funkatron.com

Folks who got the fancy lad Palm® Pre™ on opening day found the App Catalog chock full of superapps. One of them is Spaz, a ground-up rewrite of the award-winning desktop application I created for the Adobe AIR platform using pure HTML+JavaScript. Getting Spaz on webOS™ has been a big undertaking for me, and the process has certainly had it’s ups and downs. But I’m proud of the fact that we shipped a truly open source, transparent app on the first day of a new platform.

But much like Spaz on the desktop, this is not a revenue generator for the project. Everyone who works on the Spaz project is a volunteer, and we rely on motivated folks to help us make cool software. It doesn’t need to be a huge commitment — even just getting involved in the discussion and coming up with ideas is a big help. But here’s where we need help the most:

Coding

While I intend to be the lead on Spaz for webOS™ for a while, I really could use help — I’m working in my free time, and that’s pretty limited with a family and a day job. The full source code of Spaz for webOS™ is available on GitHub, and people who want to help make new features happen are encouraged to check it out.

Even if you’re not well-versed in webOS™ coding, if you have a good JavaScript background (or don’t and are just interested in developing one), we need help to build up SpazCore, our component library that drives Spaz for webOS™, and will drive all our projects in the future. Hacking on SpazCore requires no knowledge of webOS™.

Support

We have a brand new, very awesome support site at http://spaz.tenderapp.com/ which is sponsored by the awesome folks at ENTP. We need to direct people there, and we need to get involved in helping them there. We also should build up the FAQ/Knowledge base. In addition, identifying folks on Twitter who are trying Spaz or having issues and pointing them to the support site is very important.

Advocacy

Do you like Spaz? Why? First off, let us know — I’d like to build a repository of positive mentions like that. In addition, telling people about Spaz and encouraging them to check it out is great. Hwoever, this needs to be done in a nice, non-abusive, non-spammy way, and we always need to respect other applications and their developers. THIS IS NOT A COMPETITION — it’s making people aware of quality alternatives to closed, non-transparent software.

Design/UI

I’m an opinionated fellow and rather controlling of how the Spaz apps look, but I also know there are better designers and UX experts than me. If you’re interested in helping with design and UI work on Spaz — including additional themes — I’d love to hear your ideas.

What About the Desktop?

You are not forgotten. Spaz’s desktop client is long in the tooth, and we have Big Plans for a full rewrite based on SpazCore. That’s long-term though, and in the interim work is still being done on the current Spaz codebase, including adding multi-account support and improving filtering capabilities. We also intend to transition away from AIR to the Titanium platform.

So if you want to stop bitching in your Twitter account and actually make things better, here’s your change. Drop me a line at spaz@funkatron.com and we’ll sort out the best way for you to kick ass.

A few of you may know of a small app I did in AIR a while back called Searchatron. It’s mostly a proof of concept, but does have some usefulness in making it a bit easier to track multiple Twitter search queries. Searchatron uses an MVC-style pattern similar to how the next version of Spaz will be built, and much of Searchatron’s code provided the basis for the SpazCore component library.

As more of you may know, I’m very interested in the new Titanium platform. It’s similar to AIR, but fully open-source, and much more extensible. In order to learn more about Titanium, I tasked myself last week with converting Searchatron from AIR to Titanium. The whole process only took a couple hours. You can download the result from http://get.titaniumapp.com/app/12GKqr3.

What’s interesting is that Appcelerator, the creators of the Titanium platform, are running a contest right now. Two $500 prizes will be awarded for the most downloaded app, and the highest-rated app, respectively. If Searchatron wins either of these prizes, I’m pledging now to use the prize money to support further development of Spaz and the SpazCore project, in the form of cash gifts to our most giving volunteers. It might not be a lot, but it does mean real money is going to people working on open-source development. I hope to continue doing so when feasible and prudent.

If you’re interested in helping, this one is pretty easy: download Searchatron, and if you like it, suggest others do the same. Feel free to point them here if you like. By doing so, you’ll be doing a lot to encourage the continued development Spaz and its related projects.

• Download Searchatron
• Searchatron Source
• Titanium App contest

We don’t sign Spaz with a code signing certificate generated by one of the 4 (as of this writing) certificate authorities Adobe accepts. This means that when you install Spaz, you get a scary “Publisher:UNVERIFIED” warning. This is why we don’t sign, from a letter I wrote when asked about it in Spring 2008:

If I sign Spaz with a paid-for Thawte cert, I am on the hook every year for a Thawte cert. I can’t change my cert signer or go back to a self-signed cert without breaking auto updating (at least as I understand it), and I’m therefore locked into a $300 expense every year. That’s not terrible for a commercial app backed by a company, but that’s a pretty significant chunk of change for a free, open-source app developed by one person as a hobby to lay out.

I’m familiar with how certs work, and how Thawte handles certification as compared to other, less expensive cert vendors. Were I convinced that Thawte did some kind of verification process/background checking on the applicant I could see the value, but at least with SSL certs, they certainly didn’t do anything more than vendors who donate free certs to EDUs.

Currently, there are 3 other CAs in addition to Thawte, and the prices range between $180 and $300 per year. Some of these CAs do seem to do a little more background checking. Still, the same arguments apply, especially the one related to cost.

