I want to start with a little nostalgia for my childhood.

Back then there were 2 possibilities for accessing care directly: the GP and Casualty (and yes, it was Casualty, not A&E). But first you consulted Auntie. For some people Auntie might be replaced by Granny or Mrs Thing down the road. This was the person in the community who, having either years of experience (from having raised 9 or so children) or a little medical knowledge, provided what is now called Triage.

Casualty was for injuries. Your Mrs Thing would check some simple rules. Can you bend it? Then it's not broken (this isn't strictly true, but still provides a fair rule of triage as to whether you need medical care). Is the wound clean, free of foreign objects and not requiring stitches? Then clean it thoroughly with antiseptic and apply a dressing. A bump on the head? Did you lose consciousness or vomit? Is the patient alert and awake? Is there an external bump? Then a bit of careful monitoring (and don't sleep for a couple of hours) and you'll be fine (this was often accompanied by an application of butter, which I can only assume was a placebo as I can find no therapeutic value to it whatsoever!)

Every home had a first aid kit, containing antiseptic, wipes, dressings, an eye-bath, antihistamine cream (for bites and stings), burn cream, calamine lotion... you get the idea. For minor medical issues, we were self-sufficient.

For everything else, you saw your family doctor. Again applying some simple rules. Are you going to die before the surgery opens? Are you going to get significantly worse before the surgery opens? (The best way to establish this is to wait and see if you do start to get worse). If the answer to both is no, then you wait till the surgery opens. Of course, that assumed that you could count on seeing a doctor swiftly.

The doctor would make a house-call during surgery hours for rashes (though Mum, clutching her book on childhood illnesses had usually already diagnosed) and high fevers. Having the doctor call was a cause for great alarm (Mum always panicked about whether the house was clean enough for some reason). Fevers were treated with aspirin (seriously, for children!) and ice packs.

Out of hours visits were only if you were dying. I recall it happening exactly once in my entire life – the occasion I developed vaccination fever and did nearly die. I wasn't admitted to hospital even then, though. Treated with paracetemol and ice packs (which I recall eating, too).

So what has changed? Why is hour of hours/emergency care now so pressurised?

Several things.

The population has changed. More people live alone, offering less opportunity for short-term home nursing. We have a higher proportion of older people, who have greater health needs. This has placed a huge burden on GP services, resulting in pressure in some places for getting an appointment. People are turning up at A&E with non-urgent things that they know perfectly well they should have seen their GP for – but saying that “It would be a week before I can get an appointment” (I write this knowing I'm blessed with an excellent GP practice who will find me an appointment with a doctor or nurse prescriber at short notice, or booked to my convenience.) The very success of A&E wait time targets has aggravated this: when I was small, you avoided Casualty unless it was essential because it would mean a long wait time!

We have seen the demise of Mrs Thing. Whether because we no longer have 'granny's wisdom' in our society or because anyone with a little knowledge declines to give advice for fear of litigation, people are less willing/able to self triage and self care. Attempts have been made to replace this vital part of our community with the pharmacist, though she too is only available at certain times: if I have to travel to see an out of hours pharmacist I may as well go to hospital. The NHS helplines have had a different problem: the default response of NHS 24 is always “Go to A&E”. I can think of several occasions when I or others have been advised to go to hospital unnecessarily, but the risk of getting it wrong means someone at a distance diagnosing over the phone will always choose the less risky option if there is the slightest doubt. Not to mention the people who go to A&E despite being told by NHS 24 they don't need to. I see little evidence that the new phone lines will be any better.

People have come to expect routine care urgently. Our supermarkets are open 24/7. So are our pubs. So we have been encouraged (by walk-in centres and government rhetoric) to expect our routine healthcare to be available at our convenience. (Though not, strangely, our tax office, bank counter, road fund licence office, local council office...) Because some healthcare HAS to be available at all times, there's an expectation that ALL of it should. And then there's this concept of “At our convenience”. At whose convenience? When I was small, if you had a medical appointment, you were given time off work (or school). Now you're expected to fit that in 'out of hours'. Is that at my convenience or my employer's? The idea of waiting till the surgery is open has somehow dissolved into a notion of getting care when I think I need it. And that, I think more than anything, has caused the pressure build-up at A&E, which is the ultimate in 'walk-in' centres. People incur an injury, wait to see if it improves (all very good) then pop into A&E instead of seeing their doctor because … well, it's open.

