Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson in 1972

The death of Steve Jobs has been discussed and his life memorialized over the last couple weeks, and for good reason.  Jobs was one of those rare celebrities that the computer industry produces.  He was a very public face for a very celebrated line of products and an evangelist for a way of thinking about how we, as a culture, use technology and integrate it into our lives.

Another computer legend died recently and, while his name recognition is no where near Jobs’s, without his work the current computer world might look very different, especially Apple products.

Dennis Ritchie (September 9, 1941 – October 12, 2011) created both the C programming language and (as one of many engineers) the UNIX operating system, both while employed at AT&T Bell Labs in the late 60′s and early 70′s.

The C Programming Language

Computers are only capable of carrying out a very specific number of simple instructions; they achieve complex tasks by stringing many (MANY) of these simple instructions together. This “machine code” can be complicated for humans to work with directly, especially on a large scale project, and so most computer programs are written in a “programming language” that translates ( or “compiles”) a human-friendly set of instructions into a computer-friendly set of instructions.  Roughly speaking: the friendlier a computer language is to humans, the “higher-level” it is.  The friendlier a language is to computers, the “lower-level” it is.

With C Ritchie created a bridge between the high and low-level. An elegant, structured language easy for humans to speak that translated very fluently to machine language.  It was also very easy to create versions of C for different types of computers.

C has been so successful it has inspired or evolved into many other languages including C++ (its immediate successor), JavaScript (running in your web browser), Java (used in everything from cars, home appliances and ground-control for space missions), ActionScript (the language that makes Flash animations do clever things), and PHP (which runs this WordPress blog).  Of the top ten most popular programming languages in 2011 at least seven of them are descended from C (or are, in fact, C itself.)

The UNIX Operating System

It’s hard to over-estimate the importance of the UNIX operating system.  There are a lot of reasons that it’s become such a workhorse of the information age.  Bell Labs distributed UNIX for free to universities, which meant an entire generation of computer professionals became deeply familiar with it and brought it out into the industry.  Being written in C meant it was easy to port to new hardware.  It standardized a very reliable system of allowing multiple users to access the computer and run programs at the same time.  And, at the same time UNIX was being birthed, an agency of the U.S. Defense Department was beginning to develop the technology that would eventually evolve into the present-day Internet, and a version of UNIX called BSD (“Berkley Software Distribution,” one of those branches of UNIX that evolved from the free university distributions) ran most of it.

And finally: when Steve Jobs left Apple in 1985, he almost immediately began putting together plans for what would become the NeXT computer which was unveiled in 1988.  NeXT’s operating system was called NeXTSTEP and it was based in large part on that same BSD UNIX operating system.  Returning to Apple in 1997 he brought NeXTSTEP with him and it eventually evolved into what is now OSX.

Any OSX user who opens the “Terminal” window is essentially opening a window onto a UNIX command line that any computer science major in 1975 would feel right at home with.

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Tom Hickey Categories: General, Technology, Web

Whether you are publishing content or selling products, you need to make it as easy as possible for your customers to get to your goods on their terms. Mobile usage is growing exponentially and will be an increasingly essential part of your toolkit to keep your customers coming back for more.

But if you’re just starting to think about how to go mobile, it can be hard to know where to begin. Two of the key things you’ll need to research are what mobile devices your customers are using now and what they want to use in the future. This information will help you make the right decisions when planning how to allocate your valuable resources.

Review your analytics. You should have Web analytics running on your website. Google Analytics is a top-notch free tool that will tell you a lot about how people are accessing your content. While analytics are useful, they don’t tell you the whole story. You also want to know how people ideally would view your content, which isn’t completely revealed until you’ve created an optimized mobile experience.

