The Roles in a Startup

Interesting post on The Business Insider about the roles and their area of expertise and responsibilities in a startup.

• Visionary/Architect. Idea generation, shape features, repositioning, market fit, competitive landscape, research.
• Lead Developer(s). AKA Hackers. A good place to have a pair of jelled programmers. Uses web framework, creates functionality; knows Python/Ruby, Javascript, AJAX, Flash(?), HTML, databases.
• Sysadmin. Network, web server, NFS (for VCS/file sharing), caching, other infrastructure, data backup, backup hardware, performance tuning, scalability.
• Toolsmith. Team is provided with: productive development environments (all users can say ‘apt-get install …‘), frameworks, editors, interpreters, multiple browsers, GIMP/Photoshop, (D)VCS, wiki, maybe BTS, quick training/consulting on tools/environment, continuous integration.
• Webmaster. SEO, analytics, domain registration, site hosting, Apache/lighttpd.
• DBA. Helps developers plan schema, set up tables, design for scalability, tuning/optimizing.
• Graphic Artist. Color coordination, logos, icons, image libraries, etc.
• CSS Designer. Usability, accessibility, layout, look-n-feel.
• Content Creator. User-facing documentation, populate/organize wiki, design tutorial, usage studies.
• Customer Support. Answers phones, forum voice, FAQs, knowledge base, help entries, problem solving.
• Tester. Bangs on site, tries devious things, automates stress.
• Marketer. Evangelism, blogging, advertising.
• Manager. Coordinates all team member activities.
• Lawyer. Business setup, guidance, law interpretation.
• Chef. Handles all other (random) tasks to keep team functioning.

While you don't need to take the list as an exhaustive and definitive one (as pointed by the commenters the author has left aside some important roles like Sales), I still find it interesting.

A good exercise for every startup is to figure out a the way to reduce the number of people it actually needs to successfully cover all these roles.

Cloud Computing Unification Getting Ugly

Just a couple of days after I was reporting about the cloud computing unification manifesto and the debates it generated on the cloud computing market, it looks like we know have two manifestos:

The first one was posted by Geva Perry on his blog: The Open Cloud Manifesto: A Call to action for the worldwide cloud community

This document is intended to initiate a conversation that will bring together the emerging cloud computing community (both cloud users and cloud providers) around a core set of principles. We believe that these core principles are rooted in the belief that cloud computing should be as open as all other IT technologies.

This one seems to have been lead by IBM and it is signed by quite a few companies (naming just a few: IBM, Sun, VMWare, Cisco, SAP, AMD and other 30), except at least 4 big names: Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Salesforce.com.

The second one is hosted on Wikipedia and was created as a response to the Microsoft remarks about having this initiative being really open and collaborative:

Principles

• User centric systems enrich the lives of individuals, education, communication, collaboration, business, entertainment and society as a whole; the end user is the primary stakeholder in cloud computing.
• Philanthropic initiatives can greatly increase the well-being of mankind; they should be enabled or enhanced by cloud computing where possible.
• Openness of standards, systems and software empowers and protects users; existing standards should be adopted where possible for the benefit of all stakeholders.
• Transparency fosters trust and accountability; decisions should be open to public collaboration and scrutiny and never be made 'behind closed doors'.
• Interoperability ensures effectiveness of cloud computing as a public resource; systems must be interoperable over a minimal set of community defined standards and vendor lock-in must be avoided.
• Representation of all stakeholders is essential; interoperability and standards efforts should not be dominated by vendor(s).
• Discrimination against any party for any reason is unacceptable; barriers to entry must be minimised.
• Evolution is an ongoing process in an immature market; standards may take some time to develop and coalesce but activities should be coordinated and collaborative.
• Balance of commercial and consumer interests is paramount; if in doubt consumer interests prevail.
• Security is fundamental, not optional.

