Arguing for training resource is something that we really shouldn’t have to spend too much time doing. This is a fast moving industry with new technologies, concepts and business practices seemingly emerging every other week. If we don’t keep ourselves abreast of these changes and their potential impact on our business operations then who else will? But, the realities are that new technology will get released after training budgets have been agreed and then we find ourselves spending valuable time on the cost-benefits rather than concentrating on educating and equipping our staff/teams and bringing insights & knowledge to the wider business.

Now, you’re probably asking yourselves what learning iPhone programming has to do with Advertising Operations, after all it’s not like you’re looking for seasoned C++ developers when recruiting a new Trafficker or requiring your Campaign Managers to have a Degree in statistical methodologies. But my argument has always been that AdOps lies at that intersection of Technology/Development, Advertising Theory, Statistics/Analytics and Business Development. When new technology rears and the business want to know how to leverage advertising on it then we’re the ‘go-to’ people. When there is no-one else in the company who can give a view on some latest gadget or have an opinion on how such technologies can be brought under the wider advertising strategies… you need to speak to AdOps. Keeping abreast of technological change is second nature for AdOps people, if your business doesn’t have someone with AdOps experience who is consulting with your Business Development group then you’re missing a trick.

This isn’t about getting your staff to become iOS developers, it’s about educating them to understand how these devices work in order that they are then able to advise how best to implement advertising technologies.
The more your staff are empowered by this knowledge and understand how such systems work, then the easier it will be when managing the impact of their uptake by your customers. Ultimately this should feed into the overall approach your company takes in reacting rapidly to such huge changes in the technology landcape.

All of the following courses contain between 10 and 13 videos each of which last approx 1-2hrs and will require access to a Mac running Xcode.

iPhone Application Development [Stanford]
http://itunes.apple.com/itunes-u/iphone-application-development/id384233225#ls=1

Developing Apps for iOS [Stanford]
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=395631522

iPhone Application programming [RWTH Aachen]
http://itunes.apple.com/itunes-u/iphone-application-programming/id390395304

Advanced iPhone Development [Madison Area Technical College]
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=407243032

But what has this to do with Advertising Operations? Well, I feel the similarities occur when thinking about building scalable & highly redundant/available systems (as they say themselves, they value availability over consistency). There’s quite a deep dive into their decision about using Cassandra which I found insightful and educational and well worth trying to get to grips with as it’s becoming increasingly clear that the whole NoSQL field (certainly in so far as the amount of data we are able to generate within online-advertising systems) has many benefits over traditional DB systems.

They position it as jQuery for video and the little time I’ve had to play with it would certainly support this notion. With the recent announcement from Adobe of their discontinued development of Mobile Flash this comes at a very opportune time. It’s OpenSource and fully extensible with it’s own plugin system (anyone fancy working on VAST support?) which I think will be one of it’s biggest benefits. I’ve got high-hopes for this project, anything that can level the playing field in HTML5 especially in video is to be applauded.

Link: http://mozillapopcorn.org/

I’ve got to be honest and say we’ve never run a Flash based mobile ad, so part of me is thinking that this isn’t going to affect us that much, however, it does mean those developers who were developing products across all three platforms now only have to worry about two. This, we can only hope equates to better time-to-market, reduced testing times and hopefully less complex development cycles.

Importantly it now signifies to us where we need to focus our product attention on development. So, the question is, do you have the requisite skills in your team (and personally) to support these technologies? If you don’t are there others in your wider organisation who do and if they’re not there either how will you ensure you meet these future requirements & needs of your advertisers & agencies?

CNet have a video article covering the news:

Here’s some stories (apologies if some of them are a bit sycophantic about Apple).
Wired: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/11/adobe-mobile-flash-dead/
Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/nov/09/adobe-flash-mobile-dead
LA Times: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/11/adobe-to-end-mobile-flash-plug-in-development.html

http://placekitten.com/300/250	http://placekitten.com/300/600

Link: http://placekitten.com

Joshua Hirsch, Big Spaceship
Marc Jensen, Space150
Ricardo Cabello, Freelancer
Aaron McGuire, Evolution Bureau
Markus Persson, Mojang AB
Evan Stark, Domani Studios
Scott Prindle, Crispin Porter + Bogusky
John Mayo-Smith, R/GA
Dave Riegler, TBWA\Chiat\Day
Keith Butters, The Barbarian Group

Link: http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/top-10-technologists-135797.

VIDEO: OpenRTB Roundtable Discussion from DataXu on Vimeo.

