Es importante hacer aquello en lo que se cree

Este artículo va en castellano y si no te interesa la tecnología tal vez sí te interese.

He leído un artículo de Dan Gilmore (periodista sobre tecnología) titulado Why I’m saying godbay to Apple, Google and Microsoft y me ha hecho volver sobre mis pasos.

Cuando leí el artículo me impresionó por distintas razones, contacte con Dan Gilmore y me ofrecí a traducirlo. A veces las personas son famosas y educadas, me respondió con rapidez diciéndome que ya estaba traducido: ¿Por qué le digo adiós a Apple, Google y Microsoft? (añado que no puedo competir con la bella maquetación de Medium).

El software libre tiene múltiples ventajas que no voy a comentar ahora (es gratis -aunque no siempre-, estable, supervisado por grandes grupos de desarrolladores, ofrece la libertad de manipular el código) en general es muy eficiente y seguro.

Además de las razones anteriores el software libre está comprometido con una serie de valores y ahí ya no hablamos de cuestiones tecnológicas sino de principios. Por ejemplo, el software libre está defiende entre otras cosas, la libertad de elección del usuario sin cautividades, el trabajo en común y por lo común, defiende la privacidad de los usuarios frente a abusos… en fin.

Gilmore reproduce una frase Cory Doctorow que viene a decir que es importante hacer aquello en lo que se cree.

Además, el software libre, simplemente funciona, y funciona bien.

¿Por qué digo volver sobre mis pasos? Adiós iPhone, en breve un S.O. libre en el teléfono. El ordenado principal de uso personal es una Lenovo T400 que a pesar de su edad funciona perfectamente con Fedora.

Published:
29/04/2015 – 11:26 pm
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By pbenavent
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Microsoft will buy Dropbox

My colleagues knows I’m saying that Microsoft will buy Dropbox, sooner or later. Why?

Well, first of all, let’s remember that Dropbox relays on Amazon EC2 instances (even if it’s only just temporarily) therefore they TCO may be easily modified by Amazon. There’re explanations about why has sense for Dropbox to use Amazon to store Data.

Dropbox has been improving their integration with Microsoft Office 365 and finally a partnership between Microsoft and Dropbox has been announced.

Microsoft is no longer that 80’s company that we knew and its support to services, hardware and -that’s the point- to cloud strategy has revamped and has changed from SkyDrive to OneDrive, Office 365 online or Azure. On the other hand, the core business for Dropbox is no longer storage but integration and services (IMHO). Cheap or affordable storage is at your hand via Google Drive or OneDrive for personal uses, or via the same providers and a few more if you’re looking for professional use.

So that hypothesis has a lot of sense because means a win – win option. If Microsoft does not buy Dropbox a stronger alliance will happen, for sure.

Published:
23/04/2015 – 5:25 am
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Awsesome Contactless marketing… by Apple

I’ve been involved in a contactless payment project, in fact, maybe one of the biggest projects in Spain.

Among other powerful reasons (such a VISA and Mastercard support) one reason to choose NFC as a technology to implement contactless payment is because it’s an standard. I do love standards

Apple has shown its contactless solutions (it starts at 43:11) as a breakthrough. But, it has been so? Not really. In a few lines;

      Many of the benefits shown in Apple Pay presentation are related with an standard NFC – Contactless solution; short time in payment actions, secure, no need to type your pin credit card, tokenization of your ID (HCE does it), or the Secure element (OMG, it already existed; look here and here)
      Few of the benefits shown are Apple development, such as Touch ID, Passport integration, scan and store your credit card. Truth must honored and other companies have done similar added value solutions over its own contactless implementations

Conclusions?

  1. Apple seems to be the main innovator in contactless.
  2. The truth is that Apple has accepted a pre-existing standard instead of being a kind of being a lone ranger in this business. Maybe because of the VISA and Mastercard pressure, maybe because there were a piece of cake to be eaten by someone else, maybe because Apple plans to develop its own whole payment solutions wasn’t so different for end-user and it requires a lot of effort (security certifications with banks, VISA, Mastercard and so on).
  3. Apple was the last important player in adopt NFC for contactless payments, what by its importance may it’s the final push to this tecnology
  4. Apple knows very well how to play the game and its marketing it’s extremely effective
Published:
16/11/2014 – 5:00 pm
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Useful resources from ProjectManager

One insterest commercial web for Project Management is -obviously- Project Manager. Via this post about 15 resources to build your career [1] and after read it, I want to highlight just a few of the ones they offer for free

  • Free Project Management Templates[2]
  • Free Project Management Webinars [3]
  • Free Project Management Training Videos [4]

Hope you’ll find it useful too.

[1] Original link removed because the site ask for it, so copy & paste this link www.projectmanager.com/15-resources-to-build-your-career.php
[2] http://www.projectmanager.com/project-management-templates
[3] http://www.projectmanager.com/project-management-webinar
[4] http://www.projectmanager.com/project-management-training

Published:
29/11/2013 – 9:00 am
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Mobile phone operating system quotas in Q3 2013

An advantage of being late in writing is that you may think twice what you say… it didn’t guarantee your’re right, on the other hand.

You may say the quotas among mobile OS in 2013 Q3 there’s only to be told. It’s obvious that Android and iOS are the 75% of the market if we look the results over the year.

