Windows 7 has been on the market for a couple weeks now, and early indications point to this being a pretty good software launch for Microsoft. Sales of Windows 7 are up 234% in the first week, compared to their last OS launch, Microsoft Vista.

Industry pundits point to a couple factors that may have led to the good sales figures: a relatively low price point, lots and lots of advertising, and the pushing of lower-cost pre-sales. You have to think that 7 patty Whopper promotion in Japan helped too.

And while many media types are happy to trot out that 234% number as an indication that Windows 7 is selling well, there are cynics out there that have a different take. After all, that 234% number isn’t in comparison to a competitor…it’s compared to Microsoft’s own product, Vista. The same Vista that was fraught with problems and bad-press from day one. That same Vista that sent new PC purchasers scrambling to uninstall it so they could run on XP. That same Vista that seems to require 95% of my computer’s memory just checking for software updates to keep itself up to date.

That being said, the general consensus out there seems to be that Windows 7 is pretty good (especially compared to you-know-what). Yes, it has some issues, and yes it’s still vulnerable to most of the viruses out there. But hey, it does a lot of stuff well, and by the way, have you seen that 7 patty whopper?

As we continue to inch closer to the much anticipated second wave of global H1N1 pandemic, we are cautioned to wash our hands, cough into our sleeves, stay home from work if sick and above all else get vaccinated. I wrote an earlier post looking closely at vaccines,and new alternatives being developed, but don’t you worry about any of that anymore. The magic bullet has arrived. Vioguard of Bothell,Washington has introduced the world`s first self-sanitizing computer keyboard. It’s a simple “plug and play” tool that doesn’t require any additional software and uses ultraviolet germicidal irradiation to zap H1N1 and a whole host of other infections by retracting itself into its own clean, “light tight” enclosure and flooding the filthy keyboard with ultraviolet light. I wonder if it has a de-crumbing function too?

This is excellent news for healthcare workers in Vancouver and other major cities who are on the front lines of infectious outbreaks. The cleaning process takes 90 seconds, which is great if a healthcare worker doing data entry in the middle of a pandemic ever finds 90 seconds to stop and wait for their keyboard to take a bath. Sarcasm aside, it’s pretty relevant technology, but this is supposed to be a software blog today so let’s talk about Swine Flu software.

One of the most important weapons in outbreak management is accurate information about where outbreaks are and how they are moving. Upp Technologies and numerous other makers of software solutions have teamed with the Federal US government in an attempt to effectively deal with the logistics of a response to an outbreak. Taking statistical information from a variety of sources Upp’s Embedded Decision Support System can help EMS professionals and government to get vaccines or antivirals to where they are needed most. Logistical support from internet based data gathering platforms like Flu.gov now also aid different levels of government with needed support. Like most battles, military, legal, or other, information can be your most powerful weapon. This includes perhaps most poignantly the battle against disease outbreak.  The Upp Technology software is being used by the CDC to manage their statewide vaccine provider registration system. However, if you’re a champion of the free market and an anti big-government kind of person who is skeptical of taking bureaucratic channels for your swine flu needs, you can also turn to the Microsoft H1N1 Flu Response Center or YOU COULD READ the list of symptoms on any government web site. I don’t know why people think they need to fill out some kind of survey to be told whether or not they have swine flu symptoms. If you can read, you should be able to figure it out- but I guess we have a hard time trusting our own opinion. We like the finality of being told what we are, like in the hundreds of Facebook surveys telling us what city, fruit,car, or 80s tv-character you are. (Berlin,Orange,Toyota Prius, Alex P Keaton in my case) This brings me to my last point, one I’m hoping to explore more in the future. Any time we have private companies gathering information about the public I’m skeptical that there exists an absence of profit motive- although the Microsoft site does offer an opt-out for information being stored or shared if the user prefers- so that being said, Microsoft’s aims appear very decent. To alleviate the strain on the networks of our public services in the event of a major outbreak. But there still exists a huge profit potential in dealing with this much-anticipated outbreak. And I don’t say that in a critical manner, there are far worse things to be making money off of. It’s a simple fact that when information is both crucial to some and valuable to all- Swine Flu vaccine makers aren’t the only ones bringing home the bacon this flu season.

Vancouver’s Skytrain has long dominated the list of automated mass transit systems globally. It is the longest automated system of its kind in the world, and relies on space age technology to propel me from downtown Vancouver to any number of places I’d rather be half the time. Some people freak out when told that “Nobody is driving the train” others freak out when a door fails to close while you’re moving at 100km/h 30 feet above the ground. (That’s only happened once though…) Lack of conductor, frighteningly high stretches of track and the occasional deadly door opening aside- the Skytrain is still a point of pride for Vancouverites, especially with the addition of the new Canada Line which goes direct to the airport. In fact, it’s the envy of many American cities and transit planners. I’ve taken the rapid transit in Minneapolis  (like a slow Disney children’s ride right to the mall) and in Seattle (You can race it to the space needle and back on a bike!) so it’s no surprise to me that it gets favorable mention in their media.  But our Skytrain will have to play second fiddle starting very soon. Dubai is building the final phase to their new fully automated mass transit system which will be the longest in the world, beating out Vancouver’s, upon completion next year. At its launch it apparently experienced problems synching up doors. Maybe they used the same company as us?

