Using Your Smartphone While In-Flight is a Privilege, Not a Right

Jad Mouawad and Nick Bilton, writing for The New York Times:

For many passengers, the ban has been a source of frustration. John Shahidi, a technology entrepreneur, ignored the order to turn off his cellphone late last year, but this time a flight attendant caught him sneaking a look at his iPhone, he said — and instead of a gentle scolding, she opted for a public shaming. She stood there, he said, staring at him, and announced that the plane would not take off until he had powered down the phone.

On the one hand, it is good that the FAA is going to review its rules for passengers' use of T-PEDs (Transmitting Portable Electronic Devices) during all flight phases. Having a policy that is based on research and empirical evidence is a good thing. On the other hand, the amount of vitriol being spewed by passengers is absurd.

The fact of the matter is that there is a non-zero risk to airplane systems due to passengers' devices. Honeywell, for example, is embroiled in discussions with the FAA regarding its cockpit panels' susceptibility to interference from Wi-Fi signals. The most critical and dangerous flight phases are when the airplane is taking off or landing. As you might imagine, instrument disruption during those phases is more dangerous than when the plane is at cruising altitude. With that said, 'non-zero risk' is not the same as 'imminent danger' and this policy review is a positive step for the FAA (which is entrusted with making the skies safe).

However, the fact that the FAA's existing policy may become obsolete does not warrant the childish responses exhibited by passengers such as Mr. Shahidi.  In-flight entertainment is not a human right. It is a privilege.

I am not suggesting that the FAA's existing policy is above reproach. Rather, I am suggesting that disagreement with the policy should be based on rational thought and discourse instead of being based on an emotional response to a minor inconvenience.

Folks, I am hopeful that the FAA will relax its restrictions on using electronic devices. However, until the proper authorities have weighed the risks and presented their evidence, I will follow the rules and turn my devices off when requested (and so should you).

The True Cost of Losing Employees

There are always costs associated with employees leaving a company. Every company, assuming it is around for long enough, inevitably has to deal with this issue. Final payouts, recruiter fees, and a loss of domain knowledge are the most obvious costs associated with losing employees. However, there are hidden costs involved related to time, morale, and opportunity.

Time is an underrated cost when losing an employee. It takes time to find, interview, and train a replacement. That is time which would have otherwise been spent on implementing a killer new feature, paying down technical debt, or designing the next iteration of the product. Instead, the team has to spend time learning how to integrate a new individual and find a new tempo of operations.

Team morale is one of the trickier things to gauge. It can't be quantified, yet a good leader knows when there is something  lacking in the team. Any time a company loses an employee, there is an impact on the remaining team members. Depending on how the team felt about the particular employee that is leaving, this impact can be relatively minor or it can be catastrophic. In the worst possible case, the departure of a key employee could result in an avalanche of departures. At the very least, the remaining team members may have a lack of focus for a while as they adjust to the shock.

Opportunity is, in a way, the culmination of the previously mentioned costs as well as perhaps the most deadly. Companies must continue to produce time and time again if they want to survive in an increasingly competitive world. When an employee leaves, there is a danger that the company will miss out on opportunities that it might have otherwise had. Whether that is because 'knowledge walked out the door' or the team is distracted/unfocused, the end result is the same: missed opportunities to become more competitive or increase business.

Folks, the best way to avoid losing employees is to keep them happy. You can do this by making sure that you treat your employees well, give them challenging and satisfying work, and ensuring that compensation is never a problem. An excellent team is, of course, an essential part of a successful business. Lose your team, lose your business.

When Laptops Kill Productivity

If you've ever been to a meeting in your career, then you know that meetings can be great occasions to get a team coordinated, share knowledge, or they can be colossal wastes of time. In particular, I want to focus on a single particular productivity-sapping scourge: laptops .

Please, don't misunderstand. I'm not talking about laptops in the context of sharing information (e.g. as a presenter) or laptops as data retrieval tools to enhance a discussion. Those are ways in which laptops can be used to enhance meeting productivity. 

