The 'colorful' Gary Vaynerchuk

Hello again from Cyberspace!

I watched Gary Vaynerchuk In a Seminal Performance at the 2011 Inc 500 Conference, as listed on Rizzo Tees blog. If you choose to watch for yourself, watch with caution as there is some coarse language used. This is not for the f-bomb squeamish. Or you can read this swear-word free synopsis!

Gary is a very energetic character, and is completely sold on the affect that social media is having on the business world. After a little history of Mr. Vaynerchuk's business history, he speaks to his vision of the future of marketing. There were a few interesting crowd polls that he used, for example, most of the people in the crowd use Digital Video Recorders to record all their TV and skip every commercial, or how, if 1 in 4 people are texting while driving, how can they see the road, much less the billboards they are passing? I was did several of the things he suggested (but no texting and driving!).

The point he is making is that we will be consuming our advertisement through word of mouth thanks to social media. Most people will buy things their friends recommend over any other form of marketing. The future of marketing is in the context where the ad is consumed more than the content. It is especially difficult today to capture peoples attention and break through the 'noise', so companies must move with social media to capture customers.

There was a lot of interesting factoids, perspectives, and plenty of foul language. It is obvious that Mr. Vaynerchuk is passionate about business. I enjoyed the video, but I have my suspicions that this will help many companies change their marketing strategy. What Mr. Vaynerchuk described was more of an attitude than actionable items. I had a hard time seeing any actionable items in his speech, but it was very entertaining none the less.

Are Your Web Services well RESTed?

Hello again from Cyberspace!

This post is going to answer several questions regarding web services as posted by my professor, Dr. Craig Piercy.

What is a Web Service according to the W3C?

A Web Service, as defined by the W3C, is any system of software designed to facilitate machine-to-machine interaction via a network with an interface is in a machine-readable format.

What is a "Big Web" service? Describe in detail including important components/protocols and examples of use.

A "Big Web" service is one that requires XML and Web Services Description Language (WSDL). The XML, in SOAP format, is then read automatically by other machines. These instructions dictate how the machines will communicate, as well as other nonfunctional issues like transactions, security, addressing, trust, and coordination. Amazon uses Big Web Services in some of their Could services.

 

What is a "RESTful" service? Describe in detail including important components/protocols and examples of use.

REST stands for Representational State Transfer, and is becoming popular as an alternative to other methods of web based services due to its simplicity of design, according to IBM Technical Topics. The popularity is due to the lack of complexity from the Big Web Services, and are useful for ad hoc integration scenarios. Some specific attributes of RESTful web services are

Using HTTP methods explicitly

REST methods utilize HTTP methods according to the proper format and with a high level of detail. While there may be easier methods of using the HTTP methods, REST requires that they be used completely and properly.

Is Stateless

A RESTful service includes all necessary data in the HTTP request, which means that there is no additional translation required.

A real-world example of a RESTful Web Service is Sun Microsystem's Cloud,

Big Web vs. RESTful. Compare and contrast advantages/disadvantages of the competing protocols. When is one better to use than the other?

This is a much more subjective issue. Big Web services require more setup and the systems must be compatible, but offer a highly defined structure for system-to-system communication. RESTful services, on the other hand, excel at smaller or ad hoc interactions, as mentioned. The current opinion across the web seems to be more in favor of RESTful services due to their scalability and statelessness, but I'm sure that there will always be a place for the larger, structured Web Services.

Lecture from Guest Speaker Chuck Hudson

Hello again from Cyberspace!

This post will cover a lecture from guest speaker Chuck Hudson. Mr. Hudson is currently Director of Applications at Control4, a member at PayPal Developer Council, co-author of HTML5 Developer's Cookbook at Pearson Education, co-founder at Control UI, LLC, and part time instructor at the University of Georgia, according to his Linkedin page.

The topic of the lecture was Mobile Development, and had a thorough explanations of key topics for mobile app development including:

• Monetary Models
• Mobile Design
• Technical Challenges
• Developer Accounts/Resources
• Android Specific Challenges
• iOS Development
• Planning App Release
• Localization
• Beta Testing
• Apple Distribution
• Android Distribution
• Measuring your success
• Supporting your Apps

Mr. Hudson was very detailed in his explanations, and gave good advice, specifically about what an app should do and how to chart his flow. His recommendation is to make an app do 1 thing really well for the initial release, then add functionality in future releases. He also covered some localization topics, and pointed out a pitfall that I fall for - if you add the functionality in your first release, you have to support it for every subsequent release. I often find myself getting caught up in the 'cool' factor of a feature, then I have to provide support for that feature later when I don't have the time or resources.

In addition to the topics above, Mr. Hudson demonstrated some 'under-the-hood' code for both Android and iPhone apps via desktop sharing. We saw the code behind the apps, the setup of the files, screenshots, and the publishing screens to a limited extent.

Overall, I was very impressed with the scope of the topics, and the knowledge of Mr. Hudson was evident throughout the lesson.