So what to do? Well, here's my few suggestions for the DoH.

Increase the number of GPs and make more appointments available during normal surgery hours. Then the people turning up at A&E because it's easier than trying to get to see their own doctor will go where they can best be helped.

Provide proper governance for out of hours GP services. I live in an area where people have very little confidence in the out of hours GP provision, so prefer to go to A&E if they possibly can. I'm not advocating a return to local GP surgeries taking back the responsibility (for an excellent account of GP out of hours care and the changes to contracts, see here) though contracts awarded to large companies rather than GP collectives seem to inspire less confidence. (Understatement)

Teach first aid and basic medical awareness in schools. Not just CPR (though that's useful too) but how to wash a cut, bathe an eye and determine whether or not you need a doctor. Train up the next generation of Mrs Things who can make less risk-averse assessments of need for professional intervention.

Back pedal on the rhetoric of 24/7 medical availability. Start helping people to see that it's ok to be ill overnight and wait to see the doctor in the morning. By all means, encourage the truly urgent to get the care they need critically – but persuade the less urgent not to clog up the works (and make things harder for those with critical needs). Make 'time off for medical appointments' a basic workers' right. Do we really want sick people forced to work and only see a doctor when it doesn't get in the way of them 'being productive'?

Of course, I doubt the politicians will do any of these things. It's much easier to blame the GPs for everything, rant about how much they're spending on A&E and pretend things are getting better.

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In this edition (Download)...

1. Front Page
   • Contemplation period begins for Hildon Foundation Board of Directors election
   • Aligning Maemo Community Council and Hildon Foundation Council
2. Community
   • Hildon Foundation Board of Directors meeting this week
   • Logs from last week's council meeting
   • jaffa running for Hildon Foundation Board of Directors
   • fw190 running for Hildon Foundation Board of Directors
   • win7mac running for Hildon Foundation Board of Directors
3. Devices
   • Developing GTA04 internals for a Nokia N900?

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For the above to happen it is required that the elections for HFC and MCC members are to be the same.
This unfortunately did not happen and we are currently left with one different member in each body, out of the five.

The members of the Councils to be aligned are:

Maemo Community Council
 Rüdiger Schiller / chemist
 Joerg Reisenweber / joerg_rw
 Christian Ratzenhofer / merlin1991
 Michael Demetriou / qwazix
 Aakash Sadh  / thedead1440

Hildon Foundation Council
 Rüdiger Schiller / chemist
 Joerg Reisenweber / joerg_rw
 Christian Ratzenhofer / merlin1991
 Michael Demetriou / qwazix
 Paul Healy / sixwheeledbeast

We feel three bodies will cause great confusion to the community and will be counter-productive.

Therefore to solve matters, sixwheeledbeast and thedead1440 stepped down with immediate effect from HFC and MCC respectively. While they step down to allow the alignment of the two Councils into one singular body, the current Council
for its term must listen to the opinions the aforementioned two may have on any topics before council reaching a consensus.

Hence the aligned Hildon Foundation Council members now are:

Rüdiger Schiller / chemist
Joerg Reisenweber / joerg_rw
Christian Ratzenhofer / merlin1991
Michael Demetriou / qwazix

We believe the above is an important step for moving the Community forward with a unified Council in the post-Nokia era.

So:
MCC  hereby declares the bodies of HFC and MCC to be one single body in perpetuity.

Further,

MCC agrees to align all future changes to be in line with HFC's procedures of change so that the Bylaws are adhered to.
and:
HFC hereby declares the bodies of HFC and MCC to be one single body in perpetuity.  Further, HFC accepts as it's own all existing rules, electorate processes and generals of MCC, including future changes, as it's own.

Regards
Maemo Community Council & Hildon Foundation Council coalition.

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For the above to happen it is required that the elections for HFC and MCC members are to be the same.
This unfortunately did not happen and we are currently left with one different member in each body, out of the five.