I'd say that it is more than clear that aligning the cloud computing initiatives will take a while and that the fight for the market is just starting. Not to mention the fact that most probably Sun will not stay aside and will start pushing for its Virtual Data Center API initiative too Update: it looks like Sun is in fact part of one of the manifestos.

Resources:

• The Open Cloud Manifesto: A Call to action for the worldwide cloud community
• Cloud Computing Manifesto - Cloud Computing Community Wiki
• The Open Cloud Manifesto now signed and delivered
• IBM leading 'Open Cloud Manifesto' charge

Rolinks 2009-03-26

• Social networks are just another form of losing time except for those working on online or marketing: De ce au succes reţelele de socializare online?. You can also read my crazy hypothesis posted as a reply to the post.
• The Romanian blog readers are young, rich and beautiful: Profilul cititorului roman de bloguri, conform studiului STANDOUT (nb the article refers to a survey run in 2009 and not 2008 as it appears in the post)
• Romanian Entrepreneurs are no pitch gurus: Cum îşi susţin noii antreprenori prezentările?. Cristi Manafu is recommending a post on how to get better: 20 tips for better conference speaking
• Microsoft getVIRTUALwow. (nb: Most probably I'll participate at the webinar.) See the resource section for more coverage of getVIRTUALnow.

Resources:

• getVIRTUALnow: ce stiti despre virtualizare?
• Virtualizare: ce este si cu ce se maninca ea?
• Virtualizare: noi dezvaluiri pe YouTube
• getVIRTUALnow: Sa trecem la treaba! (2)
• Specialistii in virtualizare ies la iveala

Cloud Computing Unification: Microsoft or Sun?

Looks like this is generating more discussions than I have initially though. You can check the last two links in the resource section for even more detailed coverage.

Even if the Sun cloud computing solution is not yet public, they made available the specifications (Tim Bray is the lead of the spec) under a commons creative license. Moreover they made it clear that Sun would be happy to have their specification becoming the standard for the cloud computing.

On the other hand, Microsoft has built their cloud platform Azure around some open standards too: web addressability, SOAP, XML, and REST and are stating that

Our vision in taking this approach was to ensure that the programming model was extensible and that the individual services could be used in conjunction with applications and infrastructure that ran on both Microsoft and non-Microsoft stacks.

Last but not least there is a cloud manifesto initiative that is taking shape on the Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum:

Our goal is to draft a document that clearly states we (including dozens of supporting companies) believe that like the Internet, the cloud itself should be open. The manifesto does not speak to application code or licensing but instead to the fundamental principles that the Internet was founded upon - an open platform available to all. It is a call to action for the worldwide cloud community to get involved and embrace the principles of the open cloud.

Now if you think about it, who wouldn't want to become the leader in the cloud computing market and coordinate and shape its future? (Forrester, Gardner and almost everybody else is speaking about the bright future of cloud computing). Most probably we will see once again some friction in the industry for the specification leadership role and for the

And the signs of the debate are already here, as Microsoft is already blaming others for not inviting them to the manifesto group (there are tons of links covering the subject in the resource section).

Recently, we've heard about a “Cloud Manifesto,” purportedly describing principles and guidelines for interoperability in cloud computing. We love the concept. We strongly support an open, collaborative discussion with customers, analysts and other vendors regarding the direction and principles of cloud computing. When the center of gravity is standards and interoperability, we are even more enthusiastic because we believe these are the key to the long term success for the industry, as we are demonstrating through a variety of technologies such as Silverlight, Internet Explorer 8, and the Azure Services Platform. We have learned a lot from the tens-of-thousands of developers who are using our cloud platform and their feedback is driving our efforts. We are happy to participate in a dialogue with other providers and collaborate with them on how cloud computing could evolve to provide additional choices and greater value for customers.

We were admittedly disappointed by the lack of openness in the development of the Cloud Manifesto.

I don't believe that either Sun's or Microsoft's current approaches can become the specification. There is indeed a lot to be learnt from their experience, but a specification will have to bring to the table all the companies involved in providing cloud computing solution plus the community. A specification created by providers only has no value with the consumers are not involved.

