Roundarch moves to #38 on the Advertising Age Top Digital Agencies list.

The list is ranked by 2009 U.S. digital revenue.

Please join us for drinks and hors d’oeuvres in our new Denver office to get to know us and how we deliver digital experiences for the world’s largest organizations.

Thursday, May 13
6pm–10pm

1955 West 32nd Avenue, #1
Denver, CO 80211

Please RSVP to pburanosky@roundarch.com

Don Rescigno, the director of marketing for NYSTROM Herff Jones Education, has written a post on the Official Google Enterprise Blog about Nystrom’s partnership with Roundarch and how together we are changing the face of what today’s classrooms look like with the creation of StrataLogica.

StrataLogica will be featured at Google I/O May19-20 in San Francisco.

In March I had the pleasure of attending a workshop at South By Southwest titled “HTML5: Tales from the Development Trenches”, featuring Bruce Lawson (@brucel, web) – Opera and Martin Kliehm (@kliehm, web) – Namics. The discussion involved; what exactly HTML5 does right now at its current iteration, where it’s going and interesting examples of applying HTML5 practically. While the discussion may have been a little biased towards the use of HTML5 in Opera 10.5, it rightfully should have been. Opera 10.5 currently supports more features of the HTML5 draft than any other browser, with Firefox 3.6 closely trailing.

Most arguments nowadays about HTML5 seem to revolve around the demise of Flash content, or superiority of Flash over HTML5. The real beauty of W3C’s latest HTML spec lies in the simplicity of its implementation and ease of use for developers. HTML5 takes out all of qualms over coding time and browser compatibility, by unifying commonly used web application features into simple markup. It also helps
that the board that oversees the spec has representatives from all major browsers.
Read more…

There are a large number of successful Facebook applications in terms of number of installs and monthly active users (MAU), a statistic that Facebook provides to track application engagement. Applications such as Mafia Wars or Farmville have high MAU numbers.

However, successful commercial Facebook applications (called business applications in Facebook parlance) are extremely rare, such as “Marketplace,” the application that enables Facebook users to buy, sell and trade with the Facebook community.

Read the full article at Adotas.com

I recently read an article exploring the idea that new tablet devices, including the iPad, will create a greater demand for SaaS and cloud storage.  This is an interesting perspective to me because I don’t think we’re too far away from the day when “iPod as a service” becomes a reality and there is no more need for DRM.  Paying $9.99 a month for listening to any song ACROSS any compatible device you have, and having the option not to “own” any of the albums or songs sounds good to me.  Rhapsody has an early model in place already that does this to an extent (it supports a few devices, but not ANY device). With the continued development of “As A Service” business models and frameworks I can’t think of a reason why iTunes or a future “Google Tunes” cannot do it tomorrow

What used to be called Storage Area Networks a decade ago and was intended to make enterprise storage more robust and accessible is now commoditized and called the Storage Cloud. Computation is also becoming an accessible commodity with the Elastic Compute Cloud. Access to applications and storage is now more consumer friendly and unlimited. If you think about it we’re in a sense going back to the Mainframe days. Only now you can access a “mainframe” with theoretically unlimited computing and storage power, for personal use, through your phone, sitting on a train and not just for dedicated scientific or business applications. Everything is becoming more seamless and transparent. For once we needn’t worry about operating environments, compatibility, or file formats. We can now focus less on the Information Technology and more on the Information.

The defining characteristic behind the adoption of any pervasive computing enabler (SaaS being the front runner right now) has been the degree of mobility of the associated commercially available User Agent (iPad, iPhone, HP Slate, Android devices like ICD Gemini etc). While it can be argued that these devices are still in their infancy, if Moore’s law is anything to go by, we’ll see significant improvements in associated enabling technologies, specifically connectivity and bandwidth, as these devices gain market share. As the enablers do more the devices themselves need to do less without overall loss of functionality. In other words pretty soon you will find fully functional clients getting smaller and thinner simply because the technology has matured to the degree that storage and computation is not a constraint anymore. Just so long as you are connected to a pipe that’s fast enough to shuttle data back and forth without latency (IEEE 802.16 anyone?).

Taking the idea of smaller sizes and integrated capabilities a bit further I can’t help but imagine what new possibilities nano-scale technologies and quantum computing will offer in the near future. For those more inclined towards theoretical computing foundations there seems a greater push to look beyond the traditional Church-Turing conjecture that all computing technology based on registers and pointers is arguably inspired by. What seemed like sci-fi fantasy 20 years ago is in our pockets today. Mark Weiser’s Smart Device is now a reality, the internet of things is probably not too far away. By all indications could “Hyper-computation” be doable in 20 years or less? Regardless with the advent of full virtualization, on demand licensing and increased bandwidth we’re in for some good times ahead!

