In the last year, I have been amazed at the speed for which mobile technology has evolved. While consumers have quickly adopted the current generation of smartphones, I would never have guessed that large enterprise organizations would start investing so quickly in technology that is still in the upwards curve for maturity. Software developers have jumped in head first to develop amazing tools that create true utility in smart phones.

One year ago the talk was Blackberry vs iPhone, with Android and Palm building momentum. Now it is iPhone vs a collection of Android enabled devices, with Palm now completely out of the picture, Blackberry barely newsworthy, and Microsoft yet to jump into the mix. With Android and Microsoft tablets on their way, mobile carriers, device makers, and platform developers will compete for their position as a market leaders while stabilizing the marketplace for content providers and consumers.

The joke about cutting edge technology today being obsolete tomorrow is a mantra that we have truly accepted...

SMART PHONE LEADERSHIP

Apple is still a clear market leader.. They were first to market and still have a well designed, stable product (setting aside the antenna issue) with the largest pool of quality content. 1.5 million units in a day without anyone even touching the product is undeniable success. They develop the hardware and operating system, and have a level of control over content and the developer community. Like it or not, this is a solid business model, especially when it is complimented amazing design, marketing, and PR buzz.

Google is relying on shorter release cycles and innovation among hardware providers to catch up and compete with Apple. It seems that every week there is a new Android enabled device crammed with more computing power than the predecessor. I still believe the X-factor for Google is an overwhelming presence on the web that Apple does not have. How that will play out in the long run is to be seen. Though unlikely, Adobe Flash could be another interesting play if mobile flash player 10.1 succeeds... We know Apple will never support it so it can be a clear differentiator, though I don't think normal consumers care as much as technologists.

RIM / Blackberry still has a huge market share with organizations that bought into the blackberry server solution and consumers who have never picked up an iPhone or Android and converted. While they have the hardware and platform to be competitive, I still wonder if they will ever attract enough developers to compete with Apple and Android enabled phones. Developers will ultimately toward money so if there is not a strong market for Blackberry apps, it could lead to trouble.

Microsoft is a sleeping giant in the mobile space, and with Windows powering most desktops, and a huge development and partner ecosystem, it would be ill advised to write them off as a contender that could significantly impact the future of mobile computing.

MOBILE REVOLUTION
The mobile revolution is here with the same fierce competitive and creative buzz that we saw in the 90s. An incredible shift in focus to mobility by all media outlets is creating a lot of pressure on large software providers to prove shareholders and customers that they have a sound mobile strategy.

At no point in history have we had our finger on the pulse on technological advancements as close as we do with mobility. The major technology players involved are PR magnets whom consumers have strong emotional ties to. That coupled with a 24 hour, perpetual, social media blitz has create a virtual spotlight on software and hardware companies.

Even as a small software vendor focused on desktop software, our software solutions will ultimately need to need to compliment various mobile integration points or we will be left behind. I am very excited to move in this direction, as I have been scheming and thinking for a long time about various mobile business solutions. I would love to hear your opinions and feelings on this subject. We can all come back in mid 2011 and see how much the landscape changes and where all of the pieces fall.

I recently had a requirement to show a month over month change by percentage in an Xcelsius chart. As you may have found out, there is no way to customize the tooltip labels within Xcelsius and SAP Crystal Dashboard Design charts. To fill in the requirement, I came up with a interesting workaround to use a second chart, with the new chart labels feature from SP3 to display month over month changes.

Pros- You can get closer than prior versions of Xcelsius to get what customers ask for in charting with all other functionality like ignore end blanks intact

Cons- I have to insert a second chart and you can only display one value.

In a perfect world, I would be granted with 100% control over what data I display in Xcelsius chart tooltips. That way I can show the following for any bar:

• Bar value the
• X-Axis label
• Series name
• Month over month change both as a value and as a %
• Change the color of the % change based on pre-determined alert thresholds

All things considered, if you only have a few charts in your dashboard this workaround is not too bad, and looks great.

Here are a few notes in how to re-produce this functionality.

