Stay hungry. Stay foolish

9 Deadliest Start-up Sins

Fri, 18 May 2012 06:39:41 -0700

My #10 - try anything, don’t do anything

Johnny Marr on Album vs MP3 makes me think about UX. Albums have...

Thu, 17 May 2012 06:38:00 -0700

Johnny Marr on Album vs MP3 makes me think about UX. Albums have Beginning and End, and two sides vs Infinite Cloud streamed feeling

Google plus has no beginning and end feeling. Facebook has sign-in and sign-out. Social Product needs UX feeling.

compositecode: JavaScript… it’s here to stay. Best learn to...

Wed, 16 May 2012 06:52:15 -0700

compositecode:

JavaScript… it’s here to stay. Best learn to love it. (Taken with Instagram at Stumptown Coffee Roasters)

Always an admirer of icons designed for internationalization....

Tue, 15 May 2012 06:35:01 -0700

Always an admirer of icons designed for internationalization.

9-bits:

Say Hello to Octicons

GitHub describes their process in creating and using a custom @font-face for icons throughout the site. Beyond these spiffy new icons, the entire design at GitHub seems to get iterated and improved upon constantly.

jQuery’s Rise to Dominance - O’Reilly spoke to John...

Mon, 14 May 2012 06:43:18 -0700

jQuery’s Rise to Dominance - O’Reilly spoke to John Resig, the creator. Having suffered cross-browser pain, hats off to John.

Girls and Robots - Deus Ex Machinatio - Andrea Phillips

Sun, 13 May 2012 07:01:35 -0700

Girls and Robots - Deus Ex Machinatio - Andrea Phillips:

Feeling society’s expectations at only 5 y/o.

Benefits of abstracting CSS with Sass and Compass. 9-bits: I...

Sat, 12 May 2012 06:59:09 -0700

Benefits of abstracting CSS with Sass and Compass.

9-bits:

I recently presented at Philly Emerging Tech for the Enterprise on the benefits of abstracting CSS with Sass and Compass. While I don’t thoroughly cover every feature available, the session is almost entirely a live coding session, so it hopefully shows how easy-to-use and powerful these tools can be.

Mark Pincus, the tech world’s Willy Wonka wants every group of...

Fri, 11 May 2012 06:44:00 -0700

Mark Pincus, the tech world’s Willy Wonka wants every group of new hires to be a CEO of something. His role-playing ideas stem from the frustration of his own early corporate experience. “I felt like an expert witness in my 20s – I had a series of jobs where I felt that I had the right answer but was never empowered to make the decision”

Full interview by FT’s Chris Nuttall.

COUCHDB & RubY YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG - @timanglade

Thu, 10 May 2012 07:00:09 -0700

COUCHDB & RubY YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG - @timanglade

Back-fitting on-premise for ‘web 2.0’ growth Kewill...

Wed, 09 May 2012 07:01:00 -0700

Back-fitting on-premise for ‘web 2.0’ growth

Kewill plc succumbed to a buy out by Francisco Partners PE. Without disrupting complex code bases, how could Kewill have avoided this fate?

‘Web 2.0’ business architecture apps are not so different than the previous era ‘client-server’ business architecture. Forester calls the new era App/Internet. Fueling growth requires more, back fitting traditional on-premise applications with the ‘web 2.0’ business architecture. Generally this is additive additive, not code base disruptive.

Illustrative is Sage Group plc, last year we arranged for Google Seattle to host a tech talk by Sage Chief Software Architect, Stephen Smith. The installed base of conservative accountants is not yet ready for SaaS and certainly not big data, yet Sage wants to share the benefits with customers. All applications, 6.2 million customers, are being reachitected using Google’s GWT not .NET or Java, ahead of this huge effort the Sage application installers are being back-fitted for big data user experience analytics.

On an opt in basis, usage is promulgated to Sage.com giving specific usage analytics allowing for learning from users the same as Google does with its search engine. This allows Sage product designers to attend to real optimization (not hearsay) http://smist08.wordpress.com/2012/03/25/sage-advisor-pep/

AfterShip.com a startup entrant based in Hong Kong is more directly going to big data via by texting customer service shipment notifications directly, and collecting ratings back from customers. Providing a seamless delivery experience, reducing missed parcel shipments, at the same time learning from customer feedback about carrier, city, neighbor hood, delivery satisfaction. The resultant feedback is anatomized for privacy, and circulated back into the Aftership SaaS providing more satisfaction and value. http://blog.aftership.com/zappos-to-text-customers-before-package-is-delivered/

How might Kewill, have blended Sage and Aftership approaches, to back-fit tier-1 / tier-2 / tier-3 applications without a huge or disruptive code base investment? Likely each of Kewill’s customers is under pressure to deliver higher levels of customer service, Kewill touches on-premise and in hosted applications shipment data, yet former era application architectures do not have a way to close the web 2.0 big data loop.

