- @FredKSchott • Introducing CoVim – Collaborative Editing for Vim
"Today we’re announcing CoVim, a plugin that adds multi-user, real-time collaboration to your favorite (or least favorite) text editor. CoVim allows you to remotely code, write, edit, and collaborate, all within your custom Vim configuration." (collaboration pair_programming vim )
- Open Source Is Old School, Says The GitHub Generation – ReadWrite
A fascinating look at the decline of GNU-style licensing. (licencing github open_source legal dopost )
- Yahoo! to Acquire Tumblr – Yahoo! Finance
Acquisition with awareness… "Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO) and Tumblr announced today that they have reached a definitive agreement for Yahoo! to acquire Tumblr. Per the agreement and our promise not to screw it up…" (yahoo tumblr dopost acquisition )
- Exclusive: Inside Hangouts, Google’s big fix for its messaging mess | The Verge
"Google in 2013 is a very different company than the one most of us still envision. Larry Page’s ascension to CEO was the first step towards crafting a company more focused on big, integrated products. [...] the days of the world-changing 20-percent projects are waning. The next Gmail just isn’t coming from two or three engineers on lunch break." (social_media google google_hangouts mobile management dopost )
- Queues – the true enemy of flow
"When a project is late, it’s rarely because of how long the actual work takes us. It’s more often connected to how long our tasks have spent inactive, sitting in a queue. [...] This article examines why we ought to track them and how much they cost us. (lean software_development measurement dopost process )
1100hrs, Wednesday, 22 May, 2013 | Links | Trackback | No Comments »
- Airware: An operating system for drones – Chris Dixon
"I’m excited to announce that Andreessen Horowitz, along with Google Ventures, is investing $10.7M in Airware, a startup that makes operating systems for flying robots, popularly known as drones. Drones were first developed by the military. But as component prices drop and software becomes more sophisticated, drones are starting to be used in non-military applications." (investment military dopost )
- Ian Katz is the new editor of Newsnight » Spectator Blogs
News, laiden with bias: "Shockwaves this morning in both Fleet Street and BBC land as the news comes in the Guardian’s bridesmaid, but never the bride, Ian Katz, is finally bored of waiting for Alan Rusbridger to retire and has jumped ship to the BBC." (guardian bbc jobs media )
- Technology Blog » Blog Archive » The 7digital and Esendex Prize for Software Quality -
A nice piece of outreach from 7digital… "Last week was the annual open day for the 2nd year group project at the Computer Science School at the University of Nottingham. [...] 7digital were represented at the open day by Leon Hewitt and Paul Shannon, which is 7digital’s second year in attendance, except this time we were judging a slightly different prize." (quality prize 7digital sponsorship dopost education )
- Why Songkick’s new paternity policy is good for women | Technology | guardian.co.uk
"There's a consensus among the entrepreneurs and technologists I talk to that many of the way to encourage more women into the industry is by challenging and changing the way a business operates, [...] That's exactly what Songkick has just done by introducing an equal period of paternity leave for new fathers, which means they can take up to nine months off after their child is born." (management startups parenthood women dopost )
- Howard Kurtz isn’t the problem at The Daily Beast, it’s Tina Brown | Michael Wolff | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
"The Daily Beast/Newsweek has floundered in the digital space. Some blame needs to be pointed at editor Tina Brown" (daily_beast tina_brown journalism magazines media )
- ActiveHistory replies to Gove’s accusation of ‘infantilisation’
A teaching expert hits back… "On Thursday 9th May 2013 I was the subject of an attack by the Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, in what’s being called his “Mr. Men” speech. According to Mr. Gove, my approach to teaching is apparently symptomatic of all that is wrong with UK secondary education in general, and history teaching in particular." (history teaching government michael_gove politics education )
- Tarbell
"The Tarbell template uses Python Flask and Google Spreadsheets to create simple, static sites that can be baked out to Amazon S3 or your local filesystem." (web_development simplicity dopost google_docs python )
- Binstock on Software: Perfecting OO’s Small Classes and Short Methods
"…there is a fascinating essay called “Object Calisthenics” by Jeff Bay. It’s a detailed exercise for perfecting the writing of the small routines that demonstrate characterize good OO implementations. [...] He suggests writing a 1000-line program with the constraints listed below. These constraints are intended to be excessively restrictive, so as to force developers out of the procedural groove. I guarantee if you apply this technique, their code will move markedly towards object orientation." (software_development object_orientation advice dopost )