Spaz doesn’t generate revenue, and relies on donated time from myself and a handful of other generous folks. Committing to a yearly expense in the hundreds of dollars seems unwise.

If this is something you would like to see change, I’d encourage you to ask Adobe to make code signing a realistic option for Free, Open-Source Software like Spaz by providing certificates free-of-charge – after a reasonable review process – to projects like ours.

Do you work in social media? Do you develop social networking sites? Do you like it when people do not hack your Facebook account? If you answered “yes” to one of the above, then you simply must attend Security for the Social Set, a Core Conversation I’m leading at SXSW. It will take place on Sunday morning at 11:30 a.m.

I’m excited to be able to lead this conversation, especially because I think security – especially practical solutions – is woefully under-represented in social media discussion. It’s my hope that we can raise awareness of these issues, identify where the biggest problems lie, and start sorting out how to address them.

I am told the Core Conversations will suck less this year. Last year it was often hard to hear people in your group if there was a raucous group next to yours. This year each group should have their own room, which will be a lot better, I think.

Hope to see you there!

Alex “Bring The” Payne put an interesting post on his blog yesterday about improving the state of tech journalism. While I tend to feel that what he describes is not unique to IT, I don’t think that this means we should just say “oh well, it sucks.” Bad things will always be around, but I’d rather work towards making less of it, even if just in my own little circle of dorks.

While it’s a complex issue that likely needs to be addressed in several ways, one aspect that stuck in my head is incentive. Alex talks about this generally as one of a few possible solutions to this issue:

Incentivize technology reporting as a career — It’s hard to make a buck as a technology journalist, particularly one who reports on something more substantial than gadgets and empty enterprise software press releases. No wonder that TechCrunch has gone the route of sensationalism; it drives ad clicks and sparks debate, making a potentially dreary beat profitable and exciting. Tech journalism isn’t sexy, but it could be made so. That change starts with breaking the cycle of low-quality tech reporting, giving prospective technology journalists a set of role models they can aspire to.

I believe that at least in part, this comes down to (as so many things do) money: how much tech writers are paid. I also believe that we aren’t doing right by the folks who strive for excellence in tech journalism, making their jobs harder than they should be.

I frequently hear people talk about how teachers are underpaid; how those who have such an impact on our lives at an early age should be well-paid, because that will attract higher-quality candidates. I tend to agree with this idea, at very least in the sense that if you are paying more, you will tend to get better people.

I’ve done freelance writing off and on since I was a teenager, and I’ve been doing “development” in one way or another in computers for almost as long. One thing I can tell you with certainty is that it is far, far easier to make money doing IT stuff than writing about it. Tech writing simply doesn’t pay well in almost all cases. Every time I’ve written an article or worked on a book¹, the money was not the primary factor, because I was barely making minimum wage (or worse) if I actually did the math². Getting people who do know their stuff to write about IT is made significantly more challenging, because it means sacrificing productive, profitable opportunities. It can mean the difference between handling your mortgage payment with no problem, and asking your landlord for a couple extra days to get the rent money.

As consumers in the economy, we vote with our dollars. When we purchase a product, we enable the companies involved in creating that product to keep doing business as they see fit. We effectively endorse their actions (intentionally or not) in this way.

For “free” product like most web sites, though, we don’t vote with our dollars – we vote with our eyeballs. Ad revenue is determined by visits. Ad revenue is what keeps most journalistic³ sites in business. When we visit a site, we are enabling them to do business as they see fit. We are endorsing their actions.

Ad blocking software complicates the issue, especially on tech news sites, where the relatively savvy readership blocks ads at a much higher rate⁴. It’s sort of a passive-aggressive way of dealing with something we don’t like: still playing the game, but fudging the rules. Unfortunately, I suspect this only leads to two things:

1. more ads (and more intrusive/obnoxious ads) to make up for the loss
2. questionable and nefarious practices to make up for the loss

Obviously some folks are going to do lame stuff no matter what, and the use of ad blocking software won’t impact their behavior. But for people who want to do The Right Thing, this makes things harder. Harder for them to pay people to write. Harder for writers to support themselves and their families. Ad revenue is, in the vast majority of cases, the only viable revenue stream these sites have. By blocking ads, we use their service, but take away their ability to pay for it.

There are security concerns associated with some ads, of course, and sometimes we can’t anticipate what kinds of ads we might see on a new site. In these cases, I would suggest a couple potential approaches:

• use a technology blocker like Flashblock to allow you to selectively enable Flash applets only on trusted sites
• use an adblocker defensively at first, but enable ads on sites you trust

If you like the way a tech news site does business, vote with your eyeballs and turn off your ad blockers. If, however, you don’t like how they do business – or if they run obnoxious or potentially dangerous ads – follow the same principle and don’t visit the site. At all. That will be far more effective than simply blocking ads.

Update: a good piece from The Week titled “Is Writing for the Rich?”:

It’s not obvious how young writers without accommodating, well-to-do parents or a trust from gramps make it these days. Surely they can’t spend a year or two blogging without pay until an audience evolves to nurture them. They’ll starve. Meantime, freelance rates for non-fluff magazine writing have barely risen in the past 15 years. And the chances of getting a job at a quality newspaper or a serious magazine are fast approaching zero.