Around the world as transportation costs increase due to finite oil and gas supply, and as urbana megaclusters become increasingly dense, countries and megacities are looking to digitally organized and managed mass transit like the systems in Vancouver and Dubai. Recently the BART system in San Francisco, one of the older and storied mass transit systems in the US, adopted the use of new IBM software to better manage their assets and operations. The Long Island Rail Road, a commuter line in New York, will also be using the IBM, Maximo software, which is being adopted in several mass transit systems in America, Asia and around the world, including the impressive and fast Taiwan High Speed Rail, China’s Guangzhou Metro and the Washington DC Metro, one of the busiest in the United States. According to IBM, Maximo is an asset management software program while Maximo for Transportation is “…an extension to Maximo Asset Management, offering industry specific capabilities that address the needs of transportation organizations”

Not to be outdone, Vancouver’s Translink recently installed Omnivex software and display technology into our Sky Train system. The content management software is capable of real-time data acquisition and distribution and will no doubt add a great feature that’s perfectly suited for the fast approaching 2010 Olympics.  On a related note when the previous round of 150,000 Olympic tickets were released earlier this year,VANOC’s website experienced 1,500 hits every second for four hours – making it the busiest website in the world during that period. This according to Jim Furlong who spoke yesterday to the Olympics media and IOC  president Jacques Rogge who was in town to give the final blessing to the games. Should be interesting to see how our Sky Train performs for the games it’s also going to recieve massive amounts of people every hour during the games. It will be its swan song as the longest automated system in the world- let’s hope those doors stay closed.

When something as complicated and large as a modern jumbo jet requires a change of software, a change of any parts, the adjustments run the risk of becoming systemic throughout the whole design. While it’s unlikely that changing a nut or bolt will cause system wide adjustments to be made,  changes in the design and the materials used to make the new Boeing 787 for example, have caused the developer Crane to now re-write the software for the jet’s first of a kind all electric braking system.  According to Crane the changes now need to be made to the software to compensate for aircraft level changes, this translates as a change in engine power, propeller, overall speed or weight/and or payload of the plane, temperature of gear etc.  Software is originally written with parameters in mind to react to a specific set of real world variables the coding is meant to deal with; sometimes a lot of coding. It’s a lot of work to re-write software, less than coming up with it from scratch, but this has set the release of the 787 back and has shed light on supply chain challenges that Boeing has experienced in its anticipated launch of the innovative new jet, which is touted as the most fuel efficient jet yet and utelizes the most modern composite materials in its design.

With all the sensors and automated controls in today’s jetliners, software has become in increasingly integral part of flying. Though it wasn’t the software that malfunctioned in the Air France crash, officials have attributed it to air speed sensors used commonly on Airbus jets, software has caused airport delays and confusion for pilots having to deal with autopilot errors. This makes the search for black boxes, especially for the Air France one, of paramount importance. When so much can go wrong, it’s crucial that we know exactly how it happened so we can eliminate errors in design, coding, pilot training or policy- how far is a safe distance from thunderstorms for example. And in light of the complicated sytsem that is a jet, my hat goes off to the pilots, technicians and software designers that make the whole thing work for the more than three million people a day who fly.

I for one am glad to hear that the software needed to be re-written. I’d rather hear that than hear about another frightening airline story.  I don’t like flying. Ironic, Being that my dad is a pilot.

With all this talk of retiring the NASA space shuttle fleet and Canadian astronauts being propelled into space using this 1960’s to 1980’s technology I thought I’d write about the software that makes the space jalopy work. The coding when compared to commercial software is far superior, being that when your OS encounters a bug at home or you office, chances are good that you’re not flying thousands of Km/h high above the continents with millions of pounds of extremely explosive fuel strapped to you. Therefore, the software used by NASA for these shuttles is as close to perfect as we’ve been able to get…on this planet. But what about these guys?

Software inevitably has errors. Thousands upon thousands, millions upon millions of lines of source code, at times co-authored by several different people is just not likely at this point to be perfect; especially with deadlines and competitive pressure from other firms. And where there may not be bugs there may be logic errors, that slip through the debugging process even if your syntax is correct. See this NY Times article on the development process for Microsoft Windows Vista and you start to get the picture of how screwed up software platforms can become in a clunky and inefficient design environment. To err is human, but these particular kinds of software errors cost the US economy alone up to 60 billion dollars every year

Open-source software has been hailed by some as offering a new programming method that actually decreases the amount of bugs because of the multiple scrutinizing eyes combing over the code as it matures. Google may have had this philosophy in mind when they pre-released Google Wave to scores of developers earlier this year, hoping to avoid MS Windows-like problems. See previous post. But to get back to the soon to be retired space shuttle fleet. In the newest Microsoft operating systems there are tens of millions (about 40 to 50) of lines of code and scores of bugs, perhaps thousands. The software coding for the shuttles has about 420,000 lines, smaller yes, but in the past three versions have only had ONE bug apparently. And the past 11 versions collectively have had only 17 errors total.  So for 4.5 million lines of code we have 17 bugs total. As an Astronaut I like those odds. That means I only have a 1 in 265 thousand chance of being blown to pieces on the job. Still probably a lot lower odds than your average safe desk job.