The members of the Councils to be aligned are:

Maemo Community Council
 Rüdiger Schiller / chemist
 Joerg Reisenweber / joerg_rw
 Christian Ratzenhofer / merlin1991
 Michael Demetriou / qwazix
 Aakash Sadh  / thedead1440

Hildon Foundation Council
 Rüdiger Schiller / chemist
 Joerg Reisenweber / joerg_rw
 Christian Ratzenhofer / merlin1991
 Michael Demetriou / qwazix
 Paul Healy / sixwheeledbeast

We feel three bodies will cause great confusion to the community and will be counter-productive.

Therefore to solve matters, sixwheeledbeast and thedead1440 stepped down with immediate effect from HFC and MCC respectively. While they step down to allow the alignment of the two Councils into one singular body, the current Council
for its term must listen to the opinions the aforementioned two may have on any topics before council reaching a consensus.

Hence the aligned Hildon Foundation Council members now are:

Rüdiger Schiller / chemist
Joerg Reisenweber / joerg_rw
Christian Ratzenhofer / merlin1991
Michael Demetriou / qwazix

We believe the above is an important step for moving the Community forward with a unified Council in the post-Nokia era.

So:
MCC  hereby declares the bodies of HFC and MCC to be one single body in perpetuity.

Further,

MCC agrees to align all future changes to be in line with HFC's procedures of change so that the Bylaws are adhered to.
and:
HFC hereby declares the bodies of HFC and MCC to be one single body in perpetuity.  Further, HFC accepts as it's own all existing rules, electorate processes and generals of MCC, including future changes, as it's own.

Regards
Maemo Community Council & Hildon Foundation Council coalition.

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TeamViewer is a remote control tool that can be found on the TeamViewer web site.

Only package for ubuntu are provided, but the package can be installed directly on Crunchbang.

Except for the 64 bits version where some dependancies aren't installed correctly (the 32bits libs). Waldorf is based on debian testing and so use multi arch. We need it to install teamviewer else at the first launch we will got an tvwine.dll.so missing error.

We need to activate first the arch i386 :

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
sudo apt-get update

Then we need to install missing dependancies :

sudo apt-get install libxext:i386 ia32-libs

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Each time code modifications in the github repository of KhtNotes, KhtSimpleText or BitPurse are pushed,
drone.io build a new debian package of the apps for Harmattan.

So if you want to try development version of KhtNotes, BitPurse or KhtSimpleText,
now you can without building them yourself

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I've just fix the news atom feed and also set a more simple design for the
website as i found the previous one was too dark.

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BitPurse 2.0.1 is now available in Nokia Store : BitPurse 2.0.1 in Nokia Store

A donation will be appreciate : 18tFSEMgeHbCK28hAC81RT6cNCjCDZ91sx

Alternate Downloads:

This new version should be available soon in Nokia Store, and MeeGo COBS and
is already available here : BitPurse 2.0.1

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Please note that my knowledge of ARM processors started in 2003 so I can make mistakes in everything older. Tried to understand articles about old times but sometimes they do not keep one version of story.

Ancient times

ARM1 got released in 1985 as CPU add-on to BBC Micro manufactured by Acorn Computers Ltd. as result of few years of research work. They wanted to have new processor to replace ageing 6502 used in BBC Micro and Acorn Electron and none of existing ones did not fit their requirements.

But it was ARM2 which landed in new computers — Acorn Archimedes (1987 year). Had multiply instructions added so new version of instruction set was created: ARMv2. Just 8MHz clock but remember that it was first computer with new CPU…

Then ARM3 came — with cache controller integrated and 25MHz clock. ISA was bumped to ARMv2a due to SWP instruction added. And it was released in another Acorn computer: A5000. This was also used in Acorn A4 which was first ARM powered laptop (but term “ARM Powered” was created few years later). I hope that one day I will be able to play with all those old machines…

There was also ARM250 processor with ARMv2a instruction set like in ARM3 but no cache controller. But it is worth mentioning as it can be seen as first SoC due to ARM, MEMC, VIDC, IOC chips integrated in one piece of silicon. This allowed to create budget versions of computers.

ARM Ltd.