Resources:

• The Sun Cloud API
• Sun Cloud API: Is Simplicity Enough?
• Tim Bray Designs Sun's Virtual Data Center RESTful API
• Introducing the Open Cloud Manifesto
• Cloud Manifesto
• Moving Toward an Open Process on Cloud Computing Interoperability
• Microsoft Readies For Another Big Tech Battle
• Microsoft expresses outrage at secret 'Cloud Manifesto'
• Microsoft loudly disses secret 'Cloud Manifesto'
• Microsoft criticizes drafting of secret 'Cloud Manifesto'
• Microsoft Bashes Secret 'Cloud Manifesto'
• Amazon Web Services: No Open Cloud Manifesto for us (TechMeme)
• Introducing the Open Cloud Manifesto (TechMeme)

Java on Google App Engine? Some Speculating, But There May Be Some Truth

Today I was reading two articles on TechCrunch and GigaOm speculating on the upcoming support for Java on Google App Engine.

There are a few reasons (presented below) why I cannot call these 2 articles pure speculations, but I really doubt that GigaOm has any confirmation about it even if they're saying they have one: (TechCrunch doesn't make any such claims):

We are trying to get more details. [...] but we can now confirm that it is going to happen. We have have confirmed the news and expect the announcement later this spring,

Have you heard before of any unofficial confirmations coming from Google about their unreleased projects?

Anyways, let's see why I do think that Java may be in fact the next language on the Google App Engine.

Already on the roadmap

Google has already announced in their App Engine roadmap that they will add support for another language and as we already know, at Google the 3 official languages are: Python, Java and C. Python is already available on the Google App Engine, so Java has at lest a 50% chance of being the next.

Top Requested Language

By looking at the Google App Engine Issue tracker you'll notice that quite a few languages are requested by the community and Java is leading with 2000+ votes:

Language	Votes
Java	2039
PHP	1796
Ruby	1456
Perl	1207

While I don't believe Google will base their decision on a community request, the community is sometimes good at figuring the future.

Virtual Machines vs Native Code

Java is running on the virtual machine and controlling a virtual machine is definitely easier than restricting/limitting native code. Remember that what currently runs on Google App Engine is a reduced Python.

Secondly, Google has experience building a custom Java VM: see Android's Dalvik.

Java is the Most Popular Language

I know this might be debatable, but there are many reports showing Java as being the most popular language.

So, while I think those 2 articles are speculating, things may in fact become true and Java will be available on Google App Engine.

Resources:

• TIOBE Programming Community Index for March 2009
• Android Dalvik VM
• Get Ready For Java On AppEngine
• Java: Coming Soon to Google’s App Engine

Tim Bray Designs Sun's Virtual Data Center RESTful API

Tim Bray speaking about the Virtual Data Center API specification goals:

This is a unified view of the storage and compute and networking services. It’s built around the notion of a “Virtual Data Center” (VDC), which contains networks and clusters of servers and public IP addresses and storage services. The idea is to give you the administrative and operational handles to build something really big and ambitious. The VDC notion is really slick and I think something like it is going to be required in any serious cloud API going forward.

Tim Bray is giving also a high level rationale for the RESTful API:

Why, then? Simply because we wanted a bits-on-the-wire interface. APIs, in the general case, suck; and are really hard to make portable. Bits-on-the-wire are ultimately flexible and interoperable. If you’re going to do bits-on-the-wire, Why not use HTTP? And if you’re going to use HTTP, use it right. That’s all.

Update InfoQ has published a couple of days ago an interview with Tim Bray on the Future of the Web (nb IMO a must see).

Resources:

• The Sun Cloud
• The Sun Cloud API
• Tim Bray on the Future of the Web

Are you a Tag Fan?

