notch beyond that!
Put good materials into your mind.

I can’t say this enough – listen to tapes. I still listen to tapes regularly. I buy tape clubs from other speakers and I learn and grow. Their successes motivate me to get my own successes! Read good books. Read books that teach you new ideas and skills. Read books that tell the stories of successful people. Buy them, read them, and get motivated! Buy great music and listen to it. I just did a spinning class at the club today. Whenever a good song came on I was actually able to get motivated to ride faster! It gets you going and motivates you!
Ride the momentum when it comes.

Sometimes you will just be clicking and sometimes you won’t. That is okay. It is the cycle of life. When you aren’t clicking, plug away. When you are clicking, pour it on because momentum will help you get larger gains in a shorter period of time with less energy. That is the Momentum Equation! When you are feeling good about how your work is going, ride the momentum and get as much out of it as you can!
These are the top six ways to stay motivated:

1 – Get motivated every day.
2 – Have a vision for your life.
3 – Fuel your passion.
4 – Work hard enough to get results.
5 – Put good materials into your mind.
6 – Ride the momentum when it comes.
These are simple principles, that when you put them to work regularly, will change your life by keeping you motivated all the time! Get going!