Configure the first chart

1. Insert the first chart which will be the primary chart that your user will view
2. Bind the data, axis labels, series name, etc
3. In Appearance>Axis tab, hide the minor and major gridlines
4. Delete the title and sub-title. Since you will overlay 2 charts on top of each other, you don’t want to worry about the titles. Instead you can use labels.
5. On Appearance>Layout> Check hide chart background

Configure the second chart

1. Copy and paste the first chart
2. Change the X-Axis labels to the % delta for month over month. If you complete this step and thought I made a typo, I did mean the X Axis labels and not the values. What you want to end up with is a second chart where the bars are identical, but the x axis labels are percentage values. I know it does not sound correct, but the magic will happen in the next few steps.
3. Go to Appearance Tab > Text
4. Hide the horizontal axis lables.
5. Check “Data Labels” to display the data labels.
6. While on the same tab go down an un-check “Value” and check “Category Label”
   
7. Now you should see the percentage values.
8. Align the two charts on top of each other using the lower left vertical and horizontal axis points so they sit right on top of each other
9. Re-size you second chart’s height so the vertical axis labels sit right on top of each other
10. I usually go back and make the second chart’s vertical axis lables white. This way I don’t get any odd shadows if it is off by a few pixels.
11. Move the second chart behind the first and you are done!!!

While intelligent mobile devices now serve as an on the go hub, it will soon serve as a gateway to interact with physical space in a way we have only dreamed of until the last few years.

For those of you who have never heard of augmented reality, it is simply defined as a view of the physical world augmented by digital information. One of my favorite basic examples is the Yelp Monocle view for iPhone

This view uses plots restaurants and bars relative to your location and direction that you are pointing with your iphone camera.

I see augmented reality as the future for delivering real utility to mobile location awareness. We have not even scratched the surface for what the implications will be as we start to digitalize physical space but I am very excited about the opportunities that it will generate for businesses, consumers, and technologists.

Mobile devices today are in-adequate to address the true potential of augmented reality so it will be very exciting to see what vendors take the lead to re-think the human-computer interface and furthermore how it will enable us to expand our capacity to consume location-based information.

I am truly fascinated by this topic, so if you have any cool augmented reality apps or ideas I would love to see them.

As many of you know by now, SAP has re-branded Xcelsius into SAP Crystal Dashboard Design. As expected there is some confusion for customers who have long used the technology with or without BusinessObjects integration. The name change at this point is a pure marketing play and introduces no changes to the integrated development environment at this point. Below, I have provided a list of the new product names and their previous equivalent.

Xcelsius Present is now SAP Crystal Presentation Design
This version has no connectivity options and only exports to PPT, PDF, DOC, ect.. but no export to SWF option.

Xcelsius Engage is now SAP Crystal Dashboard Design Personal Edition
This version has connectivity but with build-in restraints limiting you to 2 connections.

Xcelsius Engage Server is no longer sold by SAP, but there is a similar offering offered by the guys at Flynet called Flynet Xcelsius Server 2010
This version enables unlimited connections with a concurrent access licensing for viewing runtime SWFs

Xcelsius Enterprise which previosly was sold with viewer licenses is now SAP Crystal Dashboard Design Departmental Edition and has viewer licenses called SAP Crystal Dashboard Viewing options.
This comes with the other connectivity and portal integration connections.

I believe that all of these versions are designed for use outside of BusinessObjects. I am sure there is a different SKU for BusinessObjects customers so if anyone wants to help fill in those gaps let me know.

I usually stay out of licensing matters on my blog, but there have been so many emails and phone calls in the last two weeks, I wanted to get this up for me to reference. I can't comment on any pricing since it is subject to change but hopefully this will help you make sense of these changes. Feel free to ask any questions and I will do my best to get the correct information.

Adobe recently released the heavily anticipated Flash Player 10.1. This release had a lot of attention which I believe may speed up the adoption rate in the short term. This is important for Xcelsius developers because there are a few items that we have found that may impact your deployments. If you are interested, here is some additional information about Flash Player 10.

PowerPoint and Flash Player 10.1- If you embed an Xcelsius SWF inside PowerPoint, it only will work on your own PC and not on machines with previous versions of Flash Player. PowerPoint uses an ActiveX controller to run Flash player and for some reason version 10.1 will not render content from previous versions of Flash player in PPT. The symptom is a PPT slide that displays as a white box during presentation mode. If you right click on the object, you can still see the Flash Player dialog box, but no content. There are two known solutions:

1: Do not embed your SWFs in PPT
2: Revert back to Flash player 10.0.x

SWF Performance and Flash Player 10.1- I have not noticed any real performance gains in Flash Player 10.1 and Xcelsius. A new feature with Flash Player 10.1 improves memory and power usage, so if you have large SWF files greater than 2 MB, there is a chance that clients running Flash player 10.1 may not run anymore.

If you experience any more issues or gains from Flash Player 10.1, let me know and I will add them to the post. For those of you who want to revert back without digging through the Adobe web site, I have provided the download here: Download Flash Player 10.0