Developers, Not Venture Capitalists, Help Us See The Future Of Technology

You've seen it before. Someone raises a bazillion dollars and Twitter lights up with congratulations, as if the ability to raise money is synonymous with success. While it's true that sometimes venture money does signal something positive is happening at a company, the best indicator of long-term success is a large and growing ecosystem.

In other words, look to developers, the tech industry's "kingmakers," to borrow Redmonk's term.

Something Ventured, Little Gained

Why not venture capitalists? After all, they're the ones funding tomorrow's next big Microsoft or Google, right? 

Well, no. First of all, none of today's industry titans started with venture capital. From Facebook to Google to Microsoft to Oracle, each of the industry's leading technology vendors started with great technology that developers or users loved. 

Besides, it's not as if VCs have much of a track record (Webvan, anyone? Or Color?). While we tend to think of venture capital as a high-risk, high-return gamble on the future of technology, the reality is that venture firms have averaged a measly 7.4% return over the last 10 years, according to Cambridge Associates, which means that VCs delivered worse returns than every major U.S. stock index.

In other words, your money was worth more in an index tracking the S&P 500 this past decade than with a venture firm:

Credit: Cambridge Associates

Not every VC, of course. As Businessweek notes, some firms like Greylock have delivered outsized returns for their investors. Even so, as O'Reilly Alpha Tech Ventures co-founder and managing director Bryce Roberts thinks the industry must change to survive:

Not surprisingly, OATV's investment thesis is to follow the alpha geeks; to see the future by looking at what matters most to the über geeks of today. OATV helped to spark the trend toward smaller funds tailored toward early-stage deals, many of which try to predict where ecosystems will emerge.

The irony, however, is that smart money is rarely as good as smart developers at predicting the future. JBoss, SpringSource and other companies already had vibrant communities before VCs got involved to try to monetize them.

Slavishly Following VCs On Twitter

When not dispensing cash (which is most of the time), VCs are also prone to dispense wisdom via Twitter. There are a few, like GRP Partners' Mark Suster (@msuster) and Union Square Ventures' Fred Wilson (@fredwilson), who regularly teach me a great deal about the technology business. Others, like O'Reilly Alpha Tech Venture's Bryce Roberts (@bryce) and Greylock's John Lilly (@johnolilly), offer insight into life in general.

But then there are legendary investors like Kleiner Perkins' John Doerr whoseTwitter feed reads like an infomercial for his portfolio companies. Not very interesting or enlightening.

Like venture returns, I suspect the ROI on following the average VC is quite low. While the average Twitter user has just 208 followers, the average VC commands 3,500 followers, according to Zeno Group data. People likely follow the VCs hoping to get a nugget of insight or to make a connection that will generate a nugget of Series A financing.

In my experience, neither is likely. 

Average Joes, Average Josephines

Which is not to disparage VCs. Rather, it's simply to recognize that they, like everyone else, can be average without much to say. And they can be exceptionally brilliant, generous people, just like we find outside the VC world.

But the larger point is that developers, not VCs, are the best indicator of a technology's success. As Gustavo Niemeyer argues, "Network effects and dependency relationships [are] what make developers a better indicator [of success] than VCs," because a successful developer ecosystem reinforces and feeds itself. VCs can dump money into a company, but money ultimately is no guarantor of success.

In sum, VCs aren't members of the Justice League, donning capes and skintight suits (thankfully) as they battle poor returns and gift cash to a benighted underclass. Importantly, they're also not nearly as good as developers at defining the future of computing.

So if you want to see the future, look to what developers are doing today. Which open-source projects are they embracing? In which partner programs are they enrolling? These are the real indicators of long-term technology success. Not venture money.

http://readwrite.com/2013/08/07/venture-capitalists-developers-technology-returns#awesm=~oe0Bci8lIBO4q9

Summary; Developers, not venture capitalists, are the best indicators of long-term technology success. So why do we care what VCs do?

5 Business & Design Tools Every Tech Freelancer Should Learn

http://readwrite.com/2013/05/29/5-tools-every-tech-freelancer-should-learn

Guest author Danny Groner is manager of blogger partnerships and outreach forSkillfeed.

When you work as a freelance designer or coder, your success or failure is entirely reliant on you. Since there's no one else you can blame for missed deadlines or shoddy work, it's incumbent on you to keep your skills fresh, your attention fixed and your ideas polished.