In 1990 Acorn, Apple and VLSI co-founded Advanced RISC Machines Ltd. company which took over research and development of ARM processors. Their business model was simple: “we work on cpu cores and other companies pay us license costs to make chips”.

Their first cpu was ARM60 with new instruction set: ARMv3. It had 32bit address space (compared to 26bit in older versions), was endian agnostic (so both big and little endian was possible) and there were other improvements.

Please note lack of ARM4 and ARM5 processors. I heard some rumours about that but will not repeat them here as some of them just do not fit when compared against facts.

ARM610 was powering Apple Newton PDA and first Acorn RiscPC machines where it was replaced by ARM710 (still ARMv3 instruction set but ~30% faster).

First licensees

You can create new processor cores but someone has to buy them and manufacture… In 1992 GEC Plessey and Sharp licensed ARM technology, next year added Cirrus Logic and Texas Instruments, then AKM (Asahi Kasei Microsystems) and Samsung joined in 1994 and then others…

From that list I recognize only Cirrus Logic (used their crazy EP93xx family), TI and Samsung as vendors of processors ;D

Thumb

One of next cpu cores was ARM7TDMI (Thumb+Debug+Multiplier+ICE) which added new instruction set: Thumb.

The Thumb instructions were not only to improve code density, but also to bring the power of the ARM into cheaper devices which may primarily only have a 16 bit datapath on the circuit board (for 32 bit paths are costlier). When in Thumb mode, the processor executes Thumb instructions. While most of these instructions directly map onto normal ARM instructions, the space saving is by reducing the number of options and possibilities available — for example, conditional execution is lost, only branches can be conditional. Fewer registers can be directly accessed in many instructions, etc. However, given all of this, good Thumb code can perform extremely well in a 16 bit world (as each instruction is a 16 bit entity and can be loaded directly).

ARM7TDMI landed nearly everywhere – MP3 players, cell phones, microwaves and any place where microcontroller could be used. I heard that few years ago half of ARM Ltd. income was from license costs of this cpu core…

ARM8

I heard that ARM8 is one of those things you should not ask ARM Ltd. people about. Nothing strange when you look at history…

ARM810 processor made use of ARMv4 instruction set and had 72MHz clock. At same time DEC released StrongARM with 200MHz clock… 1996 was definitively year of StrongARM.

In 2004 I bought my first Linux/ARM powered device: Sharp Zaurus SL-5500.

Other ARMv4 processors

Faraday Technology Corporation released FA526 processor which used ARMv4 instruction set.

ARM9

Ah ARM9… this was huge family of processor cores…

ARM moved from a von Neumann architecture (Princeton architecture) to a Harvard architecture with separate instruction and data buses (and caches), significantly increasing its potential speed.

There were two different instruction sets used in this family: ARMv4T and ARMv5TE. Also some kind of Java support was added in the latter one but who knows how to use it — ARM keeps details of Jazelle behind doors which can be open only with huge amount of money.

ARMv4T

Here we have ARM9TDMI, ARM920T, ARM922T, ARM925T and ARM940T cores. I mostly saw 920T one in far too many chips.

My collection includes:

• ep93xx from Cirrus Logic (with their sick VFP unit)
• omap1510 from Texas Instruments
• s3c2410 from Samsung (note that some s3c2xxx processors are ARMv5T)

ARMv5T

Note: by ARMv5T I mean every cpu never mind which extensions it has built-in (Enhanced DSP, Jazelle etc).

I consider this one to be most popular one (probably after ARM7TDMI). Countless companies had own processors based on those cores (mostly on ARM926EJ-S one). You can get them even in QFP form so hand soldering is possible. CPU frequency goes over 1GHz with Kirkwood cores from Marvell.

In my collection I have:

• at91sam9263 from Atmel
• pxa255 from Intel
• st88n15 from ST Microelectronics

Had also at91sam9m10, Kirkwood based Sheevaplug and ixp425 based NSLU2 but they found new home.

ARM10

Another quiet moment in ARM history. ARM1020E, ARM1022E, ARM1026EJ-S cores existed but I never heard of any real processor which would use them.

