Jason's Log

WTF: GoDaddy.com Tech Support says AJAX requires Windows

Here is a head scratcher for you:

While investigating a customer-reported problem with one of Altos Research's WordPress Plugin, I had sent off a technical support request to GoDaddy.com's support team. The problem was being caused by HTTP 404 status codes being returned by server-side PHP scripts generating JSON-formatted output. This is a fairly typical thing for a PHP script to do as part of a modern AJAX-powered web application, and our WordPress plugin is one of those.

After Googling around a bit, I did come across another developer who'd experienced similar problems with a GoDaddy.com hosted application, as described in this StackOverflow.com question:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/948116/ajax-404-with-results-using-buddypress

The solution is fairly simple, as it turns out (you must manually set an HTTP status code value of '200'). 

But before I'd come across this answer, I had decided to submit a description of the problem using the GoDaddy.com Technical Support form. About 5 hours later, I received the following answer:

"Ajax requires a Windows operating system; the domain welcomehomenwi.com is on a Linux server.  To switch the operating system of your hosting account, please use the following instructions"

Huh? AJAX in the GoDaddy.com environment requires that you switch from a Linux-based host to a WIndows server? In either case, the WordPress plugin problem has been fixed, and it didn't require that our customer switch their hosting service to a Windows server. Sheesh.

Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech mp3 Download

For reasons I cannot quite explain, finding a downloadable mp3 recording of Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech proved rather difficult. I did finally manage to track down a good quality recording, and have made it available as an mp3 download here:

Obama-nobel-prize-acceptance-speech.mp3

If you haven't already heard it, the speech is worth a read/view/listen. If anything, throw the mp3 on your audio player and give it a listen during your commute to and from work. In the speech, Obama makes a compelling argument for the inevitability of war, for the necessity of war and for the moral justification of war. That is not a very comfortable argument to make while accepting an award with the word 'Peace' in the title.

The iPhone App Store and the Lament of the Mobile App Developer

Apple has taken many well deserved punches for the opacity of the iPhone App Store approval process. However, Apple deserves major credit for finally breaking the suffocating control of the mobile service provider over the set applications that can be installed on a mobile device.

In my three years as an engineering manager at Motorola's Mobile Devices business unit, I was approached dozens of times by energetic mobile application entrepreneurs who all asked the same question:

"How do I get my application onto your phones?"

The only answer available at the time was:

"Talk to the mobile network operators (carriers). You'll need to negotiate the pre-installation of your application with each operator for each device they support. One at a time. It will be impossibly hard and likely to fail, so you should probably give up now."

At the time, I had no useful advice on how they could achieve the widespread distribution their business plan depended on. It was depressing.

I am now convinced that Apple and the iPhone App Store have finally cracked that nut. This article from the NYTimes triggered my change in attitude:

To quote:

"Still, the App Store is markedly better than the alternative, says Peter Farago, a marketing executive at Flurry, a mobile analytics company in San Francisco. Gone are the days when mobile developers had to negotiate with major telecommunications companies if they had any hopes of publishing their applications on a mobile phone.

“It took six to nine months to build a relationship with a carrier, maybe a quarter-million to get the infrastructure built, and the company took 50 percent or more from each dollar,” Mr. Farago says, a process that limited access to mobile platforms. “Apple has helped create a much healthier middle class of developers and expanded the pie for everyone.”

This is indeed a watershed period for the developer of mobile applications. The break between carrier and application control (AT&T + iPhone) now has the momentum. We already see signs of this spreading from carrier to carrier (Verizon, Sprint) and platform to platform (Android, WebOS, Blackberry).

Finally, a nice dose of free (free as in speech) in the world of mobile devices.