January 2012
3 posts
7 tags
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Play mp3s on a Mac with a nicer interface than...
onethingwell:
Simplify lets you control iTunes, Rdio and Spotify from the player shown above or via custom keyboard shortcuts.
Mac App Store
This app looks nice if you’re well-invested into iTunes. But if you’re not, I recommend Vox. It’s small both in visual and technical footprint. It’s just an mp3 player. But it’s quite nice and it’s free.
(Image...
6 tags
October 2011
5 posts
4 tags
The Android hardware fragmentation, support,...
“Other than the original G1 and MyTouch, virtually all of the millions of phones represented by this chart are still under contract today. If you thought that entitled you to some support, think again:
7 of the 18 Android phones never ran a current version of the OS.
12 of 18 only ran a current version of the OS for a matter of weeks or less.
10 of 18 were at least two major versions...
6 tags
DevOps in the enterprise
DevOps. Many of us in enterprise IT look longingly upon the growing DevOps movement. We have a significant challenge: Often the “dev” in DevOps isn’t just another team or department, but in a completely different corporate group, with a different VP. Unlike a web company (often not big enough to have an IT department dedicated to internal technical needs), enterprise IT’s...
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New conference: Consumerization of IT in the...
I’m sure it will have some boring parts, and some helpful parts. But how fantastic that there’s a mainstream conference like this about the topic of consumerization! :-)
Thanks rankandfile:
March 2012 brings the debut of the Consumerization of IT in the Enterprise (CITE) conference and expo in San Francisco, California.
Managed by IDG, and sponsored by Cisco and Citrix, the event...
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Michael Lewis's new book Boomerang about the new...
An interview with Moneyball author Michael Lewis about his new book, Boomerang. Boomerang is about how the first world increasingly resembles the third world,
Found on the addictive Infectious Greed.
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Steve Jobs Apple tribute logo
Lots of Steve Jobs Apple logos and icons floating around, all done with great respect. They make me both sad and happy at the same time. Here is my favorite.
Beautiful job, jmak.
September 2011
40 posts
6 tags
Awk book review: Awk One-Liners Explained by...
In addition to being a thorough, fair review, it’s a great explanation of why and how Awk is so helpful.
benoithamelin:
A history lesson
As a target for writing code, the UNIX software ecosystem is strangely fascinating. Among its features, one standout is its reliance on text as a basic information storage unit. This sentence looks dumb out of context, because of course. But in the age...
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New Facebook layout deconstructed
Heh. Somebody thinks the new Facebook layout and design is more than a bit inspired by Google+ and Twitter. It may be a bit premature to see where Facebook is going with this though.
Supposedly the other shoe drops this week at F8, the Facebook developer conference.
The event is being livestreamed (video) here, starting at 10AM Pacfic.
People are already breathless saying “Facebook to be...
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Photographic magnets as a service (for your...
Well that’s fun! I’m not sure many of us have the sheer volume of magnetic surface it would take to buy-in to a monthly subscription part, but this is quite nice.
stickygram:
When faced with an office full of bare metal and a team of instagram users, the folks at GitHub turned to StickyGram.
A few weeks ago the CTO of GitHub, Tom Preston-Werner, approached us with a proposal we...
6 tags
Dream Windows 8 wallpaper
Would also make a good Windows 8 developer preview background wallpaper… if precious Metro could be disturbed :-)
yewknee:
shablazm:
My Windows 7, virtual machine, background…
totally doing this.
6 tags
Don't necessarily blame Mac devs for app issues
I’ve read enough of these App Store horror stories to give developers the benefit of the doubt if I have some issues with App Store purchases on my Mac.
jacobgorban:
Background
Since OS X 10.7 (Lion) Apple allows in-app purchase (IAP) of features or content in Mac Apps, similar to how it works on iOS but without some of the advanced features of iOS, like subscriptions.
We converted one...
4 tags
Strategy will kill ya
“What you need are many experiments in parallel. Not all of them need the same amount of resources and not all needs to be released to the public. But you absolutely do need people working on crazy, random things.”
sriramk:
One of the occupational hazards of working at Microsoft was attending offsites. These were 2-3 day affairs, typically cloistered watching endless sessions of...
3 tags
How to fix volunteering (for web geeks)
” let’s create a non-profit which feels like a startup…”
atroche:
Summary for the impatient: let’s create a non-profit which feels like a startup, makes awesome stuff on the web for charities, and is exactly the kind of place where we’d volunteer.
Charities are great at building wells in African villages, but terrible at doing anything online. Fair enough: it’s not their...
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Upper bounds of being a shit with your loved ones
A nice, self-aware post on being a deliberately obtuse shit with the people in your life, just because you read a new book. After all, they don’t do it to you..
