ropox.net

Northwest Communications has launched winshop.gr as part of their services. Winshop was created with the latest eshop abilities to view products from the tech industry.

This is not my latest project, since winshop.gr is up and running successfully since May 2009. I have to start posting more frequently.!
This is a custom e-commerce solution, made exclusively for NorthWest Communications.

www.winshop.gr

Design: Iordanis Aslanoglou
Production: Aslanoglou -Baldpixel
Client: Northwest Communications
Published: 20/5/2009
Developers Jargon: It has a backoffice that supports multiple users, supports multiple product characteristics , advanced taxonomy and custom views. There has been a lot of searching for the optimal way to support multiple tags for product characteristics, due the complexity of the task. InnoDB tables were used and were monitored after launch in order to check how optimal is the implementation. Jquery was used for the UI of the customer for some tasks like Updating profile, completing an order and so on.
The performance turned out to be good since along with all the queries, dynamically generated XMLs were created to publish products on other sites. Lesson to be learned from this development: I’m happy that I did not use Drupal or some other E-commerce platform , where most  of the backend tasks could not be supported easily.

www.winshop.gr

www.winshop.gr

photo from theflashblog.com

Πριν κανα δύο μέρες ο Steve Jobs (τον οποίο σέβομαι πάρα πολύ για την πορεία του), ανακοίνωσε το launch του νέου προϊόντος της Apple το iPad . Όπως συνήθως, αυτό που έχει καταφέρει η Apple με την μυστικοπάθεια που την περιτριγυρίζει σχετικά με τα νέα προϊόντα, δημιούργησε ένα πολύ μεγάλο buzz για αυτό που έρχεται και είμαι σίγουρος οτι αυτό είναι βασισμένο σε όλους τους φανατικούς της apple που βλέπουν την εν λόγω εταιρία σαν ευαγγελίστρια. Το πάθος τους όμως κατά την ταπεινή μου γνώμη τους κάνει να αποτυγχάνουν να δουν πράγματα που αν τα έκανα άλλες εταιρείες, μόνο διαβολικές δεν θα τις ονόμαζαν.
Διάβασα λίγο για το νέο προϊόν που στην ουσία καλύπτει το κενό μεταξύ PDA τύπου iPhone και φορητού υπολογιστή. Είδα όμως οτι κακώς γίνεται αυτός ο χαμός αφού στην ουσία δεν πρόκειται για κάποιο μεγάλο επίτευγμα τεχνολογίας, εκτός από το γεγονός ότι είναι πολύ λεπτό και designato.

Καταρχήν δεν είναι multitasking . Δηλαδή θα σερφάρεις αλλά δεν θα μπορείς να ακούς μουσική, ή θα γράφεις αλλά δεν θα μπορείς να σερφάρεις. Ακριβώς πως αυτό είναι προτέρημα για αυτό το συγκεκριμένο εργαλείο ?? (να βάλω υποσημείωση εδώ οτι το iPad θέλει να συναγωνιστεί τα netbooks και χωρίς το παραπάνω δεν ξέρω πως ακριβώς θα το κάνει)

Δεν έχει κάμερα. Εχει όμως μικρόφωνο. Δηλαδή εν έτος 2010 που οι κάμερες έχουν γίνει τόσο μικρές και φθηνές το μηχανάκι των $500 δεν θα μπορείς να κάνεις όσα προσφέρουν τα κατά πολύ ποιο φθηνά netbooks.

Δεν έχει embedded USB!!!!! αν το θέλεις θα πρέπει να πάρεις τον adaptor (που βέβαια στο δίνει η Apple) για να συνδέσεις τη συσκευή σου. Και Ω ναι είναι τεράστιος!!! so much for the design…

Το keyboard που υποτίθεται οτι είναι νέο και ανανεωμένο αλλά guess what.. σε βολεύει να γράψεις  μόνο αν κάθεσαι στο πάτωμα και έχεις τα χέρια κολλημένα πάνω στην οθόνη σου.

Το καλύτερο και τελευταίο… ΔΕΝ ΥΠΟΣΤΗΡΙΖΕΙ FLASH!!!!. θα σερφάρεις στο internet αλλά OH NO θα βλέπεις μικρά μπλε lego αντί για αυτό που θα έπρεπε να βλέπεις. Amazing browsing experience.
Για μένα τα παραπάνω αποτελούν ένα πράγμα μόνο. Είναι μεν ένα ωραίο παιχνίδι αλλά το μόνο που μπορώ να το συγκρίνω είναι το reader της Amazon (Kindle) και δεν θέλω καν να αρχίσω να κράζω για αυτό

my two cents….

