September 2009
72 posts
3 tags
3 tags
Optimizing CDN Performance →
A paper from Google analyzing possible CDN optimizations and an internal system they’ve built to help their administrators:
First, WhyHigh measures client latencies across all nodes in the CDN and correlates measurements to identify the prefixes affected by inflated latencies. Second, since clients in several thousand prefixes have poor latencies, WhyHigh prioritizes problems based on the...
2 tags
Patterns for Cloud Computing →
I just found a 192 slides long presentation (I’m wondering how long did that take) analyzing different cloud computing scenarios and the conclusion is that there are 5 patterns:
Using the Cloud for Scale: How are people using cloud computing to achieve scale using provisioned machines in the cloud vs. physical machines on-premise?
Using the Cloud for Multi-Tenancy: How are people...
2 tags
How Do Innovators Think? →
So innovation is about: associating, questioning, detailing, exploring, with the ability to connect things being the most important one.
The first skill is what we call “associating.” It’s a cognitive skill that allows creative people to make connections across seemingly unrelated questions, problems, or ideas. The second skill is questioning - an ability to ask “what...
2 tags
A friend asked me for advice: startup or big...
It’s difficult to disagree with Bijan, but to me both startups and big companies are about passion, vision, people and products. And there shouldn’t be a difference there!
Some might say that it is about the influence you will have. And I tend to disagree with this too. While not everyone will get a C -level job so their influence can be seen immediately, I feel that everyone can...
3 tags
The infinite to-do list →
While the conclusion might seem a bit different than mine, the important thing is:
Instead of worrying about the enormity of things that need to be done, concentrate on getting a few concrete ones completed. And realize that sometimes procrastination is a lot better than prioritization.
2 tags
WatchBret Taylor talks Tornado
With the published performance metrics ☞ and keeping in mind it is Python, I’d say it is definitely something that a web developer should check.
2 tags
“If you’re thinking about starting a company, please don’t write a business...”
– That’s exactly the philosophy behind customer development, whose main proponent is Steve Blank, author of the book The Four Steps to the Epiphany
5 tags
Confused about iPhone Twitter Apps?
I don’t know about you, but I still haven’t decided what Twitter iPhone app I should be using, so I currently have 6 (six) different apps installed: 2 feature-rich apps, 2 elegant apps and 2 basic ones. I know this may sound a bit crazy, but so far I couldn’t figure out which one is THE Twitter iPhone app, plus I have found a specific scenario for each of them
feature-rich:
...
3 tags
WriteRoom.iPhone 2.1 and TextExpander
I’ve been using WriteRoom since getting it on a previous promotion and I can tell you that it is one of the best writing apps. I have also tried TextExpander for saving on typing, but I would strongly recommend Apple to consider it as an app allowed to be run in the background to finally be able to take full advantage of its power.
To celebrate the integration of WriteRoom.iPhone with...
1 tag
“One possible conclusion reached from this experiment could be this: If we do...”
– This is just another, much more complex, example of information overload that is continuously shrinking our attention span.
2 tags
Productivity: How do you decide what to do next?
In a recent post Seth Godin was writing about priority lists ☞ and was asking himself and the readers the following question:
How do you decide what to do next?
To me this is the most important productivity step. I tend to believe that we are spending a lot more time deciding what to do next, then figuring out what to do and how to do it. The decision involved for this step shouldn’t feel...
“[…] Silicon Valley’s companies share the same entrepreneurial heritage,...”
“We are innovative animals. If something can be invented, we feel compelled to...”
3 tags
1 tag
1 tag
3 tags
Productivity Tools
The lack of productivity comes from the lack of focus.
The lack of focus comes from our attempt to multitask.
Our temptation to multitask comes from the way we manage tasks.
The way we manage our tasks is heavily influenced by the tools we are using.
The more complex the tool is the more complex our lives are.
So, do you have any productivity tricks?
1 tag
Above the Clouds A Berkeley View of Cloud... →
3 tags
4 tags
1 tag
One in Five Tweets Are Free Brand Advertising →
With 1 in 5 tweets mentioning a brand, Twitter can become either an extremely powerful tool for finding out things about brands or an enormous spam stream.
Research from Penn State found that a full twenty percent of tweets mention specific brand names or products. Out of half a million tweets examined during the study, one fifth were essentially free brand advertising.
I hope Twitter people...
4 tags
Simplest iPhone Tethering →
This is said to be the easiest way for enabling tethering on the iPhone. The solution is not updated for the version 3.1 and I couldn’t find Orange Ro in the list of carriers though.
4 tags
iTunes Ate My Apps ... and How I Got 'em Back →
I have waited a couple of days before upgrading iTunes and the iPhone OS, just to make sure that there will be no such ‘accidents’.
3 tags
How To: Back Up All Your Stuff, For Free →
A review of a couple of different ways to backup your data for free. While imo not all reviewed solutions qualify as backup, there are a few interesting options.
1 tag
Embeddable Google Document Viewer →
Cool finding by Alex Chitu (of Google Operating System blog):
Google Docs offers an undocumented feature that lets you embed PDF files and PowerPoint presentations in a web page. The files don’t have to be uploaded to Google Docs, but they need to be available online.
All you have to do to use this embedding functionality is to have the PDF/PPT available somewhere on the web and then...
“Good judgment comes from wisdom, but wisdom comes from bad judgment”
6 tags
The Future of the Web Development →
I haven’t read such a great piece in quite a while. Hell, I wish I have written that.
Web development sucks.