I’m sure several things come quickly to mind when someone mentions cloud computing or cloud applications. As Mark noted in his post about different emerging cloud services there are several layers of complexity that might flavor an application built on or with cloud services. I’m going to specifically talk about building applications that consume or consist of cloud services, Software as a Service ( SaaS ). These can be services you build yourself or they can be 3rd party services. At any rate your end goal would be to have an application that can be delivered to your users, built upon cloud services and my goal is to describe the different layers of how you can build that application based on my experience of designing/building cloud based applications.

I tend to think of the cloud just as I would a traditional computing solution with a few caveats: cloud computing should be highly scalable, on demand and more cost-effective than something I could get at my local web hosting company. At least in theory. In five years time, what we think of  as cloud computing will probably be the “traditional” computing solution,  indeed you will notice that the layers I’ll describe already follow how web applications are generally built today. The reality of the situation means that while cloud computing solutions offer more for less, the trade off is that no one service can be 100% trusted, no one network can always be relied upon, and therefore fault tolerance must be built into the system.

So let’s break down the anatomy of a typical web based cloud application. Generally speaking applications fall into 3 layers, 1) Persistence Layer, 2) Processing Layer and 3) Presentation Layer. These layers can consist of several different services, from several different cloud computing vendors or api’s. You should feel free to have all of these layers talk to each other as well.

So, for the Persistence Layer you might write to a EC2 hosted MySQL database for app specific data, while also relying on the the Persistent capabilities of Facebook, Twitter, or even Google to store user specific data. When I think of the the Persistence Layer I think of only reading and writing data to disk. There should be no (or as little as possible) logic associated with this layer because any logic you write will tend to be platform specific making it more difficult to port in the future event you have to switch providers. In most cloud computing solutions this layer is the layer that implements Eventual Consistency. Interactions with this layer should be quick and to the point. You write, you read. Period. It doesn’t happen often, but if you were to move your persistence layer from one vendor to another, it should be a simple as transferring files.

The Processing layer ( just like a traditional application ) is the layer that interacts with both the Presentation and Persistence layers. This could be a layer you write in  your favorite server scripting language. It could be a proxy layer that you write that takes input from your application and then routes data to other third party services, with some of it  going/coming from Amazon SimpleDB, some of it going to a legacy database from with your network, and perhaps it ferries analytical information to Google Analytics or Omniture. The point is that, the processing layer can be used for any type of processing that your application needs.  But keep this in mind, in my experience the more you proxy to third party services, the less code you’ll have to write and maintain. Or to look at this from the other side if you’re using a third party API and your application doesn’t need to augment the data before sending it over there should be no reason to build a processing layer. Mashups can be thought of a cloud application without the Processing Layer. Can your Presentation Layer talk directly to Omniture or Amazon S3? Absolutely, as long as you don’t have application logic that needs to run before you read or commit.

The Presentation Layer is where everything gets tied together. Above all it needs to always be responsive. I’d go so far as to say that it’s development specific limitations should drive all other development, when possible. I realize that might be a bit controversial, but remember in most use cases, the Presentation layer is running on a user’s machine, which can be thought of just another machine in the cloud. The user is allowing us to run the application on his/her processor for free with the implicit expectation that the application will give something back. The very least we can do as developers is to make sure the user knows what is going on. The need to pull data from multiple locations and present in a data rich interfaces is what makes technologies like Adobe Flex and Microsoft Silverlight so appealing to developers.

So, as a quick summary about what to think about when building cloud based applications. Build the Presentation and the Persistence Layers first and only add the Processing Layer as needed. Never trust any one server or any one network. Practice failure to help build Fault Tolerance. And last but not least, the most important fault tolerance you can build is on the Presentation Layer.

In posts to follow I’ll take a deeper look at each of these layers, various options for these layers and talk about some the lessons learned and best practices for building applications upon cloud services.

When Apple announced the iPad I was excited and let down at the same time.  Finally they released the mythical Apple Tablet.  It took me a few days to look past the fact that on the outside the iPad appeared to be a giant iPhone/iPod Touch.  I consider the iPad a Trojan horse in the computer world.  Apple is ushering in the age of software over technology, and it is easy to see how the Web, Widgets, and RIAs (Rich Internet Applications) have inspired its apps.  With Apple’s refusal to include the Flash Player as a part of its web browsing experience a rift has grown in the Flash community.  I have always been a big believer that I am a developer over a Flash Developer and I see the iPad as a new platform to grow into.  I wrote a post that outlined a few of my thoughts on why the iPad will change the way we view RIAs and recently it was published in Flash & Flex Developer’s Magazine.  It is my pleasure to share it with you here.

Also, if you do not get a free copy of Flash & Flex Developer’s Magazine I suggest you sign up for it.  It is free and there are lots of good articles in it so how can you go wrong?

All the panelists at the iPad panel in SXSW were in agreement that the iPad is a new genre of mass market device. It’s large form factor made it difficult to carry around all the time unlike a mobile device. Because it lacked a full keyboard, it was not a workstation in the sense that a laptop or desktop is. I would call the iPad a casual consumption device. It’s not meant to replace my laptop or the mobile phone. If I am composing a blog post, photoshopping or coding, I probably want to do it on my laptop. If I am standing on the train on my way to work, I would use my phone to consume my news and RSS feeds. The iPad is ideal when I am on the couch and just want to surf the (non Flash) web, watch some Youtube or play some games. It’s also great for bedside reading I would imagine. One of the panelists even went as far as saying that you would probably bring the iPad to the toilet.

