Block Coffee

I termed 'Block Coffee' from Block chain technology enabled Coffee industry. 

 The Coffee Board of India has launched a pilot blockchain-based e-marketplace in order to integrate coffee farmers with markets. On 28 Mar, Indian Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MCI) announced the idea to reduce the number of intermediaries between coffee growers and buyers - "bean to coffee".

According to Indian business publication Business Line, the application will initially launch in a pilot phase with a limited number of growers for the next four to five months. Should the test prove successful it will be expanded to all growers in the country. There are over 350,000 coffee growers in India, according to Business Line.

Blockchain has been actively adopted by food producers around the world in a bid to bring more efficiency to their supply chains. Recently, the United States National Pork Board partnered with startup ripe.io to test out a blockchain platform for pork supply chains.

This new platform will purportedly enable the Board to monitor and evaluate sustainability practices, food safety standards, livestock health, and environmental protections.

Apple Card

Yday, Apple announced Apple Card, an innovative, new kind of credit card created by Apple and designed to help customers lead a healthier financial life.

For years, as the iPhone has become ubiquitous and sales have started to slow, Apple has tried to emulate the paradigm-shifting success of the App Store and iTunes before it by barreling its way into TV and film, mobile payments, and news.

But time and again over the last half-decade or so, Apple has run into the hard economic and logistic reality of trying to change industries that are far less malleable than mobile software and music.

Apple Pay may be a bold vision of the future, it’ll likely be years before contactless digital payments become truly mainstream in the US.  Apple’s strategy mirrors that of Amazon.

Visual Studio 2019 Launch

Microsoft is holding a day-long, virtual launch event for the next major version of its developer platform, Visual Studio 2019, on April 2. Microsoft plans to highlight how the 2019 release can improve developer productivity and AI features.  Ref: https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs2019-launch/

VS 2019 includes Microsoft's Visual Studio Live Share coding-collaboration service installed by default. The product features a new start window to help users get coding faster; improved search capabilities; overall performance improvements, Visual Studio IntelliCode AI assistance; better Python virtual and conda support; and support for .NET Core 3.0 projects, including WinForms and WPF, among other features.

Microsoft released a first public preview of Visual Studio 2019 in December 2018; Preview 2 in January 2019; and Preview 3 on February 13, 2019.

If you want to be in person, no worries.  Microsoft announced 212 local events and feel free to reserve your seat at https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs2019-launch/local-events/

Microsoft's annual Build developer conference will be a month after the VS 2019 launch, on May 6 to 8 in Seattle, USA.

Feature Flag Driven Development

With 25 years of industry experience, it is so exciting to sail through the positive transformations of Information Technology (IT). This week blog, I'm going to cover the engineering process in stead of usual technology topic.

On start of my career, Waterfall process was ruling the industry. In the world of waterfall, you will typically see one continuous build that culminates in a single deploy.  After this deploy, you’ll receive feedback and fix some bugs, but you will likely need to restart the process for any major feature releases.

Waterfall matures into Agile, Continuous Delivery, Test Driven, Lean, Feature Flag Driven development process. Diagram depicts Agile vs FDD.

Emerging industry trend is Feature Flag Driven Development (FDD), which is completely aligned with the recent model - "Collaboration". Microsoft is the best role model for this transformation.  They were closed technology company during inception; but promoting strongly on "Collaborative" Open Source model.

Feature flag driven development allows you to quickly release iterations of your features to market, receive feedback, improve, and redeploy.  It allows you to roll out features to small segments of your users in order to mitigate risk all while receiving valuable feedback.  More importantly, your team will converge and collaborate based on real market feedback and make the necessary improvements to drive the product forward.

Leader moves life forward with the sacrifices, who jump in and get their hands dirty actually doing it.  I'm blessed to be part of FDD transformation using my current work assignment.

Ref: https://martinfowler.com/bliki/FeatureToggle.html

Google PhD Fellowship

Google PhD Fellowships directly support graduate students as they pursue their PhD, as well as connect them to a Google Research Mentor.

Google is currently offering Fellowships in Australia, China and East Asia, Europe, Africa, India, the United States and Canada.

If you are interested, feel free to leverage the site at https://scholarship-positions.com/google-phd-fellowship-program-graduate-students/2018/11/30/

30th Anniversary

On March 12, 1989, Tim Berners-Lee had submitted the 'Information Management: A Proposal' to his boss which is celebrated as the day World Wide Web (www).  Today is 30th anniversary of World Wide Web.

Initially, he envisioned as a large hypertext database with typed links namely "Mesh", which helps his colleagues at CERT to share the information amongst multiple computers.

The Web was made public in April 1993.  As post graduate student, still I remember this disruptive year and the related debate with my college friends.

It's popularity started spreading from November with the launch of Mosaic, the first search engine to accept pictures.  It revolutionized the web, making it user friendly.

Mosaic was later replaced by Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, etc.  World recorded 400+ million internet users in 2000.  Look at the growth of "one internet minute" in 2018.

Today, Tim hailed the opportunities the web had created, giving marginalized groups a voice and making daily life easier.  He quoted "If we give up on building a better web now, then the web will not have failed us.  We will have failed the web"

Indian IT

Good weekend read to learn current Indian IT.  The article is about the transformation from the traditional remote resource provider to technology talent hub.

The days where technologists have traditionally delivered on specific requirements driven by the business are long gone. Institutions now understand that technology drives innovation and technology leaders are finding a seat at the decision-making table and partnering closely with business on new solutions and services.

Ref: https://www.cnbctv18.com/views/top-three-myths-about-working-in-financial-services-technology-in-india-2495291.htm

Trimble PULSE

Itz proud moment to announce Trimble PULSE product launch, based on last 2+ years tremendous effort by our team.  Product Ref: https://trimblepulse.com/

Today's News link: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/trimble-expands-pulse-field-management-platform-to-seamlessly-connect-service-equipment-and-fleet-managers-on-a-single-platform-300806419.html

Microsoft Blazor

Blazor, Microsoft’s experimental framework that brings C# into the browser, is the missing piece in the C# puzzle. Today, a C# programmer can write desktop, server-side Web, cloud, phone, tablet, watch, TV and IoT applications. Blazor completes the puzzle, allowing a C# developer to share code and business logic right into the user’s browser. This is a powerful ability and a gigantic productivity improvement for C# developers.

It holds the promise of modern single-page applications, combined with the ability to use C# and its vast base-class library. Blazor takes C# development to a new level. It’s the final piece necessary to make the language a full-stack development tool. It will have all the power of the popular JavaScript frameworks, but based on the familiar languages, APIs and tooling of the Microsoft .NET Framework.

If you come from a traditional Microsoft background and are familiar with ASP.NET Web Forms or Model-View-Controller (MVC), getting up to speed on Blazor is surprisingly easy, especially when compared to the mountain a Microsoft developer must climb to gain the equivalent knowledge in a JavaScript framework such as Angular or React.

It’s important to understand that Blazor runs completely inside the browser. Once a Blazor app is compiled, it’s essentially a set of files that gets loaded into the browser and runs. Unlike traditional ASP.NET applications, there’s no need for anything special on the back end to serve it. A Blazor site can be served by any Web server on any platform. As for clients, any browser that supports the WebAssembly standard supports Blazor. That includes all the major browsers shipping today.

When running in the browser, an application isn’t really all that useful without access to external data and services. Just like standard JavaScript single-page applications, Blazor apps access Web services using HTTP REST APIs. Those APIs can be created using Microsoft tools, such as Web API, or any technology that can present an HTTP REST endpoint. In this article, I’m going to demonstrate the ability of a Blazor app to call freely available Web services on the Web.