Do you ever feel that your computer treats your favourite web-applications like second class citizens compared to desktop software? Sure, Gmail is slick, but it doesn’t get to sit in your Mac’s Dock and show you how many unread messages you have. You probably check your Facebook Newsfeed far more than you change your screen resolution, but Display Settings gets a permanent spot at the top of your screen while Facebook is three clicks away. A funky little application called Fluid can help elevate any web-app to first-class status on your Mac.

Fluid allows you to create an application that lives in your Dock or Menu Bar out of any website or web-app. These applications are cleaner and simpler than a typical instance of a web browser. A Fluid app has no address bar, or back and forward buttons, letting you forget you are using a website at all. Gmail users will appreciate the fact that Fluid shows your unread message count in a badge on the dock icon, just like Apple’s native mail application. It even automatically creates an attractive icon out of the site’s favicon. iPhone users will be familiar with the concept of Fluid, since it has been a feature in the iPhone OS for over a year.

As more and more desktop applications become replaced by web-apps, Fluid will only become more useful. Fluid helps make these rich web-apps more stable by having each of them run in their own process. If the flash game you are playing crashes, you don’t have to worry about losing your half-written Facebook message (or Basecamp update – we know you work hard too), because each Fluid app is totally independent. Fluid runs as a native Cocoa app in Mac OS 10.5 and uses the Webkit engine (the same one that sits under the hood in Safari 3), so it is fast and reliable.

Best of all, Fluid is completely free. You can thank Todd Ditchendorf on his blog or via Twitter for this fantastic app, or just directly download it here.

A web-app filled dock, thanks to Fluid

This new iPhone app by Dunkin Donuts combines man’s love for donuts with social media into one super delicious iPhone app!  The Dunkin Donuts app lets users set up friends lists that alerts them whenever you decide to go on a donut run, enabling them to chime in for a donut run as well.  Orders placed online are then available for pickup at the closest retail location.  There’s also a website version for those without iPhones.  Now if only Timmy Ho’s could jump onto that bandwagon!

In this recent news story, China declares that it will continue on with its plan to make mandatory the regulation stipulating that all computers sold in China contain Internet filtering software, despite protestations from US officials.   Many are calling for a boycott of the Internet itself on July 1st, the day when the new regulation comes into effect (incidentally, it’s also Canada Day!) however it’s doubtful that denying yourself of Twitter for 24 hours is really going to grab the attention of the inner echelon of Chinese power.  With China’s well known history of blocking sites it deems politically offensive, it’s understandable that many are crying out over this new, aggressive move, but China maintains that the software is benign and intended to prevent young children from accessing porn sites, because you know, that’s all the kids do these days.  China also claims that citizens will be free to decide whether to load the software or not, but there’s still no confirmation yet on whether not installing the software will result in a quiet, sudden disappearance.

The best thing about the Internet is the free and open proliferation of information and opinions.  The worst thing about the Internet is the free and open proliferation of information and opinions, particularly the opinion part.  With the massive popularity of social networks, everyone and their grandma (and even their dog) has caught a case of electronic verbal diarrhea and is constantly spouting their every thought out into the web universe.  Now there is another hopeful start-up company seeking to cash in on the social phenomenon: Kutano, which means gathering in Swahili, is a little browser add-on that allows you to comment on any page you visit on the Internet via a pop-up side-bar displaying related discussions on your current page’s topic.   The most amusing thing this author can think of to use for this app would be to google the oddest search topics ever and see what Kutano comes up with; for example, the slew of search results generated by Google’s helpful “my poo is green” search string.  Are you feeling lucky today?

Electronic Arts has run into some trouble recently, but they’ll have to be happy with the recent launch of The Sims 3. With sales of 1.4 million copies in the first week alone, the game set a record for an EA PC game launch, and sales are still going strong. Which just goes to show that even with a whole lot of platforms for gamers, a good PC game can still kick butt at the register (not that anyone still buys games at actual stores, with actual cash registers anymore, but you get my drift). And those amazing sales numbers (obviously) don’t include the estimated 140,000+ copies of The Sims 3 that were downloaded by pirates in the weeks prior to the official launch.

One development that I find interesting is that more and more people are playing games like The Sims 3 on mobile devices. In fact, the mobile iPhone/iPod Touch version  topped the charts for Apple paid apps in 37 countries, within two days of launch.

So what’s interesting about that? Well, I’m someone who spent approximately 1,000 hours playing various iterations of Sid Meier’s Civilization games in the comfort of my basement. And to be honest, I’m not sure I like the idea of people mixing long-form strategy/simulation games with…well…life. There was something pleasingly nerdy about taking on Genghis Khan while locked away from society and you’d lose that playing on the bus or down at the beach. But then maybe someone who spent 1,000 hours playing Civ shouldn’t really get to have an opinion.