Update1: διόρθωσα την προτασή μου για το USB που μάλλον δεν διατυπώθηκε σωστά στην αρχή
Update 2: μου έστειλαν και αυτό προς ενίσχυση της μη υποστήριξης του Flash… το θέμα είναι τι πασάρουν και τι στα αλήθεια μπορεί να κάνει σήμερα (όχι τι θα κανει αργότερα)

Update3 : Δεν ανέφερα καθόλου το γεγονός οτι δεν μπορείς να εγκαταστήσεις ΤΙΠΟΤΑ αν δεν υπάρχει στο AppStore. Ι mean cm’on are you serious ? όσο και καλό να είναι το app store γιατί με βάζεις στο tripaki οτι μόνο απο σένα θα αγοράζω???
Update4:  Το γεγονός οτι δεν μπορείς να αλλάξεις μπαταρία να σου τελειώσει και να βάλεις μια νέα , παρά θα πρέπε να το φορτίσεις? εννοω οτι για τη χρήση που προορίζεται και το market που απευθύνεται κάτι τέτοιο δεν θα ήταν απλό για τον χρήστη ?

Update5: όσο περισσότερο διαβάζω για αυτό τόσο περισσότερο βλέπω οτι είναι μια μεγάλη πατάτα αλλα interesting να δεις τι κάνει το marketing στα masses.

As the Web becomes more social, privacy becomes harder and harder to come by. People are over-sharing on Facebook and Twitter, broadcasting their whereabouts every ten steps on Foursquare and Gowalla, and uploading photos and videos of their most private moments to the Web for all to see. It’s easy to say that privacy is dead, we all live in public now, and just deal with it.

But things are a bit more complicated. It used to be that we lived in private and chose to make parts of our lives public. Now that is being turned on its head. We live in public, like the movie says (except via micro-signals not 24-7 video self-surveillance), and choose what parts of our lives to keep private. Public is the new default.

Stowe Boyd, along with others before him, calls this new state of exposure “publicy” (as opposed to privacy or secrecy). He writes:

The idea of publicy is no more than this: rather than concealing things, and limiting access to those explicitly invited, tools based on publicy default to things being open and with open access.

I don’t particularly care for the neologism, but the idea behind it is spot on. This change represents a major shift in the social fabric, and it is only now just getting started. If you thought there was a lot of hair-pulling over privacy in 2009, just wait until 2010. Facebook’s new privacy policies which favor more public sharing, will be a big driver of this shift, as will the continued adoption of Twitter, which by its very design makes personal utterances public. Then there are startups like Blippy that go even further by turning every single purchase into a public statement.

It takes some getting used to the idea of living in public. As I discussed several hours ago with Andrew Keen, in public on Twitter, instead of making the private public, we will make the public private.” When public is the default, you deliberately select what to keep private instead of the other way around.

It’s not that privacy disappears. But it becomes more a matter of emphasis and a conscious decision. Boyd points out:

Some people are the web equivalent of nudists: they live very open lives on the web, revealing the intimate details of their relationships, what they think of friends and co-workers, their interactions with family and authorities. But . . . even these apparently wide open web denizens may keep some things private, or secret.

Privacy and secrecy are two different things. Secrets can be shared, and thus become “social objects that link those sharing the secrets together, and excluding others,” writes Boyd. Making it easy for people to move from the public to the private, and in between, will become increasingly important for Web companies.

Getting back to the original question, privacy will still live on, but will be so transformed as to become almost unrecognizable. No doubt, many people will mistake it for dead and keep pulling out their hair.  The rest of us will go on with our public lives.

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below is the list of 10 technologies that I agree with Erick from TechCrunch that will leave an impact ..
I also included a interesting video for the last 100 years that will give you an idea of what is accomplished so far.

Read on:

Now that the aughts are behind us, we can start the new decade with a bang. So many new technologies are ready to make a big impact this year. Some of them will be brand new, but many have been gestating and are now ready to hatch. If there is any theme here it is the mobile Web. As I think through the top ten technologies that will rock 2010, more than half of them are mobile. But those technologies are tied to advances in the overall Web as well.

