Blog Posts

March 2012

• 2012-03-02

  Letting out my Comcast frustrations

  “Dear Kelley

  I’ve had a very bad two days with Comcast, and if you check my account you will see that I’ve used Comcast for over 20 years!! But I am now talking to Verizon.

  Because I don’t want to waste more time with you guys I will say this: I am glad to talk to someone serious who wants to know how you are going wrong. I don’t want to talk to a trained support person who is trying to calm me down. I am very calm.

  Here is a short list of issues:

  the web site says that the link is for an email to Rick Germano. This is clearly not the case as I am talking to you. You treat your customers like they are dummies. your voice mail menu is horrible and time wasting. it seems tike it tries all ...

  Read more →
• 2012-03-01

  Clever iPhone app vs. the Transistor

  This interesting, and I think, correct article, makes the argument that the word ‘innovation’ is being watered downand even getting cheapened. It says, about “innovation”,

  “Regrettably, we now use the term to describe almost anything. It can describe a smartphone app or a social media tool; or it can describe the transistor or the blueprint for a cellphone system. The differences are immense.” (from ...

  Read more →

  #apple #technology

February 2012

• 2012-02-29

  Family Values

  [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSQQK2Vuf9Q&w=560&h=315]

• 2012-02-29

  Poll: Chose the new BlogBridge icon

  99designs is #1 for Button & Icon Design

• 2012-02-26

  Amazing article about what’s going on in Syria

  

  In the Sunday Times (of London, I gather, but they don’t feel the need to include that in their name) I saw this outstanding article about what’s going on in Syria. (No I don’t regularly read the Sunday Times, I got this through a link.

  Here’s a little from the article by Marie Colvin:

  “Our house was hit by a rocket so 17 of us were staying in one room,” she recalls as Mimi, her three-year-old daughter, and Mohamed, her five-year-old son, cling to her abaya.

  “We had had nothing but sugar and water for two days and my husband went to try to find food.” It was the las...

  Read more →

  #politics
• 2012-02-25

  8 Hour Sleep is for the birds?

  Do you believe that you require 8 hours of sleep to be rested and effective. Well, in this really interesting article in the BBC News it seems like that pattern might not really be the most natural.Some experiments conducted came up with some interesting findings:

  In the early 1990s, psychiatrist Thomas Wehr conducted an experiment in which a group of people were plunged into darkness for 14 hours every day for a month.

  “It took some time for their sleep to regulate but by the fourth week the subjects settled into a very distinct sleeping pattern. They slept first for four hours, then woke for one or two hours before falling into a second fou...

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  #health
• 2012-02-24

  What is Pinterest good for?

  Funny thing, I like many people are trying to figure out what Pinterest is good for. Well I found a use.

  From yesterday’s post, you saw that I am searching for a new application icon for BlogBridge. In fact I listed a series of out/crowdsource design options. What I need to do now is to provide them with design guidance, a design brief.

  So as you may imagine, I’ve been looking around the web for icons and logos which I like because one of the best ways to tell a designer what you are looking for is to show them the stuff you like.

  See where this is going?

  Voila, what better use for Pinterest can you think of?

  Here’s my Pinterest “BlogBridge Icon Inspiration” Board

  I will try to set it up so you can add an idea or two if you have any contribution. Whoops, that might be dangerous. Shall we try?

  #design
• 2012-02-23

  Crowdsourcing a new BlogBridge icon

  Well, it’s been about 5 years with the same (lovely) BlogBridge application icon and as we are redesigning the web site and releasing a major new release of the product, we thought, hey, it’s time to update the icon to something, ahem, a little more modern.

  In case you forgot (or never knew),here’s what the BlogBridge app icon looks like today:

  

  I guess, nice, but boring, yes?

  So what I am looking for is a beautiful new, 3D rendered, and meaningful application icon. Something that will look really cool in my dock (but equally on a Windows or Linux desktop.)

  So far I’ve consid...

  Read more →

  #design
• 2012-02-21

  Lake Wobegon and Politics

  Have you ever heard a politician or pundit say, with self-assurance, America is a Right of Center country. Think Newt Gingrich.

  Right of Center. How do we determine the center?

  Isn’t this a lot like Lake Wobegon, “Where all our children are above average“?

  I’m just sayin’…

  #politics
• 2012-02-18

  RSS feed for for twitter

  A simple question that for some reason does not have a simple answer:

  “I want to follow someone’s twitter feed using an RSS reader, where is it?”

  Well it seems that for some reason Twitter has quite hidden it but as a public service I will share the results of my research with you.