The people who excel working for themselves are more than just good networkers - they make themselves marketable through the array of tasks they can tackle and complete. Quite simply, they offer more opportunity and flexibility than their peers.

It's always going to be easier and more efficient for a company to hire one contractor for a given project than two, or more. If you show that you have the skills to accomplish all aspects of the project yourself, you'll be more a more attractive option. For independent contractors, that versatility requires the ability to make ideas jump off the page. Selling an idea is sometimes not as simple as putting together a Powerpoint presentation, so it helps to know both basic and advanced tools of creating and presenting your work.

(See also 15 Programming Skills Most Coveted By Employers.)

Developing skills in these five tools - four from Adobe, one from Microsoft - will come in handy for almost any tech freelancer:

1. Adobe Dreamweaver

Lots of developers are taking over basic elements of design because technology has made everything so much simpler. Adobe Dreamweaver is the quintessential program that combines HTML and design, and it saves you time as it writes HTML code for you as you go. You can think about layout design as you write code for your site, and then check how those elements are developing on the back and front end.

2. Adobe Photoshop

Photoshop is the most commonly known image manipulation program around, and is used primarily for photographs, banner design and Web graphics. Since Photoshop is a pixel-based software, be careful to keep all images to a fixed size or risk stretching them out and distorting them. On the plus side, it's a relatively user-friendly applicaiton that's easy to pick up and even for basic color correction and retouching. While many people already have a basic understanding of Photoshop, taking the time to dive in a bit more will reveal an endless world of possibilities.

(See also Adobe Just Killed Your Ability To Pirate Photoshop.)

3. Illustrator

If you're working on vector-based projects, like logos, illustrations or typography, you should use Illustator to prevent blurriness. Quality is retained as you enlarge or shrink images. If you're in the market for a new business card, Illustrator is the way to go. Make sure, however, to first edit and crop your photos in Photoshop before moving them over to Illustrator. You can get more creative with projects in Illustrator, taking on brochures, stationary, and more.

4. Adobe InDesign

Once you've edited and prepared your images, sometimes you'll want to incorporate them into bigger features. That's where InDesign comes in. It's a layout program that lets you organize text alongside your images to make for more consistent displays. You can import graphics from both Photoshop and Illustrator to brighten up text-heavy PDFs, for example. It also supports multi-page assignments like annual reports that some clients may ask for.

5. Microsoft Excel

You may not be a math person, but Microsoft Excel can still serve you well. In addition to offering easy-to-manage spreadsheets that will help you keep track of expenses and progress, Excel gives you the chance to really investigate your opportunity costs and growth opportunities for your freelance business. Successful consultants and freelancers need to think analytically and know how to process data to tell a story. For Web developers looking to increase their organization's scalability, it's worth investing in basic Excel skills. There are plenty of other spreadsheets, including some good free ones in the cloud, but Excel remains the standard, and the one your clients are most likely to use.

iPhone & Android App Design: Developers Cheat Sheet [Infographic]

http://readwrite.com/2013/05/15/the-developers-cheat-sheet-for-iphone-android-app-design-infographic

Designing a mobile app can seem simple when you are sketching it out on the whiteboard. But when you actually sit down in your developer environment and get cracking, turning your ideas into reality is not always so easy.

That's only the beginning, of course. What if you need to design your app for both the iPhone and Android? You will very quickly learn that you cannot just cut and paste your design from one platform to the other. Android and iOS frameworks share some basic principles, but when it comes to design, they are as different as ebony and ivory. 

For instance, the notification bars in iOS and Android may look similar, but they perform different functions on each platform. And did you know that the action bar interface icon for iPhone is 20x20 pixels, while Android's is 24x24 density-independent pixels? Do you know the difference between a pixel and a density-independent pixel?

Here’s a quick reminder, from StackOverflow: Density-independent Pixels - an abstract unit based on the physical density of the screen. These units are relative to a 160dpi screen, so one dp is one pixel on a 160dpi screen. The ratio of dp-to-pixel changes with the screen density, but not necessarily in direct proportion. Note: The compiler accepts both "dip" and "dp," though "dp" is more consistent with "sp."