Some additional features I’d like to see are:

• Search based filtering. Many sites will fire off a couple of hundred urls in a single page load, drilling down through the mess to those specific urls you’re looking for would be easier with some sort of filtering. httpWatch has probably the best filtering I’ve seen on any similar tool to date, I couldn’t see any search functions at all
• On the timeline I’d like to see the a clearer indication of the various aspects of each connection eg; have the DNS lookup in one colour, connection in another, first-byte download in another etc. Whilst this is available if you go into each call/line-item it would be nice to have the option to customise this output.
• It would be great to have the ability to export the data in different formats eg; CSV.
• Display Flash objects in the preview tab. Currently it renders GIF, JPG PNG etc, it would be nice to have the Flash object rendered as well.
• Display any video data eg; dimensions, codec, audio/video bitrates etc.
• Non HTTP traffic such as streaming services, eg; RTMP, RTMPT, RTMPE, RTSP & MMS

It’s certainly a step in the right direction and I’m most grateful for this latest addition to Chrome. My continued favourite tool is httpWatch, not only does it provide excellent filtering/search capabilites but genrally makes tracing HTTP calls a little easier than the curent Google Developer Toolbar does. However, a team licence (that’s four licences) for httpWatch will set you back just under £1000.

Further Information:
http://code.google.com/chrome/devtools/docs/network.html

Cloud Four has an article on iPad orientation detection through CSS here:
http://www.cloudfour.com/ipad-orientation-css/
They supply an example of their techniques as well:
http://www.cloudfour.com/ipad-css/

NCZOnline – iPad web development tips:
Amongst other topics covered this article deals with the all important: User-agent string, iPad detection through Javascript as well as ways to ascertain screen dimensions and orientation:
http://www.nczonline.net/blog/2010/04/06/ipad-web-development-tips/

Smashing Magazine has porovided some well thought out issues to consider when starting out developing web-pages for the iPad & iPhone:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/05/28/web-development-for-the-iphone-and-ipad-getting-started/

HTMLGoodies has an article detailing more in-depth approaches to orientation on the iPad & iPhone:
Detect and Set the iPhone/iPad’s Viewport/Orientation Using JavaScript, CSS & MetaTags

Using CSS to handle Orientation on the iPad:
So, the upside is that this is a lot easier than you might think. WebKit/Safari supports the CSS media query declarations based on orientation. You can simply specify two CSS files which contain the layouts for portrait and landscape and place the following two lines in your pages HEAD tag.

<link rel="stylesheet" media="all and (orientation:portrait)" href="portrait.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" media="all and (orientation:landscape)" href="landscape.css">

And then simply amend the layout for each orientation accordingly, in the example below they use it to hide/show a H1 tag accordingly. Here’s a working example:
http://www.cloudfour.com/ipad-css/.

http://www.w3.org/TR/mwabp/

1. Use Cookies Sparingly
2. Use Appropriate Client-Side Storage Technologies for Local Data
3. Replicate Local Data
4. Do not Execute Unescaped or Untrusted JSON data
5. Ensure the User is Informed About Use of Personal and Device Information
6. Enable Automatic Sign-in
7. Use Transfer Compression
8. Minimize Application and Data Size
9. Avoid Redirects
10. Optimize Network Requests
11. Minimize External Resources
12. Aggregate Static Images into a Single Composite Resource (Sprites)
13. Include Background Images Inline in CSS Style Sheets
14. Cache Resources By Fingerprinting Resource References
15. Cache AJAX Data
16. Do not Send Cookie Information Unnecessarily
17. Keep DOM Size Reasonable
18. Optimize For Application Start-up Time
19. Minimize Perceived Latency
20. Design for Multiple Interaction Methods
21. Preserve Focus on Dynamic Page Updates
22. Use Fragment IDs to Drive Application View
23. Make Telephone Numbers “Click-to-Call”
24. Ensure Paragraph Text Flows
25. Ensure Consistency Of State Between Devices
26. Consider Mobile Specific Technologies for Initiating Web Applications
27. Use Meta Viewport Element To Identify Desired Screen Size
28. Prefer Server-side Detection Where Possible
29. Use Client-side Detection When Necessary
30. Use Device Classification to Simplify Content Adaptation
31. Support a non-JavaScript Variant if Appropriate
32. Offer Users a Choice of Interfaces
33. Consider Use Of Canvas Element or SVG For Dynamic Graphics
34. Inform the User About Automatic Network Access
35. Provide Sufficient Means to Control Automatic Network Access

http://www.w3.org/TR/mwabp/