Alexey Zimarev's blog

Globalstar launch live from Baikonur

You can watch the Globalstar launch of new six second generation satellites live from Baikonur cosmodrome, starting at 02:07 UTC 13/07/2011

http://www.videocorner.tv/videocorner2/live_flv/index.php?langue=en

Globalstar launch - 13 July

Globalstar second launch of six new satellites is now planned for 13 July. Countdown started, 17 hours still to go from this moment.

Globalstar launch posponed

Soyuz launch with Globalstar second-generation satellites is postponed

July 11, 2011 – Soyuz Flight ST23

Today’s launch of six Globalstar second-generation satellites was postponed following the countdown’s interruption prior to liftoff of the Soyuz vehicle from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

via www.arianespace.com

Although you don't find it on Globalstar web site, their second generation constellation second launch, planned for today 11 June 2011, has been posponed due to technical issues with the launch vehicle. New date is still to be announced.

Globalstar launch date announced - 11 July

GO FOR LAUNCH - GLOBALSTAR ANNOUNCES LAUNCH DATE FOR SIX NEW SECOND-GENERATON SATELLITESFueling of satellites and mating with the upper stage dispenser of the Soyuz launch vehicle now completeCovington, LA. , June 22 2011- Globalstar, Inc. (NASDAQ:GSAT), a leading provider of mobile satellite voice and data services to businesses, government, and recreational consumers today announced that the second launch of six new Globalstar satellites is scheduled for July 11, 2011 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The Company also announced that engineers and technicians from launch services provider Arianespace and satellite manufacturer Thales Alenia Space have completed fueling of the satellites and all six spacecraft have now been mated to the upper stage dispenser of the Soyuz launch vehicle.

via www.globalstar.com

Looks like Globalstar is finally going to deploy their second batch of satellites bringing the total number of second generation devices to twelve. Hopefully weæll see their two-way voice fully back on the market by the end of this year. However a lot of time passed by since the service level drastically degraded due to issues with their first generation satellites and mobile networks got incredible progress during those years (2007-2011). If Globalstar will not offer something new like fast and affordable satellite internet, they could probably get difficulties building up a loyal client base once again.

Skype’s iPad app ‘coming soon’ - or not so soon?

A dedicated Skype app for Apple’s iPad is on its way, bringing along with it the company’s popular voice over Internet phone service and video chatting.

via www.appolicious.com

Now the whole Internet is full of this news and in many Skype for iPad is called a "killer app for iPad" that seriously threatens Apple's FaceTime position even for Mac users since most of them use Skype anyway. On some news sites I have even seen that "it will appear in Appstore today" meaning 28th of July. So, we are one day ahead and there's still no sign of dedicated Skype for iPad in iTunes. This raises the question again how fast/slow Apple approved applications in their store if it somehow intersects or get in conflict with their business interests. But I now have to admit that Skype could now suffer from what they did many times their selves. Using their closeness and proprietary developer programs, they managed to close Skype support in Fring and now are killing Skype for Asterisk.

I don't really wish that Skype for iPad will not be approved by Apple for iTunes. But I wish Skype (or should I now say Microsoft) would learn something from this delay. However I have to admin the chance of this is too small...

Nokia: No Qt For Windows Phone 7 - AppScout

Bad news for developers who are using Qt for their apps for Symbian and MeeGo platform. When Nokia is releasing N9 it supposedly also expects some nice applications to come to Ovi store for this phone but at the same time there are no promises of new high-end devices on this platform. This strategy seems to be very disruptive for the Nokia targeted developers. I don't really see who is winning from this - the only party that seem to get any profit, even not materialized, is Microsoft. Giving free tooling away for mobile developers, it would anyhow gather new developers on their dead-end Silverlight platform that seems to be giving up in competition with HTML5, especially looking at the Windows 8 features set.

Nokia: No Qt For Windows Phone 7 - AppScout.