Sometimes you just need an easy chart to remember these kinds of things. Mobile cloud-service provider Kinvey created a quick infographic going over the basics of iOS and Android design for easy reference when you are pulling out your hair trying to port your iPhone icons over to an Android app (or vice versa). Check it out below.

Developer says Twitter should shut him down. He may be about to get his wish

http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/29/twitter-followgen/

Myles Recny looked in the face of Twitter yesterday and said, “You should shut my company down.” Now, the social network is in talks with Recny about the app he claimed was “better than Twitter Ads.”
“Twitter reached out to me, as has the ad team at one of the other big social networks, and we’re trying to work something out,” Recny said today, in an interview with VentureBeat.
His app, Followgen, uses Twitter’s application programming interface to automate “favoriting” people’s tweets. A company signs up with Followgen and decides on a target market. The app finds relevant Twitters users and favorites some of their tweets. If all works according to plan, the person will be pleased at having a tweet favorited and then, in turn, follow the company’s Twitter profile.
Recny considers this a form of advertising. Instead of serving impressions, he’s serving favorites that convert into follows. And that’s why he wrote that Twitter should shut him down: His app may violate Twitter’s terms of service.
However, he believes that if he had legitimate access to Twitter’s special advertising API, he could make money for both companies.
“It’s been kind of an emotional roller coaster. I’ve been having uncertainty whether what I was doing was white hat or black hat in regards to Twitter’s Terms of Service,” said Recny.
Twitter has a habit of shutting companies like his down, particularly when they encroach on its business model. Instead of waiting for the inevitable, Recny explained to me that he tried to contact Twitter first by applying for the special API two months ago. He then reached out through friends who knew Twitter big wigs. Both attempts failed.
Only after he wrote the blog post yesterday did the social network get in touch with Recny.
“We both know how the dev ecosystem feels about Twitter right now, and it’s not a positive sentiment, is it?” said Recny. “People feel that their API access can be turned off for any reason. People feel like there’s no trustworthy channel in which to get in contact with Twitter.”
He says Followgen customers can expect one of three outcomes:

1. Twitter will yank Followgen’s API access and he will have to shut down the company.
2. Twitter will yank Followgen’s “favoriting” business, but give Recny its Ads API access to build something that will be mutually beneficial.
3. Twitter and Followgen will figure out a revenue sharing partnership and keep both the favoriting product and a new Ads API-supported product on the market.

That last one, even Recny admits, is highly unlikely. But Recny is not without options. Twitter and the mysterious second social network could be interested in him as an employee on their ads teams.
We asked Recny if Facebook was the second social network to get in touch with him. He replied, “Would no comment be a comment?”
He leaves the experience having learned about the struggles of not only working with Twitter, but working with yourself. He says he would not recommend the solo-founder route, and would find a co-founder next time around. Or, at least, a co-working space with people he enjoys.

Adobe Closes BrowserLab, Blames Mobile Platform Rise

http://readwrite.com/2013/03/14/adobe-closes-browserlab-blames-mobile-platforms

When future historians look back and try to determine the exact moment when the personal computer and desktop form factor started to decline, there will be a lot of pointing at Jan. 27, 2010 - the day Steve Jobs announced the iPad. In truth, the downward spiral isn't marked by one event, but a lot of little incidents that mark the trail.

On March 13, Adobe unexpectedly added a chapter to the story of the fading of the PC, when it announced that it would be closing down its BrowserLab service effective… March 13.

The closure was as surprising as it was abrupt. BrowserLab enabled developers and web designers to test their work on different desktop browsers and operating systems, to help ensure cross-platform uniformity in look and operation.

In a statement to users on the BrowserLab blog, Bruce Bowman, Sr. Product Manager Edge Tools & Services and the Adobe BrowserLab Team, cited the popularity of mobile platforms as the big reason for BrowserLab's deactivation.

"When we originally launched BrowserLab as a free service back in 2009, our customers were struggling with testing their web content across desktop browsers and platforms. Since then with the growth of the importance of mobile devices and tablets, the landscape has changed dramatically. Because of this shift, we have seen the usage of BrowserLab drop over the past year while at the same time our engineering team has been focusing on solving this new challenge with new solutions.

"Due to this, we will be shutting down the Adobe BrowserLab Service effective immediately," Bowman added.