It’s true: web development, at its worst, is difficult, repetitive, and boring. The tools we have suck. At best, they make web development slightly less painful, but we’re a long way from making web development awesome.
The author main concerns are the lack of...
Building Scalable Web Services →
Tom Killalea, Vice President of technology with responsibility for infrastructure and distributed systems engineering at Amazon.com wrote an article on ACM queue on building scalable web services. He…
1 tag
5 tags
Frustrations with the iPhone Google Reader
I don’t know if I’m qualifying myself as a heavy reader, but I usually go through a few hundred news on a daily basis. I’ve been using Google Reader for a long time to manage all my not-so-dead RSS subscriptions. Even if most of the time I’m using a “fluid” version on my laptop, there are times when I’d really love to use it on my iPhone.
You know I...
2 tags
2 tags
“I want everybody here to be careful about what you post on Facebook because, in...”
– This is quote from the speech President Barack Obama gave to a room of 9th graders. (via gbattle)
It’s good to know that these very important privacy concerns are acknowledged at the highest level!
1 tag
1 tag
Fear the "Anonymized" Data →
From the Ars Technica article:
Companies continue to store and sometimes release vast databases of “anonymized” information about users. But, as Netflix, AOL, and the State of Massachusetts have learned, “anonymized” data can often be cracked in surprising ways, revealing the hidden secrets each of us are assembling in online “databases of ruin.”
I’m...
2 tags
Legal Documents For Your Startup →
Thanks to Sillicon Alley Insider and law firm Cooley Godward Kronish, you can get now samples of the documents needed for your next startup: Employee Non-Disclosure (with Non-Compete), Employee Non-Disclosure (without Non-Compete), Action of Sole Incorporator, Certificate of Incorporation, By-Laws, Initial Board Resolutions, Choosing a Name
3 tags
Launching a start-up and having a family life:... →
I couldn’t imagine someone jotting down these principles of a healthy entrepreneur’s family life. Black on white.
And I am darn happy to discover so many common ideas that we’ve been following in our family. But there is so much more to learn and improve!
We would have a family dinner at home most nights of the week.
Put the kids to bed.
Act and be engaged.
Back to work...
4 tags
Achievable goals: Everybody Else and The...
Seth Godin wrote about achievable goals in one of his recent posts:
That’s what your team wants. Your employees, your investors, your boss. They’re willing to put in the time and the energy and the work if they think:
The outcome might be an avalanche of attention, new business and growth, and
Their work makes that outcome achievable, even likely.
— Seth Godin: Achievable...
2 tags
RSS is Dead No More
It took one man and a whole world of Wordpress to get us over the stupid “RSS is dead” meme.
Articles
As I haven’t distilled yet all that was written on the subject, here is a list of articles in no particular order
What does rssCloud mean to you? ☞
Someone give Om an award ☞
How to publish and receive blog posts in Real-time ☞
WordPress integrates RSSCloud. Are we talking about...
2 tags
Tech news: For the smarter kind of bookworm (Alex... →
Alex Pell / Times of London: Asus, inventors of the netbook, is about to shake up the ebook world with the arrival of the…
1 tag
GridEcon: An European Cloud Platform
→
Interesting project funded by EU:
GridEcon project has created a commodity market platform that enables users to bid on available computing capacity, or put out a tender for a specific computing time slot
The part that caught my attention is that the GridEcon platform allows users to both buy and sell computing capacity. Anyways, I’m not sure yet how this solution has addressed...
4 tags
Paul Graham's Melon Seed Model →
Paul Graham has published a great article analyzing what are the most important factors for success. While explaining why he considers determination to be the most important factor, Paul is also introducing the melon seed model:
We can imagine will and discipline as two fingers squeezing a slippery melon seed. The harder they squeeze, the further the seed flies, but they must both squeeze...
3 tags
REST - Essential Resources
Everyone interested in learning or applying REST should definitely start his journey by reading Roy Fielding’s Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures ☞ which focuses on the rationale behind the design of the modern Web architecture and how it differs from other architectural styles.
Over time, I’ve put together a list of articles that introduced...
2 tags
Most Relevant Articles on Snow Leopard Upgrade
By now the internet is full of materials, discussions, debates, arguments about the new Mac OS version: Snow Leopard. I will not upgrade right away as I usually like to leave these new products for a couple of weeks/month to see the dust settling down and the bugs coming out.
Meanwhile, I’ve started to put together a reading list covering the most important aspects
Mac OS X 10.6 Snow...
1 tag
How Did Economists Get It So Wrong? →
A brilliant New York Times article on the recent history of economy and economy theories, staring with Adam Smith ☞ going through John Maynard Keynes ☞ and up to Milton Friedman ☞.
Few economists saw our current crisis coming, but this predictive failure was the least of the field’s problems. More important was the profession’s blindness to the very possibility of catastrophic failures in a...
3 tags
Loopt Does NOT Work in the Background
The news about the Loopt iPhone app have got a lot of attention. But as I’ve discovered later, there is a serious mistake in it. So, to set things straight:
Loopt iPhone app does NOT work in the background. The solution is using server-to-server communication between AT&T and Loopt (basically Loopt gets the location data directly from AT&T).
4 tags
Gizmodo's Essential iPhone Apps →
I must confess that I was expecting much (much much more) from a geek squad as that from Gizmodo. Listing apps like Bud American Ale Finder and a bunch of games (I know this is quite a subjective matter for some). made the list not so useful for me.
Anyways, it’s safe to disagree with me, but do let me know what apps from that list you do consider as essential.
1 tag
