Pigsaw Blog http://blog.pigsaw.org All the pig that's fit to saw Sat, 19 May 2012 21:00:36 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Bookmarks for 19 May 2012 http://blog.pigsaw.org/permalink/2012/05/19/2379 http://blog.pigsaw.org/permalink/2012/05/19/2379#comments Sat, 19 May 2012 21:00:36 +0000 Nik http://blog.pigsaw.org/?p=2379
  • Eigenlabs
    (music musical_instrument eigenharp )
  • VIDEO: Korg Mini KP 2 and Kaossilator 2 reviewed | MusicRadar.com
    (musical_instrument music video review kaossilator korg )
  • Fundamentals of Piano Practice
    An online book. (piano tutorial advice music )
  • How Yahoo Killed Flickr and Lost the Internet
    "This is the story of Flickr. And how Yahoo bought it and murdered it and screwed itself out of relevance along the way." (history dopost yahoo flickr )
  • Chromium Blog: Connect with Web Intents
    "Last year we proposed the Web Intents API to help web applications integrate with one another with minimal effort. We've now enabled an experimental version of the API in the most recent stable version of Chrome, to gather feedback from the web community and shape the future of the Web Intents API." (dopost browsers chrome google web_intents )
    • ]]>     http://blog.pigsaw.org/permalink/2012/05/19/2379/feed 0     Bookmarks for 17 May 2012 http://blog.pigsaw.org/permalink/2012/05/18/2375 http://blog.pigsaw.org/permalink/2012/05/18/2375#comments Thu, 17 May 2012 23:00:33 +0000 Nik http://blog.pigsaw.org/?p=2375
  • Please carry on learning to code
    "Every time I see someone retweet Jeff Atwood’s article “Please don’t learn to code” my heart sinks a little. I’ve got to respect his personal achievements, but on this I think he is spectacularly wrong." (software_development teaching education dopost )
  • Coding Horror: Please Don’t Learn to Code
    "The "everyone should learn to code" movement isn't just wrong because it falsely equates coding with essential life skills like reading, writing, and math. I wish. It is wrong in so many other ways." (teaching education dopost software_development )
  • HM Government | Agile
    "Agile in government is about championing the user, visible work, collaborating, learning and adapting. It's about innovating not just what we do, but how we do it. This site offers a community space to help with that." Great stuff. Odd that it "agile" encompasses championing the user, though. (agile government dopost )
  • The Wirecutter
    Technology buying decisions made easy. I also like the integrated advertising. (shopping technology comparison )
  • How The Counting Crows Learned To Stop Worrying and Love BitTorrent – Forbes
    Counting Crows' aims are not the same as their (former) label's, and they've turned to BitTorrent: "Ray understands why record labelskeep garlic in their offices to ward off torrents – labels make money by selling recorded music, not giving it away. But as a manager, he’s not just interested in record sales, he’s interested in the holistic strength of the band and its brand." (dopost bittorrent music_industry business_models counting_crows )
    • ]]>     http://blog.pigsaw.org/permalink/2012/05/18/2375/feed 0     Bookmarks for 16 May 2012 http://blog.pigsaw.org/permalink/2012/05/16/2373 http://blog.pigsaw.org/permalink/2012/05/16/2373#comments Wed, 16 May 2012 22:01:10 +0000 Nik http://blog.pigsaw.org/?p=2373
  • The problem with nerd politics | Technology | guardian.co.uk
    Nerd determinism (which advocates that technological freedom will triumph) versus nerd fatalism (which advocates that political compromise will triumph). (dopost freedom technology politics )
  • Geofeedia helps journalists locate real-time photos, tweets where news breaks | Poynter.
    "Geofeedia, a service that comes out of private beta today, aims to solve [the search for breaking news] problem by enabling location-based searches for social media content." (launch local search geofeedia dopost )
  • You’ll never believe how LinkedIn built its new iPad app (exclusive) | VentureBeat
    LinkedIn iPad app is 95% HTML5: not so interesting. Generic picture of woman using iPad: less interesting. How LinkedIn built their app: very interesting. (dopost html5 linkedin ipad software_development )
  • Facebook Hires Team From Android Photosharing App Dev Lightbox To Quiet Mobile Fears | TechCrunch
    "Facebook has just closed a deal to hire the full team of seven employees from Android photosharing app developer Lightbox, which should reduce worries that mobile will be its downfall." (dopost mobile facebook lightbox )
  • Lightbox Blog — Lightbox is joining Facebook!