The resources BrowserLab must have taken up for Adobe must have been significant, for them to want to retask their team to focus on mobile development. Adobe has long been a strong presence in web design, desktop or otherwise, so it seems odd for them to abruptly drop even an ancillary service like this. While no one would argue that desktop is in decline, it's not completely going to go away.

An unspoken reason here may also be the way major browsers use rolling release schemes, where updates happen transparently and rapidly. Keeping up with those many different browser releases may have been too much of a challenge for Adobe, especially if is focused on delivering a similar service for mobile developers with its Edge Inspect product.

BrowserLabs users won't be left in too much of a lurch: Bowman specifically pointed out BrowserStack and Sauce Labs as two viable alternatives to BrowserLab.

In the grand scheme of desktop these days, I suspect the departure of BrowserLabs will create little more than a ripple within the development community. But it is one more signpost on the shift from desktop to mobile, and a potential harbinger to developers focused on the desktop that their tools and services may one day disappear.

HTML5: 10 Provocative Predictions For The Future

http://readwrite.com/2013/02/22/html5-10-provocative-predictions-for-the-future

Todd Anglin February 22nd, 2013

Guest author Todd Anglin is EVP Cross Platform Tools & Services at Telerik.

For HTML5 developers and decision makers, the most important technologies right now are HTML, JavaScript, CSS, mobile platforms and devices and evolving HTML platforms (browsers and operating systems). But what does that mean in the real world? It means these 10 things in 2013:  

1. Rise Of HTML5 Mobile Platforms

HTML5 has played an increasingly important role building cross-platform apps for mobile devices. So far that has primarily been done using native “wrappers,” such as Cordova, which allow HTML and JavaScript to power apps on other native platforms (such as iOS and Android). This technique is called “hybrid” app development.

This year, though, a wave of emerging platforms will support HTML5 apps as a first-class citizen - no wrapper required! The biggest players will be Chrome OS, which is about to get much more attention from Google; Firefox OS, already scheduled to start shipping on low-end ZTE and TCL devices in Europe; Tizen, a new HTML-focused platform backed by many industry heavyweights, including Intel and Samsung; Ubuntu Phone, which brings the most popular flavor of Linux to phones, again with a HTML-centered ap strategy; BlackBerry 10, which puts HTML and JavaScript at the center of its next-gen app strategy; and Windows 8, which introduced a new HTML and JavaScript development model for it’s “Windows 8 style” apps.   One (or more) of these platforms is bound to succeed in 2013. My money is on Chrome OS and Tizen. With the backing of Google, a revamped developer and consumer push, and the broadest platform strategy (spans mobile and desktop), Chrome OS is very well positioned.

Tizen, meanwhile, enjoys broad industry backing from Intel, Samsung, NEC, Panasonic, Sprint, Huawei and Vodafone (among many others), and engineering stewardship in The Linux Foundation. It shows the most potential to challenge Android as the “more open” (read: more customizable) open source device platform, which should appeal to device makers.  

2. Made For Chrome(kit)

A growing number of sites are once again buildiing Web apps tested to work in only one browser. Like the “Made for Internet Explorer” badges of the 1990s, developers are now proudly advertising “Made for Chrome” in their apps. Not using Chrome? No guarantees.   This trend is likely to accelerate in 2013.   With a rapidly evolving, highlycapable browser platform that is available on virtually every major operating system (Windows, Mac, Linux, Android and kinda iOS), and a Webkit foundation that helps deliver a little extra compatibility with other non-Chrome browsers (like Safari and BlackBerry browser), developers are likely to conclude that the “good outweighs the bad” when it comes to building exclusively for Chrome.   In exchange for potentially alienating some users, developers building for Chrome can more aggressively leverage HTML5 APIs and save valuable development and testing time.  

3. IE10 Euphoria - And Pain

Internet Explorer 10 is widely regarded as a huge step forward for the venerable Microsoft browser. With more support than ever for Web standards, IE10 goes a long way to put Microsoft’s browser in the modern HTML5 conversation.   But as fast-updating browsers like Chrome and Firefox race forward through 2013, IE will once again be left looking old and slow. There is a glimmer of hope that Microsoft will evolve IE more quickly: The Microsoft-owned HTML5 Labs, launched originally in the IE9 days, is continuing to publish new “experimental” improvements for IE10 that make it an even more capable HTML5 browser. Baby steps, but still a good sign.  