You already know what tags are as in the last years you've seen them almost everywhere: GMail, delicious, Flickr, just to name a few (nb some tools/websites are using the term label, but the two are absolutely equivalent and provide the same functionality: non-hierarchical categorization).

Now it looks like the tags are attacking the desktop world. I've been running the Tags trial, but unfortunately due to some limitations I have decided not to buy a license.

Anyways it looks like I've made the right decision as today I have read about a FREE tool: Punakea (still in beta). Below is screencast that walks you to the features:

Click the image to watch the Punakea screencast!

I haven't tried it yet, so if you start using it I'd really love to hear from you.

Resources:

• Punakea
• Tags

OpenSocial Resources

OpenSocial Supporters/Implementors

• AOL
• hi5
• Hyves
• iGoogle
• imeem
• MySpace
• Netlog
• Ning
• orkut.com
• Plaxo Pulse

Social Design Best Practices

1. Engage Quickly: we suggest you focus on the 30s experience; before distracting the user with expert features. Try the following:
   • Show value and identity by making the purpose and core features of your application absolutely clear.
   • Populate the application with fun or interesting content (especially content from friends) that makes for a browse-friendly experience.
   • Make it easy for the user to add content, change settings and feel ownership of the application. This increases a user's desire to keep the application on his/her profile.
2. Mimic Look and Feel: attempt consistency with the container UI by using similar fonts, tabs and buttons.
3. Enable Self Expression:
4. Make it Dynamic
5. Expose Friend Activity
6. Browse the Graph
7. Drive Communication
8. Build Communities
9. Solve Real World Tasks

Implementation: Apache Shindig

Friend Connect

Friend Connect: uses three open standards to connect to other websites. It uses OpenID for identity and logging in, it uses OAuth to authorize access to friend and profile data on existing sites that host it, and it uses OpenSocial to embed the applications within your site.

Friend Connect will work with existing standards such as OpenID, OAuth, OpenSocial, as well as with data access APIs from Facebook, Google, and MySpace.

[...]

Friend Connect is geared at the Long Tail of small sites that don’t even have any user information. It allows them to tap into bigger sites and piggyback on their user sign-in and registration, list of friends, and interactions between those friends. It takes advantage of many existing standards, including Facebook’s (it is not an official partner, but it Google is taking advantage of its published APIs).

Erik Schonfeld on TechCrunch

MySpace Embraces DataPortability, Partners With Yahoo, Ebay And Twitter

MySpace is a partner in Google's OpenSocial project, but this is being done outside of that framework. MySpace says they’ll adopt the Open Social APIs that evolve around data sharing once they are developed and announced.

Social Graph API

Technologies:

• OpenSocial
• OpenID
• OAuth
• Friend Connect
• DataPortability

Resources:

• OpenSocial Official Blog
• The Social Network Wars Begin In Earnest: Facebook Bans Google Friend Connect
• He Said, She Said In Google v. Facebook
• Facebook Responds To MySpace With Facebook Connect
• Google Gathers Social Graph Information From The Web, Launches API

Microsoft to Lead the Cloud Computing Market

Not so long ago, some where saying that Microsoft is loosing the cloud computing bandwagon and that they have no idea what to do about it. Well, I'm pretty sure that now those that said it are biting their tongues. Not only that Microsoft has jumped into the cloud computing bandwagon with their Azure platform, but if they continue this way, I'd say that quite soon they will probably lead the market.

How sure am I about it? Nobody can be sure about anything these days, but I can tell you this: after spending time with both Amazon Web Services and Google App Engine, now I am preparing a virtual environment to start looking into Windows Azure.

Leaving aside my personal opinion, I'd encourage you to take a look at what Azure is offering (and what the plans are). Then do keep in mind that Microsoft has always been into integration and interoperability (in the sense that their products were always created to integrate and interoperate with existing ones). Last, but not least add to the mix the Microsoft BizSpark initiative (a program that between other things is offering startups 3 years free licenses to all Microsoft products) and you'll probably have a new perspective of the impact Microsoft will have on the cloud computing market.