    "Today, we’re happy to announce that the Lightbox team is joining Facebook, [...] Facebook is not acquiring the company or any of the user data hosted on Lightbox.com. In the coming weeks, we will be open sourcing portions of the code we’ve written for Lightbox and posting them to our Github repository." (dopost recruitment facebook lightbox )
  • Facebook giveth, Facebook taketh: A curious case of video apps — Tech News and Analysis
    "Facebook is good at hoarding data, but is terrible at interpreting the data: putting a proper context around it and then putting it to use." (dopost acquisitions a_b_testing facebook )
  • Lightbox Blog — Lightbox is joining Facebook!
    "Today, we’re happy to announce that the Lightbox team is joining Facebook, [...] Facebook is not acquiring the company or any of the user data hosted on Lightbox.com. In the coming weeks, we will be open sourcing portions of the code we’ve written for Lightbox and posting them to our Github repository." (recruitment facebook lightbox )
    • ]]>     http://blog.pigsaw.org/permalink/2012/05/16/2373/feed 0     Bookmarks for 14 May 2012 http://blog.pigsaw.org/permalink/2012/05/14/2368 http://blog.pigsaw.org/permalink/2012/05/14/2368#comments Mon, 14 May 2012 08:00:27 +0000 Nik http://blog.pigsaw.org/?p=2368
  • Yahoo’s Thompson Out; Levinsohn In; Board Settlement With Loeb – Kara Swisher – News – AllThingsD
    (dopost jobs yahoo )
  • How Hewlett-Packard lost its way – Fortune Tech
    Very well-researched article outlining the ten years of internal fighting at the top of HP. (history meg_whitman mark_hurd leo_apotheker hp )
  • The SIM-less Phone Is Coming. And It Should Scare The Shit Out Of You | Terence Eden has a Blog
    Apple is planning to control more of your online experience… "Their next move is a phone with a “Virtual SIM” [...] You buy your iPhone, plug it into iTunes, and tell it which price-plan you want. You pay Apple directly and they update the iPhone’s “Virtual SIM”. Hey presto, you’re on the network. What network? Who knows! As far as you’re concerned, you’re on Apple. [...] There are several reasons why the Virtual SIM is a dangerous idea…" (dopost lock_in telcos sim_cards technology apple )
  • Google’s head of news: Newspapers are the new Yahoo — Tech News and Analysis
    "Like media theorist Clay Shirky, the Google executive argues that one of the big problems for newspapers is that they always depended on “cross-subsidization” of topics — so the classified ads and the lifestyle section paid for the foreign reporting. Now, he says “we have blogs focusing on these niches alone, with a much keener sense of commercialization.”" (speech dopost newspapers journalism google )
  • Top GOP Pollster to GOP: Reverse On Gay Issues – The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan – The Daily Beast
    "Below is a remarkable document. It's a memo circulated by Jan van Lohuizen, a highly respected Republican pollster, [...] And the pollster's conclusion is clear: if the GOP keeps up its current rhetoric and positions on gays and lesbians, it is in danger of marginalizing itself to irrelevance or worse." (republicans gay_rights usa politics )
  • If You’re Not Pissing Someone Off, You’re Probably Not Innovating – Philip Auerswald – Harvard Business Review
    "The more disruptive your innovation, the more your success needs to look like the creation of a political movement." (advice ben_and_jerry dopost innovation )
  • Disruptions: Facebook’s Real-Life ‘Spidey Sense’ – NYTimes.com
    "Because it connects Facebook users to more than nine million apps and services through Facebook Connect, the Open Graph developer platform, and the hundreds of millions of like buttons that perforate Web pages across the Internet, the company can see what people are using. Facebook is more tapped into the pulse of people online than any company on the planet. As a result, Facebook has the inside track to what is becoming more popular in a way that its many competitors do not." (acquisitions dopost facebook )
  • Accordion – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    You learn something new every day… "Accordionists in heavy metal make their most extensive appearances in the folk metal sub-genre, and are otherwise generally rare. Full-time accordionists in folk metal seem even rarer…" (heavy_metal music accordians )
  • Mozilla 10 May – a set on Flickr
    Always lovely photos from Paul Clarke. (dopost photographs mozilla )
  • Improving estimate accuracy | Value, Flow, Quality