Send a survey. The best way to find out what your customers want is to ask. There are numerous survey tools available, which you can use to send a Web-based survey to your email list. Regardless of how you deploy the survey, it’s important to keep it short to increase the number of responses. Here is a suggested set of questions to find out your customers’ mobile preferences:

1) What type(s) of mobile phone do you have?
        a) iPhone
        b) Android
        c) Blackberry
        d) Windows
        e) Palm
        f) Other

2) What type(s) of mobile phone do you expect to have 1 year from now?
        a) iPhone
        b) Android
        c) Blackberry
        d) Windows
        e) Palm
        f) Other

3) From where do you typically view our website?
        a) Work
        b) Home
        c) On the go

4) From what type of device would you prefer to view our website?
        a) Desktop computer
        b) Laptop
        c) Tablet
        d) Mobile Phone

5) On a mobile phone, how do you prefer to read content?
        a) Apps
        b) Mobile Web browser (e.g., Safari)
        c) RSS Reader

6) If you own a tablet, what kind?
        a) iPad
        b) Android
        c) Windows
        d) Blackberry
        e) I don’t own a tablet

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Andy Swindler Categories: Gadget, How To, Marketing, Mobile, Technology

Astek uses the testing platform Litmus to make sure that the HTML formatted emails we send out for our clients look great in all email clients from Outlook to Hotmail. They have a company blog with some valuable articles on email and browser trends. This month they have shared some very interesting infographs on mobile trends and best practices.

Check them both out:

Where Are Subscribers Opening Email

Anatomy of a Perfect Mobile Email

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Katie Hawkey Categories: General, Marketing, Web

In June 2009 Microsoft rolled out Bing, the newest, freshly branded version of their search services.  I’ve used it a few times and found it a capable tool with a nice presentation but saw no reason to switch from Google.  Just saw an interesting article from CNNMoney provides some interesting statistics about where Bing stands at two years old.

One fun fact is that while Bing’s market share has risen from 8.4% at the time of its launch to 14.7% currently, almost none of that increase has come at the expense of market-leader Google (now with 64.8%).  It’s mainly been siphoned away from third-place Yahoo which (in case you didn’t know) has actually been powered by Bing since late 2009.  As the article puts it:

“There’s usually no such thing as ‘bad’ market share growth, but… That means more than half of Microsoft’s share growth has come from cannibalizing its search partner.”

The most attention-grabbing numbers though are Microsoft’s losses on Bing: $5.5 billion since launch.  The entire online services division at Microsoft, since 2007, has lost $9 billion.

Microsoft (and some analysts) believe that Bing will start turning a profit in a few years and, more importantly, evolve into a truly unique product through the addition of natural language searches and other features.  But when you’re losing a billion dollars a quarter that’s definitely the sort of bet that only a giant like Microsoft can take.

The day I hear someone say, in absolute seriousness, “I binged the address of the hotel,” I’ll admit that they’ve made real progress.

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Tom Hickey Categories: Bing, General, google, Web

I spent the weekend with my new iPhone 4S, having gotten it delivered on Friday.  It is indeed pretty cool, but unlike Siri I won’t just direct you to Apple’s website to read about it.  I first had to endure months of waiting, after first expecting it to come in June as the last few iPhone models had in years past.  I couldn’t help but be tantalized by the rumors of a magical iPhone 5 with a thin, teardrop form factor, full-face screen, and myriad other features that, in the end, proved to be COMPLETELY MADE UP!  It’s amazing to me that people actually went to the trouble to build mockups of these imaginary iPhone 5.  And in the end, we got the 4S, as I originally expected, and was looking forward to anyway.

As an improvement on the iPhone 4, it made sense to me to upgrade to it from my 3GS, as I upgraded to that from my 1st generation iPhone.  I’m a sort of 5 minutes early adopter (except for that 1st gen. iPhone, which was a hand-me-down).  I’d rather let others experience the problems with a brand new technology, then get it on the first revision.  In the case of the iPhone 4, there was at least one clear and significant problem: that of the antenna.  Which I can’t say I’ve done any intense first-hand testing for, but my experience so far is positive.  And I’ll take the Apple literature and other reviews’ word that the “death grip” problem is done away with, and that the smart antenna switching technology actually does improve internet bandwidth over the same 3G network.

