July 2011

• 2011-07-01

  Microsoft is to Google as Lotus was to Microsoft

  This isn’t a huge new insight but it’s interesting to see history kind of repeating itself.

  Sometimes a product is so locked in and so entrenched that it looks like it will never be beat. After all, no one ever got fired for buying IBM right? And you’d have to be crazy to try to build a new spreadsheet to compete with Excel, because companies large and small have an unbelievable investment in training, familiarity and documents so that any change is extremely hard and costly.

  It is said, correctly, I think, that such entrenched software products often get unseated during a platform switch. When a dominant technology platform (e.g. PCs or Windows) is losing it’s dominance in...

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  #business #lotus

June 2011

• 2011-06-30

  Inside Job

  It’s hard to comprehend people who feel that it is reasonable (let alone ethical, let alone bankers) to get paid on the order of $50 MILLION a year.

  You should watch the documentary Inside Job. It’s nauseating.

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

  #business #politics
• 2011-06-29

  [GEEKY] Full Applications that run in the browser

  Sproutcore is a JavaScript framework for writing powerful web applications with less code. It looks to me as a way to write a lot more of your application in JavaScript running in the browser. And this involves moving the logic of the application’s own logic there.

  Sproutcore is a big complicated system that I have not fully investigated. It comes with a good pedigree though and is very nicely documented and designed. Worth a look if you want to have a super responsive browser based app that will continue to work even when the network connection is gone.

  Here is their own blurb: “SproutCore applications move business l...

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  #programming
• 2011-06-27

  Interesting approach to teaching computer science

  Fun article about Ben Hescott who has some unique – and impressive – approaches to teaching an abstract topic:

  Q. Did you experience an “aha’’ teaching moment?

  A. My first time teaching, I was using PowerPoint slides. One student kept saying, “I don’t see it.’’ So I turned off the computer, grabbed a piece of chalk, and went through the material slowly on the blackboard, without notes. Afterward, the kid said, “You’re a really good teacher when you’re not using PowerPoint.’’ That changed everything.” (from The Boston Globe)

  You have to read the whole interview!

  #computer-science #education
• 2011-06-26

  [GEEKY] JavaScript – Universal Language of the Future

  JavaScript is the language of the future. Why do I say this?

  I love Ruby, I respect Java, and I am jealous of Python. And of course I have a warm spot in my heart for C++. Think about it. JavaScript is unique among all those languages:

  Any computer you can get your hands on nowadays has a working, and probably very fast JavaScript compiler/interpreter. Laptops, Desktops, Servers, Mac, Pc, Linux, Phone, Tablet. ALL OF THEM. You can’t say that of any of the other languages.

  Because of the browser wars, and probably spurred on by Google and Chrome, there has been enormous investment in JavaScript performance so that it is now respected as a viable high performance language for server side ap...

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  #programming
• 2011-06-20

  Adobe Software Updates To Help Devs Build iOS, PlayBook And Android Apps

  As you (don’t) know, I am teaching a course at Brandeis University about mobile and game development. So I follow stories about how to more easily create cross platform mobile apps with great interest. Check this post Adobe Software Updates To Help Devs Build iOS, PlayBook And Android Apps from TechCrunch: Adobe is today pushing updates to its application development software product Flash Builder and the open source Flex framework to enable developers to build apps for iPhone, iPad and BlackBerry PlayBook, following support for the Android platform (added last April).

  #technology #apple
• 2011-06-17

  In Boston, Bruins more important than Bin Laden!

  

  #boston
• 2011-06-15

  Waiting for Superman

  I recently saw the movie “Waiting for Superman” – yes I am late to the party. But in case you have not seen it let me recommend it to you as a highly revealing and disappointing view into the way the American school system runs, stuck in a system that feels so wrong in so many ways. Watch it. And visit the Waiting For Superman Web Site.

  Here is the IMdb info for Waiting for Superman. Here is theNetflix link for the DVD.

  #education
• 2011-06-14

  Internet in a suitcase

  The U.S. government is helping create parallel internetsand cell phone networks in countries where the government is suppressing free communications between their citizens. The idea makes sense and is, “pretty cool”: “The effort includes secretive projects to create independent cellphone networks inside foreign countries, as well as one operation out of a spy novel in a fifth-floor shop on L Street in Washington, where a group of young entrepreneurs who look as if they could be in a garage band are fitting deceptively innocent-looking hardware into a prototype “Internet in a suitcase.” (from The New York Times)

  Read more about it in the New York Times: US Underwrites Detour Around Sensors.

  #politics #technology
• 2011-06-13

  Hulu Pluz

  So I finally got to try Hulu Plus on a one month promotion, and used it to watch an episode of Friday Night Lights. I had read a recent TV review comparing Friday Night Lights to Glee, and it made me curious. Verdict: Friday Night Lights – Excellent!