ARM11

Released in 2002 as four new cores: ARM1136J, ARM1156T2, ARM1176JZ and ARM11 MPCore. Several improvements over ARM9 family including optional VFP unit. New instruction set: ARMv6 (and ARMv6K extensions). There was also Thumb2 support in arm1156 core (but I do not know did someone made chips with it). arm1176 core got TrustZone support.

I have:

• omap2430 from Texas Instruments
• i.mx35 from Freescale

Currently most popular chip with this family is BCM2835 GPU which got arm1136 cpu core on die because there was some space left and none of Cortex-A processor core fit there.

Cortex

New family of processor cores was announced in 2004 with Cortex-M3 as first cpu. There are three branches:

• Aplication
• Realtime
• Microcontroller

All of them (with exception of Cortex-M0 which is ARMv6) use new instruction sets: ARMv7 and Thumb-2 (some from R/M lines are Thumb-2 only). Several cpu modules were announced (some with newer cores):

• NEON for SIMD operations
• VFP3 and VFP4
• Jazelle RCT (aka ThumbEE).
• LPAE for more then 4GB ram support (Cortex A7/12/15)
• virtualization support (A7/12/15)
• big.LITTLE
• TrustZone

I will not cover R/M lines as did not played with them.

Cortex-A8

Announced in 2006 single core ARMv7a processor core. Released in chips by Texas Instruments, Samsung, Allwinner, Apple, Freescale, Rockchip and probably few others.

Has higher clocks than ARM11 cores and achieves roughly twice the instructions executed per clock cycle due to dual-issue superscalar design.

So far collected:

• am3358 from Texas Instruments
• i.mx515 from Freescale
• omap3530 from Texas Instruments

Cortex-A9

First multiple core design in Cortex family. Allows up to 4 cores in one processor. Announced in 2007. Looks like most of companies which had previous cores licensed also this one but there were also new vendors.

There are also single core Cortex-A9 processors on a market.

I have products based on omap4430 from Texas Instruments and Tegra3 from NVidia.

Cortex-A5

Announced around the end of 2009 (I remember discussion about something new from ARM with someone at ELC/E). Single core only, mostly for use in all designs where ARM9 and ARM11 cores were used. In other words new low-end cpu with modern instruction set.

Cortex-A15

The fastest (so far) core in ARMv7a part of Cortex family. Up to 4 cores. Announced in 2010 and expanded ARM line with several new things:

• 40-bit LPAE which extends address range to 1TB (but 32-bit per process)
• VFPv4
• Hardware virtualization support
• TrustZone security extensions

I have Chromebook with Exynos5250 cpu and have to admit that it is best device for ARM software development. Fast, portable and hackable.

Cortex-A7

Announced in 2011. Younger brother of Cortex-A15 design. Slower but eats much less power.

Cortex-A12

Announced in 2013 as modern replacement for Cortex-A9 designs. Has everything from Cortex-A15/A7 and is ~40% faster than Cortex-A9 at same clock frequency. No chips on a market yet.

big.LITTLE

That’s interesting part which was announced in 2011. It is not new core but combination of them. Vendor can mix Cortex-A7/12/15 cores to have kind of dual-multicore processor which runs different cores for different needs. For example normal operation on A7 to save energy but go up for A15 when more processing power is needed. And amount of cores in each of them does not even have to match.

It is also possible to make use of all cores all together which may result in 8-core ARM processor scheduling tasks on different cpu cores.

There are few implementations already: ARM TC2 testing platform, HiSilicon K3V3, Samsung Exynos 5 Octa and Renesas Mobile MP6530 were announced. They differ in amount of cores but all (except TC2) use the same amount of A7/A15 cores.

ARMv8

In 2011 ARM announced new 64-bit architecture called AArch64. There will be two cores: Cortex-A53 and Cortex-A57 and big.LITTLE combination will be possible as well.

Lot of things got changed here. VFP and NEON are parts of standard. Lot of work went into making sure that all designs will not be so fragmented like 32-bit architecture is.

I worked on AArch64 bootstrapping in OpenEmbedded build system and did also porting of several applications.

Hope to see hardware in 2014 with possibility to play with it to check how it will play compared to current systems.