So what have I experienced so far that I can specifically highlight as points of awesomeness in the 4S?

• Battery life – I left my house at 1PM on Saturday with a full charge, and used it sporadically over the following 13 hours, included a little voice use, some texting, email and Facebook, and a little Pandora at the end of the night.  It only got down to 20% battery at about 4PM on Sunday, when I finally plugged it in again.  WAY better than how my 3GS currently fares.  I’m curious how much this current performance on the 4S will degrade over time.
• Camera – So I haven’t totally put it through its paces yet, but I’m very pleased so far.  Partly due to the responsiveness when starting the camera app, and between shots.  That’s mostly due to the increased processor speed, which I’ll touch on in concert with the screen.  The video quality very very good.  For some reason playback in Quicktime on my Mac looks a little jerky, but I’m thinking that might be an independent issue.  I’ve got one example of a really nice looking photo here.  Low-light quality I’m not yet very impressed with, but there are more settings I have yet to explore.
• Siri – A lot of the buzz of course is about Siri, the built-in voice recognition software that can contextually parse your questions and commands, and really does just work remarkably well at understanding what you’re saying.  The old voice command feature on the iPhone was almost useless in terms of interpreting your voice, so it was refreshing to see this actually come together.  You can also have some fun with it, as evidenced by my screenshot above, and the ones others posted here.  What’s great about it to me, is that I can use it to dictate emails and text messages while I’m driving.
• Screen/Processor – Having come from a 3GS, I’m just wowed by the image quality on the screen.  This is nothing new to iPhone 4 users, but it’s still amazing to me.  However, that combined with the increased processor speed (up to 73% higher than the 4, by some evidence) means that apps can now render even more stunning graphics.  I found a game that purported to have new version with graphics only supported by the new 4S (Real Racing 2), and it does indeed look really really cool.  Fun game too.

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Andrew Crowe Categories: Gadget, Technology

Like so many other people out there, I subscribe to probably 100 more RSS feeds than I need to. However, I just love the idea that everything I may or may not be interested in is at least is one place. It stands for “Real Simple Syndication” for  a reason right? Unfortunately, sometimes organizing can lead more towards organized chaos versus simplicity. Therefore earlier this year I decided to make a commitment to not only organize my RSS feeds, but to do so through apps that made reading them not only enjoyable, but simple!

So I started with my MacBook. I admit I mostly use my RSS reader on my Mac to find relevant articles on specific topics for either our company or for clients. With that being said, I think NetNewsWire is quite literally, the bomb. You can download it to your computer and it synchronizes with your reader (in my case, I synch it with Google Reader).

The selling feature to me is the Smart List functionality. It’s a similar set-up to iTunes, in which you can create Smart Lists with keywords and phrases that automatically gather in these folders to show all the content in your feeds that contain these keywords. It’s perfect for finding those articles mentioning B2B news or highlighting competition mentions. And don’t worry PC users, you can use FeedDemon similarly with tags versus smart lists for finding those keywords.

The other feature I like about NetNewsWire is that it synchs with Instapaper. So if I’m reading something interesting, and I want to save it to tweet about later, write a blog post about, or actually finish reading the article, it’s a click of a button and POOF! It’s saved in my Instapaper feed. And yes, I do have many-a folder in my Instapaper account with titles such as “Facebook Posts”, “Tweets”, “Newsletter Links”, etc. for both Astek and clients. That way I don’t have to worry about a back-log of links in my Instapaper account. But that’s a whole other blog post.

Now, to my iPad. Personally, I am a newspaper kind of girl. I have a degree in Journalism, and there’s something about reading a real newspaper…you know, one with ink. That doesn’t mean I don’t have a digital subscription to the New York Times (I do). It does mean that I scoured the App Store for an RSS reader that made reading my RSS feeds an actually pleasant experience. Lo and behold, Early Edition. Now, no matter how many RSS feeds I have, they will always look pretty on my reader. Just add a cup of coffee and it’s almost as Sunday-morning-esque as a real newspaper.