I’ve been there buddy :-).
“… Or I could not think so literally.”
isomorphismes:
Ever since I took too many mathematics classes, I started using the concept of “upper bound” literally. It confuses...
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Vim + .vmrc for newbies
Great minimal .vimrc for beginners, especially this. Would have been great for me/ still is.
“Another main thing is changing the color of the status line to more visibly show what mode you’re in.”
vorbby:
I just started using Vim to write code a week or so ago. I’m a casual coder right now, so I’m probably not as advanced as most people who have used it for a week or so.
Anyways,...
4 tags
Why web developers are rooting for Windows 8
“…I want to write Metro apps, and the only way I can do that is if Windows 8 sells like hotcakes.”
benstraub:
Mr. Sinofsky, I’d like to thank you. I’ve been waiting for this for a long time.
Win32 is an old warhorse. In its heyday, it was dependable, useful, and let us as developers do whatever we needed. But the world has moved on, and while development got easier and...
11 tags
Very cool LinkedIn Meetup mashup
This is such a nice idea. I don’t use LinkedIn. Maybe I can make one for Twitter.
planetjeffro:
Image via CrunchBase
The Problem:
I go to a lot of Meetups and other events (tech, networking, etc) so I always check the RSVP list beforehand to get a sense of who’s going. In fact, I often will decide whether or not to go based on who I know. For example, if I see a few tech folks who I...
5 tags
Developer sensitivity training for managers
Noted. It’s easy for managers to grow out of touch with how certain kinds of work gets done.
readsideways:
Surely.
Surely it can’t be that hard?
Surely we can do that by next week?
Surely we can integrate that?
Why not take that word and replace it with, “I have absolutely no clue, but I’m going to take a stupid guess”.
When working with someone else and that word comes to mind, do...
3 tags
News.me is now free
This app looks great, but I really wish there were a web version.
Does anybody know a hack to use it on the web?
newsme:
We’re pleased to announce that News.me has officially spun out of bitly to run as an independent company under betaworks. Here’s what John Borthwick has to say about the change on his blog:
Over the past year, News.me has been incubated within bitly. Today, we’re pleased...
5 tags
When should a business use "daily deal" (Groupon)...
Incredible post. Who should run a daily deal? Very few businesses.
Everybody else is cannibalizing existing revenue.
“So who should be using Groupons? And how?
New businesses: There are no sales to cannibalize and advertising value may be much higher as people are not aware of your business.
Zero fixed cost businesses: If you give boat tours and Groupon can fill up your boat with...
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How to map ec2 to your Mac OS X box
” I highly recommend you adjust the preferences in Macfusion to have a lengthy timeout on mounting (I personally use 45 seconds)”
Thanks so much for writing this up.
falicon:
If you’re already using EC2, you’re probably familiar with SSH’ing to your box via Terminal with something like this: ssh -i your_ec2_pem.pem your_ec2_instance_username_like_ubuntu@your_ec2_host.com But did...
8 tags
How to change Windows 8 Start Menu back to Windows...
The Windows 8 Start Menu is a bit different. This nice person wrote up what to change in the registry to make it the “old” (Windows 7/ Vista/ XP) style.
mycodelog:
The new start menu when you you click on the Windows logo isn’t the same anymore in Windows 8, but now you can change it back to the original design by changing the registry key.
Change the value of RPEnabled from “1”...
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Business Models- from the customer's side
‘No Versioning - Everyone gets the same application and you never have to worry about someone seeing a bug on an older version of your software.”
The customers love this too! Especially if they’re in IT group. No patching, no upgrades, no downtime to manage.
garrettdimon:
After the recent presentation, I was surprised how many questions I heard about our choice of business...
5 tags
Is this a moment to get Apple to change its...
I have my doubts if Tim Cook will be more any more aggressive about this than Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was already relatively intertwined with high profile environmentalists and thought leaders (like Al Gore), and he still didn’t move much beyond industry levels.
I believe even HP and Dell have a more proactive recycling program, something that surely Apple knows of.
It’s not hopeless...
6 tags
Recruiters. Help us, help you.
Recruiters have a pretty rotten reputation in the technology industry. Not just from the recruits who feel commodified, disrespected, demeaned, misunderstood, and fatigued from time-wasting phone calls where the recruiter mistakes Java for Javascript, Rails for something you can have 12 years of experience in, and Cloud for a language, but by management as well.
This is really unfortunate for the...
5 tags
Is there a rise in security breaches?
We’ve heard about a lot of security breaches this year.
It’s a bit like natural disaster reporting. Or poltical violence.
It sure feels like there’s more activity.
But is there? Or do we just find out about it more efficiently?