4. The Death Of IE6, IE7 & IE8

While IE10 will be in the spotlight, the long death march for Microsoft’s older IE versions will continue. Only the most stubborn corporate environments (and China) still require IE6 support, and much of the world skipped IE7 anyway. If you haven't already stopped supporting IE6 and IE7, 2013 is definitely your year.   Dropping IE8 is a bit more of a stretch, but the pressure is on. Not only does IE10’s release make IE8 two versions old (often used as a “clean” support cut-off justification), but jQuery 2.0 will join Google Apps in cutting-off IE8 in 2013. By the end of the year, most developers will conclude IE8 is not worth their time.  

5. The Death Of Android 2.x

Until recently, it looked like we had another IE6 on our hands with Android 2.x (Eclair, Froyo and Gingerbread). According to Google’s own stats, as recently as mid-2012, these versions of Android (mostly 2.3.x) represented more than 90% of all Android devices in use, despite the fact that Google was already shipping Android 4+! Google was failing to keep its Android user base (and ecosystem) upgrading.   Fortunately, the 2012 holiday season seems to have broken the logjam. Usage of Android 4+ (Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean) surged to nearly 40% at the end of 2012. By the end of 2013, Android 2.x will likely account for less than 15% of the market, and Android developers will be able to shift focus to versions 4+.  

6. Responsive Design Goes Mainstream

So far, responsive design has remained on the fringes of Web development - something nice to do “if you have time."   That's about to change. With the lines between PCs and mobile devices increasingly blurred, developers will have no choice but to develop websites and apps that can dynamically adapt to an unpredictable array of screen sizes and resolutions.

(See also The New ReadWrite: Looking Good On Every Screen [Video].)

To ease the way, look for new techniques and defacto standards to also emerge, offering guidance for properly dealing with different device capabilities and form factors.  

7. Mobile Development Overtakes Desktop

It doesn’t take an expensive analyst to see the growth in phones and tablets while traditional PCs fade. Right now is the moment when developers will begin spending more time developing software for mobile devices than for traditional desktop PCs, extending from the consumer market to businesses of all sizes, for both internal and external audiences. If you’re not developing for devices in 2013, you’re either A) maintaining legacy software, or B) missing the boat.  

8. HTML On The Desktop

Just because mobile is on the rise, don’t start writing an obituary for desktop development. The traditional desktop form factor will remain critical for many information workers. But as the PC becomes one among many screens, developers will look for ways to write code that can be shared across the PC and mobile devices.   HTML and JavaScript are perfectly positioned to offer this capability, and platforms like Chrome Packaged Apps and Windows Store Style (WinJS) apps will make this possible. With both Microsoft and Google pushing HTML for desktop app development, developers will take notice and start embracing cross-platform desktop development with HTML and JavaScript.  

9. SPA Time

With the shift of desktop development and increasingly complex mobile apps to HTML and JavaScript, developers will recognize the need for new techniques to build maintainable cross-platform apps. The “Single Page Application” (or SPA) has been on the rise thanks to powerful frameworks like Backbone, Knockout and even Kendo UI. If “RIA” (Rich Internet Applications) was the buzzword in 2010, “SPA” will be the buzzword in 2013.   If you’re looking for the one new technology or concept to learn as an HTML and JavaScript developer in 2013, it's SPA architecture.  

10. HTML Gets Naked (Again)

Now that the W3C has “finalized” HTML5, public conversation and media coverage is going focus on what’s next for the Web standards platform. The W3C is already working on HTML 5.1, the next “snapshot” of the “living standards” work done within WHATWG, the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group. But as we move past the “HTML5” bubble, we’ll once again settle-in to talking about HTML, sans version numbers. After all, who wants to talk or write about “HTML5.1” or “HTML5.3”?   Whatever it’s called, the next wave of HTML platform improvements will shift focus beyond the lower-level core at the center of HTML5 (DOM elements, CSS styles, Simple JavaScript APIs like Geolocation) and instead characterize improvements that are important to more robust application development (like ShadowDOM, Web Components, CSS layouts, speech recognition and more).

The HTML conversation (and technology) will continue to evolve, even if the version numbers don’t come along for the ride.