Other designs

ARM Ltd. is not the only company which releases new cpu cores. That’s due to fact that there are few types of license you can buy. Most vendors just buy licence for existing core and make use of it in their designs. But some companies (Intel, Marvell, Qualcomm, Microsoft, Apple, Faraday and others) paid for ‘architectural license’ which allows to design own cores.

XScale

Probably oldest one was StrongARM made by DEC, later sold to Intel where it was used as a base for XScale family with ARMv5TEJ instruction set. Later IWMMXT got added in PXA27x line.

In 2006 Intel sold whole ARM line to Marvell which released newer processor lines and later moved to own designs.

There were few lines in this family:

• Application Processors (with the prefix PXA).
• I/O Processors (with the prefix IOP)
• Network Processors (with the prefix IXP)
• Control Plane Processors (with the prefix IXC).
• Consumer Electronics Processors (with the prefix CE).

One day I will undust my Sharp Zaurus c760 just to check how recent kernels work on PXA255 ;D

Qualcomm

Company known mostly from wireless networks (GSM/CDMA/3G) released first ARM based processors in 2007. First ones used ARMv6 instruction set and in next year also ARMv7a were available. Their designs are similar to Cortex family but have different performance.

Nexus 4 uses Snapdragon S4 Pro and I also have S4 Plus based Snapdragon development board.

Final note

If you spotted any mistakes please write in comments and I will do my best to fix them. If you have something interesting to add also please do a comment.

I used several sources to collect data for this post. Wikipedia articles helped me with details about Acorn products and ARM listings. ARM infocenter provided other information. Dates were taken from Wikipedia or ARM Company Milestones page. Ancient times part based on The ARM Family and The history of the ARM CPU articles. The history of the ARM architecture was interesting and helpful as well.

Please do not copy this article without providing author information. Took me quite long time to finish it.

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
ARMology was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

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The number of mobile web users is already at 1.5 billion, which happens to be quite close to the total number of Internet users back in 2009.

And it is growing rapidly. In 2015 there will be an estimated 2 billion smartphone users which is quite close to the total number of Internet users currently.

In the developed world, this is likely to be a mixture of tablets, smartphones, and traditional desktop computers, with most users having at least two different web-capable devices. In the developing world, the smartphone is the computer.

Considering these statistics, it is insanity to design websites and services PC-first, with mobile only as an afterthought.

How to prepare

Just some years ago, the mobile web was a slum. Instead of getting full-featured websites, many sent us out to poorly-built and featureless m. sites. Now more and more sites go with responsive web design that makes the site itself adapt to different screen sizes and resolutions.

But even with responsive design, it is easy to go overboard. Tools like WordPress Jetpack and jQuery Mobile oversimplify the site itself by trying to make it look and feel like a native app. In the mobile-first world this is not the right way to go.

In The Rise of the Mobile-Only User content strategist Karen McGrane makes a valid point (emphasis added):

Mobile users should get the same content. It's frustrating and confusing for them if you only give them a little bit of what you offer on your "real" website. If you try to guess which subset of your content the mobile user needs, you're going to guess wrong. Deliver the same content as your desktop user sees. (If you think some of your content doesn't deserve to be on mobile, guess what — it doesn't deserve to be on the desktop either. Get rid of it.)

There is no pixel-perfect

In this new world users will access your content or software using a wildly varying set of devices. And each of them has the reasonable expectation of being able to access the full experience and the full set of features you're providing.

This changes web design substantially. Even in the old world of different PC browsers, pixel perfect web design was rarely that. With responsive design, it is even less so.

Instead:

• Think in visual components instead of full pages. The composition of a page out of these components can wary for different screen sizes
• Design the compositions always for at three screen form factors: a full-sized desktop or tablet screen, a smartphone screen, and the 7" tablet in between
• Make your user interface elements big enough to be used on inaccurate touch screens
• Never, ever require a plugin to access some content or functionality

CSS Media Queries make responding to different form factors quite easy. And besides that, they also make it easy to optimize for the different screen densities we now have. This way your images will look sharp on anything the users have, from the "retina-class devices" to the lowest-specced Chinese smartphone, while requiring the user to only download the assets that their device can utilize.