What do you think? Are there more breaches, or just more reports? There’s probably some data about this.
thesecurityforcaster:
It seems you...
6 tags
Your future professional peers want to see your...
This blogger below titled his post “Be Visible.”
I always appreciate when people have a blog or Twitter not because I want to stalk them or judge them (in fact, political/personal relationship/superficial things are not what I’m looking for at all.).
It just gives me a much better idea of one’s (professional) interests, (professional) style, preferences, skills,...
4 tags
A list of "successful" Hollywood Blockbusters that...
I was always under the impression that My Big Fat Greek Wedding was made for very little money, and was s surprise hit (and surprisingly profitable.)
Guess Hollywood is just like venture-funded Hollywood- very wacky.
revenuetrades:
Return of the Jedi grossed $572 million in revenue, claims $0 in profit.
Harry Potter, and the Order of the Phoenix grossed $938 million in revenue, claimed a $167...
6 tags
Don't worry about lawsuits, worry about making...
Have a bias towards action not merely eliminating risk.
In an ideal world, both parties will have this bias. Especially in this example, the little guy is taking more of the risk.
pudjam666:
So,
It was 1998 and the dot-com boom was in full effect. I was making websites as a 22 year old freelance programmer in NYC. I charged my first client $1,400. My second client paid $5,400. The next paid...
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Univision correspondent Blanca Vilchez's story
“You’re not running as a journalist, you’re running as a human being,”
univisionnews:
By INGRID ROJAS Channel: Remembering 9/11
“You’re not running as a journalist, you’re running as a human being,” says Univision’s veteran correspondent Blanca Rosa Vilchez of 9/11, when she had to run for cover from the Twin Towers’ collapse. Blanca was in the area covering that day’s primary elections when...
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Google App Engine price changes clearly explained
Thank you nice Tumblr, for lucidly explaining the Google App Engine price changes.
“The old pricing model charged for the wrong thing. The overwhelming vast majority of web applications use very little CPU; processes spend most of their time blocked waiting for I/O (datastore fetches, url fetches, etc). The App Engine cluster is not limited by CPU power, it is limited by the number of...
4 tags
Is perfectionism the enemy of shipping?
“The essence of the enterprise is to get to these other lands and NOT sit around in the harbor fawning over your creation. Unfortunately that’s what a lot happens in software — gold plated code with unit tests, agile up the wazoo, but too late to the market. Sitting around in the source repo, rotting away perfectly.”
shippingiseverything:
There is a tide in the affairs of men....
6 tags
Data visualization for Kiva
“data-based art”
buzzdatablog:
Intercontinental Ballistic Microfinance from Kiva on Vimeo.
Micro-loan non-profit Kiva just recently released an interactive data visualization campaign, that to me, has everything: it tells a story and paints a picture, it’s appropriately colour-coded, it’s evocative; heck, even the musical score they picked adds a touch of humour to the mix. And...
6 tags
Programmer/designer super combo
Agreed. Ideally one knows both. Not to save on resources or expect the impossible, but because there’s often a gap of possibility when it’s two separate people.
Unfortunately in an enterprise environment, it’s incredibly hard to get good designers, let alone one who knows both. I can’t blame these wonderful folks, what fantastic designer wants their work to be seen only...
17 tags
What keys do you press the most for each...
Very fun post post where a programmer created separate heat maps for different programming languages.
dustyprogrammer:
I switch between programming languages quite a bit; I often wondered what happens when having to deal with the different syntaxes, does the syntax allow you to be more expressive or faster at coding in one language or another. I dont really know about that; but what I do know...
4 tags
How Git Thinks
“I made the executive decision to leave our comfy world of (Subversion tool) Versions because it seemed clear that Git was winning the Internet.”
nfarina:
It was about one year ago that we switched to Git. Previously, we used Subversion, through the Mac app Versions, which (rightly) holds an Apple Design Award.
I made the executive decision to leave our comfy world of Versions...
4 tags
Ideas vs execution post that doesn't end how you...
I was surprised and uplifted by the ending.
While I continue to think “good ideas” are not in short supply, a positive message to at least listen.
chriseidhof:
I’ve been an iPhone developer for over three years now. The first app I built was CookieCombo. We sold enough copies to go bowling twice, but still it was completely worth it. We tweeted about it, and got some awesome gigs...
6 tags
Tech defies labor market, let's help each other...
Tech defies the labor market.
I never know quite how to bring up this disconnect without sounding insensitive towards those looking for work.
There is a giant software developer shortage. Not only that, there is a giant technical worker shortage. People who are great system administrators, analysts, data scientists, web designers, etc.
While each of these positions does entail programming...
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August 2011
27 posts
4 tags
7 tags
