Digital Media, Internet and Tech stuff

O Guilherme Chapiewski escreveu um post esta semana bem polêmico e a discussão esta correndo solta no Blog. O ponto é, até onde vai o papel do ScrumMaster quando este pode ajudar o time resolvendo, quando possível, impedimentos técnicos ou discutindo uma dada solução técnica.

Nas últimas semanas, venho conversando muito com o Guilherme e com a Patricia Fontes (nossa Product Owner nos projetos de vídeos da Globo.com) sobre estas questões de relacionamento entre Time, ScrumMaster e PO, até onde vai o papel de cada um. Nas nossas conversas geralmente temos pontos de vistas diferentes e as vezes opostos, mas o resultado destas conversas tem sido muito enriquecedor, pelo menos para mim. No final de cada conversa sinto que estamos mais unidos e concientes de onde queremos chegar e sempre que discutimos tentamos manter como nossa referência o que é a melhor solução/decisão/atitude para os produtos que estamos construindo.

O Phillip Calçado também fez um post onde coloca o seu ponto de vista sobre ter um SM que também é um líder técnico. Neste post dele gosto muito da frase:

Quem assume que isso é uma verdade absoluta está buscando respostas fáceis ao invés de tentar resolver o problema. Isso não é diferente em nada do cidadão que usa todos os templates, artefatos e papéis do RUP no seu projeto, ou daquele que acredita que um selo como CMMI ou MPS.BR traz qualidade.

E replicando meu comentário no blog do Phillip, para mim não existem verdades absolutas, e sim evolução e aprendizado contínuo, aprendizado quer dizer que erramos e acertamos em ciclos infinitos, e se estivermos no caminho certo, mais acertamos do que erramos, e estes erros que cometemos não deveriam se repetir.

OK, acho que todos já devem saber que o Firefox continua crescendo e tirando fatia de mercado do IE de forma lenta mas consistente. Para nós que temos blogs ligados a tecnologia é normal verificar que a grande maioria da nossa audiência é composta por usuários do browser da Mozilla, no meu caso aproximadamente 50% dos visitantes são usuários do Firefox e 7% usuários de Safari, o restante fica com o IE.

De qq forma em sites não técnicos e focados na grande “massa” esta não é a realidade, mas no caso do Globo Vídeos venho observado um avanço razoável do Firefox sobre o IE, principalmente nos últimos seis meses. Atualmente estamos com a seguinte distribuição:

• 90.10% de usuários de IE
• 9.3% de Firefox
• Safari e Opera totalizam por volta de 0.5%

Isso não parece ser grande coisa, mas se olharmos o retrato da audiência em Agosto de 2007, tinhamos o Firefox com pouco mais de 5% e o IE com aprox. 94%, ou seja, o IE caiu 4 pontos percentuais e o Firefox cresceu exatos 4 pontos, mostrando nitidamente que houve uma migração dos usuários de um browser para o outro. E ainda não esta refletindo a nossa migração da plataforma de vídeo para Flash, que realizados em meados de dezembro de 2007, o que facilitou bastante a vida de quem utiliza outros browsers que não o IE.

Muito legal saber que mais e mais gente esta usando o browser da Mozilla, neste momento estou testando o beta 2 do Firefox 3, e ele promete ser ainda melhor que a versao 2.0, o novo formato de bookmarks (será chamado de Places e terá uma dinâmica bem diferente), a integração com o Mozilla Weave e o uso da nova versão do Gecko vão tornar o browser ainda mais fácil de usar e rápido na renderização de páginas, estou muito satisfeito com o beta 2, o único ponto negativo até agora é que todos os Extensions do Firefox 2.0 deixaram de ser compatíveis com o FF 3.0, é um saco ter de instalar tudo de novo. De qq forma os desenvolvedores de extensions geralmente se adaptam rapidamente as novas versões e em breve teremos as melhores extensions portadas.

Update 25/01/2008: Em pouco mais de 10 dias após este post, o Firefox mostrou mais uma vez estar forte no crescimento acrescentando mais de 1% de share, seguem novos números de acessos ao Globo Vídeos.

• 89.48% de usuários de IE
• 9.98% de Firefox
• Safari e Opera continuam por volta de 0.5%

Finally the iPhone was unlocked, last week all blogs and gadget oriented sites were talking about two new hacks, one of them I even started but didn’t have the right tools to open my iPhone, and the other wasn’t publicly released yet but will be very soon.

Well, basically there is three known ways to unlock the iPhone to use it with any operator worldwide, the first one is through Bladox TurboSim, which allows you to spoof the phone making it think it has a valid AT&T simcard and actually use your operator’s simcard. No need to disassemble your precious iPhone, just some hacks (you still need to jailbreak it and install the SSHd) with some code that runs on your iPhone and the Turbosim “adaptor”. The problem is to get your hands on TurboSIM, even if you are inclined to spend a thousand bucks to get out your hands on it, you will not be able to find any TurboSIM units. The guys at Bladox had a surprise when someone found a way to use their product, a SIM toolkit developer product, to unlock the iPhone, then the demand was monstrous and they couldn’t keep up. Right now there is no schedule to the next arrival of TurboSIM units. Other bad thing is that Bladox is based in Czchec Republic, so shipping can be very expensive.