- Daniel Dennett’s seven tools for thinking
" Cognitive scientist and philosopher Daniel Dennett is one of America's foremost thinkers. In this extract from his new book, he reveals some of the lessons life has taught him" (daniel_dennett philosophy book )
- MPAA Freaks Out: Insists That Having To Consider Fair Use Before Filing A DMCA Takedown Would Be Crazy | Techdirt
"It's not an "unwarranted burden" to ask DMCA filers to actually check to make sure a file is infringing. It's the whole freaking point." (dopost mpaa music piracy dmca legal )
- Rethinking the way we build on the cloud: Part 1: Layering the Cloud | ThoughtWorks Studios
"We've just launched Mingle SaaS, and as part of designing & building the architecture from scratch, we were able to challenge and rethink the way we build systems on the cloud. This is the first part in a series of blogs discussing our learning." (cloud_computing architecture dopost )
2101hrs, Monday, 20 May, 2013 | Links | Trackback | No Comments »
- Auto Trader puts brakes on print edition as part of move to digital | Media | guardian.co.uk
Yes, print publications can transition. Well, one can… "Trader Media Group confirms publication will go online only in June as website traffic reaches 11 million readers a month" (autotrader publishing dopost )
- Peter Nixey – Dear Apple, let’s talk about photos
The pain of Apple's walled garden. (photography cloud_computing apple dopost ios )
- Twitter / bengoldacre: Wow. EverythingEverywhere …
Ipsos Mori selling personal location data thanks to Everything Everywhere. (privacy everything_everywhere dopost )
- ‘Liberator’: Proof that you CAN’T make a working gun in a 3D printer • The Register
"People are missing one important point about the "Liberator" 3D-printed "plastic gun": it isn't any more a gun than any other very short piece of plastic pipe is a "gun"." (3d_printing guns dopost )
- Staying centered – The Official Microsoft Blog – Site Home – TechNet Blogs
Microsoft hits back on the "New Coke" accusation with a well-reasoned response: "Windows 8 is a good product, and it’s getting better every day. Unlike a can of soda, a computer operating system offers different experiences to different customers to meet different needs, while still moving the entire industry toward an exciting future of touch, mobility, and seamless, cross-device experiences." (microsoft windows dopost public_relations )
- "I Contribute to the Windows Kernel. We Are Slower Than Other Operating Systems. Here Is Why." – Zorinaq
"Windows is indeed slower than other operating systems in many scenarios, and the gap is worsening. The cause of the problem is social." (windows microsoft performance dopost operating_systems management )
- How the Syrian Electronic Army Hacked The Onion – The Onion Tech Blog
"This is a write-up of how the Syrian Electronic Army hacked The Onion. In summary, they phished Onion employees’ Google Apps accounts via 3 seperate methods." (hacking security twitter the_onion dopost )
- Samsung Galaxy S4 Costs $237 to Build, Teardown Analysis Shows – Arik Hesseldahl – News – AllThingsD
"A teardown analysis conducted by the market research firm IHS, due to be released tomorrow, has pegged Samsung’s cost of materials and manufacturing to produce the U.S. version of the 32 gigabyte model of the S4 at slightly above $237 per unit. [...] “Samsung’s strength is this ability to in-source to itself,” IHS analyst Vincent Leung said in an interview. “They just keep adding to the list of components that they can supply to themselves.”" (samsung hardware manufacturing dopost analysis )
- Being prepared is something different to having a plan | energizr
"Amundsen’s philosophy was don’t wait until you’re in an unexpected storm to discover that you need more strength and endurance. Prepare all the time so that when conditions turn against you, you can draw from a deep reservoir of strength." (planning management advice dopost )
2003hrs, Monday, 13 May, 2013 | Links | Trackback | No Comments »
- Write Twice | Made by Many
"There's a prevailing belief that, in our lean workflow, we must be committed to our user stories before we enter them into Production, that it would be wasteful to create something, then change our minds and have to scrap it. Why do we believe it to be wasteful?" (prototyping software_development dopost )
- What a stupid idea | Dustin Curtis
"The future is extremely hard to see through the lens of the present. It's very easy to unconsciously dismiss the first versions of something as frivolous or useless. Or as stupid ideas." (future innovation mistake dopost )
- Introducing Airbnb Verified ID – The Airbnb Blog – Company news, tips, and features
