Daniel Leuck's Blog (146)

After initial failures in the Japanese market, Facebook and LinkedIn may have caught their second wind



For years US based social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn have had very poor penetration in Japan despite having more features and better UX design than local competitors. Homegrown networks such as Mixi and Gree dwarf the Japanese localized versions…

Yesterday I was asked to chair a committee on workforce development for the software industry in Hawaii. Our committee was specifically tasked with coming up with suggestions on how to bring the number of senior software developers in the workforce closer to meeting the demands of software companies in our state. The suggestions are to be presented by the Workforce Development…

When I was in high school I read about research at the University of Hawaii in small scale self contained ecosystems. The idea fascinated me so I started doing research on how I could build one. In Des Moines, Iowa, where I lived, there is a small rain forest contained in a geodesic dome called the Des Moines Botanical Center. A scientist at the center helped me with a design for a miniature version of the center with the addition…

With Apple's new iTunes subscription feature publishers can publish their digital content via the App Store and collect a recurring subscription fee. Users can easily organize, browse and manage their subscriptions in one place. That sounds great until you hear about the cut Apple is taking: 30% for the…

I realize its sacrilegious to say anything bad about HTML5, but I have to say I am really disappointed in its handling of widgets (i.e. combo boxes, lists, sliders, etc.) HTML5 introduces new form input types such as range, date pickers, color selector, etc. but they are completely opaque and have very narrow APIs. This is due to HTML5's approach of punting to the browser to render and manage the widget. Often the browser in turn punts to the OS. This was the approach Java AWT took when it…

Apple stock jumped again today. The company is now worth $336 billion. That is almost $100 billion more than Microsoft and well over twice the value of Oracle. They are now the largest technology company that has ever existed. Apple is also the largest content distributor and the largest mobile phone manufacturer in the United States. There are over 325,000 active apps in the App Store. They have been downloaded almost 10 billion times. Gartner expects the App Store will generate a stunning…

How a new suite of unencumbered technologies could elevate web development today and better prepare us for HTML5 tomorrow

The web development world is in an interesting place. HTML5 is the future, but its not quite ready. Javascript is the lingua franca of this brave new world despite the fact it lacks many basic…

I'm currently in Tokyo on business. As I travel around the city I've been spot checking Foursquare's coverage. To my surprise, coverage is excellent. Most popular eateries and nightspots have already been added. Many already have mayors. Foursquare specials…

Microsoft created quite a stir on Thursday when they said they are "repositioning" Silverlight and focusing on HTML5 for web apps. Like Adobe, which just demoed a Flash to HTML5 converter, they seem to be conceding that the web world is moving away from plugin-based rich media platforms and toward HTML5. Now they will be playing in a sandbox dominated by Google, a company that…

I debated posting this because we have so many great UH faculty members as members, and I don't want this to turn into a bash-fest on the people who were instrumental in helping us grow this community. That being said, it wouldn't be honest for us not to address the issue. Obviously three major security breaches in a year indicates a very serious problem. I'm sure most of you have read the articles, but for…

From the phone to the cloud, where will developers look for a unified, unencumbered platform?



What are the implications of Oracle's lawsuit on the future of robust multi-targeted virtual machines in the software universe? This is a question I've been asking myself over the past few weeks. The vast majority of software written today runs on one of a few runtime environments - the JVM (Java's runtime),…

At recent developer events, including today's UX Design Meetup, the effect of the great 2009-2010 Hawaii brain drain was readily apparent. Seth Ladd, Anthony Eden, Sam Joseph, Truman Leung, Ken Mayer, David Neely, Sherwin Gao, Seri Lee, Gabe Morris, Alex Salkever, Laurence Lee, Ken Berkun...this is just a handful of quality people I know personally. The list of talented tech industry people who have left or will soon be leaving over this very short period of time is truly…

I thought I would take a break from my usual subjects, software development, Hawaiʻi's tech industry and policy issues, to write a few thoughts about my favorite little ecosystems - anchialine pools. Scientists have identified about 150 unique ecosystems in our state ranging from the awe inspiring alpine deserts of Mauna Loa to the world's wettest rainforests on Kauaʻi.…