The second unlock method is a hardware based one with some advanced software moves, was announced by George Hotz, he was one of the member of the team that has been working on the iPhone unlock project since the launch date, The iPhone Dev Wiki. They have been working in developing tools and hacks and trying several different styles to hack the Iphone. One of the most known methods is through the use of JTAGs. The problem with this is that you need to disassemble your iPhone and make some soldering and scrubbing on the circuits (track A17), this is very advanced and besides that you still need to get your hands on hacking firmwares and extracting binary parts of existing softwares and so on. I even tried to do it, but unfortunately, I didn’t had the appropriate tools to open it.

And, finally the third method, comes from the guys at IphoneSIMfree.com which announced last Friday they successfully achieved the so much awaited software based unlock method. It was confirmed by Engadget that it works and the whole process takes only a couple of minutes, anyway you still need to activate your iPhone through iAsign or iActivator . The Iphone SIm Free.com also sad they will release the unlock software for sale this week, so I am waiting to the get access to it and tell you if it really works outside US.

Here is some pictures from Engadget

Gallery: iPhone unlocked

And the video that proves it really works :

I definitively have a thing for gadgets, thank God my wife loves me and understands my needs related to electronics and my obsession with BestBuy, eBay, the chinese little store with that, really necessary, electronic stuff

Well, one of my e-passions are mobile gadgets, in special the smart ones. So last week, I was organizing some old boxes (yes, I keep the boxes) and found the boxes of my SonyEricsson P800, the old mate P900, the Treo 680 (which I gave to my wife) and more recently my Nokia E61 (SIP til the end) . The objective of this post is to say that I finally got an Apple device, and it is an iPhone, which unfortunately I can’t fully use here in Brazil (at least as a phone) because the guys out there are still trying to get rid of the AT&T lock.

I am a long time Apple critic/admirer, I am a PC guy, an open source guy, and Apple is purely against anything that means open, everything they develop is tightly attached to their own products and systems and you can’t do anything, Apple doesn’t want you to do it (at least not officially), it’s a totally controlled environment. But they are really good at Marketing, Usability, Design, the Experience, the MacOSX is really good and the community around Apple products is something for a MBA case study. These attributes are the reason I got an iPhone, when you enter into an Apple Store and try the Iphone it’s really something unique. So I got mine a few weeks ago and now I can write about my impressions on it.

I have some mixed feelings about the iPhone so far, it is a beautiful piece of hardware and the OS interface is really simple and surprising and now I have a “Unix like” device that fits on my pocket (if properly hacked), but that’s it. In terms of “out of the box” functionality, the iPhone is very limited, I feel like I’ve bought a $600 alpha product, anyway Apple is not known by it’s concern in having the most complete product (I mean, in number of features and compatibility, they don’t allow you to use Ogg Vorbis!!!). Apple is known for the way it packs the whole experience, the box, the interface, the form factor, the ads, the environment at the Apple Store, the whole thing is perfectly prepared to seduce you.

You can find several sites with lists for what is missing and what is broke on iPhone, but what I really miss and would make me move away from my E61 definitively is: Copy and Paste, video recording, digital zoom on the camera, native multi-IM client, native To-Do list app, native integration with MS Exchange ActiveSync (not just IMAP), full bluetooth OBEX support for transfering and receiving files (ANY kind of files) , a SIP/VoIP client and, of course, an unlock alternative solution (that’s really optional if they keep the current hacks working like they are doing with AppleTV)

What is being really fun for me right now, is to research and try all the hacks that are popping up all over the web, and keep updated with the community, they are really mapping and documenting everything, without any help from Apple. I’ve even installed an Apache on it

Now talking about Brazil, there are some rumors in the market that Vivo and Claro intend to launch the iPhone, and already started negotiations with the big fruit company. Of course, the price will be prohibitive, as always happens down here, and they will probably link it to the same 2 years kind of contract AT&T is offering back in US.

Anyway… more about my experiences with iPhone to come.

Recently we are experimenting an explosion in sales of branded PCs (like Dell, HP, Toshiba, Positivo, etc) in Brazil, for the first time, the expected PC sales during 2007 is threatening sell as much as TV sets. Industry estimates 11,7 million TVs will be sold, and nearly 11 million PCs. In 2006 some 8,6 million PCs were sold.

“Between 2005 and 2006, 8 million people went from poor to low-middle class. That’s an astonishing amount,” Positivo Chief Executive Helio Rotenberg said in an interview to Reuters. “And the middle class has more money and more credit. This is an explosive formula.” Positivo is the leading Brazilian computer manufacturer and estimates overall PC sales will grow 35.5 percent a year through 2010.

The government program called “Computador para todos” (Computers for all), that offers tax exemptions for low cost computers running GNU/Linux, to be paid in up to 36 months, will have an upgrade on its configurations delivering PCs with LCD monitors, the amount of money is about 600 million BRL (almost 300 million USD). Last year, approximately ~150k computers where sold and now they expect to double it, including cheaper laptops as well.