Instead, I'm talking about laptops when they are used in the interests of 'multi-tasking' during a meeting. Please stop doing this. It is rare that a person can truly be effective as a meeting participant when they are trying to also focus on a separate task. Sure, you might think that you are the rare unicorn that can contribute meaningfully to a discussion while hammering out code that would make Donald Knuth weep with joy. You are incredibly unlikely to be such a rarity. 

Much more likely is that you will at best waste your own time in the meeting and at worst you will waste everyone else's time in the meeting. I have been in meetings where the purpose of the meeting was to review and approve API changes that would impact the workload for two teams, yet it became clear that the meeting was a waste of time due to key members being distracted by their laptops and missing important information. I have also been in meetings where a key member was--unintentionally--drastically slowing down the meeting's progression due to not hearing information when it was presented and requiring that information to be repeated before the meeting could continue.

Folks, meetings should be thought of as an investment with an expected return on that investment. As such, it is important to treat that investment with care. Close the laptop lid, focus on the topic at hand, and your meetings will be far more effective.

The Nexus 7 Has Problems Displaying Videos from Vimeo

My friend Jigar, Android developer extraordinaire, has recently been showing me various features of the Google Nexus 7 (2013 version). This time, however, he showed me something...odd  to say the least. His Nexus 7, it seemed, was having trouble displaying videos from the web.

More specifically, the Nexus 7 was having trouble displaying TED Talks and videos on The Verge. As shown in the embedded video, the Nexus 7 displayed a blank green screen instead of the actual content when the device was in landscape mode. Videos displayed just fine in portrait mode. One extra quirk was that the video would briefly return to normal in landscape mode when the device was about to transition to portrait mode.

After some additional testing, we determined that it wasn't all web videos that were problematic (Youtube, for example, worked fine) but just videos hosted by Vimeo. This Nexus 7 runs Android 4.3, so we asked another friend to try the same videos on his Google Nexus 4 that also runs Android 4.3. The videos worked perfectly on the Nexus 4, regardless of the source or the orientation of the device. The Nexus 7, it seems, has some sort of problem that isn't specific to Android 4.3.

Folks, this is a strange bug. I'm surprised that I haven't heard of this one before.

Thanks to my friend Jigar for bringing this to my attention. You can find his posts on Twitter as @jigarhb.

One Developer is Putting a Bunch of Garbage in BlackBerry's App Store

Ronen Halevy, over at BerryReview:

As of this article BlackBerry World is reporting that S4BB has over 47,000+ Apps in BlackBerry World. The first 20-30 actually seem like good to decent quality legitimate apps and then it rapidly goes downhill.

Nothing quite like a bunch of spammy apps to ruin your app store's credibility as a place that interests users and developers alike.  Considering that BlackBerry World doesn't have very many apps, relatively speaking, this is a bad sign for the platform's long term viability.

It feels like the BlackBerry 10 event was AGES ago.

In-App Purchases are a Hot Topic

John Moltz had an interesting take on the topic of in-app purchases, summed up nicely by these quotes: 

Well, sure. Ask a heroin addict and they’ll probably tell you the same. In-app purchases are just like the proverbial drug pusher, giving the first go round away for free in order to get you hooked with each subsequent high giving the promise of an even better one the next time.

 ...

What we should be asking is simply whether or not we’re spending what the app is worth. We’ve spent a lot of time decrying the race to the bottom in app pricing. Now we’re complaining because app developers have found a way to make more money.

I've previously written about in-app purchases and the culture of freemium and how both are hurting modern video game design (as well as apps in general). To be fair, I do think that there ways that in-app purchases can be designed in a way that isn't abusive towards users.

In his post, Moltz gives a fair assessment of in-app purchases. While they are often disdainful, in-app purchases are not inherently evil. He is correct when he makes the comparison to drugs and gambling. People with addictive personalities will be easy prey for exploitive tactics, while others will not be directly impacted much at all.

Folks, be mindful of the difference between good and bad in-app purchases (developers, this includes you too). 