Operating
System

3Q13 Shipment Volumes

3Q13 Market Share

3Q12 Shipment Volumes

3Q12 Market Share

Year-Over-Year Change

Android

211.6

81.0%

139.9

74.9%

51.3%

iOS

33.8

12.9%

26.9

14.4%

25.6%

Windows Phone

9.5

3.6%

3.7

2.0%

156.0%

BlackBerry

4.5

1.7%

7.7

4.1%

-41.6%

Others

1.7

0.6%

8.4

4.5%

-80.1%

Total

261.1

100.0%

186.7

100.0%

39.9%

So, what’s worthy to think about? Just two facts; Blackberry keeps falling down and Windows has a significant growth. Is Windows the refuge for former Blacberry users?

I really don’t know if it’s so and maybe we’ve to wait a little bit until how Blackberry ends or change their business. There’s one strengh shared by Blackberry and Windows Phone; business features.

Blackberry started by offering an added value by Microsoft Exchange integration when no one did it better. Now, with a mature Windows OS for mobile Microsoft can overtake any competitor in this arena. iOS is yet quite consumer and fashioned oriented, not focused on companies needs. Android has yet a lack of integration in the companies software in terms. Time to MS to keep increasing, especially in business field?

Published:
24/11/2013 – 8:36 am
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What I make for a living?

Sometimes I’m asked about my job and what it consist in. Well, time ago I used to joke about and I used to repeat a line from a film; I solve problems.

Now, seriously; in my LinkedIn profile I describe myself as a IT Trusted Advisor. So, what does it means? I help my customers to find the best IT solution for a need or problem. Nowadays my customers are from inside the company but from time to time I’ve to face projects that impact directly on end customers.

That help means much more that you may imagine in a first sight. For instance;

  • define clearly what the customerneeds
  • concrete what problem we’re trying to solve
  • propose a solution, which may be something quite different from what customer was asking for
  • supervise that everything is done and it’s done on time
  • write manual, documentation, procedures, they all have to be clear and useful ones
  • evaluate when everything has ended if the target was achieved

Most amazing and challenging thing is to deal with people. It’s really difficult to express it. Sometimes is hard, but many times it’s a wide open window to learning, in many senses, not only in professional terms but also in personal terms

Published:
04/11/2013 – 8:00 am
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Fewer site style changes

Taking advantage from Halloween day I’ve updated some minor things I want to change in this site, as a friend taught me; details are important.

  • Front page; “Benavent” appears at the front page with the same colour and tipography as it appears in the blog; consistency matters
  • About page; More links related with social media site I use or where you may find me. Revised wording

I also want to thank you Marija Zaric for her beautiful HTML5 template “Think simple”, graciously donated. I love not only the clean and polish design but also the underlying idea; think simple.

Published:
03/11/2013 – 10:55 am
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How the future is going to be?

I work on choosing the best option for a customer need. I’ve to be a step ahead, what does it mean? Probably this is more related with an attitude than with a type of task. Look forward, imagine, and if something is not possible right now so let everything ready for upcoming things and …make it happen.

i stumbled upon this video, I watched time ago but now, although many things aren’t still around us I found it inspiring, that’s why I wanna share with all you. Future and tech for help us in some of our ordinary to-dos. I hope you enjoy it.

Published:
14/10/2013 – 8:00 am
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Blackberry sell to Fairfax

There has been a lot of buzz about Blackberry’s sell to Fairfax, its major stockholder.

Please, let me remind you a few previous material:

  • I said Firefox OS was a “maybe” although I’m convinced it’s late.
  • I also said that Ubuntu for phones was definitely late and it has a lack of company support that Firefox OS has achive from majors telco as Telefonica

Major players at corporate mobile devices IMHO are: Android, Apple, Windows. It’s crazy for me since iOS has not been design for corporate deployment, Android is still more oriented to end user than to companies. Both companies needs to advance in MDM features

There was a chance to Blackberry to rise from the ashes, unfortunatelly for a healthy competition I guess they’re out of the game. Who’s left? Find your answer and don’t forget they all are moving, and moving really fast.

What is going to happen with Blackberry? I have no data at all and this is one of my foresight based on my previous knowledge and experience: Blackberry is going to follow the same path that Palm. Good product, lack of direction.

I guess Fairfax just want to monetize its investments and try to manage patents and know-how from a former leader. Probably patents and code from Blackberry ends up inside some other company. That’s my bet.

Published:
09/10/2013 – 10:00 am
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Who is the most important company on Big Data?

Who is the most important company on Big Data? Google, no doubt. Here I may finish the post… no way.

Big Data is becoming “a must” in many environment. Companies but also governments that wants to develop a consistent Open Government strategy needs to meet with Big Data. You may find different approaches to it, maybe the most popular is Hadoop.

In the beginning was MapReduce, a programming model developed at Google, from MapReduce was derived Hadoop.

As you’re noticing I’m not going into IT details. This shorts notes are just here to introduce you the main thing, the article Why Google is the big data company that matters most and then man behind the scene; Jeff Dean. We do need good engineers, software architecs, programmers… here’s why.

The consistent data treatment done from this algorithms let us manage huge amounts of data. Only from this improvements plus a strong civilian compromise Open Government is becoming possible.

Published:
24/06/2013 – 9:10 am
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