The devices people use to access the services you provide will vary greatly not only in their display capabilities, but also in the ways you can do input. Some will have mice and physical keyboards, but an increasing amount will instead have a touchscreen. For these users, it is a big service to use the correct HTML5 input types so that the on-screen keyboards and widgets can adapt to the content being entered.

The web is not native

The web is its own platform, and as such it is foolish to try and mimic traditional desktop applications. It will never feel quite right whatever you do.

It is a lot better to accept this and fully embrace the unique advantages of the web platform:

• The web is an universal runtime that works on 100% of the computing devices your users have
• There are no gatekeepers telling what you can publish, and no middlemen taking a cut of whatever you sell online
• The web is built out of URLs that users can easily share with each other, and continue using when they switch devices
• URLs also allow any application on the web to link to any screen or state of another application
• It is just as easy to provide content as it is to provide functional applications on the web

Every major software company on the planet has their own web browser, and the competition between these is fierce. This will ensure that over time, the web will keep on getting better and faster. Compare this to traditional software platforms that can easily stagnate or get abandoned. Thanks to the standard protocols it also allows you to use any technology of your choosing for the server side of your software.

Paul Graham put it well in his The other road ahead from 2001:

And you don't have to know if you bet on Web-based applications. No one can break that without breaking browsing. The Web may not be the only way to deliver software, but it's one that works now and will continue to work for a long time. Web-based applications are cheap to develop, and easy for even the smallest startup to deliver.

Things are getting better

As somebody who has been developing for the web for nearly twenty years the rate the web developer experience keeps improving is sometimes dizzying.

We get used to some limitations in the stack, and then suddenly something comes along and removes that shortcoming. We're still exploring the new kinds of designs and visual experiences technologies like Media Queries and WebGL make possible, just like it took years for the community to find best practices around things like AJAX.

And yet new amazing things keep pouring in. My personal favourite recently has been Web Components which gives a standard way to provide reusable widgets on the web, and to do things like data binding and templating. This alone will make a lot of the popular frameworks and libraries obsolete.

Just watch this video and see how much easier web development is becoming:

The current work on standardizing Web Payments together with more grassroots efforts like BitCoin promise to add better ways to do business on the web. This should remove the last big advantage of native applications in that they're easier (but very expensive) to monetize via app stores and in-app payments.

Linked Data on the web and new features like Yandex Islands make it easier to connect web applications and data on the web together. Tools like my Create.js make the web easier to edit, and Web Intents promise even closer integration between web apps.

Each of these will make the web richer and better. Each of them will allow new startups to be built, and new meaningful connections to happen over the internet, many of these using mobile devices.

It is an exciting time to be a web developer.

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With a direct flight from London (LHR) to Seoul (ICN), I was lucky enough to fly on Korean Air. Only Quatar Airways comes close in terms of service, though I still like their aubergine-colored uniforms more. Incheon Airport won a "best airport" award several times in a row, and I think it's well-earned. It starts with the gorgeous view when flying in, but the best argument going for the airport is probably A'REX, an affordable, fast and reliable railway line that connects Icheon with the most important spots in the city. Taxi drivers will try to convince you otherwise but don't be fooled, there's no competition to that line.

I stayed near Hongik University station, which is serviced by A'REX. It's a great location, especially at night. Tristan, our famous GTK+/Glade (and now also EDS) hacker, decided to stay nearby so we could go out for drinks and cure my jetlag with great food and a hangover. The hangover didn't happen (too much food?) and neither did the jetlag. As I arrived a couple of days early, I had enough time to discover the city a bit and prepare for the conference (read: slides and stuff). My talk about Wayland input methods seemed to be well received. It lead to a couple of good discussions about text input in general.

The venue was difficult to find in this maze of office buildings. It was good to see old & new friends at the summit though I had hoped for a lot more attendees. Perhaps (local?) advertising the event at universites would have helped. At least in my perception, the target audience for F/OSS development have always been students with enough spare time on their hands to try out stupid things (such as writing free software). I have come to prefer 3-day conferences over 2-day conferences. Two days just doesn't allow for enough hallway discussions as your time to attend talks is very limited. Spreading talks out over three days gives me a better opportunity to balance between talks and hallway track. I wish for instance that FOSDEM wasn't crammed into two days. The other extreme are probably Akademy and GUADEC that go over a week if you count BoFs and workshops as part of the confernence. But I am pretty sure that two days are too short ;-)

Thanks to the GNOME Foundation for 1) accepting my membership \o/ 2) approving my travel sponsorship. This would not have happened without my talk being accepted, which as I understand from talking to others who submitted session proposals was a quite lucky circumstance on its own.