  You will find it at:

  https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_name=username So, for my twitter feed it is:

  https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_name=pitosalas Of course, users of BlogBridge have a much easier time and have many more options. With BlogBridge you can subscribe to a person, to a list, or even to a general Twitter query, like “Object Oriented Marketing”.

  Watch this brief video to see how you would do it in BlogBridge:

  [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSo5sC3kN3Q]

• 2012-02-17

  MapReduce Patterns and Examples

  Great review article:

  “In this article I digested a number of MapReduce patterns and algorithms to give a systematic view of the different techniques that can be found in the web or scientific articles. Several practical case studies are also provided. All descriptions and code snippets use the standard Hadoop’s MapReduce model with Mappers, Reduces, Combiners, Partitioners, and sorting. This framework is depicted in the figure below.” (from Highly Scalable)

  Worth reading if you are interested in how Hadoop and friends might apply to the problems that you are trying to solve: “MapReduce Patterns, Algorithms, and Use Cases”

  #computer-science
• 2012-02-14

  What I want to see in Spotify

  As you know, I am a big big fan of Spotify. Lately I’ve been playing with the Last.FM integration. It’s a handy way for me to see what new music or artists I might like to listen to. I’ve discovered plenty of new music that way, it’s great.

  What I would like is to be able to ask Spotify (or Last.FM) for a ‘radio’ station which plays music that I might like to hear. This feature exists but it doesn’t suit me because it would jump from a raucous rock piece to a quiet jazz piece to a strange folk piece. Generally I play music based on a general mood I am in or want. Quiet Jazz in the morning and upbeat stuff (load) when I am washing dishes. You get the idea.

  If you work for Spotify, what do you think?

  #music
• 2012-02-13

  Brilliant response to when your site gets hacked

  [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILhiW76B3H8&w=560&h=315]

• 2012-02-12

  Do you have a favorite mustard? I do!

  

• 2012-02-10

  Superbowl Social Media

  Here’s a really interesting article about how the Superbowl used Social Mediato enhance the experience:

  “An exclusive, in-depth look into the Super Bowl’s first ever social media command center, the folks who ran it, and how the convergence of technology and people created the ultimate online Super Bowl experience.” (from Why the Super Bowl’s Mission Command Center Scores a Winning Touchdown)

  The article goes into each of t...

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• 2012-02-10

  Selling course notes: a market solution

  Should it be ok for students to take notes during a class and turn them into a marketable product that they make money on?

  If I am teaching the same class again this year, students could buy the course notes and potentially do better, or learn more. That’s a good thing, right?

  However is it fair to me? After all these students are becoming multi-millionaires by reselling my work, my intellectual property. Yeah right.

  One professor has an amusing solution to this dilemma, but I think it still misses the point;

  Precisely. Besides which, I’ve figured out a much more fun solution to the problem: I’m going to buy some of these note sets and outlines being sold for my classes. ...

  Read more →

  #education
• 2012-02-08

  Compelling: 23 and 1/2 hours

  [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUaInS6HIGo&w=560&h=315]

  #health
• 2012-02-08

  Elections: Hand counts are NOT the gold standard

  There is always a good deal of controversy surrounding elections and in particular, whether an election is ‘fair’ or not. As I have been working on a project with the Open Source Digital Voting FoundationI’ve been exposed to this from time to time.

  This controversy arises in many different guises. There is a group that is absolutely against using computers in any way shape or form to run elections. Given that we need to count the votes of some 200 Million people in this country alone, it seems far fetched to try to do that without a computer involved anywhere.

  Others say that the act of looking at a ballot and determining the votes cast should only done ...

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  #politics
• 2012-02-04

  Software Developer Meat Market

  An interesting article in Forbes about Software Developers and Development in general, The Rise of Developeronomics. While here and there he is promoting old chestnuts which may or may not be true there is a core argument which is quite intriguing. It goes something like this:

  All companies are becoming software companies, meaning they are driven by software whatever their business actually is. Hence a key resource to a successful business is an effective, efficient and scalable capability to create innovative computer driven systems. Programmers are scarce. Hence the way to invest in the future is to culti...

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  #software-engineering #business
• 2012-02-03

  Is your software developer any good?

  Are you thinking about hiring a software developer to build your system? Here are “8 Things You Ought to Know If You Do Not Know Anything About Hiring a Software Developer“. He says:

  “I did not come to this industry with a software background. I studied math, physics, business, then finance. But over the past 12 years or so, I have learned quite a bit about how to pick a software… “friend”. So let me share with you 8 things I would want to know if I was starting afresh.” (from “8 Things You Ought to Know If You Do Not Know Anything About Hiring a Software Developer“)

  Can I be your friend?

  #software-engineering