Henning von Vogelsang has consulted with YVOD for years. He recently had this to say about Apple’s iPhone.
—-
Thinking about Apple’s decision to release no ‘true’ SDK but supporting the use of Safari on the device, I am thinking about YVOD’s future. This opens a whole new set of interesting opportunities for you.
Say the iPhone isn’t the failure, but a huge success. What this will mean for Palm, Windows Mobile, Nokia and Sony Ericsson using Symbian, is easy to foresee. They will want to create a similarly smooth experience, particularly when browsing websites. The web applications that run on iPhones will run on those devices too, as soon as they get their act together and release browser versions that provide a true Web experience. Right now you get the real Web only with high-end Windows Mobile and some Nokia devices, like the Nokia N95 or the E61. Those phones have a browser built in that supports Javascript, AJAX and the stuff that will make an iPhone app cool.
I am thinking, if YVOD finds developers who can do AJAX, use the Yahoo! UI library, the Google developers library and who *get* what makes an iPhone experience, he could develop web applications and create a new space for his services.
All you need for this are two things. One, you need someone who’s good at XHTML, CSS and AJAX. Two, you need great ideas that are based on what people want, not what you want. With the e-commerce track, you’ve been following something you wanted to sell because you were capable of offering it. With YVOD programmers working on your backend you were able to offer the tools for online sales, but it wasn’t exactly the biggest market and it still is hard to pull off. The e-commerce market is overcrowded with solutions that come cheaper, are customizable and simply work.
While YVOD has been focusing on L.A.M.P. (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl/PHP/Python/Ruby) the world has moved on with applications that can be implemented fast and are based on the user experience. Ideas get realized quickly because tools like Ruby make it easy to implement features. Granted, this is for the lack of durability and scalability. You explained this to me a lot of times. I also don’t think CGI and Perl are dead horses. All I’m saying is “look what’s happening here”…
—-
Good points all. Thank you.
90+% of of YVOD’s energies are spent implementing Open Source solutions that we have not built. Email, WordPress, MediaWiki, Gallery2, etc. We have been VERY successful as Apple Authorized Business Agents and already have over a dozen orders for the iPhone. Not a week goes by that someone does not request another Mac of some kind or hourly support for Macs we have sold them.
We do not build Macs. We do not build blogs. We help people USE them. YVOD is a service company. Our service is building you the best website for your needs at the lowest cost. All our solutions scale… even if that means we implement different technology as you scale up.
I am sure you would be surprised with how much L.A.M.P. (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl/PHP/Python/Ruby) foundation support is required to keep these solutions running smoothly. Our programmers have more work than ever… and the vast majority of it is not creating customized code for YVOD.
PS: Funny you should mention the Yahoo! Libraries. I have a weekly foosball game at Place Pigalle with one of the people who maintains them and last we we were joined by another developer who works for Google doing similar stuff. They will both be thrilled to know you agree with their visions about the future of the web =)