  Verdict: Hulu Plus – Commercial after every 7-8 minutes, highly annoying

• 2011-06-12

  “The Real Housewives of Wall Street”

  Mike Taibi writes in Rolling Stone about some fairly outrageous doings between Washington D.C. and Wall Street during the various ‘bailouts‘: “Christy is the wife of John Mack, the chairman of Morgan Stanley. Susan is the widow of Peter Karches, a close friend of the Macks who served as president of Morgan Stanley’s investment-banking division. Neither woman appears to have any serious history in business, apart from a few philanthropic experiences. Yet the Federal Reserve handed them both low-interest loans of nearly a quarter of a billion dollars through a complicated bailout program that virtually guaranteed them millions in risk-free income.” (from The Real Housewives of Wall Street)

  #politics #business
• 2011-06-11

  Really good advice

  Robert Krulwich gave this graduation speech. While it is aimed at Journalism students, it has some good stories: “As I say, he was a news writer, writing copy off in a corner, sometimes for Murrow, but he’s pretty much an indoors guy, and he’s dreaming of course, of getting outdoors where things are happening and one night – in the middle of the night, on the graveyard shift, two a.m.—the bell on the wire ticker goes off and says an airplane has just fallen short of the runway at LaGuardia Airport and is sinking in the East River, right now.” (...

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May 2011

• 2011-05-30

  Urban Outfitters Rip Off Independent Artists?

  This article, “Anatomy of a Trending Topic: How Twitter & the crafting community put the smackdown on Urban Outfitters” is interesting for two reasons:

  Photographs that show graphically that Urban Outfitters, in at least one case, seems to have totally ripped off an independent jewelry designer.

  A case history of how that accusation spread through a relatively small set of twitter users and tweets and seems to have forced Urban Outfitters to pay attention.

  There is lots of stuff on the web about ripoffs in general – “You thought we wouldn’t notice”. Also an interesting comment thread on this page: “Did Urban Outfitters rip off an indie designer, yet again?” where you can see a bit of a debate of whether in fact the original design was truly original.

  Things are never as simple as they appear…

  #business
• 2011-05-29

  Sudafed and Voting

  A theme that I have followed in this blog is the question of whether it’s a good idea to require a picture ID of some kind before permitting a citizen to vote. In another article in the New York Times called “Republican Legislators Push to TIghten Voting Rules”, Governor Nikki Haley of South Carolina had this quote:

  ***“If you have to show a picture ID to buy Sudafed, if you have to show a picture ID to get on an airplane, you should show a picture ID when you vote,” ***

  Which is pretty convincing comment, on the face of it, isn’t it? Except:

  Voting is far more importa...

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  #politics
• 2011-05-27

  [GEEKY] Great set of excellent Rails 3 Gems

  Just a quick read of this post showed me several great gems that I want to try right away! If you’re a Rails programmer this is going to be of great interest: Rails 3: Fully Loaded

  ActiveAdmin is particular looks like an excellent new way to generate a whole suite of reasonable views and controllers to create, read, update and delete information in Rails3 applications. ActiveAdmin is customized with a DSL so that you have a prayer of getting what you want without hacking the hell out of the logic that is built in. I will definitely try it.

  #programming #ruby
• 2011-05-25

  University Teaching – homework, tests and grades?

  I am about a week from beginning teaching my course at Brandeis University. The curriculum is a little different from last year, focusing on mobile software engineering and game development. This is different from last year, where we focused both on web and mobile software engineering.

  The structure is that we teach during june and july, 4 days a week, and the students end up with 3 courses worth of credits. The students are both graduate and undergraduate. Given the time frame you can see that it’s an intensive boot camp-like experience. It’s a lot of work and a lot of fun.

  So with my mind on teaching, curriculum, homework assignments and grading, I made note of...

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  #education #brandeis
• 2011-05-25

  Hilarious blog post teaching Israelis how to adapt to living in the USA

  This is too funny. Here’s a taste, but you should read the whole article saying how an Israeli should adapt to living in the United States. For example, this is about the express line in the super market:

  “The express line operates differently in American grocery stores, and might take some getting used to. The 10 item limit is strictly enforced. It would not be considered normal for you to haggle and argue with the sales clerk and to raise your voice because you only have 11 items. It is even less likely that as you stood your ground, the people in line behind you would start to call you names and to yell at t...

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  #jewish
• 2011-05-23

  [GEEKY] REST and the PATCH verb

  Last year when teaching REST concepts at Brandeis University I proved the truism that there’s no better way to learn about something than to try and teach it. We (all) wrapped ourselves around the axle trying to understand HTTP “PUT” versus HTTP “POST” and learned new english words like Idempotency. I won’t go into the whole story because it’s kind of long.

  * But one of the keys ideas that is tricky to understand is the difference between PUT and POST in REST as it is implemented using HTTP. PUT replaces a specific resource (think of it as a record for a specific key) while POST creates a new resource. *

  So I was interested to see that there’...

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  #programming #brandeis
• 2011-05-22

  Bill Gates is starting to look like Woody Allen??

  

• 2011-05-21

  [GEEKY] Devise Gem – current favorite for authentication of Rails Applications

  How to build authentication into Rails applications? Well, at least at RailsConf 2011, the buzz was around a new Authentication gem called Devise.

  I played with it a little (here in the airport) at it seems quite nice and straightforward. Check it out if you were looking for something like that.

  railsconf

  #programming #ruby