Archive for general category:
Product Managers Should Know How to Write Code
I’ve been absent for a while, not sure if this tweet from Chet was related to my silence, but if it was, I have an excuse.
Paul and I just returned from Austin and SXSWi, which ran March 12-16.
For those unfamiliar, SXSW is comprised of three festivals: film, music and interactive. It began in 1987 as [...]
Say it Ain’t So Rich, a Palm Pre?
Rich (@rmanalan), a borderline Apple fanboi, told me just weeks ago when I was contemplating my iPhone dilemma, that he’d never give up his iPhone. They’d have to pry it from his cold, dead fingers.
Apparently, Rich died, and his alien leaders haven’t done their homework because he told me yesterday he had given his iPhone to [...]
Fourface Exposes New Interface Paradigms
Thanks to a tweet from the @foursquare team and a post from TechCrunch, I have a new app for checking in to foursquare, Fourface.
Yeah, I know foursquare and location generally have been getting a lot of ink here and other place. Get used to it though because heading into SXSW later this week, location is [...]
Is Simple Viable In Enterprise Land?
The tradeoff between simplicity and features has been around for ages, but it was hotly debated on the web by two of the most forward thinking software luminaries: Jason Fried and Joel Spolsky. Their back and forth debate hit a crescendo last year around the time I attended the wonderful Business of Software conference put [...]
Friday Ramblings
I started three different placeholders today that I thought might be post-worthy, but since it’s Friday afternoon, I decided to cram them all into a single post.
You understand.
Free does not mean open source.
Eddie tweeted a link yesterday that caught my eye called “20 Reasons Why Oracle is the World’s Largest Open Source Company“.
Interesting article and [...]
OK Go’s Epic Rube Goldberg Machine Video
This video is awesome and brilliant, even if you don’t care for the song. There’s so much going on each second that it’s difficult to focus on any one thing.
Even more interesting, you might notice it’s a single Steadicam shot, no cuts. Apparently, that shot took 60 takes over two days to get. Wired has [...]
Too Much Information Makes People Something Something
When we started this team, three years ago, most people we talked to hadn’t heard of Facebook or Twitter and associated MySpace, assuming they’d heard of it, with something kids do.
Some people knew LinkedIn and that often helped get the wheels turning about social and how it could benefit work.
It was a lot like 1997 [...]
Do You Search or Organize?
On a web conference today, I caught a glimpse of someone’s inbox.
Protip: Close your email and IM if you’re presenting something. Unless of course, you want me to see your email folders, including the ones where you store “house” email.
But I digress. The person’s inbox had probably 40 folders, some of them with nested folders, which I’m [...]
Software is Hard
I’m convinced that innovation on the consumer side of the web is great for enterprise software.
I’m similarly convinced that innovation on the consumer side of the web is terrible for enterprise software.
Reading Marc Benioff’s post “The Facebook Imperative” on TechCrunch last week reminded me of these mutually-exclusive conclusions.
On the one hand, as Benioff points out, the consumer [...]
We’ll Be at Chirp
Not long ago, Twitter announced its inaugural developer conference, whimsically called Chirp, would be held April 14 and 15, 2010 in San Francisco.
It may or may not be coincidental that the dates are one week earlier than Facebook’s annual f8 developer conference.
Anyway, Chirp looks to be an outstanding opportunity to learn more about Twitter, the [...]
Apply Caution to Interwebs, Rinse, Repeat
Last week’s kerfuffle about foursquare and how it exposes you to would-be burglars was hilarious to me.
More accurately, it’s Twitter that poses the risk, which isn’t a new problem. Foursquare encourages people to socialize their game-playing by adding friends from Facebook, Twitter and GMail. As with any service, this is to their advantage.
Although, I would argue [...]
Raimonds Updates ActiveRecord Oracle Adapter
Ruby enthusiast and friend of the ‘Lab Raimonds Simanovskis (@rsim) just released a maintenance update to his ActiveRecord oracle-enhanced-adapter, bringing it to version 1.2.4.
This will be the final version of the adapter for Rails 2, after which he’ll move it to Rails 3.
Last month, he updated ruby-plsql.
As you know, we’re big fans of Ruby in [...]
Coined a New Term: Computer Plumber
I did some printer support over the weekend, which reminded me of the whole “facebook login” fiasco from earlier in the month.
Long story short, the person I was supporting couldn’t get Windows to recognize the printer.
The PC tower was under a desk and in a difficult spot to reach. The area was so snug that [...]
Learning from Buzz
In life if something doesn’t work out, at least you can learn from it. That is the power of doing. The beauty of being a human being is that we are exceptionally good at learning from others. As I watched Google launch Buzz, and the ensuing mess, it got me thinking. Why did a project [...]
My Anti-Social Experiment
In an IM conversation I had with Paul this morning, I decided to embark on an experiment. I’ve decided to drop out of all things social (online) for a few weeks. This includes Twitter, Buzz, Facebook, blogging, etc. The only thing this doesn’t include is email and IM — those are essential.
My [...]
Facebook Knows When You Need a Hug
Halfway through a blah post about Google Buzz, I ran across this post about the correlation between Facebook relationship status and happiness.
I’ve largely ignored Facebook for a while now, and it didn’t occur to me until Pete Warden released his initial observations about Facebook and US geography how much statistical gold exists there.
Turns out Facebook [...]
The Obligatory Google Buzz Review
It’s been a few days since Google Buzz was born and it’s time for an AppsLabber to review it, so here are my thoughts.
Day one
It was a lonely experience — akin to showing up to a party you knew was going to be fun, but you ended being one of the first ones there. [...]
These Are Our Users
A post from Signal vs. Noise titled “Computers shouldn’t make people feel like idiots“ has been open in a tab for nearly a week.
Reading it, and other iPad coverage, has me torn. I know that I exist in a world populated by geeks, and I know that many outside this world are uncomfortable with computers. I [...]
Evolution of Design
Thought of something interesting (see disclaimer) yesterday, namely observing the evolution of how design solves problems with software.
Take a common requirement for the interwebs and its viewer, the browser, like wanting to view more than a single web page at a time.
In the first few iterations of browsers, this was possible only by launching multiple [...]
And Now, Google the ISP
So, Google has been busy announcing products this week. Lost in the Buzz news was this bit that Google is planning to build its own high-speed fiber network.
Mmm, fiber.
Their goals are:
We’re planning to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States. We’ll deliver Internet speeds [...]