I got my hands on the iPad the day it came out and here are some impressions. It’s heavier than I thought. The Kindle is super lightweight and I have it in my backpack at all times. The fact that it’s a bit weighty might dissuade me or someone else to carry it around as much. I didn’t hate it but I wasn’t in love with it either. However, it wasn’t built for people like me. I do a lot of content creation whether it’s coding, designing, writing a blog post, or uploading a video to Youtube. I also don’t really listen to music or play video games. However, the target audience is not people like me who are producers of content but rather consumers. The iPad is perfect for this. With a few simple taps you can do things like listen to music, watch video, read facebook, and play games with relative ease. The file system is completely abstracted from you. The old desktop paradigm of files and folders is gone. That was true with the iPhone as well, but it was mobile device, and people who had no need for a smart phone never saw the benefits.

You might argue that the iPad is a giant iPhone. In fact in some ways it is even less than a giant iPhone. It doesn’t even come standard with apps that the iPhone ships with, like calculator, weather, and stocks. You can’t make calls and, it doesn’t have a built-in camera either. It’s more like a giant iPod touch in that respect. I think this is where the similarity ends.

The one big thing I notice is that all the existing iPhone apps look horrible on it. This represents an opportunity in it of itself for enterprising app developers who missed the boat on iPhone apps. However playing with the iPhone apps on the iPad also exposes another issue. iPhone apps are very single minded. I mean because the real estate is so small, you can really only do or see one thing at once whether it’s a list or a view. It’s very rare that an app presents you with more than just one dimension of data at a time. Because the iPad has a much larger screen, you can now have child parent windows on at the same time. Apps like Outlook which show you both the list view and the detail view now don’t have to show you only one view at a time.

Secondly, I think the use cases are different. With an iPhone, you are mobile, on the go, on the run. You are basically in between states and you only have a few moments to access information. Most people I see on the train with their iPhones are either playing casual games or listening to music. With an iPad, you are probably comfortably situated somewhere, either on the couch or bed. You have some leisure time to consume content for more than a few seconds or minutes. So an app designed for the iPad would be more similar to a desktop app in the sense that the user has some time to devote to the task.

I also thought the form factor lends itself really well for dashboard applications. Dashboard are at a glance apps that usually don’t require a lot of interaction. You want to take a look and see the key performance indicators (KPI) and maybe drill down. I can see this on factory floors as well as command centers. Dashboards are passive displays and currently you can see plasma or 42″ LCD screens being used like this, but I think a personal dashboard using an iPad is something down the road as well. Its form factor is also convenient for being handed down from person to person in a more intimate presentation or discussion. I hate it when I have to bring people over to my laptop or try to hand my laptop to other people.

GetItNext Apps, LLC formed last year as a partnership between Roundarch and GetItNext and recently launched their first application, GetItNext Shipping Manager (GINSM), onto the eBay Selling Manager Applications platform.  With eBay’s recent move to open Selling Manager Apps to all sellers, GINSM follows eBay to a larger market of between 1million and 3million eBay sellers.

Roundarch’s extensive experience building applications that are not only functional but also a joy to use was key in developing an experience that works seamlessly on the Selling Manager Applications platform.  Roundarch created a new tool that allows shippers to intuitively manage their shipments much more efficiently.

Now found in eBay’s Apps Center, Selling Manager Applications were launched last year to Selling Manager and Selling Manager Pro subscribers.  This is the latest step in eBay’s multi-year plan to improve and leverage their developers program.  The results speak for themselves, there are now 40+ practical and powerful eBay verified third-party applications available to eBay users in the United States.  The applications found on the App Center are designed to improve the user experience and efficiency of eBay users’ businesses.  The applications are integrated directly into eBay through use of a broader more flexible API.

The Apps Center is in the early stages of growth with plans to roll out the Apps Center to the rest of the world in coming years.  Further expansion may follow eBay’s US platform to international markets where eBay recently announced US, UK, and German domestic listings will be optionally available internationally in country (Russia, Greece, Norway, Czech Republic, Denmark and Sweden) language through mirrored site listings.

GetItNext Apps, LLC has been with the eBay developers program from the beginning.  The GetItNext Shipping Manager has provided US domestic freight shipping at discounted rates to Selling Manager Applications platform users since the platform launch last year.  GINSM is excited to follow eBay’s expansion to open the platform to all sellers.  Additionally, GINSM is preparing for eBay’s move internationally and has developed an international shipping service where beta users are finding simplified customs information and great international envelope and package shipping rates.

GetItNext Shipping Manager for all your domestic freight shipping on eBay.  Ship, Save, Simplify!