Anyways, here are a couple of the latest announcements and presentations from Mix09 just to wet your taste. (nb: Silverlight required. Some of the videos are also available for download.)

• Overview of Windows Azure
• See through the Clouds: Introduction to the Azure Services Platform
• Building Web Applications with Windows Azure
• Windows Azure Storage
• What's New in Microsoft SQL Data Services
• Cloud Computing: What's in It for Me?
• Using the Windows Azure Tools to Build Cloud Services
• Simplifying Distributed Access Control with Microsoft .NET Services
• Mesh-Enabled Web Applications
• Live Framework and Mesh Services: Live Services for Developers
• Connecting Applications across Networks with Microsoft .NET Services
• A Lap around Microsoft .NET Services

Overview of Windows Azure

See through the Clouds: Introduction to the Azure Services Platform

Building Web Applications with Windows Azure

Windows Azure Storage

What's New in Microsoft SQL Data Services

Cloud Computing: What's in It for Me?

Using the Windows Azure Tools to Build Cloud Services

Simplifying Distributed Access Control with Microsoft .NET Services

Mesh-Enabled Web Applications

Live Framework and Mesh Services: Live Services for Developers

Connecting Applications across Networks with Microsoft .NET Services

A Lap around Microsoft .NET Services

I know this is a lot, but I'd strongly suggest to watch some of them in order to better understand why I think that Microsoft is going to be a leader in the cloud computing market.

Resources:

• RESTful Services for the Programmable Web with Windows Communication Foundation
• Caching REST with Windows Communication Foundation
• Developing RESTful Services and Clients with "M"
• Modeling RESTful Data Services: Present and Future

GMail Account Lockdown: FAIL

It looks like GMail has decided to lockdown my GMail account for unusual activities, while I wasn't performing ANY operation at all: FAIL!

I've carefully reviewed what can be considered as an unusual activity and I couldn't find that having the Mailapp open and sitting in the Dock as being considered unusual.

After 30 minutes of searching around for ways to reactivate the account and following all the indications in the GMail help pages, I have figured out a way to report the problem through a web form.

As you can imagine I was getting angry by the minute and so when I've received back the automatic notification that I should check the documentation I felt like exploding. FAIL, FAIL, FAIL.

I will have to wait 24 hours for (hopefully) getting back my account. I use this account to access my job email, so this will cost me one day of work. FAIL again!

Summarizing, having your browser/Mailapp open on GMail and sitting in the Dock is an unusual activity that may lead to your account lockdown: GMail Account Lockdown: FAIL.

Update: Panic mode off! I don't know if it is the result of my cry here or on Twitter or the support email I've sent, but my I've regained the access to my account.

Safari: Not the Most Vulnerable Browser, Even If It Failed First

Update: It looks like Chrome is the most secure browser right now, as none of the participants have been able to hack it. (report ed by ars technica)

I didn't know that there are any hacking contests for security researchers, but ZNet reports that for the 2nd year in a row, the winner has exploited vulnerabilities in the Safari browser to take full control over the target machine.

Anyways the part that actually caught my attention was this one:

Several hackers are currently attempting exploits against Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox but those browsers are still standing.

While pausing to reflect on the above, ZDNet has published an update in which they reported that all 3 (major) browsers have been successfully hacked. Now I can feel again as safe as a Windows user!

Idea: Virtual Mall

Have you thought about renting space in a virtual mall?

It should be like a mall but online, with stores, and we will sell "space" in it so there will be many size of stores, and each one will have different prize, the incomes will depend of the comission(probably 3% of each transaction) and of the stores selled. It should work with "credits" that the users should buy from us to buy the products.

Not sure though, if the guy got the money to start it or not.

Joking, manzu is asking me on Twitter:

What can we do for the bored mall addicts in a virtual mall? How can they live without the benches in the mall?