    Excellent stuff: "Don’t we just get frustrated when our estimates or guesstimates on timescales or costs turn out to be different from what actually happens? So how do we improve the accuracy of our estimates?" (dopost measurement estimation )
  • On editing text « Bosker Blog
    Editing text is like handling exceptions backwards. A curious observation, with the help of category theory. (maths category_theory dopost )
    • ]]>     http://blog.pigsaw.org/permalink/2012/05/14/2368/feed 0     Bookmarks for 10 May 2012 http://blog.pigsaw.org/permalink/2012/05/10/2365 http://blog.pigsaw.org/permalink/2012/05/10/2365#comments Thu, 10 May 2012 10:00:26 +0000 Nik http://blog.pigsaw.org/?p=2365
  • Instagram
    “What greets you on your first day at Apple. I've had this taped to my dresser for two years. Words to live by.” (epigram photograph dopost apple )
  • Two brilliant moves that helped create the Apple iOS powerhouse by Dalton Caldwell
    1. Windows Compatible iPods. 2. Allowing lower-value customers buy older stuff. (dopost ipod business_strategy apple )
  • The frequent fliers who flew too much – latimes.com
    Never mind about the ozone layer: "…Each had paid American more than $350,000 for an unlimited AAirpass and a companion ticket that allowed them to take someone along on their adventures. Both agree it was the best purchase they ever made, one that completely redefined their lives. [But they] were costing it millions of dollars in revenue, the airline concluded. [...] Now they were targets of an investigation." (flying american_airlines )
  • Rev Dan Catt – I’m leaving the Guardian
    "The title says it all – after two-and-a-half years I’m going to be leaving the Guardian." (jobs guardian dan_catt )
  • Nyquist Info
    "Nyquist is a sound synthesis and composition language offering a Lisp syntax as well as an imperative language syntax and a powerful integrated development environment.. Nyquist is an elegant and powerful system based on functional programming." (language music )
    • ]]>     http://blog.pigsaw.org/permalink/2012/05/10/2365/feed 1     Bookmarks for 7 May 2012 http://blog.pigsaw.org/permalink/2012/05/07/2361 http://blog.pigsaw.org/permalink/2012/05/07/2361#comments Mon, 07 May 2012 14:02:56 +0000 Nik http://blog.pigsaw.org/?p=2361
  • WWW Ircam: Musical Representations
    "The Musical Representations Team carries out research and development into the symbolic representation of musical structures, languages and computer paradigms adapted to music." (language music )
  • Gotan Project – YouTube
    Wonderful and tango, and great video. (tango video music )
  • What is Value? « Think Different
    "I publish here the core ideas underpinning our work [in teaching about value], in the hope that others might find it useful, wish to dig deeper, or even collaborate to add some polish and further depth." (agile ideas value )
  • Ricci Adams’ Musictheory.net
    Excellent and beautifully-rendered lessons in music theory. (lessons music )
  • Stephen King: Tax Me, for F@%&’s Sake! – The Daily Beast
    "What charitable 1 percenters can’t do is assume responsibility—America’s national responsibilities: the care of its sick and its poor, the education of its young, the repair of its failing infrastructure, the repayment of its staggering war debts. Charity from the rich can’t fix global warming or lower the price of gasoline by one single red penny. [...] That annoying responsibility stuff comes from three words that are anathema to the Tea Partiers: United American citizenry." (usa politics taxation stephen_king )
    • ]]>     http://blog.pigsaw.org/permalink/2012/05/07/2361/feed 0     Bookmarks for 5 May 2012 http://blog.pigsaw.org/permalink/2012/05/05/2357 http://blog.pigsaw.org/permalink/2012/05/05/2357#comments Sat, 05 May 2012 20:01:23 +0000 Nik http://blog.pigsaw.org/?p=2357
  • A Profile of London by A.A. Gill – NYTimes.com
    Lovely hymn to a city: "London can see the dead, and hugs them close. If New York is a wise guy, Paris a coquette, Rome a gigolo and Berlin a wicked uncle, then London is an old lady who mutters and has the second sight. She is slightly deaf, and doesn’t suffer fools gladly. " (a_a_gill london )
  • Washington Post only wants Digg’s human assets — paidContent
    "…but according to some reporters I trust (even if they can’t spell acqhire), at least some of the tech/dev Digg team is headed to WaPo. [...] Does the company need them more than its journalists? It needs them each differently." (digg dopost washington_post acquisition )