Pay for Your Apps, Folks, or We All Suffer the Consequences

Gentlemen! , available on the iTunes App Store and Google Play, is the latest example of how tough the app development business can be. The app has received some very good reviews for its unique style and gameplay. According to Killian Bell at Cult of Android, the developers of Gentlemen! have noted that the game "has over 6,000 players on Android". Sounds great, right? 6,000 players is a nice number for the early days of an app. The problem is that of all those people that have played the game, only 50 people paid for it. 

Let that sink in for a while. Fewer than 1% of the people who downloaded and played the game were paying customers. To put it another way, over 99% of the game's players were freeloaders. 

As I've noted before, creating an app isn't necessarily the path to riches. However, this is ridiculous. The game is priced at roughly $3 in both stores, which isn't a large amount of money by any measure. There really isn't a good reason for this game to be pirated so much when the price is low and the quality is high. By not paying for the game, the message sent to the developers is that it either isn't worth their time to develop the game or that they must employ the sleazy techniques used in many freemium games.

Folks,  we all want to play good games. The best way to ensure that new good games are created is to pay for them.

DuckTales, Ooh-woo-ooh

Kyle Orland, one lucky duck at Ars Technica:

I wondered: did Capcom actually send a working NES cartridge to promote their game? There was only one way to find out. I stuck the cartridge in the top-loading system sitting to the side of my work desk. Holy crap, it works!

The folks at Capcom are issuing an HD remake of the old Nintendo game, DuckTales Remastered, and have sent some members of the press some very, very, very cool promotional items. This would make a great collectible for fans of the game.

For Developers, There is Buy-In and Then There is "Buy-In"

There is a strange phenomenon common to software development projects that shows its ugly head time and time again in a developer's career. It is a phenomenon that at worst will destroy a project (and sometimes a company) and at best will result in disgruntled developers. This phenomenon of which I speak is called "buy-in". 

To clarify, I'm not referring to the traditional sense of buy-in, where parties involved in a decision not only agree to that decision but provide their support for that decision. Instead, I'm referring to "buy-in" in cases where a single party (usually in management or some other decision-making body) makes a decision and then applies heavy pressure to attempt to get the affected parties to agree to and support that decision. Thus, "buy-in" can be considered a form of fake or faux buy-in.

This problem usually manifests itself in the form of scope creep, schedule changes, or unpopular architectural or business changes. If you've ever been asked to 'take on one more thing for this sprint' or been pressured into fitting your development estimates into a particular prescribed timeline, then there is a very good chance that you've experienced a form of "buy-in". It seems as though the primary reason behind management striving for this faux buy-in is either some lame attempt at 'rallying the troops for a common cause' or an attempt to make it more difficult to pin blame on a specific person (after all, 'the team bought into the decision'). 

In any case, this sort of thing is not healthy for a development team. True buy-in is healthy since the team is involved and committed to something that they believe can be successful. "Buy-in" is unhealthy since it is something that the team does not believe can be successful or can only be successful via death march conditions. An unmotivated and overworked team is not a recipe for success.

Folks, be cognizant of when you are being asked for your buy-in to a decision versus being asked for "buy-in". 

Apple is Wrong Even When It Does Something Positive

Diane Bullock wrote this dreck over at Minyanville:

Apple is providing this superior product and environmentally friendly service for the special price of $10 -- and all in the interest of the safety of its customers. How responsible. How beneficent. How -- wait, ten bucks? Is that actually a deal? How much does this thing normally cost? Try nearly double. In the interest of keeping its iPhone faithful free of electric shock, Apple is practically giving away this one-inch plastic cube at just half of what it normally charges ($19) -- and thus settling for a slightly less egregious markup.

The short story is that Apple is offering its own chargers, at a discounted price, as a replacement for potentially unsafe chargers made by other companies. This is in response to a woman in China who was electrocuted when she answered a phone call while her iPhone was charging using a knockoff charger. Bullock apparently takes issue with this move since her article seems to imply that Apple bears responsibility for this situation by maintaining a high price for its accessories. Mind you, Apple is under no obligation in these circumstances since it bears no responsibility in the case of knockoff chargers. This move by Apple is both a positive public relations move for the company and a positive move for consumers. 

Folks, if someone offers you a sirloin steak for a nickel, please turn down the offer.