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Rachel Yeomans Categories: ePiphany Featured Story, How To, Technology

We’re going green at Astek! Now…define green…

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Rachel Yeomans Categories: Fun, Green

I owe a lot to Steve Jobs. My family got an Apple IIc computer when I was in the 1st grade (thanks Mom and Dad!) and it defined my entire career. I was an early card-carrying member of the cult of Apple. It wasn’t just about being cool or different. There are hundreds of tangible reasons why that platform was and is superior. Not just for artists, but for everyone. An evangelist was born.

In the 2nd grade, my 1st grade teacher came to get me out of class to help her “fix” her Apple IIe. Remember those guys with the green and black monitors? Turns out she just didn’t have the monitor on, but I found it remarkable that she came to me rather than any other adult in the school.

That was my first consulting gig.

I often don’t write about “big news” since I figure everyone is doing it and the world probably doesn’t need one more blog post. But in this case, this isn’t just news. This is the end of an era.

But it’s not all sadness. Steve’s legacy is so strong, inspiring, and lasting that his untimely passing also marks the beginning of a new era — for Apple and all technology companies and geeks.

We’ve seen social media take hold in the past few years, and I believe we have yet to realize the true potential of that technology. In its infant state of exploration, experimentation and fundamental learning, social media remain anyone’s game.

Apple fueled the growth of new technologies such as social media by exploding the potential of open mobile app distribution. I clamor to ideas like this — philosophies, frameworks, and factories working together to empower everyone and level the playing field.

At the center of all this was Steve, whose singular vision and demanding standards merged artistry and technology into some of the most empowering devices and software ever created.

Being a life-long Apple fanatic means I’ve been there in good times and bad. I saw Steve get booted from Apple, and then triumphantly return to save the company from disappearing altogether. I painfully tried to help my college buddies with their late-90’s Mac’s that just weren’t very well-built.

When the Mac came about in 1984, I became mesmerized by desktop publishing and later PageMaker. The Mac made that world possible at the time, and once again I found it easy to dazzle people by doing what I enjoyed most – using the things that came out of Steve’s mind to solve problems and create.

This lead me to pursue journalism through high school and college. I was also an Apple Student Rep at Northwestern, which is the only time I received a paycheck from Apple. While I didn’t specifically pursue journalism as a career, my life has led me along the path of the new journalism in the form of social media and communication technologies. I apply these lessons on behalf of my company and clients every day.

And yes, I still use a Mac. Now I have several. I feel like much of the world has come to understand what I’ve known all my life. Vision like this is rare and deserves to be revered.

Steve would be the first to tell you that his path was not without mistakes. Whose life isn’t? But his journey is an extraordinary one worthy of reflection. He had a unique way of bringing teams of varied talent together to create something profound around a singular vision. It’s no surprise that Pixar is one of most successful film studios and business success stories in any industry.

Five years ago, who would have thought that thousands of executives would be walking around with an Apple logo on their phones?

If you’ve never seen it, take a few minutes to watch Steve Jobs’ address to Stanford graduates in 2005. These words continue to inspire me.

Thanks Steve for all you’ve given me and the world. We’ll never forget what you did and we’ll do our very best to carry your torch of innovation.

Update:
I was going through some old Apple memorabilia (yes, I have a lot of it), and found this photo of the rock we painted at Northwestern University in April 1997 before they changed to a single color logo. We made the student newspaper, The Daily Northwestern, the next day. However, the article was titled “Macintosh Misery” due to our decision to create hopeful art during a dark chapter in Apple’s life. Steve’s return and recovery of the company shortly thereafter thankfully make these mere anecdotes of history.

This post was featured in ePiphany, Astek’s Monthly Newsletter |  Other ePiphany Articles

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, ePiphany Featured Story, Gadget, Technology