  • Cameron’s performance was spectacularly ill-judged – Telegraph Blogs
    "From the off Cameron's approach was wince-inducingly ill-judged. He rushed his statement and sounded steadily more touchy as he got deeper into it, lashing out and even shouting at one point about Charlie Whelan. It wasn't very Prime Ministerial." (politics leveson_inquiry david_cameron )
  • Agile recruitment agents – YouTube
    "You have Agile on your CV" (humour recruitment agile video )
  • A Tale of Two Agilities – YouTube
    "We do the scrums". Agile zealot meets someone who can use compound sentences. (dopost video agile humour )
  • Nik Silver’s ‘Lessons in Agile’ – YouTube
    Video highlights of my talk "Life Lessons in Agile". (presentation nik_silver dopost video agile )
  • I can hack/design for hours without even knowing it while listening to Kap Slap…. | Hacker News
    "I can hack/design for hours without even knowing it while listening to Kap Slap." (dopost programming music )
    • ]]>     http://blog.pigsaw.org/permalink/2012/05/05/2357/feed 0     Bookmarks for 27 Apr 2012 http://blog.pigsaw.org/permalink/2012/04/27/2356 http://blog.pigsaw.org/permalink/2012/04/27/2356#comments Fri, 27 Apr 2012 08:03:16 +0000 Nik http://blog.pigsaw.org/permalink/2012/04/27/2356
  • BBC sends more staff to Olympics than Team GB has athletes. As ever.
    A sharp summary from Martin: "It is a classic example of one of those non-stories that really irritate me in journalism. Effectively it says “the BBC has decided to send an arbitrary number of apples to an event, whilst an entirely separate organisation has sent an equally arbitrary but smaller number of pears to the same thing in order to perform a completely different function.”" (journalism olympics )
  • Twitter / @jmacdonald: Holy cow…how google driv …
    Google seem to claim ownership of your content via Google Drive. Dropbox and Microsoft (via SkyDrive) don't. (dopost dropbox microsoft micro google_drive terms_and_conditions )
  • The night I saw Jeremy Hunt hide behind a tree before dinner with James Murdoch – Telegraph Blogs
    "It was then, as I stood on the steps with my Blackberry, that I spotted the then new Secretary of State for Culture Jeremy Hunt in the middle distance, [...] I don't know whether he saw me, or if something else diverted him, but he suddenly changed direction and darted to the side of the square and over towards a large tree." (james_murdoch leveson_inquiry news_corp politics jeremy_hunt )
  • Exclusive: Bebo founders, shareholders sue owner for ‘destroying’ site — paidContent
    When exciting companies go bad… "Bebo, which has hit one rocky patch after another the past few years, now has new troubles. The social network’s founders and some other shareholders are suing its current owner, alleging fraud." (dopost legal bebo )
  • This is the web right now – The Oatmeal
    It is. It really is. (humour dopost internet )
  • Graphic News: the secret weapon of newsroom infographics | News | guardian.co.uk
    "A small agency produces infographics used in newspapers and on websites around the world. But you may not have heard of them. Welcome to Graphic News" (dopost journalism news infographics )
  • Eric Schmidt at Google-Oracle trial: open sourcing Android was legal | Technology | guardian.co.uk
    "My understanding was what we were doing was permissible, [...] From the sum of my experiences and interactions, I was very sure what we were doing was legally correct." (java oracle legal android dopost eric_schmidt google )
    • ]]>     http://blog.pigsaw.org/permalink/2012/04/27/2356/feed 0     Bookmarks for 25 Apr 2012 http://blog.pigsaw.org/permalink/2012/04/25/2355 http://blog.pigsaw.org/permalink/2012/04/25/2355#comments Wed, 25 Apr 2012 22:03:34 +0000 Nik http://blog.pigsaw.org/permalink/2012/04/25/2355
  • Financial Times passes 2m users for its HTML5 web app | Media | guardian.co.uk
    "Mobile now driving 12% of subscriptions to the newspaper's digital offering" (dopost financial_times app html5 )
  • Billionaires’ day at the Leveson inquiry | Media | The Guardian
    "What was interesting on Monday was the way in which the proprietors take it for granted that busy prime ministers are interested in their views on Russia, Chinese tourist visas (the Barclays also own expensive London hotels) and quantitative easing for their own sake, not because they fear what their newspapers might do to them if they don't keep the boss sweet." (james_murdoch leveson_inquiry newspapers )