The Web 2.0 Big Data flow illustrates how products can be back-fitted to capture opt in data, providing a service that improves shipment recommendations, by annomizing and aggregating data, then passing back star ranked recommendations.

An excellent source for getting a grip on designing for trust and privacy in Web 2.0 business architectures is #pii2012 http://www.privacyidentityinnovation.com/

In turn these recommendations automate customer service, and collect star ratings on deliveries. Web 2.0 and big data technologies to architect a solution are often open source and used by many of the new startup entrants such as Aftership and increasingly by established company’s like Sage Group.

Previous era client-server companies who want to avoid falling prey to PE buy outs should consider back-fitting for growth using the same Web 2.0 business architecture as the new high growth entrants.

"By putting yourself in the path of possible good randomness and avoiding bad outcomes, you can..."

Tue, 08 May 2012 07:01:26 -0700

“By putting yourself in the path of possible good randomness and avoiding bad outcomes, you can “make your own luck””

- Duncan Watts book Everything Is Obvious: Once You Know The Answer

"Multiplying scales. Dividing helps you make this quarter’s numbers."

Mon, 07 May 2012 07:01:00 -0700

“Multiplying scales. Dividing helps you make this quarter’s numbers.”

- Seth Godin looks at the contradiction between marketing and sales in basic, mathematical terms. (via 9-bits)

"while it is easy to start a social network, it looks expensive to run a big one. Real assets need to..."

Sun, 06 May 2012 07:01:53 -0700

“while it is easy to start a social network, it looks expensive to run a big one. Real assets need to be bought. Capital expenditures amounted to 30 per cent of revenues, or $1bn, at Facebook last year, and chewed up nearly half of revenues in the most recent quarter. Free cash flow return on assets is strong but Google’s is twice as high.”

- ‘like’ Lex’s 2 fundamental questions …

First: will Facebook become a part of everything that happens on the internet rather
than just one digital tool among others?

Second: can Facebook change digital advertising as profoundly as Google has done in
the past decade?

Lex in depth: Facebook - FT.com

Must read article on “Facebook the stock – not Facebook the cultural phenomenon”

(via abnerg)

RT @Jimmy Wales: Actually, I think +Michael Arrington as CEO of...

Sat, 05 May 2012 06:55:00 -0700

RT @Jimmy Wales: Actually, I think +Michael Arrington as CEO of Yahoo is a good idea.

http://blogs.ft.com/tech-blog/2012/05/yahoos-new-boss-a-plain-and-simple-bean-counter/

On APIs and Copyright

Fri, 04 May 2012 06:44:03 -0700

On APIs and Copyright:

Irrespective of my opinion on the subject, what will the impact be should APIs prove copyrightable? It is likely to be extensive, cascading and a lesson in unintended consequences.

Scaling out millions of tenants using federated hierarchical...

Thu, 03 May 2012 00:15:12 -0700

Scaling out millions of tenants using federated hierarchical sharding pattern. Web 2.0 can key driven security, private, shared, map reduced think-think by @SQLServerMike

Simple Made Easy - Rich Hickey, author of Clojure. Rich,...

Wed, 02 May 2012 06:10:00 -0700

Simple Made Easy - Rich Hickey, author of Clojure.

Rich, emphasizes simplicity’s virtues over easiness’, showing that while many choose easiness they may end up with complexity, and the better way is to choose easiness along the simplicity path.

I am not a code monkey: Dear Christine, I wish I shared your optimism

Tue, 01 May 2012 07:01:16 -0700

I am not a code monkey: Dear Christine, I wish I shared your optimism:

iamnotacodemonkey:

Ever dream of forming the next Facebook, Google+ or LinkedIn? [Uhm…]

UI designer & back-end programmer - please be experienced, have an entrepreneurial mind-set, and most importantly, have time to code! [aka be my code monkey/bitch]

A new social network, that appeals to all who want…

Air France Flight 447: 'Damn it, we’re going to crash’

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 07:01:00 -0700

Air France Flight 447: 'Damn it, we’re going to crash’:

It seems surprising that Airbus has conceived a system preventing one pilot from easily assessing the actions of the colleague beside him. And yet that is how their latest generations of aircraft are designed. #HCI

thatssostanford: The mission of the Institute of Design at...

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 07:02:33 -0700

thatssostanford:

The mission of the Institute of Design at Stanford, on a napkin:

OUR INTENT: CREATE THE BEST DESIGN SCHOOL. PERIOD

prepare FUTURE INNOVATORS to be breakthrough thinkers & doers.

use DESIGN THINKING to inspire multidisciplinary teams

foster RADICAL COLLABORATION between students, faculty & industry

tackle BIG PROJECTS and use prototyping to discover new solutions

STANFORD d.school