"Airbnb users can earn a “Verified ID” badge on their profile by providing their online identity (via existing Airbnb reviews, LinkedIn, or Facebook) and matching it to offline ID documentation, such as confirming personal information or scanning a photo ID. The name provided by both channels must match for verification to succeed. Starting today, Airbnb will require a random 25% of users in the USA to go through the Verified ID process. Soon, we’ll expand this requirement to users around the world." (airbnb security identity dopost )
- PDA? Pretty Damn Awful on Vimeo
"There has been much in the press about PDA mobile technology. The assumption is that it makes repairs services more efficient and speed up the work. When they studied however, they learned that PDA's actually made services worse." (systems_thinking public_sector pdas dopost video )
- Writers’ second thoughts – FT.com
"J.K. Rowling had only agreed to annotate a copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone on condition that it was a genuine first edition, from the first print run in 1997 of only 500 copies, 300 of which had gone to libraries. Gekoski had to find one of the remaining 200. “So she was quite surprised,” he said cheerfully, “that two days later, I came up with a copy and said, ‘Let’s go ahead.’” It had cost him £20,000…" (books charity writing )
2201hrs, Thursday, 02 May, 2013 | Links | Trackback | No Comments »
- The Guardian falls victim to Syrian Electronic Army, 11 Twitter accounts compromised | The Verge
On the plus side, they can congratulate themselves on being sufficiently high-profile to be a target… "After successfully overtaking the primary Associated Press Twitter account — its highest-profile "hack" to date — the Syrian Electronic Army turned its sights on The Guardian over the weekend." (guardian hacking twitter dopost )
- if you can’t be witty, then at least be bombastic – What we talk about when we talk about pockets
"Mens clothes have pockets. My swimsuits have pockets. All of them do, and it's not unusual, because, what if you're swimming in the ocean and you find a fist full of pirate booty in the surf? You need somewhere to put it. Men are used to carrying stuff in their pockets, you put money there, you put car keys there. With money and car keys come power and independence. You can buy stuff, you can leave. The idea of some women's clothes not having pockets is baffling, but it's worse than that — it's patriarchal because it makes the assumption that women will either carry a handbag, or they'll rely on men around them for money and keys and such things." (women culture fashion )
- Jony Ive paints a fresh, yet familiar, look for iOS 7 | 9to5Mac
"The new interface is said to be “very, very flat,” according to one source. Another person said that the interface loses all signs of gloss, shine, and skeuomorphism seen across current and past versions of iOS. Another source framed the new OS as having a level of “flatness” approaching recent releases of Microsoft’s Windows Phone “Metro” UI." (ios design dopost apple user_interfaces )
- Google Glass review (Explorer Edition)
Engadget reviews Google Glass: "Battery size is unknown, but battery life is: it's poor. In what we'd consider average usage, reading emails and taking short pictures and videos, we got about five hours before the headset unceremoniously shut itself down." (review google_glass dopost hardware )
- The Real Blog: The difference between catching criminals and preventing crime? About 30 seconds
"I'm always a little sceptical when I hear that effectiveness is going to be enhanced by new technology. It isn't impossible. It is just that, in practice, it rarely is. Often it gets worse. In fact, the famous story of the beginnings of the concept of co-production in public services was about precisely this." (technology public_sector systems_thinking dopost )
- Agile at Mark Needham
"I’ve participated in a few focused retrospectives over the past 7/8 months and I think there are some things to be careful about when we decide to focus on something specific rather than just looking back at a time period in general." (retrospectives agile dopost )
- The Guardian Transfoms Journalism with Typesafe – The Typesafe Blog
How the Guardian introduced Scala. "In our newest case study, Graham Tackley, Head of Architecture for The Guardian, shares how his team uses Scala, Akka and Play Framework to provide a solid, scalable foundation on which to start building these new services." (scala guardian case_study dopost )
0900hrs, Wednesday, 01 May, 2013 | Links | Trackback | 1 Comment »
- When Is A Media Model A Revolution, And When Is It A Unicorn? | The Awl
"You can’t understand NSFWCORP without understanding Las Vegas, and not just Vegas in general, but Vegas right now. And you can’t understand Vegas right now without understanding the Downtown Project, Tony Hsieh’s moonshot-scale attempt at bootstrapping a thriving cultural hub, no small job in a city where electronic dance music counts as high art." (journalism las_vegas property nsfwcorp )
- BBC – Blogs – Adam Curtis – MRS THATCHER – THE GHOST IN THE HOUSE OF WONKS
