Articles
June 30th, 2008
Author: Michael Krotscheck
Category: Articles
Tags: flash, flex, javascript, ria, rna
I had an excellent discussion with my coworker Susan today about refining certain internal processes, and one of the tangents of the conversation went off on what the actual definition of a Rich Internet Application actually was. As we know, anything from a banner ad to a product configurator can be considered an RIA, and the only common element seemed to be that an RIA retains its functionality within the context of what the user is interacting with. In other words, if you click on button in an RIA, the resulting action does not significantly change the page or window the user is interacting with; Clicking to go to a new page loses context, using an animated accordion to display different content does not.
The similarities, though, end there. Implementation varies, technology varies, scope and location and functionality varies, and all in all it ends up being a pretty difficult convoluted mess to describe. At best you can group them via complexity, and after a brief exercise of that nature we realized that a new breed of networked application was emerging. Well, alright, perhaps not emerging, but instead gaining momentum and acceptance in the mainstream. Here’s the scale, see if you agree with our reasoning.
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June 6th, 2008
Author: Michael Krotscheck
Category: Articles
Tags: design, development
An interview question I have been frequently asked in the past is: “On the spectrum of Designer < - > Developer, where would you put yourself?”
I’ve always been bothered by that question, because not only do I have a strong background in the Fine Arts, but I have 8 years of solid experience as a developer. The reason I don’t like it is that those of us who operate on the web apply both our creative and logical skills on a daily basis, and in many cases it is our creative streaks that make us so good at what we do. Problem solving skills and creative expression are absolutely inseparable: We learned this from Einstein, and Galileo, and Leonardo Da Vinci, and Thales, and Newton, and a host of other individuals who nowadays would be called the greatest minds of their time.
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May 26th, 2008
Author: Michael Krotscheck
Category: Articles, Inspiration, News
Tags: actionscript, air, code, flash, installer, pandora, practical desktop
I’ve finally gotten around to fully open source my various applications, factoring and debugging the code, commenting and applying all the necessary licenses and other miscellaneous logistical duties to get my two AIR applications up and out there.
Practical Desktop
Practical Desktop appears to be a simple timekeeping application, though in reality it’s an open source widget framework that allows pretty much anyone to build a deployable block of functionality that can start interacting with other widgets. The wrapper’s there for you, go nuts. The source is here
From a personal perspective, I use it as a beta and explorative sandbox, because there are a lot of interesting things coming out in the near future that I’d like to offer some guidance on development best practice, and to do so I will have to figure it out myself first. Rest assured that the widgets I build will be functionally complete, though perhaps limited in feature support.
Pandora
The Pandora Desktop application is really just a customized webkit browser that’s hardwired to the Pandora mini player. I’ve fixed the application so minimization works in Windows, and expanded it to include the player’s html wrapper as well. The reason I did this is because Pandora’s a free service, and I’d like to make sure that I’m not ripping them off by stripping out the ads. Optimally I’d like to help them convert their existing player to AIR, but until I have free time (or they pay me 
) that won’t happen.
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May 3rd, 2008
Author: Michael Krotscheck
Category: Articles
Tags: air, desktop, drunken coding, flash, flex, pandora
So there I was, hacking away at AIR, and my iPod runs out of batteries. I was in that rare coding zen where you really need the audio to lock you out from the rest of the world, so I was fairly annoyed that the random conversation here at Apropos suddenly started to interfere with my productivity. No worries though, I could always resort to Pandora, right?
Now, I’m not a big fan of Pandora. Don’t get me wrong, I love what they’re doing and have found some phenomenal music there, but the fact that I always have to keep a browser window open to make use of their service has kindof annoyed me, and now was no different. I could deal with it though for the sake of productivity…. until I realized that AIR came with its own embedded WebKit browser.
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April 24th, 2008
Author: Michael Krotscheck
Category: Articles
Tags: apple, corporate strategy, google, judo economics, microsoft, nintendo
A few years ago I took what must have been one of the most entertaining courses of my graduate career: Business Game Theory. It was run using the Harvard Case method, but with no supporting textbook and no explanatory lectures before a case was assigned- we simply received a problem and were expected to solve it by the next lecture. The problems themselves were simple: we were given a situation and asked a fairly straightforward question. Should Company B enter a particular market, how will a competition play out, can you predict the next step in a competition given certain parameters, things like that. Most of us got the first problems blatantly wrong- the tacit requirement to do our own research didn’t sink in until after the first discussion- yet after that reality check it became one of the most engaging classes ever: The problems were challenging but not beyond rational analysis, and though I spent hours at a time bending my brain around decision making in a risky environment and other situations, I can still name the topics and methodologies for every case.
As a result I was practically giddy when I recognized a real world example of Judo Economics, a situation where a player uses the strength of their opponent against them. Consider a simple case: There exist two markets for a single product and two companies that can produce said product. The first market is large, however serving it comes with a high cost and therefore a low margin. The second market is small, but serving it is cheap and therefore comes with a high margin. The first of the companies must serve both markets, has deep pockets, while the second is considering market entry, but can only serve one of the two. Each company can only set one price against both markets. The question posed is: What will happen?
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