  • Facebook Buys AOL Patents From Microsoft For $550 Million In Cash | TechCrunch
    "Microsoft and Facebook today announced that Microsoft would be selling to Facebook 650 of the 925 patents that it bought from AOL to Facebook for $550 million in cash." (dopost facebook microsoft patents )
  • “Why I break DRM on e-books”: A publishing exec speaks out — paidContent
    "…Recently, I began chatting with a publishing industry executive about this. This person — who I’ll call Exec — was interested in learning how to break DRM on e-books. About a month later, Exec is a convert and was ready to talk about the experience, albeit anonymously." (dopost publishing drm ebooks )
  • The Problem With Patents | Marvels – WSJ.com
    "The problem is that the system allows too many inessential patents, which leads to even more inessential litigation." (wsj patents )
  • Introducing Google Drive… yes, really | Official Google Blog
    "Just like the Loch Ness Monster, you may have heard the rumors about Google Drive. It turns out, one of the two actually does exist." (dopost google_drive )
  • Identity and privacy principles | Government Digital Service
    Most of all, I like the way these principles are written from the point of view of the citizen, not the corporation. (principles dopost identity government )
  • Tor Books goes completely DRM-free – Boing Boing
    "Today, Tor Books, the largest science fiction publisher in the world, announced that henceforth all of its ebooks would be completely DRM-free." (openness dopost drm ebooks )
  • Could the NYT make money from its scoops? | Felix Salmon
    "…shouldn’t the NYT, which can always use a bit of extra revenue, take advantage of the fact that its stories can move markets so much?" (nytimes journalism ethics )
  • This Amazing Device Just Made Wheelchairs Obsolete for Paraplegics
    "The young man in this video looks like he's riding a Segway. But Yusuf Akturkoglu was paralized after falling from a horse five years ago, and he's being mobilized by an amazing device invented by Turkish scientists. It's going to change lives." (invention disability mobility )
    • ]]>     http://blog.pigsaw.org/permalink/2012/04/25/2355/feed 2     Bookmarks for 23 Apr 2012 http://blog.pigsaw.org/permalink/2012/04/23/2352 http://blog.pigsaw.org/permalink/2012/04/23/2352#comments Mon, 23 Apr 2012 08:00:17 +0000 Nik http://blog.pigsaw.org/?p=2352
  • Big picture: ‘God hates signs’ – gay rights protesters’ placards | Art and design | The Guardian
    "…we pay tribute to the best gay rights protesting placards." Including "If God hates fags, why are we so cute?" (gay_rights humour photographs homophobia )
  • A VC: What If Web And Mobile Apps Are Like TV Shows?
    "Network effects are powerful in both directions. They can help you grow exponentially. But when they are going against you, they work just as fast. Myspace's decline was mind blowingly quick. RIM's has been as well. Who is next?" (apps myspace network_effect dopost )
  • Instagram is mine and it owes me a living | Made by Many
    Paul Sims is put out about Instagram's buyout. But things could be different… "If an insurance document can be generated on the fly, seconds before you get in a stranger's car, then could a user become a part owner in a organisation simply by signing up or using micro-investment?" (mutualisation ownership facebook dopost instagram )
  • Nick Denton wants to turn the online media world on its head — Tech News and Analysis
    "While many outlets treat comments and the discussion around a story as an afterthought, something that gets tacked on once the story is finished, Denton said he sees it not only as as the beginning of the story — but as the most important part." (gawker nick_denton dopost journalism commenting )
  • Jalmus – Free sight-reading software – Musical Instruments Buying Guide
    "Jalmus is a free, open source music education software helping the musicians, specially pianists, to improve their sight-reading. You can train to read music with both exercises on notes or rhythms." (software training sight_reading music )
  • Sass vs. LESS vs. Stylus: Preprocessor Shootout | Nettuts+
    "Wielding the true power of a CSS preprocessor is an adventure. There are countless languages, syntaxes, and features, all ready for use right now. In this article, we will be covering the various features and benefits of using three different preprocessors—Sass, LESS, and Stylus." (dopost comparison tools css )
    • ]]>     http://blog.pigsaw.org/permalink/2012/04/23/2352/feed 0