Update: It looks like the Australians have already implemented the idea of a virtual mall!

New Tools for Browser Testing

Just the other day I was talking with a friend about how tedious in-browser testing really is. Anyways, by looking at some of the latest releases it looks like we are slowly getting somewhere.

Microsoft has introduced at MIX09 the Web SuperPreview for Windows Internet Explorer (nb: runs only on Windows)

Expression Web SuperPreview for Internet Explorer is a visual debugging tool that makes it easier to migrate your Web sites from Internet Explorer 6 to Internet Explorer 7 or 8.

There is also the Xenocode Browser Sandbox:

(nb: runs only on Windows)

The Xenocode Browser Sandbox allows all popular Windows browsers to be run simultaneously, directly from the web. Web designers, system administrators, and other users can now evaluate Internet Explorer 8, 7, and 6, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera, and Google Chrome directly from the web in a risk-free manner. Unlike traditional software applications, Xenocode WebApps do not require any software to be installed and allow multiple application versions to run side-by-side on any version of Windows.

Resources:

• Microsoft SuperPreview: a New Way to Test Websites
• 10 Helpful Resources for Cross Browser Testing
• 7 Fresh and Simple Ways to Test Cross-Browser Compatibility

Python Virtual Environment

Do you know what a Python Virtual environment is?

Python Virtual Environment: providing a means of having multiple isolated environments for the one Python installation on a system, such that it would be possible to run different applications on the same system, but using different sets of installed Python packages.

I've always asked myself how is this thing done in Python and Pylons with its go-pylons.py was the first I've found offering a solution. Then, I've found some more solutions.

Virtualenv, a solution developed by Ian Bicking, replacing the now deprecated workingenv and based inspired by virtual-python, seems to be the preferred solution (even if the comments on Ian's blog are still reporting issues).

Another option is documented by Graham Dumpleton and is introduced as the poor man's solution as it is pretty manual and it involves the manipulation of PYTHONPATH and the creation of a set of predefined symlinks.

As such setting the PYTHONHOME environment seems to be a simpler and more deterministic way of specifying where the Python lib directory is located, avoiding the need to perform fixups to the Python executable on MacOS X.

As to how to setup a Python virtual environment based on using the PYTHONHOME environment variable, for UNIX based systems it is just a matter of creating a parallel copy of the installed Python installation using symlinks. In some respects it is therefore quite similar to the original virtual-python, except that the Python executable itself is also just a symlink and not a copy.

Even if none of the above solutions seems to be 100% bullet proof, I do believe that they may prove quite useful for developing or maintaining projects relying on many dependencies and needing a stable environment.

Python 2.6 implements PEP370: Per-user site-packages directory. While the PEP doesn't directly address the virtual environments, it is introducing the possibility to control this directory through a new env variable PYTHONUSERBASE, which means that setting this variable to the desired location will in fact provide the solution.

Resources:

• Pylons installation
• Virtualenv
• Workingenv is dead, long live Virtualenv!
• workingenv
• virtual-python
• Poor man's Python virtual environment.
• mod_wsgi virtual environments
• Tools for using virtual environments and PEP 370

Welcome Back: Blogger 502

Probably just a nice way to welcome me back:

According to RFC2616:

The server, while acting as a gateway or proxy, received an invalid response from the upstream server it accessed in attempting to fulfill the request.

Blogger Custom Template

Wow! It's for the first time I've set a custom (non-default) template on blog. I am so impressed that I'm afraid to really look at it.

If you thought for a moment that it was me the one designing the template... then you are absolutely wrong. I have found tons of resources though:

Update: I have also installed a very cool widget that displays related posts by tag.

Related:

• 70 Fresh And Modern Blogger Templates (Note: many links in the post are actually broken)
• Final Sense
• Pyzam
• blogger-templates
• freshbloggertemplates
• BTemplates
• BlogspotTemplate.com
• falconhive.com
• templatesparanovoblogger