Yesterday Microsoft launched a new product under Azure services: Azure Mobile. It is a cloud backend for mobile apps. This is a huge leap forward in Microsoft developer tools and cloud+mobile iteration in the company. Maybe someday, it will be language-independent and have SDKs for iOS, Android, Windows Phone. It is just like Parse.com. So things are getting crazy at backend-as-a-service (BaaS) market.

But is it always viable to use a BaaS for your app or startup? What are pros ad cons?

Well, that depends on the scale you’re aiming for.

If you are aiming to be a mobile startup that is going to be around in the market for a few months or at most one and a half years, then BaaS is a good option. The main reason is, you don’t want to buy a Linux VPS, write backend code (in Ruby, Python, Java whatever), don’t want do choose a DB (mysql, pgsql, mongo etc) and don’t want to configure a permanent domain and URLs for your communication endpoints.

These are considerably messy tasks. Most of the backend-as-a-service providers promote several points on their homepages:

• Ease of use
• Rapid prototyping
• Off-the-shelf mobile SDKs
• Data security

If you would evaluate these features in terms of your needs, you’ll see that they are aimed mostly for small-scale apps. No serious apps rely on BaaS providers and probably they won’t in the near future. Even the security and privacy of services like EC2 (and therefore Dropbox) are questionable these days, so you wouldn’t expect large-scale apps to rely on some middleware service. If you are doing serious mobile development, then you won’t need BaaS mobile SDK and don’t need rapid prototyping etc. Read More →

Some people are eager to give away their knowledge and experience –for free . They answer questions on Stack Overflow, Quora, they publish free software on GitHub, they inspire people with their designs on Dribbble, they share awesome links on Hacker News, they write blog posts and so on. Sure thing, there is a return of their effort and there should be. Don’t you see how much you learn from other people? Read More →

Guys at Fleksy did an amazing job creating a text input method that predicts and corrects your typos very successfully. I just blindfolded myself to write a few sentences using that app and it was quite amazing. I can’t imagine how helpful that might be for visually impaired people. Only iOS app available at the moment but I believe soon this will also be on Android. You should better try this out soon. Read More →

Bir süre önce hobi amaçlı bir istatistik çıkarmak için gov.tr uzantılı domainlerin listesine ihtiyaç duydum ve doğal olarak bulamadım. Ardından NIC.TR‘den Bilgi Edinme Kanunu başvuru formunu doldurup listeyi rica ettim. Kendileri, güvenlik gerekçesi ile böyle bir listenin herhangi bir kişi veya kurum ile paylaşılmadığını söylediler. Ben de kişisel gerekçelerim ile bu listeyi herkesle paylaşmak istedim. Bir saatimi ayırıp Python’da bir crawler yazdım ve çalışmaya bıraktım. Sonuç olarak 3158 gov.tr alan adı keşfedebildim. Read More →

AWS has released a cheaper alternative to S3 cloud storage service for upload once & download rarely use case, like backups and archives. I have 1 TB of personal backups that I keep on a single external HDD personal photos and music collection – which you upload once and probably won’t download again. (And I believe many people also have such backup archives.) There is no such backup product in the market. Read More →

Çok zor iş… Kendini dünya klasmanında teknoloji geliştiriyor sanan firmalar düşük maaşlar karşılığında harikalar yaratabilecek yazılımcılar arıyorlar. Uzun çalışma saatleri, sürekli değişen iş tanımı, yazılımcı her an başka projeye kaydırılabiliyor, maaşlar yerlerde sürünüyor. Dünyanın hiçbir yerinde zaten hiçbir çalışan (employee) şirkete kazandırdığı parayı maaş olarak almaz. Ufak bir örnek: Bir çalışandan yılda edilen kar: Amazon=$15k, Yahoo=$72k, Google=$224k, Microsoft=$242k, Facebook=$425k, Apple=$600k Fakat üzülerek söylüyorum, Türkiye’de internet sektöründeki işverenler üç kuruşa yazılımcının suyunu çıkarana kadar çalıştırıyorlar. Read More →

Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 are coming out this fall. Many developers are rushing into Windows 8 apps development. It seems like a gold mine, a big market for developers with hundreds of millions of PCs are going to install W8.

Is that really the case? Should iOS/Android developers rush to this new platform. At this point app developers may ask these three questions:

• How large is the user base?
• How likely is to get downloaded? Is there a competition?
• Would developing apps be profitable? (return of investment)

No doubt, in one or two years, there will be hundreds of millions of W8 PCs and tablets on the market. This is a huge potential Microsoft achieved a decade ago. And no doubt, it will be much successful than Windows Phone 7. Read More →

I’m creating software for 6 years in real terms. I created many end-user services on the web, I have apps on Android Market, iOS App Store and Windows Phone Marketplace. I didn’t sell any of it. I didn’t make any money out of something I coded. Not even a single dime. Selling stuff is a whole different concept. While doing so, the way you create, analyze, and promote your product is way different than doing hobby projects. Read More →