"I've had quite a few requests to put up a film I made a while ago about Mrs Thatcher – called The Attic. It's about how she constructed a fake ghostly version of Britain's past, and then used it to maintain her power. But also how she became possessed and haunted by this vision…" And here it is. (adam_curtis video politics margaret_thatcher )
- Digg Owner Betaworks Buys Instapaper To Go Big On Social Reading And Discovery | TechCrunch
"…Nine months later, Betaworks has acquired another news-oriented application, this time bringing Marco Arment’s popular story-saving app Instapaper into the fold." (instapaper acquisition betaworks dopost )
- My ill-advised blogpost followup about my Mail Online stats page tweet |
Dan Catt likes the fact that the Mail Online got a basic tool out there, before the Guardian could start the paperwork. (guardian mail_online delivery statistics )
- » Meet Michelle Boatley, fake Thomson Reuters legal publication reporter JIMROMENESKO.COM
"People who knew the secret about Boatley thought she had been killed — by her editors." (journalism thomson_reuters )
- An open letter to Innocean and Hyundai | Copybot
A really very stupid advert from Hyudai gets a response from someone it hurt. Very sad. (advertising hyudai mistake )
- If You Didn’t Buy It From Amazon It Doesn’t Count as Reading, Says Amazon
"Then I looked at the fine print. CCSU bases their study on factors like libraries, bookstores, periodicals, newspaper circulation, Internet resources, and education levels. But Amazon’s study? Is based on just “sales data of all book, magazine and newspaper sales in both print and Kindle format.”" (amazon books press_release usa )
- Culture
Netflix' approach to company culture, by Reed Hastings. (netflix leadership culture management dopost presentation )
- Robert Scoble – Google+ – My two-week review of Google Glass: it all depends on the…
Robert Scoble reviews Google Glass: "I will never live a day of my life from now on without it (or a competitor). It's that significant." (google_glass review dopost )
- The Most Deranged Sorority Girl Email You Will Ever Read
Lessons in management and leadership, part -1… "You have 361 days out of the fucking year to talk to sisters, and this week is NOT, I fucking repeat NOT ONE OF THEM. This week is about fostering relationships in the greek community, and that's not fucking possible if you're going to stand around and talk to each other and not our matchup. Newsflash you stupid cocks: FRATS DON'T LIKE BORING SORORITIES." (usa humour motivation letter )
- Unions claim Guardian Witness project is a threat to freelance journalists | PressGazette
The NUJ doesn't like GuardianWitness: “There are concerns about the nature of this [Guardian Witness]. The Guardian chapel will be discussing these issues in their next meeting and will be raising their concerns with the management.” (guardian journalism nuj )
2102hrs, Monday, 29 April, 2013 | Links | Trackback | No Comments »
- Friends don’t let friends use Windows 8 — Free Software Foundation — working together for free software
"Today, we're launching a new infographic to encourage everyone to close Windows and open the door to software freedom. Windows 8 is so ripe for parody, we just couldn't resist." (windows free_software freedom dopost security privacy )
- People need estimates | neilkillick.com
A clear (if imperfect) contribution to the #NoEstimates debate: "I now wonder: just because the people who still need estimates have not discovered any alternative solutions, does that mean they need estimates or that they think they need them? Or simply prefer to use them over other solutions?" (estimation dopost )
- Escape Velocity · GitHub
Details of a performance improvement in Github's code. (github performance html dopost ruby )
- Doodle3D aims to make 3D printing easy enough for anyone, is totally rad
"The software is very accessible, enabling 2D drawings done on a computer, tablet, or smartphone to be wirelessly sent to a hardware dongle attached to a variety of 3D printers. Just like that, drawings are magically turned from crude 2D images into physical 3D objects" (3d printing video dopost )
- Exit Q&A — Demotix Founder Turi Munthe Gives His Advice On How To Build A Startup | TechCrunch
"We were cheap because we never raised the squillions of our competitors in the US, so we had to be. Short, cheap leases; no marketing spend (as Founder, you are the marketing); no headhunters, no consultants, and as few hires as possible. Don’t try to outsource your risk: do it yourself. Oh, and conferences? Only go to the ones you’re speaking at…" (demotix interview advice startups dopost )
- Book review: ‘To Save Everything, Click Here’ by Evgeny Morozov – The Washington Post
"“To Save Everything, Click Here” is rife with such bullying and unfair attacks that seem mainly designed to build Morozov’s particular brand of trollism; one suspects he aspires to be a Bill O’Reilly for intellectuals" (book review internet dopost )
1205hrs, Friday, 19 April, 2013 | Links | Trackback | No Comments »