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The nomination period for said BoD elections will start on the June 1st 0:00UTC and will end on June 14th 23:59UTC, the contemplation period runs from June 15th 0:00UTC till June 21st 23:59UTC, and voting then runs from June 22nd 0:00UTC till June 28th 23:59UTC.

Appendix - Hildon Foundation Board Candidate Eligibility Rules

1. Nominations will be accepted 3 weeks before the election begins from any community member with a karma of 100 or above.

2. Nominees with a commercial interest in Maemo or Hildon Foundation, such as working for Nokia - or any other company involved with software development - must declare their interest when advertising their nomination. Failure to do so may result in the HFC, declaring their nomination invalid and so bar them from standing in the current election.

3. Elections last for 1 week.

4. Only community members who have had maemo.org accounts for over 3 months and have karma of 10 or above, may vote.

5. Each community member eligible to vote gets a single ballot.

6. The 7 nominees voted for most, as counted by a single transferrable vote system are elected. (For special cases see HiFo bylaws.)

7. There is no limit to the number of times a board member can stand for re-election.

Your Chairman Chemist

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The Tizen Store is pretty much everything you expect from a modern App Store, however it does have a couple of novel features. One of them is the ‘Discounted’ section. So if any app is on sale, it will automatically show up there. The performance seemed smooth, and the UI kind of reminds of the Nokia Store on the N9, and parts of Google Play.

Here is a detailed look at the Tizen App Store running on a a Tizen phone:

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The keynote did manage to answer a few of those questions, albeit in not complete detail. Tizen devices are coming this year, but Jong-Deok Choi, EVP, Samsung won’t be more specific. In terms of operator support, Roy Sugimura from NTT DOCOMO has stated that they will be carrying the first Tizen device in the second half of this year. Frederic Dufal, Devices Technical Director for Orange has also announced that they are committed to launching a Tizen project this year (end of summer, Europe only).

• The big change from Tizen 1.0 to the current 2.1 release is the ability to run native apps. Samsung has folded Bada into the platform, although this was not specifically mentioned in the keynote.

• The Tizen Store has been announced, and is open for app developers to submit their apps. Users cannot access it yet.

• Tizen 2 also has an inbuilt security layer, McAfee has contributed to this. 

• A Tizen App Challenge has been announced. Submissions will be accepted June 1 onwards, and a total of 4$ Million is up for grabs. 

• Also big news for gaming enthusiasts, some of the top gaming engines like Unity, Havok, Game Salad are coming to Tizen. 

• NTT DOCOMO will make a Tizen device available in the second half of the year.

• So will Orange. They like Tizen because of its open nature, and HTML5 focus. The launch will be a part of the ‘back to school’ campaign that will start at the end of summer. Europe only for now.

• We also got a look at the in vehicle application of Tizen, Jaguar | Land Rover wants to push the boundaries of what people expect from a in-car Linux based system. A competition to generate ideas, UI elements and functionality is also under way. 

• Finally, the next major release of Tizen will be the big 3.0. Expect this release in 2014 devices. The roadmap for the release isn’t complete yet, and the development will be done openly on Tizen.org. They encourage platform developers and other open source developers to contribute. 

•  There is a tremendous amount of push to bring big name developers to Tizen. Facebook, Angry Birds were named in the keynote. I saw demoes of Gameloft’s Asphalt 7 and Real Golf running on a Tizen reference device, along with games based on the Unity engine, games from Sega, and Opera Mini.

Similar Posts:

• Tizen Gets An Asia Summit: December 8-9, Beijing
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• The First Tizen Developer Conference Takes Place In San Francisco: May 7-9
• Tizen 2.1 (Nectarine) SDK & Source Code Released Ahead Of The Tizen Developer Conference

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