Below is my list of the ten technologies that will leave the biggest marks on 2010:

1. The Tablet: It’s the most anticipated product of the year.  The mythical tablet computer (which everyone seems to be working on).  There are beautiful Android tablets, concept tablets, and, of course, the one tablet which could define the category, the Apple Tablet.  Or iSlate or whatever it’s called.  If Steve Jobs is not working on a tablet, he’d better come up with one because  anything else will be a huge disappointment.Why do we need yet another computer in between a laptop and an iPhone?  We won’t really know until we have it.  But the answer lies in the fact that increasingly the Web is all you need.  As all of our apps and data and social lives move to the Web, the Tablet is the incarnation of the Web in device form, stripped down to its essentials.  It will also be a superior e-reader for digital books, newspapers, and magazines, and a portable Web TV.
2. Geo: The combination of GPS chips in mobile phones, social networks, and increasingly innovative mobile apps means that geolocation is increasingly becoming a necessary feature for any killer app.  I’m not just talking about social broadcasting apps like Foursquare and Gowalla.  The advent of Geo APIs from Twitter , SimpleGeo, and hopefully Facebook will change the game by adding rich layers of geo-related data to all sorts of apps.  Twitter just recently launched its own Geo API for Twitter apps and acquired Mixer Labs, which created the GeoAPI.
3. Realtime Search: After licensing realtime data streams from Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and others, Google and Bing are quickly ramping up their realtime search.  But realtime search is still treated as a silo, and is not regularly surfaced in the main search results page.  In 2010, I expect that to change as the search engines learn for what types of searches it makes sense to show Tweets and other realtime updates.  In the meantime, a gaggle of realtime search startups such as Collecta, OneRiot, and Topsy will continue to push the ball forward on the realtime search experience.  Realtime search will also become a form of navigation, especially on Twitter and Facebook.  The key will be to combine realtime search with realtime filters so that people are delivered not only the most recent information but the most relevant and authoritative as well.
4. Chrome OS: In November, Google gave the world a sneak peek at its Chrome operating system, which is expected to be released later this year.  The Chrome OS is Google’s most direct attack on Windows with an OS built from the ground up to run Web apps fast and furious.  Already a Google is rumored to be working on a Chrome Netbook which will show the world what is possible with it a “Web OS.” It sounds like it would be perfect for Tablet computers also (see above).  Chrome is a risky bet for Google, but it is also potentially disruptive.
5. HTML5: The Web is built on HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and the next version which has been taking form for a while is HTML5.  Already browsers such as Firefox and Google’s Chrome (the browser, not the OS) are HTML5-friendly.  Once HTML5 becomes more widespread across the Web, it will reduce the need for Flash or Silverlight plug-ins to view videos, animations, or other rich applications.  They will all just be Web-native.  HTML5 also supports offline data storage, drag-and-drop, and other features which can make Web apps act more like desktop apps.  A lot of Websites will be putting HTML5 under the hood in 2010.
6. Mobile Video: With video cameras integrated into the latest iPhone 3GS and other Web phones, live video streaming apps are becoming more commonplace—both streaming from phones and to them.  As mobile data networks beef up their 3G bandwidth and even start to tiptoe into true broadband with 4G (which Verizon is heading towards with its next-gen LTE network), mobile video usage will take off.
7. Augmented Reality: One of the coolest ways to use the camera lens on a mobile phone is with the increasing array of augmented reality apps.  They add a layer of data to reality by placing everything from photos to Tweets to business listings directly on top of the live live image captured by the camera.  Tonchidot’s Sekai Camera, Layar, GraffitiGeo and even Yelp are examples of augmented reality apps.
8. Mobile Transactions: As mobile phones become full-fledged computers, they can be used for mobile commerce also.  One area poised to take off in 2010 are mobile payments and transactions.  Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s latest startup Square turns the iPhone into a credit card reader.  Verifone has its competing product, as does Mophie.  The idea is that any mobile phone can become a point of sale, and those mobile transactions can tie into back-end accounting, CRM, and other enterprise systems.
9. Android: Last year saw the launch of nearly two dozen Android-powered phones, including the Verizon Droid.  In a few days, Google’s Nexus One will launch as the first Android phone which can be unlocked from any given carrier (it is launching with T-Mobile). Android is Google’s answer to the iPhone, and as it reaches critical mass across multiple carriers and handsets it is becoming increasingly attractive to developers.  There are already more than 10,000 apps on Android, next year there will be even more.  And other devices running on the mobile OS are launching as well.
10. Social CRM: We’ve seen the rise of Twitter and Facebook as social communication tools.  This year, those modes of realtime communication will find their way deeper into the enterprise.  Salesforce.com is set to launch Chatter, it’s realtime stream of enterprise data which interfaces with Twitter and Facebook and turn them into business tools. Startups like Yammer and Bantam Live are also making business more social.

Chrome OS

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