Qt Creator 2.2 RC released

Since the beta release four weeks ago we were getting all hands on finding and squishing all these bugs that start nesting in a piece of software between two releases. Oh, yeah, and spring has finally arrived here, giving us Berliners sunshine at 20 degrees celsius this week . The beta release was already feature complete, so if you missed that one and are interested in what is new, the Qt Creator 2.2 beta release blog still gives a good overview. Most notable bug fixes since the beta were (from my view) the lots of fixes for Qt Creator’s ABI detection, but there have been many more, not less important ones (e.g. for QML debugging, Qt Quick designer, Maemo development, and more).

via labs.qt.nokia.com

How to Find In-House Experts at Big Companies - WSJ.com

How to Find In-House Experts at Big Companies - WSJ.com

Seems that socializing internal communications in enterprise is still under question and need to be advocated. Basically just a few worldwide enterprises introduce socializing in their intranets although there's a positive trend there.

Why they don’t hire .NET programmers « Expensify Blog

It was rather entertaining to read this article on in ExpensifyBlog

CEO Friday: Why we don’t hire .NET programmers « Expensify Blog.

As many mentioned, there are obvious mistakes and misinterpretations in this article, which is covered by later "updates" that I found at the bottom. My personal opinion is that CEO even with perfect technical background should touch this subject with extreme care or not touch this at all since the line where it comes from objective to subjective, from experience to judgement, from expert valuation to show incompetence is very thin. .NET is one of the most dynamic development platforms now days targeting all aspects of technical solutions for every kind of business. Mentioning the fact that most of startups don't use it cannot be an argument. The explanation of this sis very obvious at least for me - most startups are not started by extremely experienced tech-savvys and most of them just can do PHP because it delivers results fast and learning curve for it is very comfortable. If you know nothing about Web programming, you can get good results in PHP within couple of weeks. With .NET you just can't do it, at least if you want to apply the technology in a right way. I could perfectly imagine some startup started by couple of smart guys having a brilliant idea but they are not programmers. So they get a PHP book or just read a manual because everybody says it's easy. They start doing it and it delivers - that what is most important in this kind of situation. And when you have 75% of your project done in PHP you go beta or show it to an investor, which gives you the money and you can hire someone to help you - even there would you switch the platform? In 99% the answer is no. It's just not efficient and at this stage the owner anyway still participate in the development. This is pretty normal. But this doesn't make PHP the best platform and doesn't make PHP developers any better than .NET or any other developers. There are thousands of extremely complicated, sophisticated platforms for banks, trading, investments, healthcare, even television over Internet, all created on .NET. You can't even see it most of the time because for example MVC-based solutions don't open their .NET background on the first look and this is exactly where the eye of beholder is after.

So my humble conclusion for that article is that, unfortunately, judgmental and subjective opinions of higher management is unfortunately still prevailing in this reality even when it has no real ground except rumors and own limited experience. 

Monday edit: Skip my post and read this one instead.  It says the same thing, but less offensively.  (Or, rather, more offensively to Facebook and Google employees, less offensive to .NET developers, though the underlying message is the same.)

And this "update" is also cheating. The article by Matt Swanson mentioned there is much more constructive. It is not about the technology or anything like that. It is between the ever lasting question some people ask themselves at certain period of their lives - can I do something on my own or I just go on payroll and spend my whole life working for a company? Most of the people do it since it is very common and natural. Other people start doing something in between - project based work for many clients, freelancing and contracting. And the smallest number of people who feel enterpreneurship spirit in them start their own ventures. But bloody hell, there's not a word about what programming language they use!!!

OpenNTF - Source Control Enablement for Designer

This is basically what I was waiting for a long time.

OpenNTF - Source Control Enablement for Designer

I missed the release date but it is finally there and I am sure it will make many Domino developers happy since they will be able to use their favorite version control system with Domino applications. 

 

Great job, Maureen Leland, Ishfak Bhagat, Niklas Heidloff!